Ben Rankin

Physics 1010
3 August 2016
Reflection
Hi, you already know my name so I dont need to mention it. Anyway, I have
written a paper on (supposed to be one, but) five different incidents in human
history. In those incidents I was supposed to talk about what went wrong, and what
laws of physics apply to the topic(s). I was supposed to find five different laws of
physics to apply, and show how I applied them.
It was rather interesting to explore what went wrong on each of the incidents,
and how they could have/have been fixed. For example, I never expected to apply
elasticity to an airplane, I thought instead that I would be applying airlift or
something else. It was eye-opening that a couple of birds could bring down an
entire airplane. I got to apply some of Newtons laws, specifically the for every
action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. That came up a lot in the topics I
covered. It also reinforced the concepts that I applied, including buoyancy, force,
velocity, elasticity, and several others.
I can say that I learned a bit from the assignment, whether it be physics or
minor details of history. For example, did you know what the Titanics design was
flawed? Well, it was labeled practically unsinkable, but they didnt actually design
it well enough to prevent the water from spreading far enough to sink it. Something
else is that GE throws stuff at their airplane engines to test them. But youre

probably looking for something physics related I learned. Well, for that I learned that
physics is way more involved in everyday things than I originally thought.