Quarter 3, Blogpost #7

Throughout this week, our main focus has been on electrical circuits. There are two different types of circuits; series and parallel. A series circuit transports current through one path while a parallel circuit transports current through more than one path. In most newer homes, a parallel circuit set up is used in order to allow multiple appliances to be operating at the same time while using the full amount of energy each appliance needs to operate. In honor of our electricity challenge, I took a picture of one of the more costly operating appliances within our household that I have made sure is not frequently used. Our family actually doesnʻt use our air conditioning often which is good considering how much energy it eats. My mom has also made sure to unplug anything that is not being used in order to save even more energy as well as money. I feel that my family is doing pretty well with conserving energy (:

Quarter 3, Blogpost #6

So this week, Mr. Blake gave our class an electricity challenge. He challenged each of us to go home and ask our parents if we could do things around the house that would save electricity, and any money that we saved them for that month, we would get to pocket. This seemed like a pretty good idea to me since Iʻm usually the only one in the house thats concerned with turning off unused appliances haha. But I honestly didnʻt make this proposal to my parents because I highly doubt they would let me pocket the money. Above is a picture of what our hallway looks like when only my sister is upstairs -_- She leaves ALL the lights on like electricity is free. I yell at her all the time about turning the lights off when sheʻs not using them and occasionally sheʻll listen. So when she does forget to turn of the lights (which is a majority of the time), I make sure to turn off the lights for her. This is one way I know how to save electricity. Even though I didnʻt tell her about the challenge, I talked to my mom the other day about how else we could save electricity. My mom says that she tries to save electricity by unplugging appliances throughout the house that are not being used. She said she also doesnʻt run the air conditioning in order to save money. Our bill for last month was about $187 which to me doesnʻt seem to bad. Our family doesnʻt really have trouble saving electricity, but I think their are multiple ways we could save even more.

Quarter 3, Blogpost #5

Last week we learned about current, voltage, and resistance. Current is the number of charges passing a point per second or the rate of flow of charges. The variable which represents current is "I". The units in which current is measured is Amps. Voltage is the amount of work that each charge will do as it goes through the circuit, which can also be thought of as the amount of push on the charges. The variable that represents voltage is "V". Voltage is measured coulombs per joules or simply Volts. Lastly, resistance is the opposition to the flow of charge. Any appliance that asks the charge to do work will be slowed down by a resistor. The variable for resistance is "R". The units of resistance is Ohms. All three of these concepts were introduced to us this week and practiced while doing a Home Power Activity Lab. This lab required us to look around our homes and write down the current, voltage, and resistance of each appliance. Because most appliances only listed the current or voltage of each appliance, the equation R= V/I was used to find the missing variable. Above is a photo of my water heater. This appliance possessed the largest amount of current, voltage, and resistance. If used all the time, our electric bill would definitely be sky rocketing through the roof. But luckily, we have solar panels used to heat our water.

Quarter 3, Blogpost #4

Once again, this is a blog post that was supposed to be due last week. I really need to keep up with my blog posts for each week -__- But anyway, this week we learned about Capacitance. Capacitance is known as short term energy storage. Capacitors store lots of voltage but not a great deal of charge. The equation to determine capacitance is C = Eo x A / d. "C" is capacitance while "Eo" is epsilon or permitivity o free space and is measured using the constant 8.85 x 10ˆ-12 Cˆ2/Nmˆ2. "A" is the area of plates measured in mˆ2 and "d" is distance between plates measured in meters. The units of capacitance is coulombs per volts or a Farad. To better explain capacitance to us, Mr. Blake used our laptop keyboards as examples. He explained that the capacitors of the keyboard are located underneath each key. It is made of two plates that when pressed are pushed together and tell the computer to create the specified symbol. The two plates are originally separated by a dielectric. I am using the capacitors of the keyboard right now in order to create this blogpost lol. Well I hope I explained this well enough for you all to understand. Promise my next blogpost will be on time (: haha.

Quarter 3, Blogpost #3

I'm sure this same picture is going to be used a lot, but i really liked how Mr. Blake used a battery demo to teach us the difference between electric potential and electric potential energy. At first, this concept was a little confusing because both contain the same name, but are not actually the same at all. Electric potential energy is measured in joules just like any other form of energy. To calculate electric potential energy, the same equation for finding potential energy is used: work = average force x distance. This is electric potential energy. Electric potential is something entirely different. Electric potential is measured in volts or joules per quantity of charge. In order to find electric potential, the following equation is used:

electric potential = work in joules/unit of charge moved in coulombs

Electric potential is also known as "voltage". So by the looks of the two definitions, electric potential energy is used to find electric potential. In class, Mr. Blake used a battery demo to explain voltage to the class. He said that although the voltage of an object is high, the shock we feel is dependent on how charged the object is. For example, if an object has a voltage of 100,000 volts, the shock is dependent on whether or not the object has a high or low charge.

Quarter 3, Blogpost #2

Sooooo this blogpost was supposed to have been done last weekend, but once again, I forgot to do it. Not a very good way to start off the second semester, already forgetting to do my blogposts haha. But anyway, here it is. Last friday I slept over my friend Brandiʻs house in Kaneohe. I live in Kapolei where itʻs never cold, so experiencing Kaneohe weather was a lot different. For dinner we picked up food from Jack-in-a-box and took it to the pier that Brandi always goes to. It was really nice to sit and eat near the water, but it was freezing ! Right when we got back to her house I ran to grab my fuzzy socks. Arenʻt they pretty ?(: While I had them on, for some odd reason I wanted to see if I could shock Brandi while she was laying down. But it didnʻt work. So in disappointment, I dragged by feet across the rug to her room and touched the door knob. Thatʻs when I got shocked. What happened was both me and the door knob contained a neutral charge. But, when I rubbed by feet across the rug, they became either positively or negatively charged. So when I touched the door knob, our different charges wanted to even out, creating an electric shock. I really hope I explained this right. I better have being that Mr. Blake used this example a million times lol.

Quarter 3, Blogpost #1

1st blog post of 3rd quarter..........yaaay (: haha. So as our first blog post, we will be discussing Electric Charges, Forces, and Fields. There are three different types of atoms that posses three different charges: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons are positively charged atoms. Neutrons are atoms that posses no charge or are neutral. Lastly, electrons are negatively charged atoms. Objects that contain these atoms often experience attraction or repulsion toward other objects that are not caused by gravity, springs, or other contact forces. This week, we've learned about which charges attract each other and which charges repel. Like or similar charges repel each other such as two positive charges, two negative charges, or two neutral charges. Different or unlike charges attract. Such as a negative charge and a positive charge or a negative charge and a neutral charge. The picture above shows some of the magnets we have outside on our washing machine (&yes, I do mean washing machine, but thats only because we have stainless steal refrigerator and the magnets won't stick to it lol). But anyway, I think its safe to say that the magnets and the washing machine both hold a different charge, displayed by their attraction to each other. If the magnets and the washing machine had similar charges, the magnets would not stick.