geokin

Nice Picture and Physics Note 2

Newton's 1st law of motion: the law of inertia. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. Got it.Sir Isaac Newton first presented his three laws in the "Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis" in 1686. Galieo (c.1632) had nailed this before him. Aristotle (c.300BC) had it wrong, thinking rest was the natural tendency of all objects (Aristotle didn't account for gravity).

Newton's first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. This is normally taken as the definition of inertia. The key point here is that if there is no net force resulting from unbalanced forces acting on an object (if all the external forces cancel each other out), then the object will maintain a constant velocity. If that velocity is zero, then the object remains at rest. And if an additional external force is applied, the velocity will change because of the force.

This law only holds in a inertial  frame reference. I'm not sure whether this means the reference frame has to have zero accelerational force or just all observers have to be in the same reference frame. See:   Newton's First Law 6 minute lecture from wikipedia.

Nice picture: my friend Maggie came to a family reunion gathering at the Sylvan Dale Ranch on Father's Day. I'm sure she well remebers my struggles with math and physics from college days and will no doubt think I have lost my mind with this blog project. ;-)

Nice Picture and a Physics Note 1

I found Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time from the Big Bang to Black Holes" copyright 1988 in a box of books and started reading it. I effortlessly made it to  page 19. Then I lost him as he started talking about light and time. DARN! My personal project for the summer is to make it through the book (its only 175 pages! - how bad could it be?) and understand as much as I can. I endeavor to use my blog in the breakthrough struggle to understand the science of space and time !

Picture: My friend Bruce and me at the McCune Ranch, family reunion June 2011. Looking through the picture albums there the joke became that I am sort of a "run around". We found a picture of me at the ranch with my college boyfriend Steve Sweda. I took Brent there a couple of times in the 29 years we were married. And now this guy Bruce...;-)