For the past couple weeks, the students in STEM have made videos based on various sports and then broken down the physics involved. The goal was to help athletes better understand and excel at their sport. My group made a video exploring the physics of an aerial, which is a skill used in gymnastics. The video covers the build up, the hurdle, the push off, the landing, the physics, and how to improve the action. We started out by making a storyboard and a script. Next, we started filming the actual action. Then we filmed the introduction and each group member talking about the different aspects of the aerial. After lots of challenging editing, the video shown above was the final product. This project was very fun and challenging and I learned a lot in the process.
Reflection
One of the things I enjoyed most about this project was all the hands-on work. We were able to go outside and film which gave us independence, as there is much when working in the real world. I also like how this project is very useful and helps other people learn. It was interesting going into detail about sports actions that we do every day without giving them a second thought. Peaks that my group experienced were planning out our and script and storyboard, which helped the video run smoothly, and it also helped us to manage our time more easily. Another peak that I learned about myself that I can get work done independently and without much teacher direction. My group really used the class time to our advantage, which definitely something I improved on since our last project. I also learned a lot about patience, like for example there were times when our computer died or our videos accidentally got deleted and we had to wait in order to continue working. A pit that was a large challenge was the video editing. It was hard to transfer the YouTube videos/clips to iMovie, add music, and edit the videos together so they flowed. Another pit is that I would get frustrated with technology, but I learned to just take a deep breath and calm down and that helped a lot. Skills I could work on are my familiarity with technology. I don't have much experience with technology, so that is an area I would like to improve in. For future projects, I would like to make sure that everyone's ideas are heard. Sometimes one person would have a bunch of ideas and another group member wouldn't share any of their thoughts. I want to make sure that everyone gets equal say in the project. I also want to, if possible, eliminate as many technical difficulties as we can, such as bringing chargers for the computers and constantly saving our progress to prevent it from getting deleted. Overall, this project went very well and I learned a lot!
Concepts
To find the velocity of the aerial, we measured to total distance traveled in meters and divided that by the time it took to complete the action(V=d/t): V=8.18m/2.56s=3.20m/s
We found the momentum by finding my mass in kilograms(kg) and multiplying that by the velocity(M=mv): M=54.3kg(3.20m/s)=173.76kgm/s
The force exerted on the ground was found by measuring the time my foot was on the ground when I landed and using the velocity, and dividing both sides by the time(Ft=mv): F(0.1s)=173.76/0.1s=1738 Newtons
To find the force that pulls me down at the top of the aerial, we multiplied the momentum by the acceleration due to gravity(F=ma): F=54.3kg(9.8m/s^2)=532.14 N
The potential energy at the top of the aerial was found by multiplying my mass by the acceleration due to gravity by the height I reached while in the air(PE=mgh): PE=54.3kg(9.8m/s^2)(0.45m)=260.75 Joules
To find the kinetic energy of the action, we multiplied my mass by the velocity sqaured, and then divided it all by two(KE=1/2mv^2): KE=1/2(54.3kg)(3.20)^2=278 J