Weʻre gonna rock down to ELECTRIC AVENUE!

This week we decided to further our knowledge in energy. We already knew some types of energy such as potential gravity, potential spring, kinetic, heat, and work. This week we learned a new type of energy that links what we learned about charges with what we already learned about energy. The new type of energy we learned is called electric potential energy. Electric potential energy or PEq is stored energy of a charged object in an electric potential field. PEq is measured in joules just like any other type of energy. In this picture I am holding a pack of AA batteries. We learned how to calculate voltage by dividing PEq by its charge. So AA batteries have a voltage of 1.5 volts. If a battery has a greater amount of voltage than it has a greater amount of electric potential energy.

Charges #2

This week in physics we didn't really learn anything new involving charges but we did learn more about how charges interact with each other. We know that unlike charges attract, like charges repel, and neutral charges do nothing. But this week we got more in depth in how they actually attract or repel. Objects or more specifically their charges are like focus points that either suck in energy or project energy. Positive charges project energy, while negative charges suck in energy. Energy projected is in the form of rays that connect to unlike charges or run in hyperbolas to like charges. So if a negative charge was next to a positive charge, the positive charges energy will project energy and the negative charge will suck it all in. Like in the diagram above, if two positive energies are next to each other they project energy away from them, and since they don't suck in any then they end up repelling each other. Interesting...

After a long and a very much needed winter break, we began learning a new unit, energy. The first thing we learned in this unit was a new law, the law of conservation of charges. This law states that in an isolated system, the net charge will remain the same. This week along with a new law we also learned about the reactions of charges with each other. Everything has a charge it just depends if an object has a positive, negative, or neutral charge. Like in the picture above if charges have like charges then they repel from each other, but if they have unlike charges then they attract. Also if to objects have neutral charges then no reaction occurs.