Physics wk 8 - Classical Physics

When I think about Newton's laws i am reminded of my childhood.  I grew up in a family with three sisters, and when we drove it would often entail three of us girls filling up the entire row in the family car.  Summer trips to the beach included driving down a windy canyon road.  We came upon a bit of a game as we would round a corner, the sibling towards the center of the turn would exclaim "Newton's 2nd law!" and add a little extra lean into the forces we felt pulling us towards the opposite edge of the vehicle.  More or less it was an excuse to go back and forth squishing your sister.  The sibling in the center just got squashed the whole time, which typically was the youngest of us (and why she thought she was the middle child for a long time).  

Newton's 2nd Law states that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the forces acting on it, and inversely proportional to its mass.  Force = Mass x Acceleration.   With my better understanding of physics that I have now, I know that we were feeling feeling was that our bodies wanted to continue moving in a straight line & that as the car turned we continued moving forward until the frame of the vehicle acted on our bodies forcing us to also turn with it.  Though it felt as though our bodies were being pushed towards the side of the car.

Overall even if the use of Newton's Laws wasn't spot on, I am still fairly impressed that as children we were aware enough of the laws of physics to create games out of them.

Our "Energy Efficient" culture.  I agree with the liberal use of parenthetical in that sentence.  Thermodynamics, turning heat energy into work energy was the basis for the industrial revolution. Which was a tremendous advancement of technology, however that does not mean that it was the most efficient way to create wok energy.  My mind is still reeling at the idea of the sunken processor banks that are off the coast of Scotland, with all of their excess heat leaching out into the ocean.  The effect on the local ecosystem must be dramatic.  I personally know very very little about how ecosystems work, but I surly know that the water off the coast of Scotland is not naturally warm & and a large body that will consistently be producing heat has just been dropped smack dab into the middle of that watery world. 

Cartesian thought - A note that I wrote in the sideline of our handout.  You don't need a brain to be cognitive,  A living system can act with cognition, think a slime mold that can solve a maze in order to locate a food source.  Also looking at a bee hive as a system acting with cognition vs. focusing on the individual bee.