In Unit 3, Uniform Acceleration, we learned a lot about
acceleration of objects and how the pull of gravity on our planet affects that.
In class today, Mr. B did a demonstration of an object being thrown up in the
air. How after you throw an object in the air, the force of gravity starts to
act upon the object and as it reaches its maximum height, the object slows to a
stop. After that split second of a standstill, the object starts to accelerate
downwards, reacting to gravity. This made me think of the famous rollercoaster in
Japan, the Dodonpa. I rode it dozens of times, yet I never thought about how or
why it worked. For a while you are carried up to the top of the rollercoaster,
your potential energy rising with every meter you climb. Once you are at the
top, you are the standstill I mentioned above. For that second, you are not
moving at all, then gravity starts to pull the car down. As gravity starts to
work its magic, you are accelerated downward, plummeting toward the ground as
you surrender everything to the immeasurable power of gravity.
fastslowstopslowfast lol and that's a really good example of acceleration! the roller coaster is at its fastest when goes back down because its working with gravity instead of against it.
ReplyDeleteonce i thought about roller coasters in a physics kind of way, it made me realize how strong the force of gravity really is. On roller coasters, they don't use electricity for the downfall part so the speed you move at is purely because of gravity pulling you down!
DeleteI like how you used the rollercoaster as an example because it really has a lot of slopes where velocity can change, and after all acceleration is just change in velocity!
ReplyDeleteYeah, i think it would be cool to graph a roller coaster's motion as a d/t or v/t graph!
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