Lenses

Last week I had to restock on my contact lenses for this coming year. To tell you the truth, I really like wearing my contacts more than my glasses. ( I really look funny with glasses on :)) But, I realized that these spectacles that we use have a lot to do with Physics. Basically, lenses use refraction to focus light. So glasses help focus images using refraction of light through the lenses. These lenses can be found in eye glasses and contact lenses, but also people without glasses or contacts have natural lenses found in our eyes. In our eyes, when light passes through it, the eye refracts it and focuses it on the retina, which is found in the back of our eyes and so we can process the image.

But for lenses in general, there are two types: converging lenses and diverging lenses.

Converging lenses are thinker in the center and refract light, while diverging lenses are thinner in the center and makes the light spread out.

basketball acceleration

Here is me playing some basketball against Punahou. When playing one-on-one, or even in a game, the use of acceleration is key to beating your defender. Acceleration is change in velocity, meaning change in speed of direction. To beat your defender, going from a steady pace and changing your speed to a sprint will catch your defender off guard. A velocity graph would show a short steady line and then have a constant upward slope as my speed increases, also it will have a positive slope because I am moving foward while speeding up. My position graph would have a curved line getting a steeper slope and my accleration graph would have a straight line above the x-axis because I would have positive acceleration. Also, staying lower than your defender is another key because you will have a lower center of gravity, resulting in quickness.