Dance Showcase (Last Blog!)

Wow, I can't believe that this is the last physics blog for the year! Well, on Friday, we had our spring dance showcase and I realized that a lot of physics concepts were involved. The dancers that did jumps and flips in the air all followed projectile motion and conserved energy as they gained and lost potential and kinetic energy. Our class had to chant and hit our ipus to produce sound waves. We hit our ipus on cushions in order to reduce the impulse of the ipus by increasing the time of contact with the ground so that our ipus wouldn't break. When we spun around in circular motion (with our extremely heavy skirts exerting a force of mg that is always always always downward), our skirts opened outwards because of the fictitious force. There were lots of stage lights that were different colors because they had different wavelengths and frequencies of electromagnetic spectrum. At the end of senior tribute, some seniors were blowing bubbles on stage and I started thinking about how refraction and thin film interference were creating those changing colors. So, there's no more dance for the rest of the year, and physics is going to be over after the ap exam tomorrow...how time flies!