You Know Your Hair is too Long When...

...your friends try to strangle you with it.

...you manage to only smack yourself in the face when you try to do a hair flip in the water.

...you see a loose hair on your shirt, pull it, then realize it's still attached to your head.

...your Physics teacher says it's too long. :)

...it takes two friends 20 minutes to flat iron it.

December 30, 2010. I walked into the Sears hair salon at Ala Moana, and sat down in the chair. An hour and ten minutes later, I walked out with a much lighter head, and a plastic bag full of a whopping 18 inches of hair. 18 INCHES!

Where was my hair going? Locks of Love, an organization that turns the hair into wigs donated to children suffering from long term or permanent hair loss. My sister and I have donated hair for the past 8 years alternating every year. This year was my turn. I cut off much more hair than I had anticipated (or wanted...), but I think my hair came out nice, and the layers are a change from my normal straight across cut. Do I look older, Doc?! :D

I admit, this will take some getting used to. Instead of using three pumps of shampoo and four pumps of conditioner like I used to, I now have to use one pump of each. Plus I actually had to figure out how to wash my hair. Brushing my hair takes two seconds instead of two minutes, and drying is so much faster!

Last Blog!

Well, this is bittersweet. :( I don't know how I feel right now. Anyways, yeah. Here goes my LAST BLOG along with some cherished pictures and quotes to help you remember Period 7/8 AP Physics B 2010 (although you may want to forget us. Haha).

When one of my friends came back from Texas, she brought me back a Hexbug. It's a cute little robotic bug that reacts to sound and touch to find its way around. Freddie set it up for me and surrounded it with folders and such. Whenever it hits a folder, it backs up and changes direction. Whenever it hears a noise like a clap it does the same. I wondered how it worked, so I looked it up. It has a little microphone which turns pressure from the sound waves to electrical impulses. When a loud noise is "heard," the circuit sends signals to the motor which tells the bug to turn around.

The bug's antennae allow it to figure out when it needs to turn around. There is a coil of wire surrounding an electrode protected by an insulator at the base of the antennae. When the antennae move if it hits something, the coil will touch the electrode and complete a circuit which signals the bug to turn around. Isn't that amazing? (On a side note, WOW. One full year of physics and I can't spell the word circuit...FAIL)



PERIOD 7/8 YEARBOOK!!!!! (I'm gonna cry...)
It's been a good year working with everyone in period 7/8. Lots of laughs, lots of stress, and lots of fun (and lots of failed quizzes. Heh). We might be your least favorite class and we might eat up all your cookies, doc, but I think we love you the most. :D. Anyway, here are a few pictures and quotations that sum up the entire year in our (lovable) class.

Calvin's meterstick project after the lab about it.
"You're making a mess..." ~Bobby
Thanks for letting us play with your board, doc! Danielle and I had fun with your letters as you can see. Hehe.
Wannabes...Haha.
I think this picture pretty much sums up the entire year you had with Greg, doc! :] Thanks for making a face.


QUOTATIONS:
Mark: Why'd you stop teaching, doc?
Doc: Because all of a sudden, I had a pain in my (censored haha)
Mark: WHOA, Greg, what did you do to him?!

"20 meters per second, that's huge! That's why it hurts when you fall off a building!" ~Doc

"Weight is always always always always always always always always ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYSSSSS down." ~doc!

Doc: How did you ride a seesaw when the other person is heavier than you?
Dylan: Guess and check!

"We should move Hawaii to the equator..." ~Mark

Doc: Overthinking and getting a 2 is like overcooking sashimi!
Dylan: ...But...That doesn't make sense...
Doc: EXACTLY.

"Important things happen in Kindergarten..." ~Doc! (eg: CUTTING AND PASTING!)

"Computers aren't apples, doc!...Wait..." ~Mark

"Things that are in current...wait...." ~Doc!

"Aren't you glad Greg's not graduating this year, doc?" ~Mark. Haha.

"Do we have to wake up the photogates?" ~Bobby

Doc: Are Ashley and Ian an item?
Danielle: No, Ashley has a boyfriend, why?
Doc: Because she's always beating him up...
Steph: Better watch out, doc. If she hears that, she'll beat YOU up!

