Final Project
Evidence of Work
My final was a group project analyzing a video to find the different physics aspects that could be seen. This project was to challenge our knowledge of more than just one of the units by incorporating aspects of different physics concepts we learned throughout the semester. We wanted to do something fun that still had potential for a lot of detailed work to be done, therefore we chose to analyze the physics surrounding the final crash scene from the 2006 Pixar movie Cars. The scene we pulled not only involved the crash, but also the portion of the movie afterwards where a car brakes and proceeds to push the crashed car from behind. These different instances create multiple situations where the scene can be analyzed for different physics concepts.
Our final project is condensed into a slideshow that will be presented in front of the class. The spoken presentation will include all the math we did and the assumptions we made to get to our conclusions on the numbers found. Throughout our project we tried to find interesting ways to make the presentation interesting and explore more unique physics concept for our project. This can be seen in the way we tried to use visual example for our math within our presentation. Having a physical representation was to hopefully help the audience understand how we are finding our numbers. Our exploration of interesting concept can be seen in the assumptions made in order to complete our work. For example, how we recreated a situation to the best of our abilities in order to find more accurate data.
Content
Force: A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object's interaction with another object. Whenever there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force upon each of the objects. When the interaction ceases, the two objects no longer experience the force. The equation for force is F=ma.
Acceleration: The rate of change for velocity, whether it is speeding up of slowing down. The equation for acceleration is a = Δv/Δt.
Velocity: The rate of distance traveled in a specific direction. Velocity is a vector quantity meaning that the direction matters and a change in direction could make the value negative. The velocity equation is v = Δd/Δt.
Angular Velocity: A vector measure of rotation rate, that refers to how fast an object rotates or revolves relative to another point. The angular velocity equation is ω = θ/t.
Moment of Inertia: The quantitative measure of the rotational inertia of a body—i.e., the opposition that the body exhibits to having its speed of rotation about an axis altered by the application of a torque.
Torque: The measure of the force that can cause an object to rotate about an axis. Just as force is what causes an object to accelerate in linear kinematics, torque is what causes an object to acquire angular acceleration. The torque equation is T = Fr.
Coefficient of Friction: The ratio of the frictional force resisting the motion of two surfaces in contact to the normal force pressing the two surfaces together. It is usually symbolized by the Greek letter mu (μ)
Reflection
This project was some of the most fun I've had all class and it gave us a chance to become much better friends and cater our final project to something fun that we would have a good time creating. Some of the aspects that I think we utilized during this project was our creativity and critical thinking skills. We used a combination of these to come up with interesting ways to solve for the physics when the answer wasn't so easy to find. Creativity also played a role in how we would be displaying the work we did. While a slideshow presentation isn't the most original idea it was fun finding ways to present our information with drawn on images and making the presentation flow better through added shapes and colors.
The one thing that I think we didn't try to incorporate into this project that I would be interested in involving in the future is the concept of cultural competence. While we greatly enjoyed our project and in some ways, I think it brought good or joy to our group, it didn't really bring something into the world that is helping others. Of course it is hard to do that with school projects, but I think its still something to shoot for.