In this unit I learned all about Newton’s first law of
inertia, which states that an object in motion will stay in motion or an object
at rest will stay at rest unless a force is exerted upon it. I learned about
net force, which is the total amount of forces acting on an object,
equilibrium, which is when the net force on an object is zero. And lastly I
learned about velocity, which is a certain speed of an object going in a
certain direction, speed, which is how fast an object is going, and
acceleration, which is how fast an object is speeding up.
What I have felt was difficult about what we have studied
pertains to speed, velocity, and acceleration. It is very simple to get these
three concepts mixed up. For example, a car can be traveling at a constant speed
with constant acceleration. Or a car can be accelerating in one direction with
constant acceleration but not be in constant velocity. Constant velocity
requires constant speed, but if something is traveling at a constant speed it
may or may not be traveling with a constant velocity.
I overcame these difficulties by completing my homework
questions. I had a large amount of homework questions and doing these velocity,
speed, and acceleration related questions were very helpful. I have found that
I learn very well through repetition so doing the amount of problems that I did
and going over them in class and talking about it during class helped me a lot.
Personally, I enjoyed solving the problems that we had for
homework. I quickly learned that there were a lot of trick questions. For
example, if a car is moving at a constant velocity of 20 km/h for 2 hours what
is the cars acceleration? Well there is no acceleration because you are moving
at a constant velocity. I got a lot better at reading the question and thinking
about what the question is asking for rather then just plugging numbers into
equations or restating definitions. Everything required and explanation of
reason so that required me to actually think about what I was saying.
My goals for the next unit are to get better quiz grades by
showing more steps in my math. A lot of my points got taken off for not showing
complete steps in my mathematical equations. The lost points could have been
easily avoided if I had shown all of my steps completely.
There are so many connections that physics makes in everyday
life. Physics is significant in everything from pushing a box to the importance
of headrests and seatbelts. Quite frankly, when I learned how relevant physics
was to my life I was shocked. I didn’t know much about physics before I started
the class and I am surprised at how much it pertains to my life.
The link to the podcast that I made with Becca and Isabelle on the concept of Inertia is below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n54MysJW88&feature=youtu.be
One thing that I like about your blog was at the end when I saw your picture that related to physics. 1. It must have been hard to capture the bottle right at that instance and 2. That scenario retains to many other situations, not just a bottle and a book. One thing that we had in common was that we both had issues understanding acceleration. It was very hard to comprehend acceleration with velocity and speed, and you felt the same way. One thing that was different is that I had issues with formulas and remembering them. I did not see anything about you having issues with that, but that is something I struggled with throughout this unit. One thing I would like to comment is you wanted your goal for the next unit to be to get good quiz grades. Why not shoot for more and get great quiz grades, homework grades, and test grades?
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