幾天前俺坐在家裡呲牙咧嘴敲電腦寫博文，兒子在另一邊也眉飛色舞敲電腦打字。俺沒有去關注他，他也懶得搭理俺，各自為政。昨天接到他8年級科學基礎課老師的電話，問俺有沒有看到俺兒子前天寫的作業，關於科學基礎概念的報告。這位老師說看得他樂壞了。俺向兒子要了過來，看着也真的樂了。俺知道有俺這樣正兒八經不正經鼓搗政治話題的海一代，可是在俺眼皮底下如此鼓搗科學基礎概念的13歲海二代，還是讓俺開眼界。現在把他的“日常科學基礎概念之奧林匹克夢幻報告”原文剽竊過來，作一個海一代海二代的補充開心果。

Student Name: WBC, 8th Grade

12-20-12

Block A

Olympic Dreams of Pipe Cleaner Popsicle Boarders and Everyday Science

(A Study On What We Can Learn From The Miniaturized Meta-Olympics)

Or how I’m going to win the Nobel Prize in Physics with my eighth grade level English skills

Nominate this paper for a Nobel by giving it a 110% A++

Olympic Dreams…

      The purpose of this grand Physics Olympics Project is to teach us about the terminology of the everyday forces and properties of physics in action by gluing stick figures made out of pipe cleaners on simulated snowboards and skis (Popsicle sticks). To achieve this, two partners would first make the life-impacting decision of choosing whether to have snowboarders, skiers, or both. After the choice each partner either gets a large craft stick for a snowboard or two small Popsicle sticks for a skier. Both partners then make the stick figures out of the pipe cleaners, at least 5 centimeters tall and glue them on to their sticks. Then after intense testing everyone makes modifications to make them faster such as gluing on a maximum of five pennies or sanding down the boards, and attempts to record all the data. Finally we would feed our burning passion of winning a competition by racing them down a ramp, seeing who finishes first.

Everyday Terminology…

       Motion is defined as the state in which one object’s distance from another is constantly changing. Gravity is the force that pulls objects toward another, which is really only noticeable with extreme amounts of mass. Friction is the force that one surface extorts on another when the two rub against each other. Speed is defined as the distance an object travels in one unit of time. Velocity is speed in a given direction. Momentum is the product of an object’s mass (how much matter is in an object, for our purposes the same as weight) and velocity, which is basically how much force an object is packing when in motion.

Everyday Physics Olympics Learning…

       From the project we learned each of these above terms with hands-on training. Gravity is what keeps the figures on the ramp. Motion is what we try to achieve by moving down the ramp, and once we can do that we try to get the highest speed/velocity possible. To get a high speed we need momentum, and we get that by increasing the board’s mass by gluing on pennies. Friction is an enemy that slows or even stops our boards, so we combat this by sanding the board to make it smooth.

Everyday Real-Life Examples…

       I have plenty of day-to-day activities that beautifully illustrate these properties of physics. When I’m orbiting around the earth, it’s because of gravity that I experience weightlessness – not because I’m far away from Earth, but because orbiting is the same as free falling. Of course, without gravity the weightlessness part would be the same in both cases. To use a more down-to-earth example, gravity helps me juggle chainsaws because otherwise they wouldn’t come back down to my hands. Gravity isn’t the only thing keeping me alive, however. When I’m in the wilderness filming survival tactics for Discovery Channel, I use the heat from friction simply by rubbing two sticks together to make fire. Friction is so vital, without it I wouldn't even be able to hold the two sticks. Velocity is something I can easily produce in the wild. A common technique I use when a rabid cheetah is attacking me is to outrun it by going 80 miles per hour for a bit, then I turn around (still going around 75 MPH) and head-butt it, which is definitely a blow with a lot of momentum behind it. I survive due to another physical property called pure bravery.

Epiphanies…

       While it’s obvious I knew plenty about these physics concepts, it’s nice to have these idea confirmed with good old-fashioned hands-on learning – now I know, through hands-on learning, that gravity and motion truly do probably exist. What I really learned or at least understood better from doing it myself is how to achieve the fastest velocity by increasing momentum and combating friction. It was great how we all saw why momentum is the product of mass and velocity because we noticed adding pennies to increase the mass resulted in a better speed. We saw friction meant that sanding the boards to make then smoother would slow it less. And we calculated the velocity ourselves considering to measure a given speed is to find how far it traveled in one unit of time, or second.

A Dangerous Olympic Metagame Of Strategy…

       I have numerous awards and Nobel Prizes in Engineering. The only reason Nobels in Engineering exist is because Alfred Nobel himself decided I deserved one every year. All the strategies I used and generously gave to Brian were to use my expert knowledge of physics to our advantage. I’ve gone about the process in detail inside this thesis, and it is simply to increase the momentum by gluing on pennies for more mass, and to sand down the bottom of the board to decrease friction. I guess the third strategy was to honestly not know what we were doing during the recording stages.

Wishy-Washy Wishes…

       If I could actually try to win the next competition (I totally didn’t this time around) I would use the cheapest, most unfair modification ever that apparently we could have done because Riley did it. Do the same five pennies, but also cut the length of the board in half and put the extra half on top. This cuts down the surface area touching the ramp, greatly decreasing friction, and also keeps the same amount of mass, which might even make it better due to the weight being less spread out. Another thing I would do differently is to do it the same time that everyone else does it, so Brian and I could actually understand how to record our valuable data. Perhaps if something goes wrong and our boards snap in half, our last resort strategy would be to steal the penny jar and bribe Mr. Bolden with about three dollars in pennies.

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