Week 10 Blogpost





The big question addressed in the lab, and a description of what you did

 The big question addressed in the lab today is, "How can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?" We began the lab by discussing last week's homework assignment as a table group. Then our focus switched to energy and its lens on motion. We investigated the energy in a pendulum by playing around with the pendulum simulation. I found out the reason for the pendulum slowing down is that the gravitational potential energy is transferred to kinetic energy when it is released to swing, then once it gets back to the other side, it goes back to gravitational potential energy. This causes the pendulum to not be able to get as high as the point it was released from. The transfer of energy causes friction between the pendulum ball and the air, causing thermal energy to be produced, which the constant friction makes the pendulum ball not able to reach the previous height it was dropped from. This then makes the period of the pendulum start to slow down over the time it is moving.  The gravitational potential energy is 100% of the object's energy at the maximum height, then once dropped from the pendulum, the potential energy is transferred to kinetic energy. That kinetic energy is going through the air particles causes the transfer of kinetic energy to Thermal energy, which then causes the object that is swinging to have less energy than before, proving why the object can't reach the height it started from. This all proves why the object that is swinging slows down over time of it swinging. The friction from the object swinging through the air causes the transfer of energy to the air and out of the object. 

After that, we focused on designing a safe and durable playground surface. We did this experiment by dropping an egg from 1 and 2 meters. We designed our own playground surface from the materials provided in class. Our group chose to include sand at the bottom and a layer of hay on top to help cushion the drop. When the egg was dropped from the 1 and 2 meters, we found that are egg didn't break at either height. I believe this is due to the sand underneath the layer of hay, because the energy from the egg that is dropped is strong, but as the energy from the egg hits the surface, the sand then absorbs the energy from the egg, and the egg is safe. 

A description of what you learned in Thursday's lecture.

I learned that force always comes in equal pairs - each acting on a different object! We went over Newton's 3rd law, which states, "Objects exert forces on each other that are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction." I learned that when using the energy lens on bounce, the energy is transferred from the egg to the surface, the surface compresses, and springs back. The elastic deformation of the surface stores (potential energy). Energy transfers back to the egg as kinetic energy. This causes surface materials to fly off and/or rub against each other. The energy remains in the surface as kinetic objects/particles. Energy then does not transfer back to the egg. I learned that throughout this physics module, the races worked on describing motion, the slides described force lens, surfaces described force and energy lens, and swings described force and energy lens. 


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