2nd Scholarship question.

Time for the 2nd scholarship question that Mr. Thompson wants us to answer.

See if you can help me out.

There is a bird in a cage. (The cage is like a normal bird cage, ie. barred) 

It is standing in the cage.

The cage is placed on a set of scales.

The weight is registered by the scales and it has stabilised by now.

The bird now starts flying inside the cage.

What happens and why? (I'm guessing he was referring to the weight)

I have a couple of theories but I don't want to influence your thoughts.

New Zealand's Next Top Engineering Scientist

I entered a physics competition run by Auckland Uni. YAY!
Well, the happy bit of it is the prize and the exclusivity.

The school only lets people (it's a 4 man team competition) who have done 13PHX and calculus to enter the competition even though the competition itself does not have that requirement.

I talked to Mr. Dass and managed to let me and my Year 12 buddies to enter.
That's the exclusive entry part.

The prizes...
1st place = $5,500 (split equally between the team members)
2nd and 3rd place = $1800 (also split equally)

and also if you are in the podium placing and you choose Engineering Science as your specialisation during your Engineering degree; you will be offered a guaranteed summer internship at either Orion Health, Fonterra or the Department of Engineering Science...

which is nice.

The competition involves answering one open-ended question to do with physics and maths.
We have one whole day to research and answer. A report needs to be presented.
Winners should have a report that shows logical and creative thinking etc.

Our competition as far as I know from our school is the Year 13 team.

Team name: PMS (Perpetual Motion Squad not Post menstrual syndrome)
Abhilash
Michael
Tae
Nikhil

Each a genius in their own right with wide and varied abilities and skills.

Compared to this team, our team pales in comparison.

Team Name: Year 12's
Caleb
Me
William
Pranav

Looking forward to beating atleast one team in the whole competition.

Physics question.

As mentioned in my previous post, I had to miss out on my scholarship class.
Anyway I caught up with one of my friends in the class and he told me that we got a question to work on during the week.

I found this quite hard and I hoped one of you might be able to help.

To understand the question you need to look at a diagram:
http://i26.tinypic.com/11j6hx4.jpg

The diagram shows a mass hanging off a thin string (String A). A thicker string is attached to the bottom of the mass (String B).

The question is:
If String B is pulled very gently, String A breaks/rips and
if String B is pulled very quickly, String B breaks/rips.
Why?

I am thinking this might have to do with elasticity constants and impulse but please answer with some reasonable detail. Thanks.

P.E. teachers.

P.E.
Physical Education.
Some readers might know it as gym class.

So the new school term started. Hurrah for Term 3.
Now exams get closer and therefore scholarship classes have to get started and they started today.
I was looking forward to it as I got to miss running cross country practice for PE.

So I walked into the physics scholarship class and got a warm welcome from the teacher and he wanted me to just check with my PE teacher if it was all right.

So I jog down to where my teacher is outside the Gym and I ask him.
"Sir, is it okay if I do my scholarship classes for Physics?"
and he replies, "No, I want you to take PE until cross country is over" (Cross country is about 4 weeks from now)

He sounded quite offended when he said it as well which ticked ME off.

Now my problem with this is, I do not think, that PE is anywhere as important as scholarship classes. Every class has a ton of things that I can learn from it and considering the fact that only around 3.5% of students get a scholarship, every week is important.

So why does my teacher think that cross country PRACTICE is necessary/more important than my physics scholarship class?

Yes it's nerdy but justified.

Well as a result of his answer, I had to jog back to my class, get my stuff and run back and then run around a kilometre which caused some knee injury.

Damn PE.