Faithful to Physics!

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!
This carol is about physics.

Oh come all ye willing
To learn of physics filling
Of forces and velocity, plus FBDs
Action Reaction
Opposite in direction
Bug hits windshield and windshield hits bug
Gravity in free fall
It affects us all
9.8 m slash s squared- a rate that makes us scared

Velocity and speed
Different types of motion
Speed is only magnitude
Velocity needs direction
From this arises
Projectile motion
X and y components
With distance and position.

Words by Tori and Jasmine
Music played by Abigail

Newton's Laws of Motion (the number one killers in America)

This unit my Honors Physics class learned about Newton's Laws of motion.

We began, naturally, at the very beginning with Newton's First Law of Motion, stating that "an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force," as quoted from our classwork book. This law predicts the behavior of both objects at rest and object that are moving around, or more basically stated that an object will just keep moving or sitting there unless an unbalanced force decides to mess with it. This is called inertia, the same law that makes you lurch forward when you hit the brakes on your car or throws you over the handlebars of your bike when you hit a rock. An unbalanced force happens when one force is greater than the other, and where this is unbalanced force we have net force, or the vector sum of all the forces action on one particular object. One important fact to know is that force is measured in Newtons. In order to understand forces you have to understand the difference between mass and weight. Weight is a force, therefore measured in Newtons, and is the Earth's gravitational pull on you, and mass is measured in Kilograms (in the SI units) and is what you would see on a common house-hold scale if you were to weigh yourself. Newton's First Law of Motion leads up to the knowledge of translational equilibrium. For the object to be in equilibrium, the net force has to be zero. After this long journey of understanding, we skipped over Newton's Second Law and right to the Third, tucking it away for later.

The Third Law simply states that if an object (the action force) exerts force on another (the reaction) , it will exert an equal force right back on it. For example, if I touch a desk and exert force on it, it is in turn touching my hand and exerting force on IT.

And finally, we learned about Newtons second law, which involves quite a bit of math. It states in our classwork book that "for a particular force, the acceleration of an object is proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass of the object." That's a wordy way of saying that when you multiply the mass and the acceleration together, you make the sum of the forces. Remember that force is shown in Newtons. With this formula, you can find out the acceleration of a motion, the mass, and the net force, which is pretty awesome. You can also solve problems with friction and pulleys, because it all uses the same formula in it, but with friction there is another special friction equation that you have to work in those problems, too. And with all these laws, you can better understand forces and finding their value and why physics is why it is.


What I found difficult at times was, of course, the math. I will always struggle on the first try with math sometimes, but I get through it with the help of my friends and my fabulous father. By the end I have a pretty clear understanding of the equations and what to substitute for what and things like that. Another thing that tripped me up was the fact that these laws are mainly, well, standard rules. I can understand the rules, but the material they apply to change from problem to problem, and I have trouble connecting rule to problem sometimes, another thing I get help with.


When learning about forces, a problem solving skill I used was illustrations. Any FBDs/direction of motion arrows/vectors that I could draw, I drew. It helped me greatly as I am a visual person. Sometimes, when an illustration was given, I would draw information directly on that to aid me in drawing my FBDs and making connections. Also, writing down all my data and work, showing it step by step and keeping it neat, helped me not get frustrated or confused because I knew where all of my information was. One specific example was one of the many places in my homework where I wasn't careful and ended up getting frustrated and a lot of shouting went on between me and my dad because I claimed I was right and he knew I was wrong. My work, of course, was ALL over the place because I had been lazy and rushed. He told me to erase everything and I did, albeit reluctantly. When I rewrote my data and drew my pictures and wrote down the equation and solved for the variable and THEN plugged in the data, I finally could realized where I made my mistake because I wasn't trying to look several places at once and overlooking vital information. I used my problem solving skills wisely to help me conquer this unit.