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.