Physics - 25 June - Classical Physics

Newton’s Three Laws and Me

Newton's Laws

The Law of Inertia. Bodies remain at constant velocity unless acted on by a net outside force. 

     A planet will remain at a constant pace unless disturbed by another force, mainly being pulled into the gravitational path of another celestial body. A vase will remain still on the table unless it is knocked over. From the outside, it appears that objects remain at a constant velocity--but this theorem does not seem to take into account the entropy of the elements within the the planet, or within the vase. A glass vase left standing without interruption will slowly melt over the years. Stars eventually turn into black holes when they implode. The earth's atmosphere has changed drastically over the millennia. Newton's approach to physics assumes separation of various objects, instead of viewing them relationally. That an "object's" orbit is dependent on its proximity to other bodies. Plus, who is to say that a body is separate from its orbit?

The Second Law. F=ma, when F, m, and a are the force (any type), inertial mass (defined by this law), and acceleration, respectively.

     Newton's second law allowed for the creation of airplanes. The mass of any object, which is its relationship to gravity, multiplied by how much it accelerates defines the force. Thus, larger objects need more acceleration to move. The force of an object that does not generate its own acceleration loses force as time goes one and is then subjected to gravity. When a person kicks a ball, the ball will move with the force imbued by the kick, but will eventually give way to gravity because it eventually decelerates.

The Law of Reactions. For every force, there is an equal but oppositely directed force. (1)

     If I place glass cup on a table with little fore, the table will push back against it to hold it up. If I drop a cup on the floor, with more force, the floor will meet the cup and shatter it. 


(1) Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics,  Fourth Edition. Zeilik, Gregory. 1998

Our “Energy Efficient” Culture

Perhaps our culture is energy efficient insofar as it does not acknowledge the multitude of ways one can access energy: as in qi gong, or herbal medicine, or replenishment through sleep. 

Descartes has a lot to answer for!

Descartes' theory is the basis for many of our modern assumptions. Look at modern medicine. Like Descartes, modern doctors and pharmacologists attempt to break things down to their constituent parts. Instead of viewing the world, or the mind, or the body as relational--these things become very mechanistic. This is problematic when treating a disease such as HIV, because instead of supporting the whole body system to recover from the pathogen--HIV is isolated and attacked in a Petri dish by various chemical compounds and this research is applied to a complex human being and body. 

Method consists entirely in the order and arrangement of those things upon which the power of the mind is to be concentrated in order to discover some truth. And we will follow this method exactly if we reduce complex and obscure propositions step by step to simpler ones and then try to advance by the same gradual process from the intuitive understanding of the very simplest knowledge of all the rest. (2)

(2) http://smith2.sewanee.edu/gsmith/Texts/Ecology/ OnReductionism.html