Sunday, October 28, 2012

Week 7 reflection

This week we learned all about how forces act on an object and spring strength.  I know that forces can include earths gravity, the upward push of a table, or even strings that are holding an object up.  I also learned that if something is holding an object up it has to be able hold the same amount or more newtons to hold that object up.  I learned that spring strength can be measured by the amount of force applied and how far it stretches.  This shows the spring strength or constancy. 

This week we did a lab that helped us learn how to measure spring strength.  This lab asked us to use special devices that measured how much force was being applied to it's hook that held the spring.  Each group got different springs and pulled on them to get a measurment of the force.  Then, with a meter stick, we measured how far it strectched from its starting point to its endpoint.  Our group put these measurments in the form of a graph and it showed how strong our spring was. 

To learn how forces acted upon objects, we drew force diagrams.  These diagrams would show an object, represented as a point, and have arrows pointing in whichever direction the force was coming from.  So if we want to show the upward force of a table on an object, we would make an arrow from the start pointing up.  When we want to show that two forces are equal we would put hashmarks on each of the arrows.

Personally, I think that I get these concepts pretty well.  I still think that I need to work on the force diagrams because when I was doing them I was getting the arrows wrong.  I think that my participation in class was pretty good.  I answered and participated in discussions and labs. 

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