Science Week 27

Monday or March 9, 2015 A.D.:

 In celebration of WAAS Science Olympiad Team's crushing victory against all other schools in the Regional's Competitions we had a party. By the way they our school received 10 gold medals out of 23 events. We watched the replays of our school winning and we did minimal amounts of science.

Tuesday or March 10,  2015 A.D.:

Today we finished the Circular Motion lab and we adjusted the radius and the velocity of the object in circular motion. We decreased the radius of the object in circular motion and we found out that it had more centripetal force. When we increased the velocity of the object the force was also greater. I really liked this lab, although it was sort of scary when Evan swung the string around so fast that we were sure that the nut on the end would fly and break one of the windows. We finished our lab questions and made our calculations.

Wednesday or March 11, 2015 A.D.:

Today we started a new lab called Powerful Workout Lab. The focus on this lab is to learn about Power and Work and to be able to apply it. Work is the amount of change of an object's kinetic energy because of a force that is being applied on it. Power is the amount of work done in a given amount of time, so the more work you do in a smaller amount of time the more power you deliver. Both power (Watts) and work (Joules) are scalar quantities. Anyway, back to the lab... We only prepared for tomorrow by weighing an object in Newtons that we are going to be applying a force to. I cannot wait to see how much power I can deliver.

Here we are weighing the weight.

Thursday or March 12, 2015 A.D.:

In class we did one experiment for the Powerful Workout lab. We took the weight we weighed yesterday in Newtons and attached that to a string and that to a stick. We then recorded the time we took to wrap the weight to get it to the top of the string. We found out what distance this was and we got ready to make the calculations for tomorrow. When we got at home we also did an experiment. We measured the vertical height of a staircase and timed how long we took to get to the top. I cannot wait to know how many watts I generated.

My group...

Friday or March 13, 2015 A.D.:

Today we did the calculations in class for our lab. We first calculated the force so we could find our work. My work for the first experiment was miniscule. We then did the calculations for power and I found out, not surprisingly, that I generated less than a Watt. For the other one (stairs) I generated over 300 Watts or over 0.6* horse power in vertical gain. I was thrilled at my power although one person in the class delivered 0.7 horse power. I really liked this lab because I got to find out how much power I can deliver.

*Note the "horse power" unit we used was the equivalent of 750 Watts. It is not the same unit as the Imperial Horse power of 735.5 Watts or the Common Horse Power of 746 Watts.

Summary: As always I need to improve one efficiently while doing work in this class. I also need to work on time management to finish my work faster.