4/14 Electric Potential Energy and Work

We designed a closed circuit that resulted in the two light bulbs to be the brightest. We found that putting the batteries next to each other and then connecting one light bulb to the other via direct contact was the best way to achieve this.

This is how we designed a closed circuit to yield extremely dim light bulbs. To do this, we put the batteries parallel to each other so that there wouldn't be as strong of an attraction in the wire and we made use of the lengths of the wires so that it would give us a dimmer light.

We drew the pictures of the ways you can design the closed circuit to have the dimmest light bulbs and the brightest light bulbs. We also learned how to properly draw the loop below the sketch with the proper notations. The different notations are on the top right showing the correct way to draw a battery, light bulb, and resistor.

We did an experiment where we heated a cup of water with a water heater that was connected to a voltage meter. This way we could see how much voltage the heater was using to get the water to a certain temperature.

This shows the temperature vs time graph of the experiment. 

We repeated the experiment except this time we doubled the voltage of the heater. The blue line is the new graph and the black line is from the previous run. We see that the increase in voltage lead to an increase in the rate at which temperature increased.

We were asked to determine the relationship of voltage and temperature given that the experiment showed that more voltage results in increased rate of temperature increase. We also said that we needed 3 things to calculate this relationship: mass of the water, power, and time.

We calculated the amount of work done on the scenario depicted on the top left. The scenario was how much work is needed to move the car from a -> d -> c, a -> b -> c, and a -> b on a 30 degree incline. We calculated that the work done for all 3 scenarios is the same.

We derived a formula to calculate the work needed to move between any two points on an electric field. We symbolically represented this as D. Since point A is parallel to the electric field, it did the least amount of work to move across the electric field. Point B is perpendicular to the electric field so it did the most work to move along its dotted line. Point C goes diagonally through the electric field so it does the 2nd most work out of all the points.

We drew what equal potential lines would look like on a positive point charge. At every intersection, the two lines make a perpendicular angle. We calculate on the left what the change in voltage would be from an infinitely large distance to r. The integral works out so that infinity ends up below a fraction which makes our answer kq/r. 

We drew how we thought the provided python code would look like when we ran it. Our predictions were correct.

We were asked to add another charge and electric potential of the charge to the provided code. The new charge is the one in yellow and the green dot closest to the yellow circle is the electric potential.

We calculated the net electric potential and resulted in zero because the charges are opposite.

We were asked to explain the difference between plagiarism and collaboration. Since the school did not have a moral code, Mason took it upon himself to teach us the difference between plagiarism and collaboration.