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