Still trying to save mother earth

I have found that incandescent lights give off heat as well as light energy. The higher the wattage of the light bulb the higher the temperature. A compact fluorescent bulb gives off very little heat energy because they do not use resistance and cause a light to glow hot. 

In a home or office, lots of incandescent lights means that the air conditioner would have to use more energy during the summer to remove the extra heat given off by lights. Also, some lights such as torchieres, can be very dangerous as the bulbs are rated at 300 watts or more and get VERY hot. They can catch drapes or other materials on fire if you're not careful.

Pound the Sounds

A sonic boom is a loud explosive noise caused by the shock wave from an aircraft traveling faster than the speed of sound. If you toss a pebble in a pond, little waves will form inconcentric circles and propagate away from the point of impact. If the plane is traveling slower than the speed of sound then sound waves can propagate ahead of the plane. If the plane breaks the sound barrier and flies faster than the speed of sound, it produces a sonic boom when it flies past. The boom is the "wake" of the plane's sound waves. All of the sound waves that would have normally propagated ahead of the plane are combined together so at first you hear nothing, and then you hear the boom they create. Its actually kind of scary. 

Motion of the Ocean

We see the beach everyday but do we really know much about the ocean were so comfortable to swim in? In beach waves the wind blows, pressure and friction cause a disturbance to the balance of the waters surface. It is through these forces that energy gets transferred from the air to the water and creates a wave. The size of the waves depend on how fast the wind is blowing, how long the wind blows for and the distance of over the water that the wind blows. Waves break when the water becomes shallow, the most familiar break to us is the shore break. As the wave is coming into shore the reef or ground begins to slow the wave down, causing the bottom of the wave to slow down and the top to continue moving creating a barrel affect as the wave breaks on the shore.

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The principle of superposition may be applied to waves whenever two (or more) waves travelling through the same medium at the same time. The waves pass through each other without being disturbed. The net displacement of the medium at any point in space or time, is simply the sum of the individual wave displacements. A travelling wave whose amplitude depends on the phase (ϕ). When the two waves are in-phase, they interfere constructively and the result has twice the amplitude of the individual waves. When the two waves have opposite-phase, they interfere destructively and cancel each other out. The waves in this picture are mostly flat so it must be destructive.

Going with the flow

Waves are probably one of my favorite things. Pretty waves in art, sound waves that bump rap, light waves that let me watch my movie marathons, and even waves in the beautiful ocean. They are all around us. In physics, a wave is disturbance or oscillation that travels through matter/space, accompanied by a transfer of energy. Wave motion transfers energy from one point to another. My favorite type of waves are sound. Sound is a mechanical wave that is created by a vibrating object, which is probably why you see speakers vibrating. For a sound wave traveling through air, the vibrations of the particles are best described as longitudinal. Longitudinal waves are waves in which the motion of the individual particles of the medium is in a direction that is parallel to the direction of energy transport. 

Multimeters

They sound kind of boring but are actually an important use in real life. Well its important if you're an electrician and actually know how to use it or care to learn to use it. Mechanics also use these to check the electrical of cars and other motorized vehicles. We use the multimeter to measure the "voltage across" and the "current through" something. When measuring current you must break the circuit and insert the two probes in the hole to complete the circuit again.  Some real life situations that a multimeter can be used for are things such as to check for a broken wire or bad plug connection in an extension cord or in any outlet of the house. If it isn't working you can use the multimeter to see what wire is a defect and what the problem is. 

Save Mother Earth

Recently in Physics class we discussed the topic of electricity and energy. In doing so, some assignments included calculating the resistance, voltage, and current in everyday items found in our household. I was able to observe that a lot of the larger devices or devices which created a lot of heat created the most electrical current. It was brought to our classes attention that the amount of electrical current, or killowatts, that each item uses somewhat determined how much money our parents spent on their electric bills.

The electric company used on Kauai is Kauai Island Utility Cooperative. 91% of their electric is from petroleum that is shipped to the islands with only 0.2% from solar energy. Hawaii is actually the highest electricity rate in the United States. With a growing rate of 25.13 cents per kWh, it becomes very critical that we try to save as much energy as possible.

It is encouraged greatly to switch all your light bulbs to fluorescent light bulbs but how much does it really save you? Does changing it make a big difference? These are questions I asked myself as I created this experiment.  The control will be the lamp. The independent variable is the watts/type of light bulb. The dependent variable is the thermometer or heat projected off the light bulbs. I will be measuring how much energy each light bulb uses by measuring the temperatures that each light bulb emits. Since it takes more energy to make things hot I can measure how much more heat one light bulb has to another light bulb. I will be doing 2 trials with 2 different types of lamps and measure it by recording the temperatures for each light bulb.