Resistors

For my physics blog post this week I took a picture of my refrigerator because that’s an example of a resistor. Resistors can be found in a parallel and series circuit and can be any appliance that asks the charge to do work. When the charge does work, the current will slow down. Resistance is measure in Ohms (Ω) and can be found using the equation R = V/I, or “Ohm’s Law,” named after the famous German physicist, Georg Ohm. With this equation, it’s easy to see that resistance (R) and current (I) are inversely proportional. If you want more current, you need less resistance, and vice versa. 

Home Electricity

My physic’s blog post for this week is about my home power usage. I took a picture of my electric bill from this past month and I found that my family’s electricity tab was $183. 29. When I compared this number with other people in my class, I had one of the lowest numbers. It says my family only spends $6.21 a day for electricity and since there are four people in my household, each person used about $45 of electricity the past month. The reason why my numbers are so low is because we have photovoltaic panels that we installed just last year and we have a water heater set up so our water isn’t constantly being heated 24/7. I thought analyzing my bill was really interesting because before I didn’t even what the average electricity bill was; but now after hearing a lot of other numbers from people, I see that having panels makes a big difference. 

DC Circuits

For my physic’s blog post this week, I took a picture of my phone because in class today we learned about circuits and the two types; DC and AC circuits. My phone is an example of a DC circuit because when I’m charging my phone, the charges are only going one way…to my phone. My phone isn’t transferring charges back to the wall through the charger because it just doesn’t work like that. An example of an AC circuit would be the Apple computer charger. I think one of the most important things I learned today is that energy transfers instantaneously, but the charges do not. This is referred to “drift velocity”.

Voltage

For my physics blog post this week on voltage I put together a picture of a man standing in the middle of a grass field and a lighting storm. I chose to do this because the first thing I think of when I think of voltage is lighting. I looked it up online and found that lightning contains anywhere from 1 million to 1 billion volts…whoa! That’s a lot. The most important equation in this chapter is V = PE/q because this equation helps you calculate voltage. I also learned that the number of joules (PE) doesn’t matter. What does matter is the amount of q an object has. The higher the objects charge, the more dangerous it becomes. That’s what lightning bolts are dangerous and possibly fatal. 

Electric Potential

For my physic’s blog this week about electric potential energy, I took a picture of an electrical power strip. These power strips are convenient because you can charge many different things at one time from just one wall plug. I learned in class today that each outlet contains 120 volts, so I calculated that this power strip is holding about 960 volts of potential energy since there are 8 power outlets. I also learned that the number of joules doesn’t matter when determining if something is dangerous or not. Instead, the more charge there is, that makes it more dangerous. The most important thing that I learned from physics class this week is electric potential IS NOT the same as electrical potential energy. 

Notes

For my physic’s blog post this week, I took a picture of some of the textbook pages that we had to take notes on. I first thought of doing this because it was one of the few times that I actually took notes in advance from the book before I came to class, and I have to say it somewhat helped. When we got our PA, I was already familiar with the formulas that we were going to use, for example I was already introduced to the mass of a proton and electron, those terms weren’t completely new to me. The notes also helped because I now know that the word “quantized” means describing an electrons charge…that’s something I may not have learned in class. 

Magic Tape Lab

In my picture for my blog post, I took a picture of a Scotch^® tape dispenser that’s in the shape of a lifesaver. This relates to what we’re learning in physics because we just did a Magic Tape Lab in order to find out which pieces of tape seemed to be charged or not. This lab also helped us understand the Charge-Force Law, which states that like charges will repel and unlike charges attract. I like to remember it as “opposites attract”. At the end of the lab my partner and I found that tape A and C had some type of charge, while tape B was neutral…meaning it had no charge at all. It was a good lab that physically showed how objects could have different charges depending on the situation.