Rope Swing!

This summer, my cousin Malcolm and I went to California with my parents. My mom and her crew were paddling in the World Sprints races in Sacramento and Malcolm and I had gone with them to check out colleges. Malcolm and I had a lot of time on our hands because we had to hang out at the lake where the races were for an entire week, one day when we were out paddling we found a rope swing and so we spent a lot of time playing on it. We had a waterproof camera, so this is a picture of me on the rope swing. This picture is an example of circular motion. Circular motion is when an object is rotating about an axis that is outside of the object. Although you cannot see it, the end of the rope is connected to a tree branch, so the axis of my motion is the tree branch. When I let go of the rope, I will become a projectile and no longer have circular motion. This picture also shows kinetic and potential energy. At the moment of this picture, I have both KE and PE because I am in motion and I am above the water, which is my reference point. When I let go of the rope and start to fall toward the water, my KE will increase as my PE decreases. Just in this one picture there is so much physics going on! I never stopped to think this summer that something so entertaining and fun would have so much physics involved.