Blog #6

Electricity Challenge.
      This week in physics Mr. Blake challenged us to lower our electricity bill. The reward would be being able to pocket the saved difference. It seemed like an easy challenge...charge my computer at school, charge my cell phone at school, shower at school, stay at a friends house...all these possibilities. BUT, I chose not to accept the challenge for a few of reasons.
     Reason #1: My first reason for not accepting the challenge was that my dad said I would need to pay the difference if the cost had increased from the previous bill. I did not want to lose money on this bet because the odds were against me. Also I personally would not be able to lower the bill by even 10 dollars because our bill on average is close to 200-250$. The chances of the next bill being higher was greater than my chances of lowering the bill.
    Reason #2: My younger brother. My brother is a scrawny sophomore who thinks he runs the world. He wastes electricity like crazy. First of all he is on his computer constantly and is always charging it. Plus he always has it plugged in even though it is not connected to his computer. Secondly, he almost always washes his clothes at night..."forgets to do it during the day cause he is on his computer"...then he throws them in the dryer before he goes to bed...then he runs the dryer in the morning again to warm up his clothes(warms up his clothes almost daily during these "freezing cold" months). Not only that but he also uses my mom's blow dryer to warm him up in the mornings. So the bill for February would be expensive because of him.
    Reason #3: I already do a lot of things that save money on electricity...wash clothes on cold, hang certain types of laundry, turn off lights before leaving rooms, charge things at school, and other things. We also aren't always home, we spend a lot of our time at our grandma's or cousins house on weekends and breaks.

Blog #5

Electricity, Current, Resistance. This blog is very late. Anyways...

This week in physics we continued to learn about electricity. More specifically we learned about current and resistance. Current is measured in Amperes (amps). It is the flow of electricity, just like the flow of water. Current can only flow if the circuit is complete. Resistors are part of electrical circuits that resist the electrical current so that it can be used...just like how dams resist the flow of water. An example of this in real life is quite easy to find because these two components are found in every electrical appliance.

     My picture is of a resistor. Funny looking? Well this resistor is used to control fan speed in air-conditioning systems in cars. The wires in the top of the picture are the paths that the current flows. In this particular circuit the resistance is constant. (the resistor is the big metal square). The way this system works is that as you turn the dial it allows current to flow from each of the wires above. If the dial is on 1 then only 1 path is allowed to flow through. If the dial is on 2 then only 2 paths are allowed to flow through, and so on. We had to replace this on our car because it was old and falling apart. So, as a fail safe, it only allowed the fan to run on one speed, max speed. Now that we replaced the resistor it works fine.