Bendy Strawsss!

Pressureeeeee! It's everywhereeeeee! Like in my bendy straw. Haha.

Okay, so today I got mad at my dad. I failed my road test on Friday (more pressure! Like in the book!) and my parents wanted me to keep driving. I didn't want to, so my dad literally dragged me out of the house, threw me in the driver's seat, and made me drive (Sorry, people, a little venting/back story here).

Then my daddy bought me apple juice and Lifesavers Gummies, and I was happy again (I know, easily entertained child). I drove back home and wanted to drink my juice, so I found myself a straw. It was bendy which made me even happier.

I was also pondering a Physics blog idea. I started drinking from my awesome red straw when I realized that I was hardly getting any juice! It made me a little sad on the inside when I figured out that there was a hole in my straw. -__-
That's me drinking from my fail straw. Little did I know that I had a Physics topic on my hands. By "sucking" the straw, I was lowering the pressure inside the straw (or I would have if there were no hole!!!). Since the pressure outside is greater, the liquid travels up the straw. Since there was a hole, air got in the straw through it, so not as much juice came up, which means less juice for me. :[ So in the end, I just said, forget the straw and threw it away.

I guess this is another quite lame blog. Sorry. I should think of these further in advance...

Falling Phones and Physics

Alright faithful readers of my blog, sorry, but here goes another lame blog!

I don't really know when we were talking about it, but one day, Tulga and I were looking at our phones. This is my huge SideKick Slide:
Sorry about the bad picture, but it was taken off my webcam. Give me some slack! Anyways, my phone is very big compared to Tulga's awesome tiny phone:

Yeah, I stole that picture off his blog. Haha (FORGIVE ME TULGA!). We were standing so Tulga commented that if we dropped our phones, mine would hit the ground faster only because I'm shorter. It got me thinking about Physics and how we learned that no matter how different two objects are, when you drop them from the same height, they'll both hit the ground at the same time! So if Tulga were to crouch down a little so that his phone would be at the same height as mine, and if we both happened to drop out phones at the exact same time, they would both hit the ground (and break) at the same time (even though my phone is like 3 times Tulga's). Haha.

This reminds me of the time when I was playing with my friend, Tommy's, phone and I dropped it and caught it while it was falling. He probably would have killed me if i hurt his precious LG Shine. That was rather unrelated to the rest of this blog, I just felt I needed to take the opportunity to brag about my ninja moment.

Again, sorry about the lame blog. I'll try and do better next time!

When one door opens...

It's all because of torque! YAY!

I learned at a young age that you can't push a door open near the hinge. You see, my mom would always have to unlock the door, so she stood in front of the end furthest away from the hinge where the lock was located. And I, being the impatient little kid I was, would always try to push the door open from the only other end available: the one near the hinge. Sadly, every time I tried, my little hands and body was never able to open it. (Though sometimes I would push with my mom and pretend that it was all me. Hehehe.)

In addition, today, my dad was carrying our new TV into the house. Somehow he got himself in the door, but he was holding the door open with his head and couldn't move without the door closing on him. After laughing for a little bit (haha), I went to push the door open to help. I was carrying stuff too, so I tried to use my foot. I was too close to the hinge, so the door didn't budge and Daddy was still struggling. Instead of pushing it open, I used my butt to hold it open so he could get inside with no damage.

My difficulty with doors through the years was because of torque. Torque equal radius times the force. With a shorter distance from the pivot point, you need more force to achieve the same torque. I didn't know that as a kid, but now I do.
Yeah. That's my door (Ignore the dust >_<). I stood closest to my broken doorbell, which was not very smart of Little Steph. Luckily I learned eventually.

Today, I also realized that my doorknob is related to this same concept. I won't expand too much on this one, but you can have a picture. I'm sure you get the point by now.

Oh, but if you look carefully in the background, you can see my internet antenna from last week's blog! MIND BLOWING, isn't it?! :D

If This Thing Falls...O_O

Recently, we have been having some trouble with our internet. To fix our problem, my dad told us to put our antenna thingy way up high so that it might have a a better chance of picking up a signal. My mom heard this and took it to an extreme...This is the result...

The antennae is now precariously perched on a plastic thing which is on a stack of CD's which is on some black thing which is on my dad's computer which is on my dad's desk (Ignore the mess). In all, this antenna is about 5 feet up there which equals about 1.5 meters.

This thing has a lot of potential energy (Okay well not a lot, but I think it has a lot because there's a high chance of falling...>_O). I'd say that thing weighs about 250 grams which is .25 kilograms. So, since potential energy equals mgh, (.25)(1.5)(9.8), the potential energy of this antenna is 3.675 Joules. Okay, it's really not that much. Haha. Fail me.

If this thing were to fall, it would have kinetic energy, which is a different story, and I would rather not go there...First of all, my parents would probably get mad if I pushed the antenna over, and second, I'd be mad because then I wouldn't have internet. :]

Sorry about the super lame post. I promise a better one for next week!

WHEEEE!

This weekend, my mom made me go driving pretty much everywhere we needed to go. Naturally, being a girl, I have a bag that I take with me. So I put that and my water bottle on the floor on the passenger side as shown below.


I drove my family to lunch, forgetting about my bag, and when I got to the restaurant, my bag looked like this.

My poor bag fell over! And my water bottle was gone! Some of the things in my bag were even gone! I freaked out until I remembered what we learned about fictitious force in the textbook (okay, I didn't really freak out...). After realizing what probably happened, I looked in the back seat for my stuff.

There was all my stuff! My water bottle, stress ball, Chapstick, and hand sanitizer. I have no clue where the $5 bill came from, but it's mine now. >:D

There it is, people, Physics in action! The book stresses sooooo much that there is NO force actually acting on my stuff in the car. It's the the frame in which you view it! Hence the name, fictitious force. :]