Slides

Dear Physics Journal,

I live across the street from Wailupe Elementary School. And on campus, they have a jungle gym. My friend, Lia, and I thought it would be fun to ride slides again and play with the tic-tac-toe feature just to rekindle our childhood memories. As we began to ride down the slides, I realized that it has everything to do with physics! As I climbed up the stairs I increased my potential energy while my kinetic energy lessened. As we rode down the slide, our potential energy became less, and our kinetic energy increased! Without this, slides would not be fun...at all! How thankful I am for physics!

Grid Jumps

The grid kinda looked like that, but without the hurdle part, Haha.


Basically, I have no life. All I do is go to school, work, and play soccer. Unfortunately soccer is my least favorite, but I do it the most. On Thursday our Coach whom I currently am not too fond of, thought that it would be a GREAT day for fitness. Besides the 2160 yards that he made us sprint, he made little square grids for each of us. One side of the square was A, one was labeled B, C, and D. He would give us an order (ex. ACDB=Jump to side A then C then D then B), and we would have to jump in that order for about thirty seconds. We jumped for about 20 minutes. Because I have an ongoing knee problem, I originally didn't want to participate. But then I thought, "Ah, better suck it up." And then dundundunDUN...I remembered PHYSICS! First of all, thank GOODNESS we were jumping on the grass/soil, because the pressure on my knees and feet would be a lot less than if we were jumping on concrete! Phew! Then I remembered from the last chapter (which I did not do so well on), that if I were to bend my knees when landing, I would be increasing my landing time therefore less force would be exerted on my legs! How fantastic! Even though my knee was sore after practice, I knew that the pain could have been a lot worse. And any of this could not have been possible without PHYSICS!

More soccer

Ah, back to physics. This weekend all I got to do was watch soccer, soccer, and more soccer. On Friday night we played Kamehameha and due to my sickness, I was happily sitting on the bench all cozy in my warm ups while everyone else was playing :) And then I remembered I had to write a physics blog, but I didn't sweat it since soccer has EVERYTHING to do with physics. This past week I was absent, but I know we learned about momentum. Momentum equals mass times velocity. And although it may not have registered in my head quickly, each person on the field was exerting a certain amount of momentum as well as the ball. When the ball hits our heads as we play (headers), it is much more sore than if it were to simply stop complete motion at our heads because headers require a force to exert the ball in another direction (Thanks Doc). Oh and I couldn't snap a pic at the game soooo here is a picture of the oh-so-attractive Christiano Ronaldo :)

So soccer practice starts this week, and I am oh so not excited. Running is going to suck suck suck. Anyways, at practice I realized there was a lot of physics around me. As training, we run up and down the Kozuki Stadium stairs as training. We are each working in order to get to the top. The higher you go, the bigger the potential energy gets, while the kinetic energy goes down. When you come down the stairs, you use up that potential energy so it goes down, and your use of kinetic energy goes up. When a ball is kicked out of bounds, it is usually replayed with a throw-in. As the ball arches in the air and reaches its peak, the kinetic energy is zero and it is converted into potential energy. On its way down, potential energy is used up and turns it into kinetic energy.