Learning Physics

Physics is one of the most interesting subjects I have ever learned. After the beginning of Physics, I started to think about the concepts of Physics in everything. When I run in a cross country race, I think, "Ack! Oh, man, everyone has a faster velocity than me!!!" When running down hills, the help of gravity makes me accelerate so that I can finish the race faster. At the end of the race, I'm happy that I've covered the distance of 3 miles, even though my displacement is less than 100 meters because the finish line is not that far away from the starting line.

Other than showing properties of Physics, Cross Country can also be an analogy of Physics in some ways. We start at the beginning of the course, prepared to work hard and do our best. Everyone goes at their own pace: some people understand Physics right away and excel; other people are slow to start and go at a steady pace. Even though everyone has different paces, everyone ends up at the same place at the end, learning the exact same things.

I may not be the fastest runner, and I might not be the fastest person to understand Physics. Fortunately, Everyone is on the same boat as me, learning at their own pace. I don't know if I can keep up with everybody, and I don't know if I will be able to excel as much as others excel in Physics, but I will keep trying my best and finish the race with as much effort as I possible can put into the subject. ☺

(by the way, this picture of me is from the Mid-Pacific Meet just yesterday. I got it from the pictures taken by Coach Al ☺)

Dropping Kirby

Today, I asked my sister Jodie to help me with physics. In this picture above, she's holding a stuffed Kirby (for those of you who do not know who Kirby is, It's a pink Nintendo hero that copies his opponent's foes special abilities, but that's irrelevant to physics).

While Kirby is being held in the air, it has inertia (since all objects have inertia). Inertia is the resistance of changing in its state of motion. For example, if an object is at rest, it stays at rest. On the other hand, if the object is in motion, it wants to stay in motion. Kirby is at rest, and it's acceleration is 0 meters per second squared. Also, Kirby's velocity is 0 meters per second.

Anyways, if Jodie were to drop Kirby, then Kirby would start to accelerate toward the ground because of gravity (which is -9.8 meters per second). Depending on how high my sister is, the velocity, when Kirby finally hits the ground, would be greater than 0 meters per second because of gravity. For example, if it takes two seconds for Kirby to fall to the ground, Kirby's final velocity, if you ignored air resistance, would be -19.6 meters per second (negative because it's moving downward motion).

In Physics, mass is known as the property of an object that determines how much it will resist a change in velocity. Kirby does not have much mass, so therefore Kirby will have more inertia than a larger, more massive object like an elephant. Because Kirby has such little mass, too, air resistance doesn't apply to it so much.

This is it for the Physics epiphanies today. ☺ I hoped you enjoyed Kirby and my little sister.