Christmas blog

Merry christmas! Well, this is my neighbor Kehau, Pualei's cousin. She likes to dance and stuff so she took this picture and gave it to us because she thought that it was cool. I was going through my pictures and found this and was like wow! we just learned that stuff! For Kehau to balance like that, her center of mass must be supported. I'm pretty sure her support area is her foot, I mean, how could it not be? Her arm out helps her to balance. Maybe you guys could help me out. Where is her center of mass?

Ok, well, and if you think that blog was a bit lame because I didn't know where her cm was here's another small one. Paddling has started and practice lately has been GREAT(but not really). One thing that I have learned about paddling from physics this year was that when you pull the water, you aren't actually pulling it, you are pushing it, and the water is pushing you back, so you accelerate forward. Another thing that I have noticed is that whenever we paddle towards Diamond Head, we go a lot slower. That is because the wind is a restricting force that opposes our motion. In contrast, when we head towards Kewalos, we go much faster because the wind is going in our direction. Have a great rest of the break!

Rise of the Lumberjacks!

Wow, what a great week! I'd say school getting cancelled was probably the best thing that ever happened!!!!!!!!!!! Well now that I think about it, maybe not the best but it was still pretty dang good! OK so I took these pictures of this tree by my house- that white speck under the trunk in the first one is a boy...shows how HUGE this tree was! o yah, and sorry about the random guy without a shirt in the second picture but he wasn't moving and I didn't want to tell him he had to move because he was kind of creepy looking. Anyways, I really wanted to put up these pictures and was thinking about what this tree and whole weekend had to do with physics and at first nothing came to me, but then I thought of a few things. All the rain that we experienced were little projectiles coming down and -9.8m/s^2. This tree was once an object at rest and was pushed down by an external force which was those seventy mph gusts of wind! hoooooobrah! Also, the roots in this tree are pretty flat as you can see. They don't go down deep like the deep roots of friends and family- that's why it fell. Just kidding, but seriously. The tree wouldn't have fallen if the roots were deeper because its center of mass would be shifted closer to the ground, and just like Mr. Kohara's example of being buried in the sand, if the tree's roots were super deep, it would be like being buried up to your chest! It would never fall! Well there it is, I'm sure there's more physics stuff you can think of about this week too! Man, it's a good thing the tree didn't fall on the house right in back of it yeah? Well HAVE A B-E-A-UTIFUL DAY, and stay warm and dry!

It's as simple as something that nobody knows...

hello everyone! A somewhat large portion of my life over the summer and currently is teaching ukulele. One of the things I notice about it when I teach the little kids is that they have trouble holding down the notes to get a clear, clean sound. You can relate this to physics because the uke string is kind of like an object at rest. This will stay at rest until an extraneous force large enough acts upon it. Those kids who have trouble don't push down on the strings with enough force. Some people who do though, are Jake Shimabukuro and Jack Johnson- I got to meet him! They were both at the Ukulele Festival this year! It was awesome! Every single note that Jake plays is crisp and you can tell that he pushes down on the strings with just the right amount of force! I tried to put the videos that my parents took of Jack Johnson and Jake on here but they wouldn't go, but Jake Shimabukuro has a lot of stuff on you tube and it's pretty MIND BLOWING...well maybe not mind blowing, but it's pretty cool. And everyone already knows how good Jack Johnson is too, so I guess that I don't need proof of that. That was by far the most awesome Ukulele Festival I ever worked at! MAD PERKS!!!!