Trick

Blog #4: Diggin

Over the past two to three weeks my house has been a disaster as we are putting in a new wall and fence around our house.  It has been quite stressful seeing as the animals do not have room to run around and lot of their pent-up energy has been redirected to either barking or fighting. But fortunately, we have been able to add on to the yard.  On the side of my house I have always wanted to put in a Hawaiian gardenwith native hawaiian plants that I can use for hula or just grow for fun.  Luckily, I have been able to start this garden without the constant interruption of doggy trampling and digging.  While I was digging a hole for my Ki, Ti leaf, I realized that I was once again using physics. As I pushed the shovel into the ground at unknown angle, the ground was pushing back on me, but my force was greater.  I used my wight as a force and in the ground resisted with it's force. Along the way, the shovel experienced some friction with the ground as the dirt resisted the change in direction, which slowed down the acceleration of my push.  But like I said, in the end I forced the shovel through the ground and made myself a nice hole to plant my Ki in. It was a quite successful day.

Shoppin'

So, like every other Sunday, I was with my mom shopping at Sam's Club but this time was special because I realized that my shopping was related to physics.  As I was pushing the cart, our lessons about Newton's first, second, and third law popped into my head. From the very start, the cart was following Newton's first law of an object at rest will stay at rest until acted on by another force which happened to be me, and will stay in motion until a force is acted upon it which probably would be me or something else I may have run into.  As I was pushing the cart, I found that the second law also applied for if I found the net force and divided it by the mass of the cart, I could have calculated the acceleration.  The once again another realization, Newton's third law was taking place as well because every action has an equal and opposite reaction. As I pushed on the cart, it pushed back on me. In the end it was a great over all shopping trip because while getting food, i got to recap on what we have been learning in class.