Raku Time

This week in Ceramics, we fired our raku pots. The girls were in charge of picking up the pre-heated pots from our teacher Mr. Harvey, then placing them in rubbish cans where they were to be fired for a little while more, supervised by our other teacher Reid. The magnitude and direction (defined as a vector) of the girls transferring the pots varied throughout the process. First, we traveled in the east direction at a speed of about 0.9 m/s as we traveled to the spot where were would get the pot from Harvey. Then, we traveled south, but at a quicker speed, about 2.5 m/s because we were carrying the hot pot and wanted to quickly transfer the pot to the rubbish can. Then, we traveled back west at about 1.5 m/s as we found a safe place to wait for the pots to be through firing.

Set Me!

Volleyball is a major part of my life. Not only do I enjoy playing it, I love watching and supporting at the collegiate level. This is a picture of the University of Hawaii mens volleyball team vs. University of the Pacific. The setter, Nejc Zemljak is setting the ball to the middle blocker, Shane Welch. Every time Zemjak sets the ball, it will always have the same pattern of velocity and acceleration when it goes um and comes down. We learned this in the ball toss lab that we did this week. However, when Zemljak sets his hitters and once the hitter contacts the ball, the velocity increases because the time it takes for the ball to reach somewhere (the ground or the arms of the opposing teams player) becomes lessened because the speed of the ball is so fast over time.

Killing Time JV Blue Style

This past week, we continued to learn about kinematics. On Thursday, our volleyball team had a game versus HBA at HBA. When the game was over, the bus wasn't there yet and after a while, we began to get antsy. Luckily, my friend and our manager Aryn had brought his camera. This is some of what we did to pass the time. In class, Mr. Blake did a demonstration to help us understand velocity and its path by throwing a mass into the air then catching it. The pattern of an objects velocity is slow --> fast --> stop --> slow --> fast. In the picture on the left, I was able to capture my teammates Tiyana, Kea and Mahea in this process. I am not sure what stage of velocity they are in, however, the pattern as they jumped was slow --> fast --> stop --> slow --> fast because of gravity. The same goes for the picture on the right. Though each girl is in a different stage of velocity of the jump, each will undergo the same slow --> fast --> stop --> slow --> fast pattern.

Oh Kanoe...

This past week in Physics class, we completed the Physics Olympics lab. From this lab, we learned about position, time and its relationship. The slope of a graph of position and time shows velocity. The connection that this picture has to the past week of class is that the field that my friends and I are on is also the field that we had the Physics Olympics on. More importantly, is the examination of my friend Kanoe here. She is the one lying in the center. As all of us friends walked up the stairs from lunch, our velocity decreased because the distance covered was done so in a longer time. When we walked on flat surfaces, it increased from the velocity while walking up the stairs but stayed constant until we reached another flight of stairs because the movement was constant. As you can see, all but Kanoe were able to make the trek with smiling faces.