Pressure and Buoyant Force lab conclusion

            This was a simple lab that helped me understand Archimedes’ principle when I had to calculate the buoyant force on a can of sand when we put it in a container of water. Using the formula P=F/A (or, in other terms, P=mg/A). We also used P=pwgh. We used the information that we put in our graph (Graph #1) to get the pressure. The main element we had to deal with in this lab was how much room there was for error. We could measure the depth incorrectly, whether it was just off, using the wrong units, or measuring the wrong part of the can (it happens). The dirt ratio was not perfect for the small can to the large can. It said to put dirt in it until the can was 3/4^th under water, but instead we had our small can around 7/8^th under water and our large can was about 3/4^th under water. This difference could be the reason for our 91% difference in the cans percentage difference (Graph #1, last column). One other mistake my group and I made was that we didn’t convert the weight down to grams from kilograms, which made everything messy. Nevertheless, this lab was very helpful in understanding buoyant force and the forces that push down the can.

Sound and the Musical Quality in "Anthem for Doomed Youth"

“Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen

            The poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth” was written by Wilfred Owen during the time of World War I. The poem illustrates the two extreme views and understandings of the war at that time. It shows the realistic side to war, with its terrors and deaths that the soldiers encounter, and the softer, more easygoing attitude of the people who are back safe at home. The sounds and the musical quality of the poem bring a mental image of war’s destruction along with a deeper understanding that the war is more severe than the citizens at home think it to be.

            Throughout the first stanza, anger and gunshots are heard in the words. The onomatopoeic repetition of the sound r, in the phrases “monstrous anger” (Owen Line 2) and “rifles’ rapid rattle” (3), makes the first stanza thick with the enraged feeling of the soldier narrating the poem. The r sound is similar to the growl of angry animals. Following the rs lead, the onomatopoeic repetition of the t sound creates the sound of gunshots within the poem. Words such as cattle (1), stuttering, rattle (3), and patter (4) fill the stanza with the earsplitting sound of gunshots. These onomatopoeic sounds convey the emotion of the men who are at war are livid about a situation in which they have to listen to constant gunshots and noise. The first stanza   is also loaded with cacophonous words. The ts and rs, as well as other harsh, sudden consonants like the ka sound, lend a highly unpleasant and shrill quality to the tone. This is creates a picture of the soldiers being surrounded in a hostile and tough environment.

            In the second stanza the mood changes dramatically, from a dominantly cacophonous air to a smooth and euphonious sound. The words contain more vowels and soft consonants to reflect that home is where security and refuge is found. The use of the letter l, in the words all (9), Shall (11), pallor, and pall (12),  is in similitude of children’s lullabies. The men at war want to regress into their childhood because that’s where they felt sheltered; there were no gunshots or mass deaths in their childhood. The men wish they could see war as calmly as those who have not experienced the chaos see it; they wish they could be ignorant children again. The lines “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle” (1) and “And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds” (14) explain the different viewpoints of death in the war. The first line states that the men are killed in the same way that cattle die in huge groups. In these huge groups there are hundreds of soldiers whose bodies aren’t taken and whose names are not written down and reported to families as “killed in action.” They are unrecorded, missing soldiers. Following line 1, the onomatopoeic sound of gunshots in the rest of the stanza creates a loud and brutal situation; their death is with no respect or moments of remembrance. However, in the last line, the death at home is slowly dealt with, grieved, and has closure. When the blinds are shut against the darkness of death, there is a conclusion.

            Along with the sounds, the pace affects the story. The way some of the lines are indented past the others indicate that it is supposed to be read in congruence and in sequence with the line above. This makes the lines speedy, and connected with the onomatopoeic rs, makes the first stanza an angry rant. The swiftness of the lines and the t words make the gunshots feel like machineguns. This is how fast moving their world is when they are in combat. Nothing will stop for these men, not even when it’s for their death. The second stanza slows everything down and then keeps it that way by using the indentations in a different way. Indentations are used to break up the single sentence in lines 10 and 11, making it read at a slower pace than the first stanza. The speed of the second stanza draws a parallel to how the citizens feel back home. They are under the freedoms and safety of a peaceful home, and there is no need to rush, fight, or run for their lives. They have time to find closure for the loss of their loved ones.

            Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” conveys the different views of war through the eyes of a soldier who’s in war through specific words and sounds. The two contrasting stanzas that show that this soldier knows how war is looked at back home, but hears a different story when he listens to the sounds of bugles and shells. The poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth” reveals how the war is more horrible and chaotic than what the citizens at home realize.

Works Cited

Owen, Wilfred. “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web.

            5 Feb. 2014

Torque Lab Conclusion

Torques and its Magical Properties

            This lab was a fairly simple lab with an awesome lesson. We were able to see and measure the forces that produce torque, calculate the torque on a rotating body, and with that we were able to see what relationship torque holds with the lever arm. We had to start off with the system in equilibrium which meant that the net forces had to add up to zero as well as the torque. These can be formalized by saying   and  . This was a simple lab with only a few easy formulas. To find the torque after the weight had been added onto the string, we multiplied the force we had found on the scale by how far away the weight was from the scale. We did this on both sides to calculate the clockwise and counterclockwise torques. Our official formula is T=Fxl . We knew that our meter stick had to stay horizontal because if it had tilted at an angle we would’ve had to use the sin or cos of the angle it tilted at to find the force and that would’ve been too much work for something as easily fixable as leveling out our stick. Our experiment showed all of the elements we were testing to be accurate because the numbers we were getting correlated with the theories that were discussed in the reading. So yay for us! The only thing we would have changed if we could was that we would have a more sensitive and precise scale because we might have some skewed data because of our equipment. But besides that, our experiment was helpful in learning hands-on about torque.

Pendulum Periods Lab Conclusion

            Luckily, thanks to this lab, my partners and I were able to see how the length and mass of the parts of a pendulum would make it swing differently. By using different length of string and putting more weight on the bob, we were able to conclude that the period of the swing depended greatly on the length of the string, but not necessarily on the mass of the bob. This fact can be seen on my Data Table – Part II and Part III. It can also be seen in Graph 2, which depicts the length change, and Graph 3, which depicts the mass change. If we look back at the Data Table – Part II, you can see a noticeable decrease in period as the length is also decreased. In Data Table – Part III, you can see that the average period is somewhat around the same number for the three different masses. In the Analysis questions, it explained to us that using Newton’s laws, the period is related to the length and free-fall acceleration by the formula:. Besides having that equation to reference to, we didn’t have any formulas to work out ourselves. But this formula and Newton’s law is what brings Physics into the lab. All in all this lab went pretty alright. The one thing I would’ve done differently if I could was that I would have made Graph 3 more proportional looking to what it really is. Because there really isn’t a huge amount of change in the values, but the way the Zoom Fit worked, the values looked completely polar from each other. But hey, that just proves human error, right?

Momentum, Energy, and Collisions Lab Conclusion

            Throughout this lab we were able to see the conservation of momentum and kinetic energy during collisions. Performing different kinds of collisions allowed us to classify them as elastic, inelastic, or completely inelastic. We were able to do these things easily and successfully! We discovered that when we used magnetic bumpers momentum and kinetic energy was conserved in the collision. But when we changed the bumpers to Velcro, only momentum was conserved, not kinetic energy. We could identify this because we would find the momentum or the kinetic energy right before the two carts hit each other and then find it again right after. This can be seen in the highlighted squares in my Data Table. This data was taken from Graphs 1, 2, and 3. By dividing the two numbers we got, we could see if the ratio was near one. If it was near one, that would mean that they are really close to the same number and so it did conserve the momentum or kinetic energy. Physics is evident throughout this lab because the conservation of momentum and kinetic energy uses Physics formulas, such as KE=.5mv^2 and p=mv. All in all this was a great, fun, and easy lab that taught us so much! The only big errors I made were in the beginning; I was multiplying the velocity by the mass in grams to give me the momentum when I needed the kilograms. And one technical error of us setting up the lab was that we weren't sure if our track was actually level in the center. It seemed like it was dropping down a little bit. We tried to fix it the best we could by putting a chair underneath for support.

