What Did I Learn In This Unit? 

In this unit I learned about inertia, Newton’s 1st Law, net force, equilibrium, velocity, acceleration, and how to graph the equation of a straight line. At first glance this may seem like a lot of confusing concepts although, if they are all fully explained, they are very easy to comprehend. I will give a brief summary of each topic.

• Inertia: Inertia is properly defined as, “a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged”. An example of this is if you are trying to re-arrange the furniture in your room. It can be extremely difficult to get your desk from one side of the room to the other because it wants to remain unchanged and continue to do nothing. This is inertia.

• Newton’s 1st Law: Newton’s 1st Law states that, “things want to keep doing what they are already doing.” This law actually has a direct connection to inertia. Now we have realised that things do not only want to continue doing nothing, they also do not want to stop doing something once they begin. And example of this is kicking a rock. It may take some effort at first but once it begins to move, the rock will only stop eventually because of an outside force such as air, the ground, or an obstacle. 

• Net force: Net force is the total force placed on an object. Net force is measured in Newtons (N). Do not get confused with net force and mass. Mass is a measure of inertia which is measured in kg. If a man is pushing a box to the right with a force of 5N to the right, and a woman is pushing the same box with a force of 6N to the left, the net force on the box ends up being 1N.

• Equilibrium: Equilibrium is the point in which opposing forces become balanced. Take the same box as in the previous example. If the mad continues to push the box with 5N of force, and the woman now also pushes the box with 5N of force, the net force on the box will be 0N, creating equilibrium. When an object is at equilibrium it can either be moving at a constant rate, or remain in the same place.

• Velocity: Velocity is the rate at which an object is moving. For my podcast I actually explained velocity in less than 3 minutes. I think that Alexander da’ Costa and I did a pretty good job summarising velocity there. You can watch out video below . 

• Acceleration: Acceleration can be any of three things. Speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction. This can be very confusing as acceleration has always been grouped with the increase of speed, however that is not the case. The formula for acceleration is a=∆v/t (change in velocity / time). There are two more formulas that we are using for constant acceleration. These are the how fast equation which is v=at and the how far equation which is d=1/2at². If you remember these three formulas, calculating acceleration and other things based off of constant acceleration becomes very simple. 

• Graphing the equation of a straight line: Graphing an equation was one of the hardest things for me to do in this unit but now, I think I finally understand it. It is easiest for me if I look at the equation of the line in words/symbols instead of solely numbers.

An example of this would be 

y=4x + .002

If we put this into words we get 

Distance=.002(time²) 

A sample problem : A car increased its speed from 10m/s to 40m/s over 10 seconds...

What was the acceleration of the car?: 
a=∆v/t

a=30/10
a=3m/s²

If the car continues to accelerate at this rate, how fast would it be going after 10 seconds?:

v=at

v=3(10)
v=30m/s

If the car continues to accelerate at this rate, how far would it be after 10 seconds?:
d=1/2a(t²)
d=1/2(3)(10²)
d=1/2(1.5)(100)
d=1/2(150)
d=75m

Overall, every concept we learned in this unit is extremely relevant and important to our everyday lives. Think about it, almost everyone gets into a car on a daily basis (unless you are a boarder at Asheville School) but excluding us, a car is a daily mean of transportation. Understanding Newton's First Law and Inertia would have been really helpful in the beginnings of construction and manual labor. On the very first day of class, Ms. Lawrence told us that we would not be learning anything this year that was not 100% relevant to our lives, and she has kept that promise so far.