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| Lovebirds on the left, peace sign on the right. |
Approximately one and a half seconds after I remembered, "Oh, french the llama, I'm supposed to do update my Phys blog!" my head automatically snapped to the calendar on my bulletin board (I guess I wanted to check that, yes, it was still Saturday and, yes, I still had time to do it). About half a second later, my eyes darted from the box marked "Saturday, September 25th" to the two hanging...things (What do you call these? Leis? Necklaces?)...on my board.
It took almost two seconds to see Physics in my daily life. And this is only the fifth week of school.
Anyway, on to the jelly bean of the week! This week's flavor was: FORCE. Mmmm, yum.
Newton's First Law states that an object at rest stays at rest unless a force acts upon the object, thus causing it to accelerate. The net force of the...let's call it the "lovebirds" (It's too big to be a pendant!)...anyway, the net force of the lovebirds is zero because it is not moving. The same goes for the "peace sign." For each "necklace" (Or is it more of a lei? No word exists to describe these things!) the force in the downward direction (mg) is equal to the tension of the string's upward force (T). Please see equation to the right.
Now, if I were to pull hard, vertically, on the strings, the downward forces (mg) increase and they become greater than the tensions of the strings (T). Net force would then be negative and in the downward direction. As a result, the lovebirds and peace sign fall towards the ground. But I wouldn't want to do that, of course. I'd have to pick them up (and who wants that, right?).
And, voila, the physics of lovebirds and a peace sign.
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| Hope everyone had a great time at Peace Week at 'Iolani this week! :) |
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