Circular Motion and Gravitation

I learned a couple of things about circular motion and gravitation. I learned that when an object moves in a vertical circle at the end of a string its tension in the string will vary with its position. The centripetal force on an object at any point is the vector sum of FT and the component of the object's weight toward the center of the circle. I learned that gravitation is a force that varies with the square of the distance between to objects and that every object attracts every other object.


I didn't find too many things hard. I mainly had problems figuring out how to draw the FBD for the circular motion problems, and I still struggle a little bit with problems using trigonometry.

I have gotten better at remembering formulas, but I’m still not too good at good at FBDs. Some problems are worded a little odd, and that sometimes confuses me.

Newton's Second Law of Motion

I learned many things about Newton's Second Law. I learned that an object's velocity will change if it is pusshed or pulled by another object. I didn't find too much dificulty with this section because of the stuff we had learned earlier was very similar. Finding friction was something that was a little hard at first but then I found it quite easy. I just had to do a ∑Fx=... , and once I figured out how to do that it became very easy. But, the only thing that was a little difficult were solving for forces at an angle, I still get confused a bit about when to use cos or sin. I think I need to work better on solving things at an angle. I am pretty good at finding any other forces.

(Sorry for posting about an hour later, I have internet problems at the wort of times.)

Newton's First Law

In physics class I learned many things. I’ve learned several things about Kinematics, the study of motion. I’ve learned about the importance of velocity and gravity of objects and how it affects them. During our studies of kinematics I learned several formulas that have helped me find out what the velocity, time, distance traveled, etc. of an object. I only found one thing difficult during this class. I found memorizing the formulas and what they are used for. After a while though, I memorized the formulas and figured out when and where to use them. I learned a great deal about problem solving. I would usually use trial and error for homework and would learn from my mistakes while doing that. I have problems with trig and FBDs, my strengths are freefall, velocity and acceleration, as well as anything that deals with velocity and position.




I’ve made a few connections with what we learned about inertia during this first trimester. I learned that objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless a force is applied to them. A connection is a person in a car. The seat prevents the person from staying at rest, because without the seat the person would fly to the back of the car. Also if the person does not wear their seat belt and they were to crash they would probably fly out the windshield (not counting that the airbag my stop them) because of inertia.

I am sorry that I was unable to post this earlier my internet has been having problems, my conection keeps on failing.

Garfield Explains Free Fall

(click comic to enlarge)

I used Professor Garfield's Comic Lab:

http://www.professorgarfield.org/pgf_comics_lab.html

Then to edit text I used photoshop elements.

I edited the formulas because on the Comic Lab the symbols would apear as: □ (boxes)

Making My Blog

My first Wordle