Sunday, May 10, 2009


when a person jumps up in the air...they go up and down there is no pause...their horizonal velocity stays the same as they rise and fall they cannot control it..no human can really be air born for more than a second.
as you can see in this video of me high jumping...with the right timing and practice i was able to clear the bar because i jumped a little before the bar and my momentum and forward horizontal velocity carried me over the bar as i jumped up high as well
also in this picture i was able to jump over Laurie without touching her because she trusted me and i had the right timing and hops to do this!!

Sunday, April 5, 2009


in this picture i'm the one with the green checkered board shorts!! cheee jumping of a wall into the water...i enjoy doing this a lot...through many past experiences good and bad...i've learned that if you tuck (keep knees into your chest you rotate faster..if you leave them extended you rotate slower...on some big jumps you can get away with not tucking and still get your flip down but on the mini jumps like into a regular pool i've learned the hard way that you have to gain momentum and tuck hard so you rotate faster...this is because your center of rotation is closer to the axis or turning point so you can rotate faster in that short amount of distance and time...when you leg is extended it is hard to rotate so you go slower and can back or belly flop before you complete your flip!

Monday, March 16, 2009


extra CREDIT!!!

Sunday, March 8, 2009



okay this is an old picture and i already used it but i saw that it contained an electromagnet in it...the power lines which i think are dead...but anyways yah the power lines that you see everyday while driving or just observing are electromagnets because they have current running through them...and are conducting wires so yah needs electricity to be a magnet therefore it is an electromagnet...
also while i was at blockbuster this weekend renting a scary movie:) umm i had to swipe my blockbuster card and then my credit card...when i did i noticed the screen was facing me so i could see everything that the computer read from my card and i remembered mr. Kohara telling me that that was the work of little magnets on my card..i looked closely as the computer read my full name, address, credit card #, date i became a member of blockbuster and all that jazz...its CRAZY how magnets can do that and how humans came up with that stuff...even that video in class about the hard drive blew my mind...i made my own computer last year and when i was deciding on which harddrive to use i didn't really know what all the numbers and stuff meant...i jus chose the one with the biggest numbers:P but now i can see and know how a hard drive works...and i was jus amazed that a human like me made that!!!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

so this weekend was super good:) and super long:) so yeah
obviously i forgot about my physics journal until 11:30 before its due at 12 so yah i didn't get any pictures:/ my badd...but i am thinking about physics right now and going to right my journal..so yeah we use physics everyday. like my drive home from my basketball game tonight. i could step on the pedal harder to make my car accelerate more or i could hold the pedal down at a certain height and the car would keep a constant velocity. i could read my speedometer that could tell me my instantaneous velocity (velocity at that exact moment in time) and yah. then i wanted to bump my music louder so i turned the knob on my car's volume meter and my car began to make more noise. this is relevant to the stuff we're learning now. that knob is a variable resister. i'm guessing that some how inside my car's radio that knob allows for me to make it have less resistance and cause electrons to flow through faster causing the volume to increase!!! and then the opposite way around if i turned the knob counterclockwise...chii...pretty good

Sunday, February 1, 2009

this weekend i didn't do much:/
but i did watch some episodes of Jackass on my television..they were pretty funny b/c they do some dumb stuff. in one of the stunts some of the members of Jackass wrapped one of their male body parts in tin foil and made a tip at the end. they then proceeded to stick the pointy tip of the foil into an electrical outlit. it was super funny to watch their reactions and stuff. i could imagine that it hurt A LOT!! or went numb and felt really weird or something. well the physics in this is electrons being transfered. the equations are F= kQq/r^2 as well as E = f/q = kQ/r^2. the amount of voltage coming out is PE/charge. so its 1 joule/1 columb so sometimes it isn't that bad to get shocked.. if the ratio has a big denominator. but if it has a small denominator chances are the voltage will be pretty high and the shock could be deadly or do a lot of damage. sorry i do not have a picture for this journal.lol

