Luis C Colon Collazo: Physics

At the beginning of the semester I was really motivated to take this physics class. I always make myself a lot of questions about many things in life. How things work or why that thing happened are some examples of those. With the knowledge acquired in this few months of class I have been able to answer a few of those questions.  During my life I have been a big fan of cars, I loved everything related to them from the acceleration, handling, braking and even the ability to stay stable during curved. Everything of the performance of the vehicle can be known using physics. By doing test on them you can actually improved in many ways their performance. When we think about performance in a vehicle, speed is often and attribute that comes to our minds.  Drag force and horsepower are the most important factors influencing the speed of a performance vehicle. Drag force is equal to: (1/2)Crav^2 being the C= coefficient of friction, r= density of air, a= area and v= Velocity in the drag formula. The c and r does not change so that leaves the designer to work with the designed of the vehicle. They usually work with lowering the rooflines, and angling all body surfaces away from the upcoming drag force. In the other side horsepower measures how much force the engine can apply to car in a given amount of time. Horsepower is measured in Watts and 1 horsepower is equivalent to 746watts. One thing I was always questioning myself was how the brakes system work. Because to me was very impressive to think that we only put a little amount of force pressing the brake pedal and it makes a huge amount of force to make the car stop in a few seconds only. In class I learn more of how this works and it answer my long time questions. The force from the pedal is multiplied and translated to hydraulic fluid pressure and that way the car had enough force exerted to the brake pads to make it stop. The automotive industry has come a long way since the first engine was built and put into a car, but the perfect car is still a long way off, we still have many more years of working with physics to improve the way in which our automobiles work.  

Physics to me is one of the most important sciences if not the most important.  With it, we can answer a very large amount of question about things we see and go through in our lives. Is very difference between when people see physics from the outside and when other people like us in the class that actually learned physics, know the equations to help solved those things we normally make questions like “how those that work?” or “why? is it like that”.  Learning physics these semester have been pretty awesome, I would make my best efforts to finish the class with a good grade and to learn more in the last part of the semester. 

Geraldo Lopez Rosa: I love Physics

Physics, this is by far the most interesting science of all, in my opinion. There’s just so much to talk about when I think of physics. Since I was in high school, I’ve always viewed physics as something very interesting. I’m not a person that reads magazines or journals online of physics. Physics isn’t my greatest skill, but it’s fun. I do read physics textbooks to learn more and also to study for my classes. There is physics everywhere.  

There truly is physics everywhere, for example in my Java Programming class we have a project on making a game. Guess what the project requires? PHYSICS! I have to make a ball move and collide with objects. To make the collision perfects, to get the correct angles and the force each object exerts.  I had to look over newton’s laws of motion.  

I love reading about gravity also. Gravity is very particular. One of the most fascinating things for me is how gratuity keeps the earth and all the other planets in orbit around the sun and the moon around the earth.  Newton had to be very smart to think of this. It’s very curious how the first person came up with this. The people that made all of these theories and principles had to be geniuses.  If people knew how much they would weigh in Mars they would be buying a space ticked right about now.  I would weight like 50 pounds in mars, thanks to gravity. 

I love reading about work. Work isn’t so fun, but with physics it is. So if you try to push a wall, you may be sweating but physics wise you haven’t done any work. I love how you think energy is destroyed but really you are just transferring energy.  Suppose you are moving a table, and you want to get the work done.   There are looks of things to look at, like normal force, gravitaonal force, tension, and kinetic friction. Here we see how a lot of things are related. 

One of the things that I have been learning is about quantum physics. It’s very interesting all of this. Looking at thing from the smallest of scales. It seems crazy. Everything in the level of atoms and how atoms behave is very interesting and something that I would love to keep reading about and learning more about this. The idea of time traveling with quantum physics is crazy maybe if I keep studying physics I make it possible (just a thought). 

Another interesting thing is the relative frames. If I’m sitting right now, writing this article, relative to the ground I’m at rest, but relative to the sun I’m moving. When you are in your car and see the moon moving. Is the moon moving? Are you moving? What is happening? All of that has to do with relativity. 

Physics may not be my best skill, but anyone who says physics is boring is stupid and doesn’t know any physics. There are very interesting things in physics and you can do a lot of things by understating physics. Physics isn’t only gravity or force, it has many areas. This is something you will need in your life since it is everywhere you look.