9-24-08+taylor+canavan

Hello and welcome to Taylor's Terrific Talk Show,

Today Christopher Manning, clad in a light blue collared shirt and a black and gold striped tie, began the class period with a discussion of inertia. Inertia is described as the tendency of an object to resist acceleration. He described the greater mass the greater the inertia. Therefore, the heavier the mass the less acceleration an object will have. Mass and inertia are synonymous. Mass is technically the measure of inertia. Teacher Manning then continued to question students about their answers. The inquisitive students then took their turn to ask him questions: "Can something be at rest this way or this way and not this way?" - Colleen Reynolds...motioning with hands. Demonstrations were done by Manning in an attempt to keep the class interested. These included a model car with a ping-pong ball representing a person, a diagram of a car turning and a fake ice cream cone with a launch-able scoop of ice cream. Each represents inertia in action: the body in the car is affected by inertia when the car turns and accelerates or decelerates. Similarly, when motion haults, such as in the ice cream demonstration, inertia causes the object (ice cream) to continue moving at a constant pace.

The pupils around me seem considerably interested in the inertia discussion as conversation shifts to talk of amusement parks. The subject then shifts to various types of force as a tantalizing aroma permeating from the cafeteria enters the room. I force myself to focus: Four different names of forces include normal, tension, friction and gravity. More specifically, normal, tension and friction are all contact forces whereas gravity is a long range force in which no contact is needed. Normal force is described as a PRESSING FORCE. It moves towards the object it is supporting. Tension is a STRETCHING force in which it moves away from the object it's supporting.Friction is a RUBBING force. Its direction is opposite to the object its supporting. Lastly, gravity involves two objects that have mass attracting each other.

After this an intense session of explaining types of forces we move onto the Stretchin' for an Answer Lab which we received in class today. Apparently it deals with constructing carts, applying force to these carts and observing their reaction to these various applied forces. Manning assigns three questions that he expects the class to complete by the end of tomorrow's class. Due to the extreme length of 5th period, I hypothesize this class will never end...

Apparently I stand corrected. The time is now 12:26 and the class has finally come to an end. Tune in next week for an in-depth study of why students are malnourished yet still deemed obese. Until next time this is Taylor Canavan logging out. Toodles!