Week 10 Physics: Newtons 3 Laws & Me, our "Energy Efficient" culture, Descartes has a lot to answer for...
Newton's Three Laws and Me :)
First Law: an object at rest remains at rest, and objects in motion remain in motion - a force must be applied to change the state of motion of an object.
Garfield will soon be bombarded by the force of hunger! And find some lasagna :)
If it weren't for the force of gravity, when I jump in the air I would continue in a straight line in that same direction.
Second Law: the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it, and inversely to the mass
I don't understand this one very well I think this is why we would weigh differently on the moon. I would have less mass on the moon, and even less mass on Mercury - because both have less gravity than on Earth. Force, mass and acceleration are related in that, less force is required to move something with less mass, greater force is required for something with greater mass. I seem to inappropriately exercise this law whenever I play miniature golf (which isn't often). I am not a good putter! This tiny golf ball doesn't require that much force to move such a short distance, but I typically overshoot. The First Law interferes as well, I can't accurately estimate how much the drag of the ground will slow down the ball.
Third Law: each action has an equal but opposite reaction
I've never shot a gun before, but I'm pretty sure that when pulling the trigger there is a lot of force coming back at you -- recoil. So how come in movies there's some character and we understand they've never shot a gun before, they shoot and they don't show Newton's first law! the recoil! And on top of that they often hit their target.
Our "Energy Efficient" Culture
I came across an article in Popular Science about how heat generated from the London underground was being redirected to heat 1,400 nearby homes. According to this article, "Recycling heat is quite common in Europe. Denmark gets roughly half of its electricity from recycled heat, followed by Finland at 39 percent, and Russia at 31 percent. In the U.S., it’s just 12 percent." I was really impressed by these numbers, especially Denmark. To my mind, No, our American culture is not energy efficient, but some cultures such as in Europe are (add this to the ever-growing list of reasons why I'd love to move to Europe).
I was surprised by Russia's 31%, a place I don't think of as big on recycling. My experience there showed me that the culture of reusing was much bigger than the culture of recycling. Which is still cool! So I was happy to learn that such a large country has this really smart organization (especially considering how cold it can get!).
I really hope one day our country gets smarter about using energy and how we treat the environment in general. This current administration doesn't give me a lot of hope, but since the Science March back in April, which had an amazing global turnout, I also see that I'm not the only one.
Descartes
Descartes apparently viewed the human body as a machine which could be understood by the reductionist method: take it a part, study the parts, and put them back together to study the big picture.
But of course we know that in medicine, you can't simply study the parts to know the whole, same with in an ecosystem. The parts are always in relationship with the whole, engaging in their being and production and autopoesis.
At the same time, I feel like I get the lure of approaching any form of study in this way. It's how I study herbs in school. We learned them one by one before we learned them as formulas which may not be the 'best' way to learn them, but it was a simple and straight forward approach. It was interesting to find our from our formulas professor that actually, knowledge about herbs also came from the fact that they were in a certain formula which was doing a certain thing. So traditionally, herbs weren't studied by the individual parts and how that made up the whole. The reasoning went in many directions, it was deduction and induction, and inference.
So it's nice to know that we don't have to be beginner's and learn things in the reductionist way just because this seems like an easy place to start.
First Law: an object at rest remains at rest, and objects in motion remain in motion - a force must be applied to change the state of motion of an object.
Garfield will soon be bombarded by the force of hunger! And find some lasagna :)
If it weren't for the force of gravity, when I jump in the air I would continue in a straight line in that same direction.
Second Law: the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it, and inversely to the mass
I don't understand this one very well I think this is why we would weigh differently on the moon. I would have less mass on the moon, and even less mass on Mercury - because both have less gravity than on Earth. Force, mass and acceleration are related in that, less force is required to move something with less mass, greater force is required for something with greater mass. I seem to inappropriately exercise this law whenever I play miniature golf (which isn't often). I am not a good putter! This tiny golf ball doesn't require that much force to move such a short distance, but I typically overshoot. The First Law interferes as well, I can't accurately estimate how much the drag of the ground will slow down the ball.
Third Law: each action has an equal but opposite reaction
I've never shot a gun before, but I'm pretty sure that when pulling the trigger there is a lot of force coming back at you -- recoil. So how come in movies there's some character and we understand they've never shot a gun before, they shoot and they don't show Newton's first law! the recoil! And on top of that they often hit their target.
Our "Energy Efficient" Culture
I came across an article in Popular Science about how heat generated from the London underground was being redirected to heat 1,400 nearby homes. According to this article, "Recycling heat is quite common in Europe. Denmark gets roughly half of its electricity from recycled heat, followed by Finland at 39 percent, and Russia at 31 percent. In the U.S., it’s just 12 percent." I was really impressed by these numbers, especially Denmark. To my mind, No, our American culture is not energy efficient, but some cultures such as in Europe are (add this to the ever-growing list of reasons why I'd love to move to Europe).
I was surprised by Russia's 31%, a place I don't think of as big on recycling. My experience there showed me that the culture of reusing was much bigger than the culture of recycling. Which is still cool! So I was happy to learn that such a large country has this really smart organization (especially considering how cold it can get!).
I really hope one day our country gets smarter about using energy and how we treat the environment in general. This current administration doesn't give me a lot of hope, but since the Science March back in April, which had an amazing global turnout, I also see that I'm not the only one.
Descartes
Descartes apparently viewed the human body as a machine which could be understood by the reductionist method: take it a part, study the parts, and put them back together to study the big picture.
But of course we know that in medicine, you can't simply study the parts to know the whole, same with in an ecosystem. The parts are always in relationship with the whole, engaging in their being and production and autopoesis.
At the same time, I feel like I get the lure of approaching any form of study in this way. It's how I study herbs in school. We learned them one by one before we learned them as formulas which may not be the 'best' way to learn them, but it was a simple and straight forward approach. It was interesting to find our from our formulas professor that actually, knowledge about herbs also came from the fact that they were in a certain formula which was doing a certain thing. So traditionally, herbs weren't studied by the individual parts and how that made up the whole. The reasoning went in many directions, it was deduction and induction, and inference.
So it's nice to know that we don't have to be beginner's and learn things in the reductionist way just because this seems like an easy place to start.
I really appreciate you bridging the concept of reductionist to learning herbs. My self-study of herbs started with learning about herbs by looking at how components of formulas. Eventually, talking to others and reading certain books led me to believe I was suppose to learn them individually, but I found that really unnatural. Though it is clearly a reductionist way of thinking that says you must learn herbs that way, I had not made the connection before now. Thanks Alex! It also makes me think of how herbs are sometimes written or talked about with the major emphasis on specific chemical compounds. I think its important to be aware of chemical compounds that we know and our knowledge of how they interact with the body, but there is so much more to a plant than what you can define with organic chemistry.
ReplyDeleteLol I love the comic! :) I totally agree with you about the lure of a reductionist way of approaching learning. I think what you said about herbs is totally true - sometimes the same herb we talk about in formulas class sounds totally different from the single herb we learned just because we're talking about it in relationship to a whole formula. It's like getting to know a person on their own and then having that understanding of them totally change when you see them with their group of friends. I feel like we do the same thing in our diagnosis classes. We often talk about patterns as if a patient will only present with one pattern, and don't often talk about how the symptoms might change when theirs a whole constellation of patterns existing in one person.
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