Fun with Snowballs!

Whats the best way to spend a snow day? Of course throwing snowballs using the perfect freshly- fallen 14 inches of snow we got. I thought it would be a great idea to analyse the physics in motion of throwing a snowball. Snowball fights, such a classic way to have fun in the show, can show us how physics is at every corner in our daily lives.

Now, Bella doesn't have the best arm in the world, but her soft toss of a snowball was perfect to analyse. After review of this video, we came up with the interesting idea to plug it into Logger Pro, plot points, and analyze the graph resulting. After toying around with some of the functions and different kind of graphs we could conjure, we figured a simple distance vs. time graph with an integral captured the motion of Bella's speed ball.

By finding the integral of my x distance vs time graph, Bella and I were able to determine the velocity at which she tossed the snowball. After analysis, she threw the snowball at 1.72 m/s. As seen in the video, her throw was short, only covering a distance of 2.5 meters. But nevertheless, she is training hard for the next snow day

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Physics of Black Holes...Or Lack Thereof

Isabella Jacavone To comprehend how the universe works, we must dwell into the most basic building blocks of existence; matter, energy, space, and time. NASA's Physics of the Cosmos program involves cosmology, astrophysics, and fundamental physics intended to answer questions about the elusiveness of complex concepts such as black holes, neutron stars, dark energy, and gravitational waves. In this blog post, I'd like to elaborate on a subject that is very intriguing to me; Black holes. And more specifically, what would happen if we got near one. A black hole is anything but a hole, but rather an immense amount of matter compacted into an extremely small area. A black hole is caused when, hypothetically, a star four times more massive than our sun collapses into a sphere no bigger than 600 square km. To put that in perspective, that's about the size of New York City. B lack holes were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which showed that when a

Physics Behind Drone Flight

A drone flies by using its downward thrust and forcing air in a particular direction in order to sustain a certain speed as well as a specific height. In this video my friend and I had been flying a drone at exactly 4 mph which converts to 1.788 m/s. In this project, we will be determining the forces acting upon the drone in order to sustain a consistent flight in terms of velocity and height while excluding the effects of air resitance. The drone is flying at an angle of 28˚, this is found by extending the tilted axis of the drone to the horizontal and finding the angle with a protractor. From this angle we will be able to calculate the downward thrust and the acceleration of the drone that allows it to maintain its height and velocity during flight. When the mass of the drone is taken it results in 734 grams or .734 kilograms, which will also be used for the calculations within the project. The freebody diagram pictured above will alow us to derive the force equations f

Aerodynamics of a Golf Ball

One may wonder how a small golf ball can travel at incredibly high speeds for such long distances. While the swing of the club is a major component, the structure of the golf ball is quite important. Unlike a baseball or tennis ball, a golf ball has dimples all over it (usually 336 dimples). These dimples allow the golf ball to travel without facing much air resistance. This diagram shows how air travels around the golf ball. The dimples on the golf ball also prevent drag that would occur in the wake region, resulting in further distance. Also due to the contact with the club during the swing, the golf ball has backspin during its entire flight. This diagram shows the motion of the golf ball mid flight with the lift force of F. There are hundreds of different types of golf balls that a player can choose. Some show little affect to a player's game while others can alter their performance completely. Personally, I prefer Callaway Supersoft golf balls, but it is entirely

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