Ball Bounced Off His Face!

Well it's volleyball season now. It is quite different from basketball but at least I get to pound volleyballs into opponents faces. That is always fun. Actually that's what I want to talk about. The force at which a ball bounces off a person's face is greater than if a ball just hit someone's face and fell to the ground. If I were to bounce a ball off a person's face the mass of the ball times the speed of the ball hit plus the speed of the ball after it bounces is the momentum. A ball that just stops would only be the speed the ball was hit plus zero because the ball came to a stop. The ball that bounces has a greater change in momentum which also equates to a larger impulse. So if you see a ball bounce off someone's face you know that hurt way more than if a guy stopped a ball with his face.

Hmm Momentum...

So this has been a tough weekend/week for me. I was starting to get sick before the Basketball State Tournament but it has gotten worse since then. I may have also cracked a bone in my right foot and oh we lost to Kahuku in the semi-finals of the State Tournament. Now I want to talk a little about momentum because momentum was a key factor in our loss to Kahuku. The equation m1v1+m2v2=m1v1f+m2v2f is the equation that will explain the charging call I got against me as I went up for the shot that would tie the game. No momentum is lost in a system because what one object gains the other objects loses. So basically the overall change in momentum in a system should be zero. Now the system in our basketball game was me and the opponent. As I was driving into the basket I saw my opponent come over to take a charge against me so I came to a jump stop. His mass being more than mine as well as my decreaing speed was not enough to knock him over in my opinion. His advantage in weight and speed should have resulted in my movement going backwards instead of his. So what is the explaination to his falling down backwards. I might have to say he "flopped." I'm sure if I had the exact mathematics I could prove that I did not hit him with enough force to knock him backwards like the way he fell. If only the referee knew physics he might not have costed us the game.

The Ball Pushes Me Back?

Ok well I have been playing basketball for quite some time now and not once have I ever thought the ball was pushing me back with the same force that I was pushing it at. Seriously, this concept is super strange. Newton's Third Law of Motion states that when one objects applies a force on a second object, the second object applies an equal and opposite force on the first object. Well I can see how this law works with guns with its recoil but a basketball pushing me back is kind of far-fetched. My skeptisism is easily answered with the concept of action and reaction forces relative to mass. Since the mass of the ball compared to my body mass is so small my body will not accelerate backwards as fast as the ball will accelerate foward. So basically even though the ball is pushing back at me with the same force that I pushed it at, my mass being much greater, my acceleration goes unnoticed, while the acceleration of the ball is noticable as it cleanly swishes through the basket for the game winning shot.

Bartenders, Drinks, and Inertia

Ah back to writing journals again. A new semester, a new journey to embark on and learn how this world really works. It's like a new season of your favorite show. Now down to business.
The other night I was performing music at a restaurant/bar. You know the music was awesome with me singing and playing some crazy guitar licks and the drummer laying down some sick hip-hop and rock beats. During one of the breaks we were thirsty, so we go over to the bar to get some drinks. We are underage so we order water and orange juice, of course. The bartender sends my orange juice flying at me across the bar and I stop it with my hand. At this point in the year my brain is set to notice anything physics the instant it happens. This hurts my brain sometimes because everything that is going on is always physics. But anyway...my brain tuned into the property of inertia and the forces that act upon objects to keep them in or out of equilibrium. First off the pitcher of orange juice that was flying at me needed a force to act upon it in order to move from its state of rest. The bartenders thrust took care of that. When the pitcher was moving, according to the property of inertia, it would keep going until a forced acted upon it to stop it. In this case it was mostly my hand and some friction that stopped the pitcher. There were also other forces like gravity and the support force of the counter. When I stopped the pitcher with my hand, the orange kept moving in the direction the pitcher was thrown because my hand stopped the pitcher not the orange juice. This shows the property of inertia in action. If there were no forces to act upon the pitcher and the juice it could have gone on forever like it would in a vacuum. I did not have a camera handy when the bartender slide my O.J. toward me so I had to recreate at home but the picture shows the concepts talked about in this blog.

Christmas and Basketball

Wow what a great Christmas. I love the feeling that Christmas brings. It makes me forget about all the pressures of the world especially school and that is exactly what I did. I did not think about school an ounce this Christmas which I hope the rest of you all did too. What did I think about then? Well first and foremost I thought about having fun but that ties into basketball which is pretty much what my whole winter break comprised of. Our iolani varsity team entered three different basketball tournaments this break and we won the championship two out of the three times. The tournament we lost was the Iolani Classic which has some of the best teams in the nation in it so it was a little harder to win than the other two local tournaments. I'm glad to say that I made All-Tournament Team for all three tournaments which is a great honor to me because I love basketball so much and work very hard at it. I had a great time this break and too bad it has to end because I was just getting used to waking up at noon and not having anything to think about except basketball and friends. Well I say bring it on school, I'll take you one on one!!

Reflections about Reflections

Colored Television!!!

Television is a wonderful invention. Not only does it allow people to watch their favorite television shows but it connects us to the rest of the world with news and sports coverage. Color television is even better because we can see the distinctions and details of everything as if we were at the location of whatever we are watching. Now then how do all of these different colors reach our eyes since there are so many. You may think that all the colors are in the television ready to appear where and when that color is needed as I thought it worked. Well in actuality all the colors are in the television but not as you think. Under the screen there are many, many little pixels made up of the colors red, green, and blue. The intensity of each color determines what color will be shown on the screen. The combination of these different colors to make other colors is known as color by addition because you are adding colors together to create other ones. Whether the different colored pixels are bright, dim, or off will determine the color. For example if all the pixels are bright you will get a white screen because red, blue, and green make white light; or if all the pixels are off, which is the lack of color, the screen will be black. It is a pretty simple process but if you did not know how it worked it is pretty surprising that there are only three different colored pixels that make up all the colors we see on the tele. Also the size of the pixels determines how good the quality will be. The smaller the pixels the better the definition will be.