Over Christmas break i went on a cruise around the islands with my family. Basically, the ship was a floating hotel complete with maybe 15 to 20 restaurants, three swimming pools, basketball courts, etc. As we were leaving Honolulu, i went out to the top deck to watch the ship leave. It took about half an hour just to turn the ship so it was pointing out of the harbor and even longer to get up to any kind of speed. Early the next morning, i got up to watch the ship dock in Kona. I realized that the captain had turned off the ship's propulsion well before we reached the harbor and we coasted for a long time very slowly. I realized that this is an example of momentum. Because the ship has such an enormous mass, it has a lot of inertia. This inertia makes it hard to get the ship moving and hard to stop once its moving. Because of this, it takes a lot of force to get the ship up to speed and a long time for friction to stop it.

Unfortunately i did not have a camera or my phone with me at the time, but hopefully my drawing is good enough. This weekend i went to zippy's to eat breakfast with my family and i noticed a big window decoration-thing. This thing was a picture of santa clause being pulled in his sled by his reindeer. The peculiar thing i noticed about the picture was that the reindeer were not hooked up to the sled, rather, santa was holding the reindeers' reins with one hand and waving with the other. My first thought was how strong santa must be to be able to hold onto the reindeer like that with one hand. I mean, the reindeer must be exerting a huge force on the reins to be able to pull santa and a sled full of toys. Due to Newton's second law of motion, this same force must be matched by santa's one hand in order for the picture to be plausible. I guess if santa can fly around the world in one night, he can probably exert large amounts of force with one hand.