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quantumpie:

The poetry of physics, dancing and life

-quantumpie.

A video I came upon in my searches through the internet that made my view of science, physics in particular, turn upside-down! I always found physics to be a study of making something from invisibility, then relating made up numbers to it. All the way through my high-school experience I was confused with the formulas and the reasons why everything is the way it is. Perhaps this could be because I am a rather creative person, and numbers confuse me, but whatever the reason I didn’t understand physics. I thought it was just a curse class that I had to get through to get my diploma, and that it would never help me, and I would never use it.

Watching this video made me think, “okay, well I still don’t comprehend where the numbers for gravity’s difference or acceleration vs. gravity formula come from, but maybe I can use simple things every day.” I went the next day to shovel the snowy, ice packed driveway and thought that there had to be an easier way of doing this! That’s when the video popped into my head, why? I don’t know. I thought, shoveling is simply force downward and direction right? The force you apply onto the shovel to lift the snow off the ground, put together with the direction forward you shovel that pushes the snow and pry’s it up onto the shovel tongue right… So depending on how much force I can apply and how much forward motion I use, does that depend on how much effort I have to put in?

I tried a few different ways of shoveling. I tried using a greater force downward and less forward - needless to say that didn’t work! I tried less downward, more forward - that worked a bit, but there was still ice on my driveway that was stuck. Now if I was smart I would have kept going and done calculations and figured out perfectly what force to apply to shovel my driveway without having to redo it after. Sadly, I am lazy and just wanted the snow away from my driveway so I could see where I slip on the ice when the time comes. I left my discoveries to help me another day and realized that hey, science is everywhere! It intrigued me to see physics in an every day situation that I could use it to manipulate to my advantage.

(Source: quantumpie.com)