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" analysis essay

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

            A story is made up of many elements. A short story with many elements can be used to employ an interesting piece of literary work. Flannery O’Connor’s cynical tale, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” uses the elements of characterization, symbolism, and theme to make an account that has many confused about whether the story is a horror story, a black comedy, or a depiction of God’s works through humans. “Maybe it's even all of these at once” (Shmoop). The story presents the debate that good versus evil is more than a typical war story. When one examines humans, it is seen that inevitably all good is tainted with bad and every bad is threaded with some good.

            The characterization in a story supports the theme by showing realistic humans in extreme situations. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” demonstrates the point by showing the grandmother as representing a majority of the good that’s in the world and The Misfit as an example of the evil in the world in the situation of facing a murderer. The mother and children embody the innocent in the world who are subjected to the wrong doings of evil. The family have to deal with a situation that was only skewed and dangerous because of the grandmother’s, the “good” person, interference with the plans.

The grandmother’s goodness is implied as she insinuates herself as a “lady” (O’Conner 421). She is seen pleading for the sake of the children in the beginning of the story, pleading for the sake of their safety (420). In addition, the grandmother shows that on this earth, nobody is perfect. Everybody has a humanistic downfall that brings them closer to the side of evil. This is portrayed in the judgmental character of the grandmother. She judges the mother of the children by criticizing her parenting skills and then compares her face to a cabbage (420). Inside the car, she rebukes John Wesley for his lack of pride and respect towards Georgia saying that a little boy should have a higher opinion toward his native state (422). She starts to judgmentally talk about her views on current state of the world and how people have all turned into untrustworthy and appalling people (424).

The grandmother is a static character. “‘Maybe He didn’t raise the dead’” (432) wasn’t an epiphany for her or a change in faith because it goes on to explain that she didn’t know what she was saying and “she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her” (432). She was a judgmental old lady who stayed that way. In the end of the story, she hadn’t really changed, she was crumpling under pressure. The grandmother was doing what she could to convince The Misfit not to shoot her. In her last act of crying out, “‘Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’” (433) and by touching his shoulder, she was seeking to lessen her blow. She had tried this method of handling situations before when the car crashed; she hoped she was badly injured so “Bailey’s wrath wouldn’t come down on her all at once” (426), and then she cried out, “I believe I have injured an organ” (427) but to no effect. The grandmother, although shown to be more virtuous than some of the other characters, is a static character who tries to manipulate people from the beginning of the story up until her last words.

            The Misfit, on the other hand, shows his wickedness through his actions and then what he thinks about them. He claims “‘…the crime don’t matter’” (431) and he says that the criminal will forget what they did and receive unfair punishment anyway. He also states that there is “no pleasure but meanness” (432). The Misfit is a static character who starts as a murderer and ends by killing a whole family. The Misfit cannot understand what good is. He thinks that Jesus threw the world off balance because of what he did (432). He does terrible things the way most people do normal things: relaxed. The Misfit represents the evil in the world, but as ruthless and calloused as he is, he isn’t always uncivilized or hasty. The grandmother recognized The Misfit as the escaped prisoner she read about and The Misfit didn’t react swiftly to silence her. Instead, he comforts her (after her son makes a shocking remark) by saying, “‘Lady,’ he said, ‘don’t you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don’t mean. I don’t reckon he meant to talk to you thataway’” (428). He respects ladies; even  if it only is by apologizing for his naked chest or speaking politely to them, The Misfit shows that he isn’t a savage beast (430).

            The grandmother’s daughter-in-law and her three kids are primarily viewed as innocent characters who don’t provide much opposition to good, or resistance to evil, in the story. Though everyone has bits of good and evil in them, these characters’ actions are so few that it’s hard to analyze. There is little insight into how the characters deal with The Misfit when confronted with mortal danger. Even when knowing that they are going off to die where Bailey died, the point of view doesn’t reveal any sort of emotion or thought from the family members (431). It is difficult to tag any of them as either mainly good or mainly wicked because their actions never pushed them too far one way or the other. The mother and her children represent the people in the world who walk by; they are not closely observed and go by unnoticed the majority of the time. Their motives are never analyzed within the story so judgment is difficult to make.