"That's always been my life goal. To die while teaching and all the students will freak out." ~Doc.

"We used to go to the pool and try scuba-ing with a long hose. Then you'd hear the air leaving the person's lungs and some gasping! But we don't do that anymore..." ~Doc.

"SAME HOSE!" "Sometimes trying your best just isn't good enough." ~Mottos of period 7/8


Last, but definitely NOT least, our lab group's Arduino win! Haha. Counting in binary for the win! :D Relive it over and over. Love it. Worship it. :]



Happy Mother's Day, by the way, everyone! I made fail breakfast for my mommy today. Haha. What did YOU do for your mommy? Anyway, good luck on APs. I'll miss you all. Thanks for a great year, everyone! I hope we lived up to your expectations of your last AP Physics B class, doc!

Time is Running Out...

My title is true. But as my time in AP Physics B ends, and I write my last blog, I reflect on the year with mixed emotions. Anyway, back to my topic. Time. I took an SAT this Saturday, and that wasn't fun. But my proctor said something that got me thinking about Physics. He was talking about the analog clock on the side wall of the room. He said, "I wouldn't rely on that clock because it's a little fast going downhill and a little slow going up." I thought of why that would be, and before I knew it, the test was starting.

I came to the conclusion that it has to do with gravity! Well, obviously. I realize now that this is a fail blog topic. But it's late and I'm tired, so I'm sticking with it. Sorry, doc.

Anyway, the force of gravity is greatest in magnitude when the minute hand is over the 3 and the 9! There is the most surface area and force on the hand when it is at those points (plus the force doesn't have to be componetized). When the hand is going "downhill," gravity works with the movement of the hand, so it goes faster. However, when going "uphill," gravity works against the hand, so it goes slower.

Thus ends my lame blog. Oh well. I think I also used this because I'm subconsciously really happy that my dad bought me a nice watch this weekend. :] Thanks, Daddy.

Anyways, have a really great week everyone! Good luck on AP exams and especially our Physics final! Couple more weeks, and we'll all be good!

Stars!

Okay well, time for another edition of Steph's AP Physics blog! Yay! I think I'll combine two blogs into one because I don't think either will be very good. Alrighty then. That being said, let's start. Today's topic is: STARS. I love stars and I think they're awesome.

So this weekend, I uploaded a song on my iPod called "Airplanes." I really like the chorus which goes "Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now." I like stars and wishes, so it got me thinking. What are shooting stars? I found out that meteoroids get caught in the atmosphere and burn up as they fall to earth, hence the awesomeness that is a shooting star. Though the name is very inaccurate. The reason they fall to earth is GRAVITY! And the earth's gravitational field! OH MY GOSH! 9.8 m/s^2!!!

The other star I'm going to talk about is a balloon. :] One of my balloons from my birthday is deflating, but still has some helium in it. Right now, it looks super cool because if I were to cut it off the string, it would float in midair! So yeah, the weight (MG!) of the balloon points DOWN! Like ALWAYS! Buttttt, the helium inside the balloon keeps it afloat by evening out the weight just enough so the balloon is in equilibrium! Yay!

Ignore the giant mess that is my room. >.<. But yeah, there you go. It's all floaty (I'm talking about the blue star, in case you didn't know)!

Have a great week everyone. Just a few more! We can make it!

Waterrrrrr...

So today, my blog is kind of late, because my friends threw me a surprise party today! YAY FRIENDS! Haha. Well anyway, we went swimming in the pool about 2 hours ago, and yes, it was freezing cold. But super fun anyway. We had a waterproof camera, so we took tons of pictures. And I saw a few different physics optics concepts.

First, we took pictures through the mediums. Our faces were above water, but the camera was submerged in water. There was refraction of light, and on top of that, the waves in the pool increased the distortion. Hence, the picture below.

Second, I saw reflection at the surface of the water. You can see some reflections of my friends and my faces on the surface due to the flash.

Third, my friends and I took underwater pictures. That was fun, but kind of hard to do without drowning. But the final products came out super cool. Since the camera and us were in the same medium, there was no refraction or refraction or anything, so the picture came out (relatively) normal (besides our obviously weird smiles).

