Sunday, January 10, 2010

Reflection 2

This is what I learned about Newtons second law: It says that the sum of the forces that act upon an object (on the same axis) equal the mass of the object times its acceleration. In a mathematic equation this would be F=ma where F equals force, m equals mass and a equals acceleration. This law helps to determine the different forces when the sum of the forces on one axis equals not zero and the object is accelerating. For those kind of problems we can determine every force acting on the object by writing the sum of the forces and forming an equation that takes Newtons ma into account. Further, I learned about frictional force and that the frictional force equals the normal force times the friction number or coefficient that is expressed by the greek letter mu. This number is naked because the Newtons of the normal and frictional force cancel each other out. Recently I learned about air resistance and how you reach terminal velocity. I also learned that you can slow down by increasing your area during a free fall.

My problem solving skills increased constantly. I am getting more and more familiar with FBDs and the conceptual problems with more than one object are not as hard as expected.

I have still a little problem with my organization and with showing all my work but i am confident that I will be able to solve even this problem in future.

Newtons second law is everywhere around us. We see it when a car comes down and the breakes creat a negative acceleration. We see it when we shoot a ball during soccerpractice, forcing the ball to accelerate. We even see it every morning when we make our bed and see how the big area of our comforter lets it slide slowly down on the bed after we shook it up.
having now understood Newtons second law, frictional force and air resistance I can assure that I see the world from a more "physic" point of view!

6 comments:

  1. Great reflection! Your insight into your problem organizational skills is profound.

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  2. Good job! I liked how you mentioned how mu was a naked number because the Newtons cancel each other out. Also, I thought that your examples, such as the bed comforter, were very original and made great connections to our everyday world.

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  3. This looks awesome! You explained the answer to your question thoroughly.

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  4. wait....what question? This was a reflection and not part of the project. Thanks anyways :D

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  5. Hi Julius,

    Your explanation of Newton's second law was very helpful to my understanding, especially your real life applications. Thank you.

    Thank you too for your transparency in sharing how you view your learning and what you plan to work on. Are you willing to share your strategies for improving organization? That's an area I need to work on also.

    Best wishes,
    Lani

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  6. You are wecome. If you need any help with improving your organizational skills let me know. It would be very helpful if you could comment on my momentary project. I am trying to explain why the moon circles around the earth. I could use some constructive comments there.

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