In this picture, Will, Papa John, my dad, and Uncle Po were all cleaning fish. It was pretty gross, but at the same time, it was also kind of interesting. I found that there are some really nasty jelly-looking things inside a salmon (and it wasn't salmon eggs). Anyway, Will is just about to launch a piece of salmon guts at my mom, who took this picture. The piece of fish became a projectile as it flew towards my mom because it traveled both vertically and horizontally, acted upon by gravity. At its peak, the fish had a vertical velocity of 0 m/s. I would never want to have fish guts thrown at me, but I have to admit, the look on my mom's face was priceless :)

My cousin, Madi, was rocking back and forth in her rocking chair. A rocking chair is an example of simple harmonic motion because it is a repetive movement back and forth at an equilibrium position. An equilibrium position is where the maximum displacement on one side is equal to the maximum displacement on the other. The force of the motion is always aimed at the equilibrium position. Later, another of my younger cousins was pushing her and he accidentally pushed her too hard! Through falling, she became a projectile because she traveled both vertically and horizontally through the air. Everyone was freaking out because it looked like a really bad fall, but luckily she was OK. I don't think she'll be allowed to sit on any more rocking chairs any time soon though!

This is a picture from my brother's birthday party. I don't know why, but my cousins started arm wrestling all of a sudden. This actually involves physics. Arm wrestling all depends on torque. By definition, torque is "that whcih produces or tends to produce rotation". Torque is affected by the amount of force applied to an object to make it turn about an axis of rotation. In arm wrestling, the axis of rotation is the elbow. The amount of torque generated also depends on the distance between the axis of rotation and the place where force is being applied. Torque increases when the force and the distance increases. If you bend your wrist in arm wrestling, you shorten the distance between the hand and the elbow, thereby making it harder for your opponent to create a large amount of torque. I can't remember who won this match, but the face my cousin is making is really funny!

Physics so far has been a very challenging course. Like the little girl in the picture, I'm already panicking about what the rest of the year will be like...if I survive the 1st quarter! The dog in the hotdog bun represents my brain being crushed with all the concepts we've learned so far. For some reason I just can't get my mind around graphing position, velocity, and acceleration. The labs are also pretty complicated sometimes, and I'm horrible with computers so I guess that's got something to do with it. I thought the reaction and hang time labs were fun though (I proved I'm a horrible jumper). Calculating my reaction time also showed me why I'm prone to spilling and dropping things...Anyways, I really hope this stuff gets easier to understand later on and hopefully my grades will improve as well :)

This is a picture from when we went dog sledding. In the picture, the dogs are at rest, but they quickly accelerated to a much faster velocity once they started running. The sled accelerated when it went around the curves in the trail because there was a change in direction. The mass of the sled and its passengers also affects acceleration and velocity. I rode twice, and I found that the sled went faster the first time because there was less people in it. The mass of the dogs and its cargo is also important to the momentum of the sled. The faster the sled is traveling and the heavier mass it has, the harder it is to stop.

These are pictures from my trip to Alaska this past summer when my family and I went halibut fishing. Fishing actually has a lot to do with physics. Casting is a projectile motion because it invovles horizontal and vertical motion. As the line is cast out, the vertical motion of the lure's acceleration is affected by gravity. The length of the rod also affects the velocity and acceleration of the lure. Even the tension and friction of a fishing pole's reel become invovled in reeling in a fish. For halibut fishing, however, we mostly just dropped our lines off the side of the boat so the bait would sink to the bottom. For this action, instead of being a projectile motion, it involves free fall acceleration because the lure just drops down vertically.