Sunday, January 25, 2009


so i jus put this picture up for fun...haha
and cuz i didn't have any other pictures to put up...but i shall explain some static electricity stuff that happens in my everyday life.. so everyone know that on the weekend iolani student are supposed to do homework and stuff,,, but i dont' really like to do that..most of the time. so normally my parents go out and do errands and stuff and they say, "gavin, be productive and study." and i say, "okay see ya" once they leave i do all sorts of stuff. play games, watch tv, watch movies, lift, and so on..but i noticed that whenever i watched tv there would be static electricity on the screen i think. so when i was younger and didn't know better my mom could come home and feel the tv and be like, " hey you were watching tv! grrr!" but i've learned since that and now i wipe the tv screen before my parents come home. i'm guessing what happens is that some how the tv screen is charged and when i wipe it down i ground it so that no more static electricity is left on the screen...of course i don't do it now because my mom really doesn't care. and most weekends i'm out of the house most of the time. so yeah. there is also static electricity when i comb my hair sometimes.

Monday, December 15, 2008

one weekend..a long time ago i think..erika took this picture of me doing a lame front flipthis was located at china walls.. it was the only picture i could find already on my computer and couldn't get anymore because i don't have a camera at the momment but yeah...theres some torque in this picture. so when i ran and jumped my foot applied a force on the ledge of the wall causing my boday to rotate in the air. the center of rotation is probably near my belly button or yeah some where around there...the lever arm is from the force to the point of rotation so from my foot to my belly button about...yup with enough torque and force in my jump i was able to complete a flip...when i got into the air i tucked my legs kind of...i'm not sure what physics terms it is but because i tucked my feet in closer to the center of rotation i began to rotate faster and fully get over and complete the flip..i think i might have over rotated and landed on my face this one!! haha
ouchi...lol thats like courtny's last name! haha w/e

Sunday, November 23, 2008

kay...so this evening my dad and me decided to do my physics journal...lol
so we decided that we should do a belly bump (or should i say Ab collision). so first to make it interesting we weighed ourselves on my scale. you may not be able to see it that well but my dad weighs 143 pounds and i weigh 131.6 pounds. then we lined up, my mom focused the camera and we jumped into the air thrusting our bellies(abs) into each other. it was a success!! and it was supper funny!! but i saw that my dad moved backwards as i moved forward. this is related to physics b/c of momentum and impulse. our momentums were obviously different
b/c my dad went back as i went forward but our impulses were the same...even tho i had a smaller mass than my dad, my velocity was greater causing me to have a bigger momentum. P= m x V thats why
if i had a bigger velocity but a small mass i was able to counter act my dads bigger mass and smaller velocity. THIS LAB WAS FUNNY...

Sunday, November 2, 2008


This summer my friends and I went to maunawili falls in Kailua. This is a natural water fall where you can jump off into a pretty deep pond. First we had to hike into the trail and finally we found it by following the stream up the mountain. It was tons of fun. Okay so when you get there you can jump off from different heights ranging from 40 to 10 feet. I went to the top one. When i was standing on the rocks i had all potential energy and no kinetic energy. Once my foot left the cliff and i jumped out toward the pond i began to lose potential energy and gain kinetic energy. there was no energy lost but it was being transfered from potential to kinetic energy. The equation for kinetic energy is KE=1/2mv^2 and the equation for potential energy is PE=mgh.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Physics so FAR!!


This is a picture from last year during wrestling season at the ILH jv championship. This picture is related to physics because physics has so far been my hardest class this year and i think wrestling is the hardest sport i have ever done. But although it is hard i don't mind the challenge of physics. It is very interesting to me and i don't mind putting in the extra effort to do well. In physics so far, i haven't done that well on quizes and tests which i have to work on. i see those as just obstacles that i have to over come. last year in wrestling i weighed in at the 119 weight class but had to bump up two weight classes to wrestle at the 130 weight class the day of the championships. i ended up trying my best and winning. that's what i plan to do for physics this year, to try my best and do the very best job that i can. like wrestling physics is very hard but also fun for me. i enjoy participating in class discussions and working on labs in class. i find if fun because in all my other classes we just lecture and take notes. in physics you actually get to learn the material and see it happen in real life experiences(the labs). also the journals have helped me broaden my view and see physics in my everyday life activities which is way cool.