Well, that's pretty much how my amazing day went. I hope all you people have a great week. We'll have fun with our giant review packets for physics, won't we, Doc? Next time you get the chance, everyone should go take pictures underwater. But no drowning. That's bad. ;) Happy Headmaster's Holiday everyone! :D

Sinking...?

Doc, does my extra post count for this week? Is this blog necessary? Oh well, I guess I'll do it anyway. Just in case. Ooooh. Or do I get extra credit for my extra blog? Haha. Just kidding (not really).

Okay well, prom is coming up in about a month for so, and since I'm a girl, I need things like a dress and shoes. Dress: Check, Shoes: uncheck. :( Haha. I was thinking about shoes, and my mind wandered to Junior Ring Ceremony, which happened to be the last time I wore heels. Good times. :] I wore the heels I wear to virtually every formal thing I go to. They're black, 4 inches high, and have a scary skinny heel.

I had to walk with all my heavy bags and stuff from Weinberg to the Chapel in those heels. And on the way, my friends and I had to walk over some grass. Apparently, it had rained a few hours before, and the grass and dirt were soft. As we walked across that grass, I realized that I was getting stuck in the ground with every step I took. I started freaking out along with a few of my other heel-wearing friends, while Danielle, who was in flats looked at us strangely.

This, my friends, is a lesson in surface area related to weight (mg). There was more pressure focused on that smaller area. Danielle's flats had a greater surface area than my pointy heel did, thus, I sank into the ground while Danielle didn't. Plus, my heels were high, so I added a few more inches of potential energy to myself. :] If I wore my other heels which are wedges and have a larger surface area, I wouldn't have sunk even though they are heels too.

Wow this was a pretty lame topic. Sorry about that, people. I'll think of something better next week (hopefully). Thanks for singing to me, AP physics period 7/8. I should have video taped that. Have a good week, you guys! FAIR WEEK! Live it up! :]

An Extra Post

Hello everyone! This is a special edition of Stephieee's AP Phys blog, made especially for doc! :]

So, you may or may not know, but I recently had my self portrait posted in Seto Hall for the Artist of Iolani exhibition. Doc seemed to like it, so he told me to blog about it.

That's me with my self portrait. :D I don't really know what doc wants me to say, so I'll just talk about it. This was shot for my self portrait assignment for Photo class. I had to take 200-something images of myself which was strange, but kind of fun. To take this particular picture, I set up a tripod and used the self timer in my (messy) room. I don't know where I got the inspiration to use the headphones, but I guess it works because music is a big part of my life and I like listening to it pretty much all the time. :] I shot myself with a digital SLR, Canon Rebel (The one that was featured in my other blog!). I must say, it was really strange to see such a large picture of my face on display some place. Haha.

The Artists of Iolani exhibit was really interesting to me because it gave me a chance to see what other art classes do. I'm always holed up in the Photo room, so seeing other artists' work from different mediums was amazing to me because of what they can do. It was also cool seeing work I have seen before from my Photo peers. I like the idea of the exhibit because unlike other electives, artists don't really get to have their moments. Dance has dance showcase, performing arts classes have recitals and concerts, and theatre has performances. But art doesn't really have that, so it's nice to have some place to show off what we've been working so hard on the entire year. Sure our work is around school all the time, But having all the mediums in one place at one time is a nice change.

Plus I got to sign my name on the huge wooden board in the back of the room. That made me feel a little accomplished. Overall, I'd say this was a really good experience. And according to doc, my portrait is very much like me, so I'm glad I was able to portray myself through a photograph.

I think that's pretty much all I can say about this. Doc, if you're reading this, and you want me to add anything, just let me know. That goes for anyone one else too. Enjoy extended schedule! :D Say Happy Birthday to me if you see me tomorrow! :D

I Need to FOCUS!

For those of you who don't know, I love taking pictures of things. And I kind of need to because I am in Photography class. I don't particularly enjoy life in that class, but that's a different story. Regardless, I like taking pictures. :] I especially like my daddy's high tech expensive digital SLR that I get to use for class. Ironically, I rarely use it for class because I'm too afraid of hurting it. >.<

Photography has a lot to do with lenses and mirrors because, well, they're on the cameras. My fancy camera also has mirrors inside that make sure the picture is upright and such, and you can see them if you take off the camera lens, which, by the way, is changeable. I once had to change it out for my dad's wide angle lens, which as we know, is a converging lens, and I've been wanting a fisheye lens, which, as we know, is a diverging lens that distorts the image and makes everything look all bulgy.

