Feelings About the First Quarter

When browsing through all my photos and digital art trying to find a picture that accurately represented my feelings about physics so far, i stumbled upon this photo i had taken that depicts me and several of my japanese classmates viewing the fireworks that celebrated a local matsuri this summer in Japan, and the similarities between it and my first quarter of physics became apparent. To get this picture the way i wanted (with myself in it, middle right) a lot of preparation was involved, more so than i had originally planned on. When setting up the camera I came in with notions that I already knew how to work the camera (if my analogy to physics isnt clear, since i have worked on my car and my uncle runs charts and works with aerodynamics, etc. i thought i had a decent understanding of physics) i would easily be able to get nice shots. However, firework pictures was a completely unknown topic to me, and required a lot of trial and error before i finally could get it right. At one point, despite my love of fireworks and photography, i found myself frustrated by my inability to take the quality of pictures i wanted, but realized that i had to approach it with a fresh slate, and found that i was able to understand mechanics behind successful firework shots, like delayed exposure, etc.
So in relation to physics, I came into the course already interested, yet was slightly discouraged after the first test. At the beginning topics seemed like the fireworks in that they were sometimes hard to capture until i realized i had to approach learning it with a different attitude. However, after approaching it with a different attitude i found my grade improving and that i was learning more and more about topics that interest me. I admit that my effort at the beginning of the year wasn't all there, and i think i'm working harder and harder. After looking back, i realize that i'm not doing as well as i had pictured myself as doing, but now i see the big picture that i couldn't see before. My goals for this course were never primarily the A (although that would be nice), but to understand and capture topics that i really am interested in and love, just like fireworks.

Hawaiian Brian's

This picture, taken at the Class of 2010 Welcome Back Event at Hawaiian Brians, is a picture of me about to serve a ping pong ball and demonstate the properties of a projectile. A projectile, an object that is only acted upon by gravity, is exemplified by the ping pong ball because after it is hit it maintains a constant horizontal velocity, while gravity causes it to travel in a parabolic arc as its positive velocity is slowed by gravity, peaks at 0 m/s, and then accelerates downwards back to the table, all of which is repeated multiple times throughout a rally. A ping pong ball is a projectile because after it is hit, there is no forces acting upon it (ie. jets, etc.) except for gravity. In addition, at Hawaiian Brian's I also played pool (no pictures, unfortunately), which helped to demonstrate Newton's First Law, in which an object tends to remain in its state of motion unless an external force acts upon it, as well as Newton's Third Law, that states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Unless the ball is hit by the cue, it will remain still at equilibrium, in which only gravity is causing it to push against the table, and the table is pushing upwards with the same force, and assuming the pool table was really big and friction was not a factor, the ball would continue to accelerate at the same rate after being hit by a cue. Newton's Third Law applies when the ball is hit with varying forces, whether i wanted to tap a ball in from 3 inches away, or try to bank a shot from across the table, the different amounts of force applied results in a different acceleration.