My anxieties and reservations are probably my laziness and bad time management. I think i need to put more effort into my work and not leave things to the last minute. Although in physics i normally do my homework right after school in a study group so my friends and i can help each other if we don't know whats going on. It helps me get a better understanding sometimes. After school now days I'm really tired and sometimes too lazy to finish homework and i just put it off to the next day (which is bad). Other than my laziness and not having enough time, i think physics is a manageable class and if i just put my mind to it i can do well.

My goal for physics this year, is to understand and learn the concepts that are taught in the class. I also want to get my grade up if that is a possibility that would be great. Another one of my goals would be to put more effort into physics, that would ensure better working habits and hopefully help my quiz and test averages to gradually increase.

If i work hard in physics like i worked hard last year in wrestling I'm sure anything is possible. I'm looking forward to a super fun, challenge overcoming, concept learning, awesome year of physics!!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Newton's First Law

This weekend i totally forgot about my physics journal. there was just so much going on. Like on saturday i went to the game and it was EPIC!! we beat st. louis!! the game was pretty intense and came down to the wire but we pulled through and it was mean! sunday i worked on my collage for senior page which was fun, but took a long time. so i was browsing through my pictures and i found this one. this picture is a good example of Newton's first law. if an object is at rest or at a constant velocity it's net force is zero. in this picture trevor and i are sitting on the top of a flag pole thing on the top of the koko head trail/hike. the combined force of our two weights on the pole is about 126+140=266 pounds. which means the pole is pushing us back up with an upward force of 266 pounds. this would mean that we are at equilibrium.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

trampoline!!!




so.. over the summer, i did a lot of crazy stuff. one of them was buy a huge trampoline! me and my friend landon just decided one day that we should be a trampoline, so we called up sports authority and got one. it was 12 feet by 12 feet!! we set it up in my neighbor's yard(landon's aunty's house) and began to jump. it was a lot of fun. well just thinking back to that, i realized there was some physics involved when i jumped on the trampoline. as my feet lifted off from the trampoline, my body accelerated in the air...but immediately started to slow down. my body was being affected by the earth's gravity. i still began to rise but slowly came to a stop, when i reached the peak of my jump. then like all things, my body came back down. i began to accelerate again, this time toward the ground in free fall at a rate of -9.8 m/s squared. this would continue until my legs reached the trampoline again. i realized that my body was doing exactly what we were doing in class, only thing in class we were throwing balls up toward the roof and we had a sensor underneath. or when we measured our hang time and actually jumped to stick tape on the wall. i wish i could calculate the hang time i had with the trampoline. that would be awesome.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Physics of Pool


This weekend i had some friends over to play pool at my house. This is a picture of me shooting the ball in one of the games. At that very moment i realized that this was physics. So i got my camera and took a picture. When the stick hits the ball, depending on how hard, the force will be transferred from the stick to the ball causing the ball to accelerate forward. The ball will accelerate for a little while until it reaches a constant speed. The friction of the ball and the fabric then plays a big factor because this causes the ball to decrease in velocity going in a forward motion. Velocity is the speed and direction an object is moving and acceleration is the change in velocity over a certain amount of time. The cue ball sitting on the table has an initial velocity of zero until i hit it with the stick. Then the cue ball accelerates, holds a constant velocity, then decreases in velocity. When the cue ball comes in contact with the ball you were aiming at, it stops instantly and the force is transferred to the ball it hit. This causes the ball to accelerate into a pocket.