General Relativity

Daniel Miranian
Period-7
Journal 4-8

I. I found out from wikipedia that the first recorded capacitor was invented in October of 1745 by Ewald Georg von Kleist of Germany. It was made using a glass jar with water in it. Somehow electricity was built up inside the jar then when it was ready to be discharged it was released through the mouth of the jar. Benjamin Franklin proved that the charge was stored in the glass, not the water as previously believed.

II. This week was my first time back in physics class in more than two weeks. On Monday we finished up our electricity and wave lab packets. Then on Wednesday we learned more about sound and resonance. We watched really cool video about a bridge that collapsed because the wind caused it to oscillate at its natural frequency. We also looked out how different waves have different frequencies. The visible light spectrum that we can see is near the middle of the electromagnetic spectrum. As the frequency increases the wavelength decreases and visa-versa. Gamma rays are to one extreme for having the smallest wavelength while radio waves are on the other with having the longest wavelength. On Friday we started to watch a video on general relativity and string theory. We had already watched a lot of this video earlier in the year. However, the new things on the video were very interesting. The video talked about how Einstein was looking for an equation to relate everything in the universe together but looking at things on a large scale. On the other hand, other scientists at the time were looking inward to discover the mysteries of the universe. What they came up with is known as quantum mechanics. Surprisingly, the way that they explained it in the video made a lot of sense. It seems like a lot of it relates heavily to some of the things I learned about in AP chemistry this year such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

III. For next week I would like to find out more about the life of Erwin Schrodinger.