sirens.

This is a video I stole from youtube of the tsunami warning sirens that went off yesterday. I wouldn't recommend listening to it, however, because it gets REALLY irritating. The view is quite nice though. I went to the play on Friday night, so I got home very late and therefore went to sleep late. As I was enjoying my nice dreams, the sound of a siren woke me up at 6am, much to my irritation. I then found out that our Punahou tennis match was postponed because of the tsunami. My house is like 5 minutes away from the ocean, but my parents did not seemed worried, so I went back to sleep. Then at 9am, sirens woke me up again. ugh. I just stayed up after that and watched the news.

So physics. The sirens produced sound waves that travelled through the air and reached everyone's ears to alert us that there was a potential disaster coming. The frequency of the sound waves was fairly low because the pitch of the sirens was fairly low. The amplitude of the sound waves had to be fairly big for everyone to hear it.

2-27-10 Hawaii Tsunami Warning

Pillboxes

Last weekend, I hiked Pillboxes in Lanikai to celebrate my friend Daiva's 17th birthday. This is a picture of us defying gravity. It took several tries to finally get a picture with all of us in the air because gravity very quickly draws everything towards the center of the earth at an acceleration of 9.8m/s^2. Our incredibly skilled photographer had to snap the photo at exactly the right time.

As we were sitting on the top of one of the pillboxes, the conversation took a morbid turn when my friend Sara said that if she had to commit suicide for some horrible reason, she would want to do it there, at Pillboxes because its so beautiful and free. This other guy then said that he would jump off a skyscraper instead because as he put it, "What if you jump off a cliff here and don't die? Then your life would just suck." A skyscraper, he said, would ensure immediate death upon impact with the ground. The reason jumping off a tall skyscraper is more deadly is because since it is higher, you will accelerate even more than if you jumped off a shorter cliff. Okay I'm done with the morbidness. Just thinking about that conversation gives me chills because I'm scared of heights. Don't worry, Doc, none of us are anywhere near suicidal.

The beginning of this hike is very tiring because it is fairly steep. Coming back down is the worst though. I nearly ate it at least ten times because my shoes kept slipping on the loose dirt and rocks. When you go hiking, its a good idea to wear shoes that have a good grip on the bottom to prevent such slipping and sliding. Shoes with ridges on the bottom keep you from falling because they dig into the dirt which creates friction. Shoes where the ridges on the bottom have been worn down, (like mine, apparently) have no ridges to dig into the dirt and therefore slide around on the rocks.

Friday Adventure

On Friday, after I had tennis practice and some of my friends had spring musical rehearsal, we went to the Punahou Carnival. None of us can drive (unfortunately) so we decided to take the bus. It's not like there's a lot of parking at the carnival anyway. We waited for about an hour for the number four bus to come and when we finally got on, it was packed. After nearly losing my balance several times, I turned to Mark and said, "Hey! Doc should take us to ride the bus as a field trip!" If you aren't sitting or holding on to something when the bus accelerates from a stop, you will probably lose your balance and fall backward. The same occurs when the bus stops, except you would fall forward. NEWTON'S FIRST LAW.

When we finally arrived at the carnival, we ate and then decided to go on the zipper. The line was SUPER long, so we cut behind some fellow Iolani-ers. Then it was finally our turn. We actually did not flip that much because one of my friends was freaking out and would not let us rock the cage (sadly) but it was still really fun :) I think the most we flipped in a row was three or four times. Flipping forward was the worst because the forces acting on your body made you lunge forward, and your head hit the top of the cage. (which is padded)

I remember in 8th grade, we learned a bit about roller coasters, and in a video, the engineers of a certain coaster were describing how they had to calculate what angle the seats were so that the passengers would not pass out. Remembering this made me wonder if the shape of the zipper cages was calculated so that the riders legs are at a particular angle. I guess if the knees are too bent, a person could pass out? I wonder.