Earlier today, while I was running one of the games at the Aiea Country Fair, I realized that all of the games applied physics concepts like displacement, velocity, and acceleration. The game that I was running was the "Spin the Wheel" game. As children stepped up to spin, I noticed how some would spin it clockwise and others, counterclockwise. Some spun it really fast and other put less force in their spins.
In one instance, a boy spun the wheel really fast. As I was watching to see what number it landed on, I noticed that, with each rotation, the displacement returned to zero before increasing until the rotation completed again. In addition, I also noticed how the slowing wheel was exhibiting negative acceleration until it finally came to a stop, or a velocity of 0 m/s.
It was also interesting to observe how occasionally the wind would spin the wheel in the opposite direction after it had stopped, often resulting in better numbers for the players. Overall, it was a fun day at the fair and I got to observe physics principles while there.
Today my whole family went down to my grandma's house for dinner. We had lots of delicious food like steak, noodles, and stew. While eating dinner, I had drank all my water and went to get a refill. While adding ice to my cup of water, I noticed that the water level was rising with each ice cube I added to my cup. Then I realized it was like the displacement we had learned about in Physics. The ice caused the water to change position positively. It was water displacement! Adding ice caused a positive displacement, while removing ice caused a negative displacement.
In addition, I noticed that by dropping the ice cubes into my cup, the cubes were falling from 0 m/s with a -9.8 m/s/s acceleration. However, because each added cube raised the water level, the distance each subsequent cube had to fall became shorter than the previous cube. As a result, the last cube I added fell a shorter distance in less time with a smaller final velocity than the first cube I added.
