Blog 4: Friction

Friction is defined as a force that opposes the motion or attempted motion of an object in contact with another object moving past it.  Static friction is the amount of friction occuring between two objects that are not in motion.  The maximum static friction equals the amount of force required to break the static friction and send the obhject into motion.  The other night, I attempted to find the maximum static friction of my car, a Toyota 4 Runner.  I reversed the car into the driveway amd attempted to push it back into the garage.  To my amazement, I was unable to do so despite my best effort.  Frustrated, I punched the side of the car and left a massive dent in it.  Hopefully, my dad doesn't realize it was me.  I learned from this that the maximum static friction of my car is pretty large, seeing how I couldn't get it moving. 

Blog 3

When I arrived home on Sunday, I immediately went to the tv and turned to Sports Center, expecting to see that Colts had blown out the Jacksonville Jaguars.  What I saw instead was mind boggling.  The Jaguars had won on a last second, 59 yard field goal by Josh Scobee.  I sat there, stunned, as I saw the replay of his extremely lucky kick.  That's when it hit me.  This loss is not all bad, I thought to myself.  The Colts may have lost, but physics won the game.  Josh Scobee was probably thinking of Newton's laws as he was kicking.  An object at rest stays at rest unless acted on by an outside force.  The football was at rest and the force was him kicking it.  Net force equals mass times acceleration.  Prior to his kick, he first calculated, in his head, the acceleration necessary which he inserted to find the force with which he needed to kick the ball.  Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  He kicked the ball and the ball kicked him back with an equal force.  The ball however, had a smaller mass which resulted in a greater acceleration.  I applaud Josh Scobee for using physics in order to kick that game winning field goal.