iNCLiNED PLANES AND FRiCTiON: blog 4 :)

This past summer, my friends and I decided to make a summer to do list, filled with all sorts of fun summer activities such as a trip to the waterpark and riding a catemeran. The most adventurous thing on our list was probably hiking, since none of us had really ever hiked anything more rigorous than Diamond Head. We had heard of a beautiful hidden area called "Maunawili Falls", and decided THAT was where we were going to hike.

After what seemed like forever, WE MADE IT TO THE WATERFALL :) but my friend Daniel urged us too keep climbing, up OVER the waterfall to a hidden surprise. Reluctantly we ventured over huge pipes, across bridges, and up rocky walls until we finally found it- the moss slides.

Water from another waterfall splashed down huge rocks covered in moss, the perfect area to slide down. As we climbed up, the rocks began to make a sharper incline with the ground, and the acceleration of an object going down an inclined plane is greater than the acceleration of that same object on level ground. The farther down we slid, the faster we accelerated. iT WAS SO MUCH FUN. What also made this area perfect for sliding was the moss covering the rocks.  Friction is a force the opposes the motion of an object in contact with another object moving past it. Friction depends on the two materials in contact, which in this case would be the moss and our skin. Moss is very soft, and we had a hard time climbing up the rocks because there was so little friction.This means that the coefficient of friction, in this scenario the friction between the moss and our skin, was very little.

Friction= the coefficient of friction multiplied by the normal force

Because the coefficient of friction was so small, the overall friction was small, and therefore made it easy for us to slip. Although I'm not much of a hiker, I really did enjoy the moss slides. :)

NEWTON'S FiRST LAW: blog 3 :)

Since my past blogs have all been somehow related to dance, i tried to think of how Newton's laws affects dance. Newton's First Law is "An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside net force". I thought about the force of gravity, and how it affects a dancer.

('Iolani Winter Showcase 2010)

(Spotlight Competition 2008)

(Spotlight Competition 2008)

As a dancer, I think gravity most affects a dancer when it comes to jumps. No matter what kind of jump, we always return to the ground. Our weight, which can be calculated from the equation
Weight in newtons= Mass in kilograms times Gravity in meters per second squared
acts upon us and ends our jump. If gravity did not exist and we jumped in space, our jump would go on forever and would be much easier to do than on earth. Dance would be so much easier without gravity.