Anyway, I chose to take the picture of my awesome camera from the side to focus on the length of the lens. Pictures need to be in focus to be considered good. And my cameras have a function called autofocus, which really comes in handy. This big camera uses a computer to calculate how best to make things in focus. But my little black point and shoot sends out a little infrared beam which gets returned and tells the camera how far away the object is. Either way, the camera has to adjust the distance between the object and the lens so that the image will be in focus where it matters the most: on the tiny mirrors. all the light has to meet at one point, and the camera has to figure out how far the lens needs to be from the subject to make that one point. So if you have ever seen me take a picture, you watch the camera lens move around a bit before taking the picture. That, my friend, is physics in action. :]

Fourth quarter! Almost there! Extended this week! And I turn 17 on Wednesday! AIYA! >.< Hope everyone has a great week!

Laugh at Weird Little Steph XD

Okay, well I had totally written a blog before this, but I thought of a better one. Haha. So I will tell you just how strange I am. I go to the eye doctor once a year around Christmas time. Last time I went, she put me through a bunch of tests to figure out what was wrong with my vision. I had thought that my right eye was going bad, so she checked it out. Turns out, I was correct. My right eye is slightly nearsighted. Not only that, but my left eye is slightly farsighted. SERIOUSLY?! What the heck. Even my eye doctor said it was very unusual. Luckily, neither eye is bad enough for me to get glasses yet.

When you think about it, my brain should be going insane. As our book tells us, nearsightedness happens when the image of something forms in front of the retina while farsightedness occurs when the image forms behind it. So my brain has to process all of the images coming in from both eyes at different positions! GAHHH! No wonder i'm always confused! This is the kind of thing that could only happen to me. Haha. So, when I get glasses (which might happen next time I go to the optometrist...), they will be some funky glasses. The right lens will have to be diverging while the left one needs to be converging.
That's me with my sister's (diverging) lens over my right eye. Arghh I'm a pirate! It's a little too strong for me still and it's the weakest strength. And I look strange with glasses on anyway. If I put it over my left eye, I just end up with a headache. Haha.

I hope my misfortune has somehow managed to make you smile or laugh a little at me. It's the last week before spring break, people! Let's end third quarter with a BANG! :]

Ice Cold...

...Just like the world. Aren't I a little cynic...Haha. Anyway one day, after my sister's volleyball practice, my mom emptied her water bottle. In the bottle was water, and a bowl made of ice. It literally looked like a bowl. My mom gave it to me, so I played with it. I played with it until it melted and my hands were numb. It was fun.



I did a ton of things. I held it up to the curtain to see what it would look like, I filled it with water and put things in it, I even took pictures of myself through it. And I took lots of pictures. LOTS.


As I read in my textbook this weekend, the distorted effect that I saw was because of refraction. The light reflected off of the curtain or the fork or the spoon or my face was bent through both the ice and the water. When the light bends, it reaches your eye differently, and you end up with a distorted image. As with the spoon and the fork, you can clearly see three levels of refraction: Through the air, through the ice, and through the water.

I learned that ice and water make a very good photo opportunity as well as a good physics topic. One more picture to maybe brighten up your day...or your week. :] What an attractive picture...>_<

Car Battery

Ok, well this week was not very good for me. I was sick. And Olympics are ending!!! NOOOOOO! And I'm sleepy, so here goes another blog. :|

Last week, my mom's car battery died while she was at work. Luckily for her, one of her coworkers had a pair of jumper cables which she lent to her. My mom hooked it up to her boss's car and then hers, and her boss started the engine. My mom turned her key in the ignition, and the engine started like magic. Now how does something like this work?

Well if the picture above works, you should see my dad's car and a car battery on the ground. The battery is supposed to be in the other car, but it was a little hard to take the picture. Anyway, upon starting the non-dead car, energy flows from one battery through the cables to the other battery. You attach the positive to the positive and the negative to the negative. Share the potential difference! WHOO! But yeah. After, you need to start the other car to get the engine running. Once the car is started, the running engine charges the battery.

