Newton’s 3rd Law vs. Algodoo

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his video shows two boulders of equal size, but different mass. When they collide, they each exert a force that is equal in magnitude to what the other exerts, but the reason that the lighter boulder gets pushed back farther is because it has less mass, so it has less inertia than the heavier one, which means that it will be pushed farther and faster than the heavier one.  

Transfer of Momentum vs. Algodoo

In this video we can see that there are two boulders of equal size, but different masses. The dark brown is wood, while the grey is stone. The lighter, wood one starts moving toward the heavier stone boulder, and when they collide the lighter boulder is forced backwards, while the the stone boulder starts moving in the other direction. We call this collision a transfer of momentum, which means that the momentum of the wood boulder is transferred to the stone boulder. Momentum can be transferred through many objects as well, like Newton’s cradle. It has many marbles in the middle and when one marble strikes against the side, the marble on the opposite side pops straight out because the momentum of the first marble is transferred through all the other marbles, but when it reaches the end marble, there is no other marble behind it to steal the energy that it just gained, so it pops straight out.

Momentum (Algodoo)

In this video, we can see that we have a boulder that is moving at a constant speed. This object has a value called momentum, and this object can only have this value when it is moving because of its equation. It equation is p=mv which means that momentum is equal to mass times its velocity, so when an object has 0 velocity, it has no momentum, but when this mass of 100 kilograms starts going about 18 meters per second, it suddenly has a momentum of 1800 kg*m/s. So we see that both the amount of mass and the velocity of an object affect its momentum.

A Favored Retreat

Lake Tahoe in the Summer.

In the summer we go up to the mountains to seek a respite from the heat that drives everyone indoors. My favorite place to go is Lake Tahoe. Every time we go there my mom says, “Look at how blue the water is!” Looking out over the surface of the water, I see a shiny, cobalt surface. Later, paddling out a little ways from the beach, I see the floor of the lake right under me, though it must be at least fifty feet deep. The water is cool, and has a gentle wake. White, soft and wet the sand is almost like dough. If we get to the lake early enough, morning fog is still hanging over the lake. It’s almost as though it clears the waters before humans arrive so that the water is always cold, clean, and blue, ready for us to cool off in it, and to admire God’s creation.

--Jonathan Todd

Goodbye and Hello

“Bye Dad.” I said. “I’ll miss you.”   “I will miss you too, son.” He said. In all the time I had known him, I had never seen tears in his eyes until that night. He was flying out very early the next morning to start his new job in California. The evening’s preparations for his flight and our indefinite separation kept us busy and the sadness at bay.

Me and my dad.

            The days following my dad’s departure to California weren’t too bad, although I never got used to him not walking through the door around 5 o’clock for supper.  I missed my dad. He was my best friend and playmate, he was my teacher and he was fun to be around. Friends from church invited us over and some of the neighborhood kids came almost daily to play with us, not knowing when our last Lego battle or Nerf war would be. I did not want to believe that leaving was real.  I didn’t want to go to a strange, new place and then be expected to live there and enjoy it. If I thought ahead to the day when I had to say good-bye to my companions, I would get very sad.  I played ultimate Frisbee and attended Wednesday night youth group and hung out with my neighborhood buddies as usual to keep things feeling the same. Surrounding myself with my friends and my family made me feel happy, but when I was alone, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What will that day be like when we have to leave?” Keeping busy kept the feelings of denial and sadness from creeping in.

We were also busy repairing the house to make it look nice so we could sell it and move out to be with my dad.  The house was about as clean and neat as it could be considering that the floor of the entry way and most of the hallway had been ripped up, and the whole house smelled of plaster and paint with buckets stacked up and put out of the way. Bare cement sat there, cold and hard and uneven, with no carpet over it, but it was always swept and tidy. That was a skill my mom had. Even when we made a huge mess with putty on the floor, or dust from taking apart the frames of the doors, she always managed to clean it up so things wouldn’t look as cluttered. There was so much to do, too much for my Mom to do alone. Some men at our church, called the Barnabas Builders, found out that my family would be moving to California soon and that our house needed to get finished before we could move. For the next 6 weeks they came over on the weekends and replaced doors, painted cabinets, put in a new bathtub, sink and toilet in one bathroom, laid new tile in the shower and on the floor and fixed all of the kitchen drawers. The work crew also removed the ugliest cooking stove hood in the world! A man from the crew took it and said “This is exactly what I need! This would make the best solar oven!” So he took it home, and I never saw it again and my mom was very relieved that it was gone for good. My dad came and visited a couple of times and he would paint day and night to help get the house ready to sell and to hasten his family’s relocation to California.

            After six weeks of work, the house that I had been in since I was 3 looked brand new. It had new carpet, new texture on all of the walls and ceiling and new paint. A wood floor covered the cement slab from the front door, through the kitchen and all the way to back door.  The room that I shared with my two younger brothers finally had a door on it. I could not believe how much the house changed in 6 weeks.

Soon after we had gotten our carpet put in, our 16 year old cat had to be put down. He had failing kidneys and would not have made the trip. I was sad because I was beginning to say goodbye to my friends. I still wanted him to stick around since he could still jump and play and run pretty well for a three legged cat. He was such a sweet cat and a regular part of my life. Our two other younger cats would make the trip just fine and provide comic relief in the days to come.

By mid-September, our house was on the market.  We would get calls right in the middle of meals sometimes about someone wanting to take a look at the house. One day the call came that started the dominoes falling towards our moving out of the house and leaving the great state of Texas and all that I had ever known.

