Blog Two: A "Physical" Summer Vacation

To end this summer, my family and I took our family vacation on the Big Island at the Mauna Lani Resort and Spa. My 10 year old sister golfs, so in order to let her practice my parents took my sister, brother, and I to the keiki course at the resort. Looking back at our practice game, I realized that the course of the ball could be tracked using vectors. The ball on the tee would represent the origin and start of the vector. My siblings and I gave the ball an initial horizontal and vertical velocity as our clubs hit the ball off the tee. The vector the ball creates from the tee to its peak in the air represents the vector of the ball, and the initial horizontal velocity represents the x-component while the initial vertical velocity represents the y-component. Using this I could calculate the overall velocity of the ball by taking the square-root of the x-component squared plus the y-component squared. Knowing this would allow me to control the distance my ball would travel based on how long it is in the air. I could also calculate the trajectory of the ball, or the angle the ball creates with the ground by taking the tangent inverse of the y-component over the x-component. Had I known this when we were playing golf that day on the Big Island, I might have been able to beat my sister :P

Blog Number One: Physics in Football

On Thursday September 2, 2010, the University of Hawaii Warriors challenged the University of Southern California Trojans in the season opener. Although Hawaii ended up losing the game, 49-36, I could not help but notice how punting a football reminded me of the free-falling labs we had been doing in class. When the punter, Alex Dunnachie, kicked the football, he established the initial velocity. The ball was then, for our purposes, free-falling - only affected by gravity, thus establishing acceleration. The ball then slowly lost speed as it traveled higher about the field until velocity equaled 0 and acceleration remained constant. At this point, the ball started falling down towards the field picking up speed as it went, representing the ever increasing negative velocity value. When the Trojan safety caught the ball, both the final velocity and acceleration values became 0. Using all this information, I could have calculated the distance the ball traveled. But seeing as air resistance is not taken into account in my equation, it definitely would not have matched the yardage on the field.