I apologize again if any of my blogs for the next couple weeks are messed up. My computer is still acting funky. :P Alright. Have a great week everyone!

Physics of Olympic Proportions

Ok I'm really sorry, but this isn't going to be one of my best blogs. I've had a pretty junk weekend and a not so great week last week too. :(

Well, as you probably know, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics started this past week. And I'll admit, I've been hooked. I see some sort of physics in every event I watch. I guess I'll focus on two of my favorite events: Curling and Short Track. I also apologize because I have to use pictures that aren't my own. Sorry, Doc.

I like Curling because I think it's funny. It's entertaining. The object of the game is to get the stone as close to the center of the circle thingy as possible. One person let the stone go at a certain point and two other team mates sweep the ice vigorously in front of the moving stone. According to Wikipedia, the brushing is supposed to decrease the amount of friction between the stone and the ice. Thus, the team can change the speed of the stone as well as change the direction without touching it. Even more physics is involved because the stones sometimes hit each other. This demonstrates conservation of momentum and sometimes it is almost perfect due to the near frictionless ice.

I like Short Track because I like Apolo Anton Ohno. :) And because it's such an unpredictable sport. I realized that short track is kind of like uniform circular motion. The skaters accelerate around the bends of the track, and depending on how long the race is, there can be many of them. The racers can reach pretty high speeds, and those high speeds allow the skaters to lean toward the ice at insane angles around the bends. When the skaters hit someone else, the collision causes the skater to lose speed because his or her momentum is transfered to the other skater.

Okay, well I guess I've done enough damage here for one post. Have a good week everyone. :) Wish me luck for a better week too...>.<...

MAGNETS! :]

Since Valentine's day is coming up, I thought I'd do this blog on ATTRACTION. Haha. Bad physics pun. Well, I suppose I should have saved this one for next Sunday, which is actually Valentine's day, but I couldn't think of anything else for this weekend. :D Okay, well I had a blog idea, but I can't use it. GRAWR! >.<

Well anyway, when I was a little kid, I liked magnets. I don't know where on earth my parents bought this for me, but it gave me hours of entertainment.
Inside the little compartments are littler magnets, and the case is a magnet itself! How cool is that?! (I know, I was a nerd child. -___-) All the littler magnets are in a pile on the floor mixed in with the colored paper clips that came with the set too.

All the magnets have one side painted red. When I was a mini Steph, my dad told me that the red side is always attracted to the non red side I played with my magnets and sure enough, he was right. And I even found that the paper clips get momentarily charged when near a magnet. I learned that this happens because the opposite charges are attracted to the magnet, and the same forces are repelled, causing a slight charge.

(+++magnet---)(++paperclip--)(+otherpaperclip-) <--Fail diagram. But it kind of illustrates the point...

Okay, well have a great week, everyone. Three day weekend next weekend! :D (And no homework on top of it!) OMG. I just found a magnet that fails at life. Haha. Ahh, it's going to be fun putting all this back...:P

And Yet Another Food Blog...

On Tuesday of last week, I was left at home by myself while my mom took my sister to trumpet lessons. Lucky for me, my mom made food before she left. She made stew in a Crock Pot for me. Yay for food! :]


Anyways, the idea of a Crock Pot is to let the food cook all day in it until it's ready. So you can do other stuff without worrying about burning your house down. It's pretty neat actually. But that's beside the point. When I was ready to eat, I took the plastic lid off and put it on the counter next to me. I served myself the food I wanted, but when I went to put the cover back on, the cover didn't want to come off the counter (Ew. My hand looks gross in that picture...>.<)


I took a closer look to see what happened. I realized that the condensation on the inside of the cover fell, creating a seal that isolated the air that was under the cover. That air was very hot because it had just come off of a hot Crock Pot, and when the air cooled, it contracted a little. The pressure outside of the cover was greater than that inside the cover, so the cover was essentially "stuck."


To solve my little dilemma, I scooted the cover to the edge of the counter so that air could be let inside, lessening the pressure, and allowing the cover to be removed.

