Today, we completed a group worksheet and the experiments to go along with it about the CONSERVATION of ENERGY! This included thinking about roller coasters and poppers which I had never seen before.

The popper popping up, a vertical video for vertical motion!

Today I learned:

Unless work is done to the system or the system interacts with something outside of the system, the total energy within the system will stay the same. This is the called conservation of energy. This also means that Eka + Ega = Ekb + Egb or 1/2 mk^2 a + mgha = 1/2mk^2b + mghb. You can then plug in values to solve for a desired value. In the real world though, nothing is perfect and that means that energy will always be lost or gained, very slightly due to external forces.

Sometimes it can be difficult to measure exactly how much potential energy an object has, for example the popper. How to measure the stretch of such a small object? We know it converts elastic potential energy to kinetic energy to go up, and then GP energy as it reaches the top. The GP energy is then used to fall back down. Perhaps a spring scale will help in finding the total energy, which can then be used to measure the energy transformations.

Apart from air resistance, friction, sound and other externalities, the popper conserves energy. It goes from elastic potential to kinetic, then to gravitational energy. As it falls back down, the GP energy converts back into kinetic energy and it hits the table.

There was a demonstration that involved a swinging ball where a person stood holding the ball, and let it go. The ball, hung up by a string, moved in a pendulum motion but never hit the person. This is because the the system is interacting with other forces, and is slowing down and will not swing up as high as the drop.

Today I wondered:

How slowly does an object lose its elasticity and its elastic potential enegy? How can this be measured? Just a measure of the force required to pull it back daily?

How can the potential energy of weird objects be measured? For example the popper, an odd shaped ball, etc.

Today I had an intriguing idea:

I found that the poppers today were quite interesting. A lot of energy was stored in just a small package, and the popper was able to bounce very high. I would imagine that the popper would not be as efficient with energy if it was made larger, as it the weight may outweigh it’s ability to jump up as much. However, there could be lots of potential uses for this popper in launching, and maybe something similar to a giant trampoline could be used to launch spacecraft and airplanes. This would be quite efficient, as it would provide a boost to the launch.

After Unit Reflection

This post connects to requirement #3. This was the day we used poppers, and it was a good example of energy conversions. Since a popper has a lot of elastic potential energy, it can bounce very high. This converts to kinetic energy, which is used to gain height, which gives it GP energy. Then, it falls back down, converting GP energy to kinetic energy. The total energy won’t change apart from externalities, which means energy is conserved.