Family Fair

At family fair last weekend, I got burned on an inflatable slide kinda like this one. But that's not what I want to talk about. Ok, here comes the physics. When I was at the top of the slide, I had no kinetic energy because I had to wait for this little kid to go down the slide first, so I was at rest. I had potential energy though, because that equals mass times gravity times height, and I had height. After I had ridden down the slide and had gotten by burn on my elbow and was at the bottom, I had kinetic energy, but no potential energy because I had no height. Because of the conservation of energy, I know that the amount of potential energy I had at the top of the slide was equal to the amount of kinetic energy I had when I was at the bottom fo the slide. Oh my goodness that was so much fun. I wish I went in a bouncy house though. I'm actually pretty sad I didn't. Next year though. Well I guess the slide will have to do.

Ukuleles and Physics

Sorry if you guys can't see the letters on the picture, but I sure hope you can. Well, I just wrote out the equations for velocity. I'm actually kind of scared to write this because I'm not sure if I'm right of wrong. I hope I'm right because if I'm wrong then I would just sound foolish. But what I wanted to say is that we all know from the sound of music lab that a change in frequency changes the note which is being played, so if you play a c note, then a d note, the frequency changes. In an instrument like an ukulele, you can see how this happens. When you change the note, you change the length of the string which you are playing, because you press down on frets with your fingers. This change in L changes the velocity that the string is moving. Then you go down to the second equation. Since the v changes, the frequency and wavelength have to change proportionately. Because the frequency changes, you hear the changed note. I'm not so sure about this way of thinking though, so don't take my word for it!

Squeaky Clean

Every Sunday at the Baba house is cleaning day. I am practically pro at cleaning bathrooms already- and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. So today I had to clean the back bathroom. Most of the cleaning stuff is in the front bathroom so I was going to have to transport everything from the front to the back. Those things in the picture are all the things I needed to bring to the back bathroom. I could easily carry the roll of paper, the scrubbing bubbles and that non sterile mirror cleaning stuff in the white can. But the lysol toilet bowl cleaner was a toughie. I didn't want to make TWO trips just because of that stupid blue bottle so I decided to try and hold it on my forearm. I thought I was holding it in the geometric middle of the bottle, but it fell on the ground (don't worry, I didn't make a mess). But then I remembered center of MASS. The bottle's geometric center wasn't the cm because the mass of the cleaning juice inside it adds more mass. Then I positioned the bottle on my arm and tried to find the real center and lo and behold! I didn't have to make two trips! And I cleaned that bathroom really well, if I must say so myself.