My mom says I always tend to think of blogs when I'm eating...Or when I'm with my dad. We were discussing the specific heat of spaghetti sauce yesterday. Haha. What physics nerds. I love you, Mom and Dad! Anyways, I hope you all have a great week!

Yet Another California Blog...

I apologize to all you people out there who are sick of my California-related blogs. But this just might be the last one. Anyway, in California, it was very cold and the air was dry. It kinda sucked. What sucked even more was the fact that when we touched a car door or even just something metal, we were shocked. Same effect as if you were to drag your feet on a carpet and touch something metal.

That's not what my blog is about though. Every morning, I had to wake up, and since I'm a girl, I had to brush my hair. My conditioner was pretty junk, so it was no easy task. I had to brush my hair many more times than I do here. BAD MOVE. Okay, well it wasn't bad, but just weird. I reached for my plastic hair brush and started running it through my hair. After a couple strokes, I started hearing a crackling noise. Kind of like the crackling you hear when you pull apart a soccer sock from a shirt while folding clothes freshly out of the dryer. I thought it was my imagination and ignored it. Then it got louder. I still chose to ignore it. I was very tired, so my eyes were closed the entire time.

I brushed my hair another couple minutes, and opened my eyes to look at myself in the mirror. My eyes widened as I realized that my hair was static-y. I tried to smooth it down with my hand, but it just floated right back up again. It was rather humorous. I don't have a picture of that, so have a picture of me brushing my hair wearing an All Time Low t-shirt instead.



Well yeah. I thought of this while I was reading the text book. The brush created a charge in my hair, and whatever the charge was, the other hairs were the same charge. Thus, the hairs repelled each other which made them stand up and "gain volume." Haha.

That's about it. I dislike third quarter very much. I tend to lose motivation which makes my grades go down. And since my grades were already not very good last quarter, what does that mean for this quarter? O_o Sorry. I felt like ranting for a little bit. Anyway, have a good week. :]

Sledding?!

Okay well, this blog is a little early because I'm not going to be home tomorrow night. YAY!

Anyways, as you read from my lest blog, I went to California this past break. While I was there in the snow, my friend and I went sledding as well as snowman building. Well, it was more like fail sledding. Haha. It was virtually flat, so we had zero chance of eating it in the snow. So we started out pulling each other around. It wasn't that fun. We decided to change our tactics (when Kiana pulled the sled so hard that I almost fell off) and found a little hill next to our flat ground.

See? That's me in my adorable little pom pom hat. Haha. Almost falling out...>___<
That's our little hill. I increased my potential energy so that my kinetic energy would be increased and thus my speed would increase too. My friend and my dad also used the hill while sledding, but we found that I went the furthest.

I was wondering why this was until I realized the equation for kinetic energy is 1/5mv^2. My mass was the smallest, so my velocity was greater, thus I went farthest. Well, that's that. I don't know what else I can say about this. So yeah. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day everyone! :]


And here are pictures from Tower of Terror which was what my first blog was about. There's me, Kiana, and our friend Taylor repping Hawaii. XD So moke. Haha.

Freezing in Cali

This winter break, I went to California with my best friend to visit my dad. I saw quite a few Physics concepts while I was up there.

Here we are freezing in the snow. I think this relates to thermodynamics...Or I hope it does, because if not, this is a wasted blog.

Anyway, it was colder outside than inside our bodies. Therefore the heat was leaving our bodies and going into the air. However, to keep warm, we put on layers and layers of clothing to prevent the heat from leaving. Actually, in this picture, I think I only have on a long sleeved shirt under the jacket, but that's beside the point. The hat helped too. It has a pom pom on it. :D

While I was on my trip, I told my sister about how cold I was while she was comfortably sitting at home here in Hawaii. Her response? "It's because you don't have any meat on you!" In a way, I suppose it's true. I have a very small amount of insulation compared to other people, thus I get colder more easily. Which is why I don't suggest skinny people go into 40 degree weather at night time like I did. Now THAT'S a dumb mistake of the week right there. Once I had some hot chocolate, though, the heat from it temporarily entered my body and made me stop shivering. But then again, THAT heat left too, and I was cold again. I guess I experienced thermodynamics in motion even though I didn't learn about it yet.

Here are the snowmen we made. Any suggestions for names? I still need to name the little one. :]