Week 13: True Love (!!!)

Physics can (supposedly) explain everything. But can it explain love??? Maybe not, but it can definitely explain attraction.

Roses!

To explain (gravitational) attraction, I turn to the cutest couple in my world: my parents. This also seems fitting seeing as we just celebrated my parents' anniversary on the 14th of November, a mere week ago. Ever since I was a little girl, I have always believed that no two people in the world could be more in love with each other than my mom and dad (awww!).

Newton's law of gravitation states that the attractive force of gravity between two particles is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. (In this case, the two particles are my mom and dad--because, um, well, um, they're attracted to each other.)

Using the gravitational constant, the known masses of the two particles (i.e. my mom and dad), and the distance between the two, we can measure the (gravitational) attraction between the two (F-sub-G).

I literally had to take two pictures and put some distance between them just so I would have a magnitude for r because I don't have a picture of my mom and dad in which they at least have a foot between them--awww!)

And, voila, the Physics of love. I mean, attraction. Um, gravitational attraction.

P.S. My mom bought a new salad spinner this weekend and I was like, "Why couldn't you have bought this earlier, Mom?! This spinner is a more Physics blog-worthy topic than the Lazy Susan!" Haha. =D

Week 11: Lazy Susan

 Call me weird, but I've always had a special love for Lazy Susans ever since I was a little girl. When I was younger in the Philippines, we had a transparent one because the dining table had a glass surface with black metal legs. It was just, argh, I love them. They go round and round and round......

Unfortunately, I'm apparently a "big girl" now and, therefore, I am expected not to play with Lazy Susans anymore. But that doesn't stop me from taking (and editing) this short video of my mom's precious Lazy Susan at 10:30 on a Sunday night. When my parents were asleep.

I just grabbed a magnet from the refrigerator to illustrate the concept of unifrom circular motion as we discussed in Physics class (not a very tasty jelly bean, by the way, sorry). When the magnet is placed at the outer edge of the Lazy Susan, anyone can easily calculate its angular velocity and acceleration. However, when I place the magnet in the middle of the Lazy Susan, it does not have angluar velocity (because angle displacement is 0) nor a linear/tangential velocity (because its radius is now 0).


My family's Lazy Susan :)



Ooh, there's an eerie reflection hovering above it.



And, voila, the Physics of Lazy Susans.

P.S. HA! I just made it right on time! 12:00 right on the dot.