Week 28 Reflection

This week in physics we began learning about impulse and continued talking about our knowledge about energy an energy transfer. We learned that to change the momentum of an object, you need a force exerted for some time. This is what impulse is. Impulse changes the momentum and is calculated by impulse = force *amount of time. We also learned that the change in momentum = mass *change in velocity. This means that impulse equals the momentum change and you can put the two equations equal to each other to find a missing variable. Force can also be calculated by multiplying the mass by the acceleration.

The more time an object has to collide into another object, the less the force exerted. It is an inverse relationship, which means the less time taken, the more force. This is why a helmet is so essential to safety. The plastic and foam prevents your head from hitting the ground so quickly and buys your head more time. Because time is added to your head hitting the ground, the force of the impact is lessened. If you didn't have a helmet on, your head would come into contact with the ground quicker and therefore would have more force with the ground.

This week we also did an egg lab in which we threw an egg a a sheet cradled as hard as we could in an attempt to crack/break the egg. However, no matter how hard the egg was thrown, the eg did not break. This is due to the surface of the sheet; it is not rigid and absorbs some of the energy from the egg when it hits. In addition, the sheet gives so it allows more time for the force of the impact to be lessened on the egg. I don't think the egg. will ever break despite how hard it is thrown due to the giving surface of the sheet.

We also had our newton's cradles due this week and I'm really happy with how mine turned out. The whole point of the project was to have the energy of one ball to continue to transfer to the others. You want to prevent as much friction as possible and the eye hooks I used really helped in that department. Totally satisfied with how it works :)