            The symbolism throughout the story shows the mix of good and evil and foreshadows the events to come. The grandmother’s hat (421), for instance, symbolizes a moral code. The moral code that the grandmother has made up for herself is that she is a lady who will always let it be known. She made her dress and hat look perfect in case of an accident where she ended up dead on the highway; people would know that she was a lady (421). She didn’t seem to care that in this scenario she was dead; she just found that presenting herself as a lady was an important thing. Ladies are generally good-natured and respected so the grandmother’s want to be perceived like that is a respectable thing. However, being unconcerned about her family’s, and her own, safety is distinguished as an immoral thought.

While the grandmother’s hat symbolizes something good natured and respected, there are many items that symbolize and foreshadow terrible events. While driving to their destination in Florida, the family passes through a town. As soon as they exit the town of Toombsboro, the grandmother wakes up and remembers a house she once visited. Toombsboro is brought up right before the family is introduced to the character of The Misfit (425). The name indicates the word “tomb”. This name foreshadows the event that leads the family to their grave.

The woods are hugely symbolic. The woods are described as “tall and dark and deep” (427). The woods symbolize the Grim Reaper, the personification of death. “The most common embodiment of the Grim Reaper is a tall, dark figure, clad in the black robes of a monk” (Paranda).

“Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods” (O’Connor 432). This passage foreshadows the intimate and unescapable demise of the grandmother because it describes her setting as solitarily death surrounding her. These are the woods that five members of the family go off and are murdered, confirmed when The Misfit, after shooting the grandmother in the chest, tells Hiram and Bobby Lee, “‘Take her off and throw her where you thown the others’” (O’Connor 433).

            The theme, “the unifying generalization about life stated or implied by the story” (Arp and Johnson 191) is that there is no purely righteous person in the world, nor is there a wholly wicked person. We come to see through “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” that though many try to be perfectly good, human’s idiosyncrasies bring mistakes. The grandmother is judgmental, although she tries to appear virtuous by her clothing and posture (O’Connor 421). People who are devilish in their actions can have good qualities. The Misfit kills people with seemingly no second thought, but he takes the time to have a conversation and treat the grandmother as a colloquial equal (428).

            Through the characters in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” show that no person can be simply black or white. By analyzing the characterization, symbolism, and the main theme, O’Connor reveals that there are shades to every human that can be seen through their motives.

Works Cited

Arp, Thomas, and Greg Johnson. Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. Tenth Ed.

 Ed. Thomas Arp and Greg Johnson. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.

O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and

            Sense. Tenth Ed. Ed. Thomas Arp and Greg Johnson. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage

            Learning, 2009. 420. Print.

Paranda. “Grim Reaper.” Everything2.com. Everything2 Media, LLC. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Shmoop Editorial Team. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc.,

            11 Nov. 2008. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.

Static and Kinetic Friction Lab Conclusion

            In our static and kinetic friction lab, we were able to see how the weight of an object affects its friction, measure its coefficients, and decipher is the weight affects the coefficient. We were able to do all of these things and come up with a solid conclusion in the end. We were able to see through the use of F=umg, that the weight of the object didn’t matter in finding its coefficient. Using the same equation for our different sets of data, both average coefficients of kinetic friction is within a couple hundredths of each other. The coefficient is not based upon weight because when we are finding the coefficient, we use the formulas that a=mg and F=ma. We end up dividing the two formulas so in the end we divide out the mass of the object making it useless. Through this lab, we were able to track the forces needed in static friction and kinetic friction. In graph #1, we see that there is a greater force needed at the start because of the static friction (labeled in green). My partners and I were able to do this lab fairly easily, though at the beginning there was communication error and not too long after that I mistook 500 g for 500 kg, throwing off my data. If I let it throw off my data by that much, I would have had to divide by a much bigger normal force. Through everything, I found this lab to be very fun and very informative and teaching for the concepts of static and kinetic friction through the use of wooden blocks.