Halloween Humpty Dumpty

With Halloween coming up, unopened candy litters my house and so to tidy up the mess, I eat the candy. I ate some hershey's chocolate first and then some skittles. Finally I tried the M and M's and physics kicked in. When I was opening the bag of M and M's, all of the different colors fell to the floor. The impact caused many of the hard candy shell to break, sending small pieces in all different directions. The conservation of momentum tells me that the momentum of each M and M is the same as the momentum of the pieces that it broke into. The mass of the M and M multiplied by the velocity right before impact is equal to the sum of each shard's mass multiplied by its own velocity right after breaking.
Humpty Dumpty?

NASCAR

Over the weekend there were many intriguing football games to watch from high school, to college, to professional. There was even couple of baseball games that decided who would advance to the world series. What caught my eye, however, was what is often overlooked on Sunday mornings. Nascar aired for two and a half hours ( I didn't watch all of it, of course). While I was becoming dizzy because of the cars looping around in circles, I began to realize the physics that allowed the cars to move at such high velocities. Even if the cancellation of NASCAR would solve the problems with gas prices, I began to understand the thrill of the sport. All was going well until I saw in bright colors what friction looked like. Even though I know the fire wasn't fully caused because of only friction (like how cavemen started fires), friction against the wall as well as the force that it pushed back on the car with equal and opposite force made Terry Cook run from his burning truck. His high horsepowered engine allowed him to do maximum work in a little time. His truck could accelerate up to the highest velocities, which was good and bad in this case.

Da Ref

So I was at a volleyball game this week, cheering my heart out and forgetting about school when I remembered all about physics. The ball began bouncing back and forth with different kinetic energies, but that was not what I was interested in. The top referee stood above all in the gym and had a higher potential energy than if he was at any height lower. His mass multiplied by gravity and the height of the stand (about six feet) would represent his total potential energy. If he were to fall off of the stand (I wished), at the instant before he touches the ground, his kinetic energy would be equal to that of his potential energy (if there was no air resistance). While in mid air, his potential energy added to his kinectic energy would have been equal to his initial potential energy. Who knew that Newton's law of the conservation of energy exsisted in volleyball?

School bag

So I was about to miss my ride to school at 6:30 in the morning. My mind was still half asleep when I picked up my backpack from the table and placed it in the trunk. I then had a realization that I had done work! Or had I. Considering the table was at the same height as the trunk and I had carried my bag at the same velocity, I accomplished no work. I picked up the bag from the table vertically, so no horizontal force was accounted for. Now it was time for the real kind of work. I would have to spend another eight hours of my life studying and learning.