My dad came and helped take things apart in preparation for the move. When the movers came, they took all of our belongings, including our 65 VW beetle. The house I had known for most of my life was empty. I got a strange feeling every time I went into the house after that. I felt like it should still be ours, and yet it felt as though I was intruding or it wasn’t part of my life any more. It was like saying goodbye to another one of my familiar friends.

Many of our friends in Texas helped us pass the time.

In the nine days that followed, we lived in a hotel room and it was very boring.   I got a cold and felt terrible.  Friends invited us over one last time to say goodbye, but I couldn’t go. I didn’t want to miss my last night of AWANA or my last time at Wednesday night youth group. I recovered just in time for our flight on November 16.  Along with my mom, my brothers and my 2 cats, I boarded an MD-80 bound for Sacramento and I said goodbye to a city that I called home my whole life.  I was sad, but I couldn’t help but laugh when my cat started yowling loud enough to be heard over the jet’s engines. I saw Lake Tahoe for the first time and my mom said that we wouldn’t be living that far from it. I started to hope that I would like California after all. When we landed, I felt like everything was too bright for one o’clock in the afternoon, but then I remembered that we were on Pacific Standard Time now, so I was so tired the first day.

We stayed in another hotel room for two days while we waited for our stuff to arrive. The house we were going to stay in was a two story house, so I was pretty excited since I had never lived in a house with stairs. Our cats enjoyed

Hot cocoa after snow tubing

chasing each other through the house, upstairs and down, and we called the racket they made, “Cat Thunder.” When our belongings arrived, it took some time to unpack it all. We spent the whole next day cutting open boxes and putting their contents away. When we were done, there was the biggest pile of paper I had ever seen in our living room. A pile so big, it was taller than Joshua!  We didn’t know how to get rid of it all, but some friends from our new church came and helped us fold all of those sheets of paper so we could take it to a recycling center.

We finally started to settle in, but I couldn’t help but feel like it wouldn’t be the same. I enjoyed the nicer weather in California more than the unstable climate in Texas, but I missed my friends and my favorite activities and places to be. Then we started to explore places that we had only read about. We went up into the Sierra’s the first weekend we were in California, and we enjoyed being in the fresh, cold mountain air. My hopes increased that I might really like living in a new place.

I quickly started doing activities that I enjoyed in Texas, such as biking and

Belt promotion in Karate

playing sports at the park. I have some new favorite past-times too such as karate and yo-yo club. I miss my friends very much, but I also enjoy being with my new friends here in California. I have learned how to make friends with new people and to cope with different situations.  Adjustments have become easier than when I first moved to California. Hope has ignited where doubt once ruled. Now my home is here in California. We enjoy being so close to the mountains and the endless recreation they offer during every season.  This move has changed me for the good. It will never be exactly the same when I visit Texas and I still feel a tug to go back and visit my friends, but California is my home and I look forward to growing up here.

--Jonathan Todd

To Bee or Not to Bee

It was a bright and clear day, just right for swimming. I was in my grandma’s backyard swimming in a kiddie pool with my cousins Myca and Huckleberry. Myca got out of the pool to get an ice cream sandwich and Huckleberry and I realized that there was a dead bee floating where Myca had been sitting.

            “I wonder if that is a bee or a hornet,” Huckleberry said to me. I said, “It looks like a bee because it has yellow and black stripes.” She said, “I wonder if the bee is dead or not? Why don’t you touch it to see if it is dead or alive.”

            “Y-OUCH!” is what I said when I touched the bee. It felt like an iron, white-hot needle that pierced my skin. The bee had stung me between my index finger and my thumb. My hand began to feel numb with the pain.

            I got out of the pool and went to show my hand to my dad. The stinger was still in my hand. My dad said, ”It looks like you have a bee sting.” My dad told my uncle about the sting and my Uncle Mike went inside got a hole punch and scraped out the stinger from the side.

            I learned that day never to take a dare from my cousin Huckleberry. I also learned not to touch a dead bee because they can still sting. I learned from my uncle that it is best to scrape the stinger out rather than squish all of the venom into the puncture using tweezers.

--Jacob Todd

Wonderful Water!

Water has fascinating properties, which is one of the reasons water is so mysterious. Here are a few properties of water.

adheisve and cohesive nature of water

Water is cohesive and adhesive. Which means water sticks to itself, cohesion, and to other things, adhesion. For example when there is a drop of water that is at the end of a faucet it will stick to the faucet until it eventually falls. The water sticks to the faucet because it is adhesive. Adhesion affects you when you sweat. If the sweat did not stick to you, it would fall to the ground and you would not be cooled off as the sweat evaporates. Water's cohesive property explains why water balls up. The reason water balls up is that the molecules stick to other water molecules. If water was not cohesive the drops of water would collapse!

water strider

Surface tension is the reason water has adhesive and cohesive properties. Surface tension is why  water striders scuttle across ponds and do not sink. Water molecules are made of three atoms: one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. The oxygen atom is negatively charged and the hydrogen atoms are positively charged. This difference in the charge of the water molecules means that water molecules are attracted to each other so they stick together. Negative charges are attracted to positive charges and they fit together like a puzzle. The surface tension of water is broken when you take a bath. The weight of your body in the water causes it to break apart. If it didn't, you would be on top of the water!

water dissolving substances

Water has another property. It can dissolve substances. When water dissolves substances it breaks them down into little pieces that spread throughout the water. When water dissolves a solid, the dissolved particles do not turn into a liquid. They just get broken down into tiny pieces. Water's ability to dissolve affects you right now because the water in your blood dissolves nutrients your body needs and they get transported to wherever the sugars, proteins, vitamins and minerals need to go to make your body healthy.

Those are only a few facts about the amazing substance, water.

--Jacob Todd