That Newton Guy was Right

Another unit passes behind me as I write. The unit was about Forces, however, we paid special attention to Newton's Laws, as one can see from the title. Again, I take a few moments to reflect upon what I learned easily, what took me awhile to learn, my strong problem solving skills, and my skills that need some improvement.

I found this unit to be fairly easy. One thing that especially help was the Free-Body-Diagrams. The "FBD's" helped make clear what forces were acting on the object and in which direction. Net force was also fairly easily, mainly because it is addition. Finding the individual forces was also easy. Newton's First Law was definitely the hardest Law to learn. It was the hardest because we had never done anything like it before. However, after a few problems is became as Mrs. Gende says, "Mickey-Mouse." Newton's First Law states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by another force, same as an object in constant motion. The law is all about translational equilibrium. The rule in the First law that the net force = 0 was the main concept. Very quickly, I was able to solve for any force in any axis. When we began to use trigonometry to solve for forces at an angle. I treated them as vectors, which is what they are. I did encounter a snag when the object and the axis were at an angle. Instead of changing the cosine to sine, and visa versa, I subtract theta from 90 and kept them the same. This ended up being the same as switching the sine and cosine, so it was not much of a problem. After I mastered the First Law, it was a breeze from there. We learned Newton's Third Law next, which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That was the easiest law of the three. All we learned was to identify the reaction forces. Most reaction force phrases are the converses of the original force phrases, so they were easy from the start. The Second Law was also easy. The Second Law is about an object not in translational equilibrium, when the net force is not zero. One sets up the equation as the same as the First Law, except one replaces the "= 0" to "= ma," or equals mass times acceleration. This Law is very helpful when calculating apparent weight, the net force of an objects weight if the platform it is on is acceleration up or down. It is also very helpful when calculating different forces in pulley systems. Pulley systems usually have two or more FBD's, depending on how many objects there are. The Second Law can help you determine the direction of motion so you can tell which forces are positive and negative. The Second Law can even help when calculating friction. When there is friction, there is friction, the net force will almost never be zero. Also learning about mu was extremely interesting. It was a relief to learn that forces are that simple.

My problem solving skills were essentially did not change. I kept an open mind when looking for the way to solve the problem. This often helps me find ways to solve problems that others give up on. My ability to rework equations is still strong. I keep every option open. I have improved on staying focused on one part of the problem, although that could still be improved. I will start focusing on the next part and then lose my train of thought. I have begun to check the logic of my answer compared to the problem, but I could still check more. I have seen this many times when I would get the wrong answer then what is in the key and I would scan the problem over many times instead of looking at each individual part. My logical skills are strong, but taking the process and checking slowly are still being worked on.

I enjoyed this unit. Forces are awesome. The ability to understand our world, aka physics, is still awesome to me. I cannot wait to learn more.