Jed's Reflection

The Force is Strong in me.

FORCES, we have been studying forces for a while now. We have been mostly focusing on “contact forces” (objects touching) such as normal force and tension force.  As we were starting this unit I felt really scared because “Forces” are really difficult but my friend Isaac Newton created 3 simple laws for me to follow; to pass this course.

1.      “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it”

2.      “The relationship between an object’s mass (e), its acceleration (angle), and the applied force (fa) is f=ma. Acceleration and force are vectors; in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.”

3.      “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

When I was solving a problem I would always have these laws in my head. The first thing I did when I tried to solve problems was to apply these laws and draw a labeled free body-diagram (LFBD). Even using these techniques I still found quite difficult to solve problems with Acceleration. I much prefer problems that are in Equilibrium.

When Mr. Law came to our class I found it really interesting when he “actually” should us the problems. What I mean by “actually”, is that he would shows us how a particular physics situation works using real life material other than diagrams. For example if the question was about a wooden slope and a wooden block sliding down it he would take a piece of wood create a slope out of it and take a wooden block and place it on the block. We this we are able to see the situation in real time unlike if we drew a diagram and tried to imagine it moving with all the forces. I found this to be a different technique of teaching that most of my physics teachers never use.

I am “The One who will bring balance to the Force”

We started studying force situation that were in Equilibrium. At first this unit did not click. But surprisingly by the end I felt pretty comfortable with this unit. I don’t know how this happened but it just did. I somehow figured how to do almost every single question. To be honest I was doing all the questions but then I just fell asleep. When I woke up,(the day of the test) I thought I was “toast” but somehow I was able to do almost every question. It is all a mystery; how did I do it?