Childhood Punishment: Experience is the Best Teacher

At some point in my life, I entertained the notion of becoming a photographer. Indeed, it seemed a pretty simple task without the boring office work and the inelastic nine-to-five rut: five days a week, twenty one a month.

If this class has taught me anything yet, I've learned to abort said "goal in life." Taking pictures isn't so bad; the difficult part seems to be not randomly including half of someone's face (sorry Mark).

For the purposes of this week, carefully examine the classy wine glasses that I managed to include. First, they appear to be stationary and unmoving. In addition, they appear to be made of glass. Also, they have pretty cool napkins that look carefully folded and intricately positioned.

Recall from childhood what happens when glass is dropped on the ground--it breaks immediately, emitting a sound of high, shattering frequency. If your parents were around, oh boy. You'd learn quickly to be more careful, or in my case, break the glass when my parents weren't around instead. Experientia docet, my friends: "Experience is the best teacher" :]

Recall additionally from Chemistry that according to the First Law of Thermodynamics, energy can not be created nor destroyed. SO, what exactly happens then, when the glass falls, and breaks, and impending punishment awaits? To make a long story short, an object not in motion is not necessarily void of energy. Energy is classified further into stored "potential energy" and mobile "kinetic energy". When the glasses rest on a table, all their energy is "potential"; they don't actually move or fall or break. If the glasses do indeed fal, their energy is "kinetic," the energy of motion. Energy is not being created out of nowhere, but instead being transformed from potential into kinetic in an intricate process.


In hindsight, the solution to avoiding childhood punishment is to prevent potential energy from becoming kinetic energy. How can that be done?
Try it yourself:


Experientia docet--Experience is the best teacher.