Outlets! Forks! Wood!

Well one day this past week I just happened to be by an outlet and I just so happened to have a chop stick and a fork. I always wondered what would happen if I stuck a fork into an outlet because I heard that it could shock you. Since this week in physics I have been learning about conductors and insulators, I learned that metal is a very good conductor of electrical currents and I also read that wood is a good insulator. No one was around so I was about to stick the fork into the outlet when my mom came in and said, "Stop!, metal is a good conductor and that could shock you" and for some reason also took a picture of the dumb thing i was about to do. I said, "Hey that picture will be perfect for my physics journal this week." I also got a picture of me sticking a chop stick in the outlet. Well the reason that metal, like the material my fork is made out of, is such a good conductor is because the electrons in the the outer shell of the atoms are loose and are free to wander. If the electrons were not loose and instead tightly bound and held by their atoms then no movement could occur through an object to create good electrical movement and currents. An insulator is the opposite of a conductor and do not conduct electricity well. The electrons in an insulator are tightly bound and belong to that particular object not wanting to create flow.

Waves That Rock

Sound waves are a beautiful thing.

As I was playing melodious vibrations on my guitar in both a spacious room and a hallway I suddenly thought of physics-particularly the resonance and acoustics of the instrument and amp.

First resonance: As I was tuning the last two strings of the instrument their frequencies began matching and I noticed as I hit one string the other string began to vibrate as well. The two strings had a resounding effect that made the two strings sound more full than if they were each played separately. I took this to be resonance because the forced vibration I placed on the first string matched up with the natural frequency of the next string and they both began to vibrate creating larger amplitudes.

Second acoustics: As I mentioned earlier, I played in both a hallway and a spacious room. In the spacious room there was absorbent materials such as a couch and carpet on the far wall across from me. These two absorbent objects made the music I was making lesser in volume. On the contrary, in the hallway there were only walls and a hardwood floor which made the sound reflect a lot more and because of all those reflections it created reverberations. I will admit the guitar sounded way cooler in the hallway than in the room because of the acoustics.