Energy Project Update

Over the past few months we have been doing experiments that will help to reduce our monthly energy bills. What I tried to do was not use the dishwasher and turn of lights when I leave the rooms. My energy bill did decrease but I dont know if it was a result of my experiment or as a result of other factors. In the future I plan to just attempt to reduce one thing so I can directly target the problem. If that  one reduction works then I will expand to reduce more things so I can reduce my electricity bill as much as possible.

Color Mixing

Color Mixing starts with the three primary colors: red, green and blue. When you mix all of the primary colors, you should get a white light. When you mix red and green, you get yellow. When you mix red and blue you get magenta, when you mix blue and green you get cyan. If you are wearing a red shirt and you shine a blue light on the shirt then the shirt would appear black. If you shine a red light on a red shirt then it would appear red. The thing that happens when you shine light on an opaque material is it absorbs all the colors except the color that it is. If the same color light shines on the the opaque material then it reflects that color.

Sound Waves and Doppler Effect

Sound is a longitudinal mechanical wave that can travel through almost any medium. Sound is a vibration in pressure. Sound waves consist of compressions and rarefractions. Compressions are a region of a increased pressure on a sound wave. Rarefractions are a region of decreased pressure on a sound wave.

The doppler effect is based on sound. As a vehicle with a siren moves closer the frequency increases and the pitch gets higher. As the vehicle passes you, the frequency decreases as a result, the pitch gets lower. The doppler affect can be true for other things like boats, bikes and balls.

Wave Superposition

The wave superposition principle is a principle that basically talks about the interference of two waves when the collide. The wave superposition principle says that when two waves interfere they just travel through each other and their speed and size are unaltered. If a wave is 3ft going through a 5ft wave at 20 m/s it will continue to move unaltered at 3ft at 20 m/s. The 5ft wave will also travel unaltered. At the point when they are interfering, they can have destructive interference or constructive interference but no matter what, they continue through unaltered.

Waves- What are they around us?

There are many different kinds of waves that happened around us everyday. Some examples of waves that we see every day are light waves, radio waves, waves breaking on the beach, sound waves. There are electromagnetic waves and mechanical waves. Electromagnetic waves include light waves and radio waves. Mechanical waves include sound waves or waves that we see on the surface of the water. Waves interact with each other in many ways, there is destructive interference and constructive interference. Destructive interference is when waves flatten each other out when they interact. Constructive interference is when the waves double in size when they interact with each eachother.

Energy Use and Plan

For my project where I am trying to save energy and ultimately reduce my families electric bill. I chose to not use the dishwasher for our dishes, but rather hand wash and dry them. I also am going to try to turn off lights when ever i leave a room and make sure that the rest of my family is doing the same. The idea of not using the dishwasher is not very hard as long as you keep up with it and don't let the dishes pile up. Also the idea of turning off the lights is a very easy idea. We are not too lazy to do that but we just forget sometimes. If we just focus on the little things, then we will be able to save a good amount of money very easily.

Multimeters

A multimeter is an instrument that is designed to measure electric current, voltage, and resistance. The values can range from around mili- to kilo-. If you are on a current setting that is measuring too high then it will beep and you can normally change it to another setting that will be able to handle the current. The beep is also saying that the wire would not be safe and it could possibly blow the circuit. Electricians use these multimeters to find live wires and dead wires, along with figuring out what the source of a problem is. We can use the multimeter as a more accurate way to measure wires rather than assuming that the labels on things are right and using math.

Series and Parallel Circuits

Series Circuit (left) is a circuit with only one path of current and one voltage. You can hook up as many light bulbs (resistors) as you want on to the series circuit but the more you put on the circuit, the dimmer each bulb will be. If you have 1 bulb then that bulb will be the maximum brightness, if you have 2 bulbs then each bulb will be half of the maximum brightness. If you break the circuit by either having two bulbs then taking one out, or having a switch in the line, the current will not flow until you have two bulbs in the circuit or the switch is turned on.

A parallel circuit (right) is a circuit in which you can have as many paths as you want. You can hook up as many bulbs to this circuit as you need. The voltage will be the same through each of the paths of electricity but the current will be different through all of them. No matter how many bulbs you put on the circuit the brightness will always be the same for all of the bulbs. If one path is broken in parallel, the electricity will continue to flow through the rest of the paths just not the path that has been broken.

