Understanding Energy: Kinetic, Potential, and Transformations
Understanding Energy
1. How do you define energy? It is the ability to produce work.
Main Forms of Energy
2. Main forms of energy: heat, light, electrical, chemical, atomic, mechanics.
Mechanical Energy
3. What is mechanical energy? It is a form of energy that corresponds to work produced by a force of mechanical origin.
4. There are two kinds of mechanical energy: kinetic and potential.
Kinetic Energy
5. A body in motion has kinetic energy.
6. The value of the kinetic energy of a body is equal to half the
Read MoreUnderstanding Light: Theories, Speed, and Geometric Optics
Nature of Light:
1) Corpuscular Theory: Proposed by Pythagoras, this theory suggests that light consists of tiny particles emitted from luminous bodies. Newton further developed this idea, stating that light is formed of small particles. When these particles encounter a surface separating two optically distinct media, they are either repelled (reflected) or attracted (refracted), following the laws of elastic collisions.
Elastic Collision Laws: The incident ray, the reflected ray, and the normal line
Read MoreUnderstanding Inertia, Moment of Inertia, and Flywheels
Inertia
Inertia is the resistance that opposes difficulty or a physical system or a social system to change.
In physics, we say that a system has more inertia when it is more difficult to change its physical state. The two most common uses in physics are mechanical inertia and thermal inertia. The first one appears in mechanics and is a measure of the difficulty to change the state of motion or repose of a body. The mechanical inertia depends on the amount of mass and the inertia tensor. The thermal
Read MoreWave Types, Properties, and Electromagnetic Spectrum
Types of Waves
Waves can be classified based on several criteria:
A) Type of Energy Propagated
- Mechanical Waves: These waves propagate mechanical energy caused by a harmonic oscillator. If the wave is harmonic, it’s called a harmonic wave.
- To produce mechanical waves, you need:
- A source of mechanical energy.
- A material medium that can be disturbed.
- Electromagnetic Waves: These waves propagate electromagnetic energy due to oscillations caused by accelerated electric charges.
B) Direction of Propagation and
Read MoreUnderstanding the Universe: Structure, Stars, and Big Bang
Structure of the Universe
The universe is composed of an enormous vacuum in which billions of galaxies float. In each galaxy, there are billions of stars, planets, and nebulae. Chemically, the universe is composed of approximately 75% hydrogen, 20% helium, and 5% other elements. In addition to the observable matter, there is non-observable matter (dark matter), which constitutes 90% of the universe’s matter.
To measure distances in the Universe, the unit known as a light-year is used. A light-year
Read MoreSpectrometry: Analyzing Gas Spectra and Spectrometer Operation
Spectrometry
Objectives:
- To study the spectrum of gases and operation of the spectrometer.
- Use the rotary torque sensor to measure the displacement of the disc that circulates graduate degrees and the light sensor to determine position.
- Calculate the intensity of different spectral lines and the mercury lamp or gas used in the broadcast.
- Use the data to study, register, and display data in a graph.
- Determine a pair of him, the angular variation, and with these data to determine the wavelength for each