Playing with my Food...

Tonight, I went to dinner with my family. I was sitting around, not really being social when I realized that some of the food in front of me had hidden concepts of physics.

This is my dad's plate after he went to the salad bar. "Here, I got you some, Steph," was the first thing he said when he came back, balancing this plate precariously on his hand while rushing back to the table. I laughed. I love my dad. :)

Anyway, I thought that balancing this much food would take a lot of skill. My dad probably wasn't thinking about Physics while raiding the salad bar, but there is obviously Physics here.

The center of mass of the food would have to be somewhere over the plate so that the food doesn't fall. It's even a little harder than that because we wouldn't want little pieces of mac salad falling off, would we?


This is the stack of bread that the waitress brought out for us. The first thing I thought of was how far I could make it extend over the top of the table before it falls were the slices uniform (I'm not even kidding, people...-__-).

I estimated that each slice was about 14 cm long. since there are 5 pieces of bread, they would be able to extend 11.8 cm out before falling.

7+3.5+1.75+0.875+0.4373 = 11.8

Well, there you have it, I'm obviously a Physics nerd if this is what I think about when I should be eating. According to my mom, I tend to think of blog topics while I'm eating. What does that say about me...? I wonder...

Oh, and I just thought I'd mention, HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE! :D

Falling Dollies?!

I have always been a pretty easily entertained person. When I was little, one of my favorite toys was probably one of those Russian dolls that comes back up when you push it over. It wasn't until recently that I discovered the underlying physics in it. There are two concepts that can be applied here: a stable equilibrium and (somewhat) oscillating motion.



There's my doll thingy. It's equilibrium is when it's standing straight up. I removed it from equilibrium by pushing it over. When I let go, it didn't travel away from equilibrium, but towards it. It took a little while, but it eventually ended up standing again. This demonstrates a stable equilibrium.

It shows oscillating motion because it goes back and forth. And if you were to graph it, it would look like a cosine graph. Haha.

There is more weight in the butt of the doll, which is what makes it go back to equilibrium. The center of mass/gravity is closer to the ground. Also in the butt end of the doll is a bell. I honestly don't know how my parents dealt with that thing. I could barely stand it long enough to take decent pictures. (Speaking of pictures, sorry they're not very nice. My photography skills are in short supply this weekend.)