Week 2

Welcome to Week 2 of my Senior Project Journey! 

This week, I encountered the first of many challenges, one that took a while to troubleshoot. The problem occurred when I attempted to run an applet from NASA. Specifically, SoccerNASA allowed me to do all of what I was looking for in a simulation. Unfortunately, the applet was built over 14 years ago with no updates since then. However, when I tried to run it, nothing popped up. I struggled to see what happened only saw some code and animation files unopened in the Zip File. Thinking that it was a technical issue, I decided to go on and search for a different simulation site but to my dismay could not find one. Afterward, I asked my mom if she could troubleshoot the applet and see if something was wrong with the outdated code. 

Soon after, we managed to get the simulation to run, and now I will spend the next few weeks playing around with it to get used to it, while also executing my experiment needed to show how a regular soccer ball moves when kicked. This will be for a more controlled constant, which will be used to be compared with the World Cup balls. 

When not troubled shooting, I decided to read more about Bernoulli’s Principle through various textbooks that I had from my days taking AP Physics classes though I found it to be rather boring. So, I jumped onto YouTube and watched some more videos and from there I understood the theory more. I also learned more about the Magnus Effect, which is a key concept that I needed to know to explain the phenomenon of unpredictable movement in the ball. 

See you next week!