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