Harmony McCorristin

Physics 1010
Stanford
4/29//2020

Reflection Week 1
I set a marker down on the table after taking it away from my daughter. As I was talking
to her about why she should not be drawing on her toys with it, it rolled onto the floor right in
between us! We both looked at and laughed. While we cleaned up the ink from her toys, I
noticed the table was not level. The force pulling on the marker was stronger than the friction of
the table, so it rolled down. This is an example of Newtons first law where an object in motion
stays in motion, and an object at rest stays at rest unless acted on by an outside force. The marker
would have stayed on the table if the force of the crooked table was not pulling it in a different
direction.

Reflection Week 2
I took the train home this week. We were going quite fast when suddenly, the driver put
on the brakes. We didn’t stop right away as we would in a car though. That’s because the
acceleration was dependent on not only the net force of the brakes on the train, but also the mass.
So while the net force of the brakes stopping the train was there, the high mass of the train was
decreasing the acceleration making it stop much slower then something smaller would.

Reflection week 3
Watching Brave with my family, I caught Newtons 3rd law in effect as the princess
Merida uses her weapon, a bow and arrows. When the arrow is pulled back and released it
creates an action, and the reaction would be the arrow springing forward. The arrow and string
pushes with an equal force in opposite direction. All depending on the mass and velocity of the
arrow, the momentum could be a lot or a little. Making the arrow either go far or fall short of the
intended target.

Reflection week 4
At the playground pushing my daughter on the swing I pondered the exchange of energy.
So I had to look at where all of the energy of the swing was. At the top, the swing and my
daughter were at rest, so the Kinetic energy is zero and the potential energy is at its highest. Once
reaching the lowest point the kinetic energy is at its highest and the potential energy would be
zero. Note that even if was pushing a child with more mass as long as I started at the same point
the energy would be the same. This is called conservation of energy, where energy can be
transferred but never destroyed.
Harmony McCorristin
Physics 1010
Stanford
4/29//2020

Reflection week 5
While playing “catch” with my 3-year-old she was attempting to throw the ball. It didn’t
go very far because she did not throw it out horizontally. I threw it back to her and it went
straight to her and fell into her lap. The ball I threw to her was a projectile because it was going
in a horizontal and vertical position. If I had just dropped the ball it would have hit the floor at
the same time as when I threw it though, because the mass is still the same.
Reflection week 6
During bath time my daughter was playing with some toys, But she had a hard time
finding a small mermaid toy that had sunk to the bottom, she couldn’t understand how it had
disappeared, while her rubber duck stayed on the top. The Mermaid was denser than the water,
so gravity force pulled on it towards the bottom. The duck floated because it was filled with air
making it less dense than the water. It displaced just a small amount of water, and the buoyancy
was equal to the water that was displaced.
Reflection week 7
I made a cup of hot chocolate today. When I held the glass between my hands they felt
nice and warm. The reason for this is not because I warmed the mug ahead of time. The heat
from the boiling hot chocolate transferred through the ceramic mug as a conductor and to my
hands.
Reflection week 8
I use waves every day when I use my wireless headphones. My headphones send out
radio waves. Radio waves are transverse waves, that in this case, travel from the headphones to
my cell phone. The waves are transporting energy through the air. The speed of this wave is
determined by the frequency and the wavelength. Waves are also found in sound and ripples in
the water.
Reflection week 9
When I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in Concert, I could hear so many
things. While I could hear the music just as well from anywhere in the hall, It also didn’t echo
across the whole building. This means the music waves reverberated across the hall, and was
absorbed to prevent unwanted echoes.
Reflection week 10
My husband has just recently been diagnosed with epilepsy, but before the doctors
diagnosed him with that, they needed to rule out any other problems in his brain. So, they had to
give him and MRI to look inside. An MRI is essentially just a giant magnet. The area you lay in
has multiple coils that you are inside of. It employs powerful magnets to align the protons in the
body with that magnetic field and lets them see inside.
Harmony McCorristin
Physics 1010
Stanford
4/29//2020

Reflection week 11
I was sitting outside with my daughter blowing bubbles. Each time I dipped the plastic
wand into the soapy solution, It looked as though the wand was bent and broken. I pulled the
wand out and it was perfectly fine though. This is because of the light bends, called refraction,
from air to water then water to air again. Light moves faster in air then in water. Due to the
change in medium the speed of light decreases, making the wand appear bent.
Reflection week 12
Watching a video with fireworks to entertain my daughter, I thought about how fireworks
got their color. In creating fireworks, the makes add different elements, for example iron, copper
and sodium. When the firework is ignited it causes light to pass through the different added
materials creating colors like blue, green red and gold.
Reflection week 13
I cooked dinner on my electric stovetop, watching the burners turn red. Same with when
you blow glass, it gets hot it turns red. If it got hotter it would turn yellow, and then white. Now
home stoves are made to prevent your burners to getting to that temperature for safety, but if you
could get it that high it would change to that spectrum. Its all a matter of wavelengths.
Reflection week 14
I was watching tv and my power suddenly went out. It made me start to wonder what
even happens at a power plant. It has to do with nuclear fission. In nuclear fission you take an
atom and split it into two and get energy. Nuclear reactors use the energy made by splitting two
atoms to generate power. High-energy neutrons are used to split heavy atoms of uranium,
yielding large amounts of energy.