Thursday, February 26, 2015

A Practical Application Of Physics....

Image result for walking  I was sitting in my car, outside of Macy's, waiting for Lesley while she investigated some chemicals in the perfume department so that she can continue to keep me under her spell.
  Observation:  While waiting, I was observing people as they entered and left the store and the more I thought about the simple act of walking, the more I became fascinated by it.  In my mind, I imagined them walking in slow motion.  Breaking it down, it starts with Newton's Third Law which states that for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.  In this case, pushing against the ground with one foot to create a forward motion.  During this forward momentum, we are lifting up the other foot to bring ahead of the first foot.  Because we are, at this moment, only on one foot, we are essentially off balance.  The forward momentum helps some, but the resulting tendency is to fall over.  But just in the nick of time, the other foot has moved ahead of the first foot and setting down on the ground, thus we are kept from falling over.
  Conclusion:  Walking and running  are actions where we are in a series of almost falling down but catching ourselves before it happens.

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. - Stephen Hawking