Blog 11 "Out of Power"

I was sleeping and I awoke to the sound of rain falling hard and no fan.  A few days ago, it rained super hard and the power went out across the island, but the rain and power outage hit Ewa especially hard.  The power lines literally went down…I mean they came crashing down.  So, basically, no current traveled to the homes and businesses in Ewa because there was no closed circuit as a result of the fallen power lines.  Because there was no flow of electrons, there was no voltage and no voltage difference across the wall outlets in my house.  Nothing worked.  Later though, power was restored to the homes in Ewa (no thanks to the HECO workers that went on strike), save for a few close to the fallen power lines.  This got me thinking about parallel circuits.  In Ewa there must exist a parallel circuit because some homes didn’t have electricity while the rest of the island did. 

Physics Blog 10 "Doppler Effect"

Every time I pass an ambulance with blaring sirens, I think of the Doppler Effect.  I learned about the Doppler Effect during my freshman year of high school, and it has stuck with me ever since.  Basicaly, the Doppler Effect is the change in sound wave frequency of a moving object.  When the moving object is coming closer, the sound waves are getting shorter which causes the frequency to increase and the sound to be more shrill (higher), but when the object passes, the sound waves become elongated again because there is nothing in the way of the sound waves.  The result of the elongated waves is a deeper (lower) sound.