Ohm's Law and Power

Ohms law is an equation that consists of V=IR which also can be rewritten as I=V/R and R=V/I. This equation can be used in life as an electric engineer to find the relationship between current, voltage and resistance. It can also be used to determine if a circuit is safe or not. Voltage (V)(measured in volts) is directly related to current and resistance. Current (I)(measured in amperes) is directly related to voltage and inversely related to resistance. Resistance (R)(measured in Ohms) is directly related to voltage and inversely related to current.
Power is the energy used per unit of time. The units of power is joules per second. Power is used in our everyday lives in our homes.

Electricity, Importance of electricity, Electric Current, Resistance

Electricity is a energy form that is resulting from the existence of charged particles, such as positive and negative charges orbiting around the nucleus. Electricity is used for cooking, communication, laptops among many other things in our everyday lives. Electricity is important because it helps us to see at night when its dark, power our televisions, it is made by burning oil and natural resources. Electric Current is the rate of charge flow past a given point in an electric circuit, measured in coulombs/second also known as Amperes. Resistance is the ratio of voltage applied to the electric current that flows through it using the equation R=V/I. If the resistance is constant over a range of voltage then Ohm's law can be used which is, I=V/R.

Capacitance

There are many uses of capacitors in our everyday lives, but the first one that i found was what i am using to type this right now and control my computer which is my mouse pad. Our mouse pads have two metal plates with terminals and a dialect in between them. The duty of a capacitor is just to store a charge. More examples of a capacitor besides the mouse of our keyboard are, the keys on our keyboard, our touchscreen phones, our TV remotes. All the buttons that we press have little capacitors inside of them. Without capacitors most of our electronics wouldn't be able to function.

Electric Potential Energy

Electric Potential Energy is the amount of energy a charge has based on the position of the charge in an electric field. The unit of Electric Potential Energy are Joules. In a diagram like the one above, the positive charges always have the higher potential energy and the negative charges always have the lower potential energy. Also, the flow of the energy in the diagram above goes from positive to negative. So if the positive test charge is near the positive charges it will have high potential energy, but if the positive test charge is near the negative charges then it will have a lower potential energy.

Electrostatics

Electrostatics is studying stationary electric charges or fields. This is talking about positive and negative charges along with neutral charges. In this picture a student is rubbing there socks on the ground which is charging by static friction. If it was in a cold dry environment and the student was to rub their socks and then touch someone, they would get a static shock. This is caused because of electrons building up and when they get near a neutral or positive charge they would want to jump off causing a shock. It doesn’t work very well in wet environments, the charge depletes quicker in that kind of environment.

DO WORK!

When you think of doing work you think of school or having a job. But in physics “work” is a measurement. Work is equal to force times distance (W=FD). Work is measured in Joules (J), force is measured in newtons, and distance is measured in meters. A newton is equal to the mass of something times gravity (N=mg). It is a fairly easy topic to learn. If you have force and work you can find distance, if you have distance and work then you can find force and ect. The person in this picture is doing work because the mass of their finger is going the distance down to the keyboard. So if the mass of his finger was .4kg and it had to go .1 meters down to the keyboard then the work that he would have is 0.04 J. W=FD.

What I am thankful for

Thanksgiving isn’t just about what you are thankful for in life, but it is also about what you are thankful for in school subjects like physics. There are many things to be thankful for in physics but the one thing that I am the most thankful for is gravity (-9.8 m/s^2). It is the best thing that has ever happened to the world and to physics. Without gravity everything would be floating around and it would be hard to do anything with out it. That is why everything in my room is not floating; it is staying down, because of gravity.

Momentum

Momentum is a very confusing topic for me, especially when you talk about change in momentum (impulse) versus change in speed. It is hard for me to tell the difference. In this picture a football player is getting tackled into the ground. The whole way down after he is hit there is no impulse but once he begins to hit the ground the impulse has a big small force and a large contact time, that is the same as if he his a hard surface because there would be a great force over a small contact time, they balance out. Overall he has a large momentum because has has a large mass and a large velocity moving forward.

Forces that Accelerate

I was sitting at Sandy Beach also known as “Sandys” and I realized that the blow hole was really blowing hard. So I grabbed my camera and took a sequence of pictures with it. I got pictures of when it began to blow, when it was in mid air still moving up and when all of the water was floating. This is related to physics because when the water first shot out of the hole, it was accelerating which meant that the velocity was increasing because of the pressure in the hole. As soon as all of the water left the hole it continued to move upward but it wasn’t accelerating because there was no force acting upon it. After a few seconds in mid air it began to fall because gravity downward was greater than the acceleration upward.