The Greatest Mathematician of all Time

For those of you who have taken or are currently taking Precalculus Honors, recall the 'hierarchy' of mathematicians:

() indicates information from wikipedia; refer to [ ] for a narrative.

at the top, we have:

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) [i'll gradually hate this guy more and more as i learn more physics and eventually calculus]

then, in no particular order:

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) [never heard of him]
Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) [euler's line; bad memories from that PCH test =/]
Archimedes (287 BC-212 BC) [well, he has no first name. what a baller. also, he's pretty old]

And just like everyone else, I don't care about second, third, or fourth place.
Which leaves us only with Newton. Cool. Now to examine one of his laws of physics that we diligently read about and encounter every day:

(Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare. Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.)

Latin really is useless. The English translation is still a foreign language. Let's try this again:

An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by a force.

Well. Here's my "object at rest." Common sense dictates that if I were to leave it alone, it won't go anywhere.

A 'force' magically appears; object at rest is no longer
at rest!

Now, recall the second part of Newton's first law:

An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by a force.

I don't know who said it, but "all good things must come to an end." Experience and common sense both indicate that my object, even a pretty generic prize from Family Fair two years ago, will eventually stop rolling. Even without me stopping it. And so, Newton's first law is madness. Blasphemy.


Actually, Newton was the greatest mathematician of all time. And so, he probably wasn't wrong. Of course not. My object stopped without the help of any observable force, but from the
forces of friction and air resistance (kinetic friction, I guess, since the object was moving). These same forces apply to almost every object in our everyday lives; what kind of messed up world would it be if nothing stopped moving, ever?


Well, once again, all good things must come to an end.

Concerning this week;

WHY IS IT ONLY MONDAY

WHAT THE HELL.

The "First" Post, Against the World, where the heck did the "A" go?

Hmm.

Adjusting to changes? First impressions? The entire matter sounds to me like an essay prompt in disguise. Sure! why not.

I scrolled through a few of the blogs that had already been set up. My life, (though I sometimes wish otherwise) is just as boring, if not more boring, than yours. I'm simply your normal physics student, ambitious enough (but just barely) to make the jump from regular chemistry. Instead of ranting about the same courses, the same teachers, the same dreadful junior year, let's talk specifically about physics:

I don't think anyone, at this point, can be possibly naive enough to expect the course to get easier. Of course this worries me; I realize that there are many tough times ahead. I'll be the first (ok, a little too late for that....) to admit, however, that physics does have its perks.

Anyone enjoy listening to someone lecture a powerpoint in a dark room about, fungi, where you'd be obligated, not motivated to take notes? Yeah, me neither.

While I haven't completely adjusted to the independent learning factor, or the completely hands-on, figure-it-out-yourself labs (which have been pretty cool, by the way---who doesn't enjoy shooting monkeys?), I realize that I still have time to "learn the rules of the game". If it finally means learning what grandma likes and doesn't like, how can I not be excited?

God, the course is so much more intimidating when it's spelled out in its entirety. Advanced Placement Physics B.
What the hell happened to the "A", anyway?

I promised not to talk about junior year, and I'm going to break that promise for a very quick moment. My expectations of this year prove to myself once again only prove how horrible I am at anticipating anything. I was really not prepared at all. Fail. To be brutally honest, I'm probably struggling more and more sleep deprived than many of you. No matter how much of an uphill battle it may seem, "against the world," let's try to stay positive ^^.


In order to stay true to this "first post" business and my newly acquired blog, I'm pleased to announce that this blog did indeed take less than ten minutes to set up. Cool. For those of you reading this at eight PM at night with no blog of your own, shame on you (and me). I'm sorry for wasting precious minutes of your time on a Sunday night when homework needs to be done.

Get out of here.