Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Physics Unit 3 (Part 2)

 

Today, one of the things we focused on the most was acceleration. The picture above shows the main example we used in class, which was whether or not two objects of different sizes would fall at the same rate and hit the floor at the same time. We tested this by dropping two balls (hehe), a four-square ball and a tennis ball, at the same time. While they obviously have different masses and different volumes, they still hit the floor at almost the exact same time, which proved to us that Galileo's theory on gravity was correct. However, if you drop a piece of paper at the same time you drop a rock, they will not land on the floor at the same time because of something called air-resistance. 


We also learned about how an object's velocity would change when thrown up into the air. We learned that it would be fastest as soon as it left your hand, and that it would gradually lose its velocity until it reaches its very highest point, in which case it will be 0 m/s. Once the object starts falling back down, it will gradually pick up speed, and if you were to catch the object at the same height that you threw it, its velocity will be the opposite of what it was when you threw it.



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