A small snowball starts on the top of a hill and rolls down, steadily gaining speed as well as picking up more snow. Eventually, the small snowball becomes a gigantic mass of snow moving incredibly fast. As i look back on the first quarter of physics, i find myself relating my experience to a snowball. When we started off the year i was a tiny snowball. I had no knowledge of physics or the windows it could open up in my life. However, as i began to roll down the 'hill' that is the first quarter of physics, i gained knowledge and efficiency (which is more snow and speed). Compared to the beginning of the quarter, i feel like i am a medium sized snowball moving at about 10 m/s. Although this is improvement from what i started out with, i hope to one day be a 1000 kg snowball moving at 100 m/s. I can achieve this by studying more thoroughly for exams and making sure i complete all labs competently. Overall, i am pleased with the first quarter of physics. :)

MASSIVE.

I was going to write another physics journal about soccer, but right now im watching South Park on Comedy Central and i've had an inspiration. This past week we learned about Newton's Laws of Motion, the first of which is the law of inertia. Inertia is an objects ability and tendency to resist change in velocity, and the more mass an object has, the more inertia. In tonight's episode, Starvin Marvin, a poor famished boy from Ethiopia, steals a space ship from an alien. He then flies the ship to America and picks up Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman. He asks them in his own language to help him stop the US CIA from moving all of his people to Australia. Anyway, as i was watching the space ship lift up the group of kids, i could not help but notice that the space ship must be working much harder to lift Cartman than to lift Starvin Marvin. Cartman is slightly overweight, and therefore has a lot of mass. This large amount of mass means that Cartman has a lot of inertia, and therefore a high resistance to change in velocity. This can be shown in the equation a=F/m. In order to keep the acceleration of the space ship, the force needs to be much higher in order to make up for the large mass in the denominator. This is different from Starvin Marvin, who has a very low mass. Subsequently, the space ship can exert a lesser force on Starvin Marvin and still have the same acceleration.