Nicolas Gomez-Cruz

It was my first year as a high school student, I was sixteen years old and ready for a new year. My first

class was Peruvian History. I have always felt that History as an interesting field of study, especially when

we study the pre-history and the evolution of the human being; however it becomes monotonous when

we memorize dates, places and people. I prefer the practical things like formulas and Algebra.

My second class was new to me, it was Physics. I had not heard of that subject before and was excited to

learn more about it. The teacher started his class by asking questions about our world and the nature.

“Why do the objects fall when you drop them?”, “Why do people hammer a nail on the head and the tip

against the wood, instead of doing it the other way?”, “Can someone tell me what happen with a mini

cooper if it crashes with a bus, both at the same speed?, Why the mini cooper receives more damage

that the bus?”.

At the beginning I found these questions a quite strange, it seemed as these questions have obvious

answers. No one hammers a nail hitting the tip, the head would never get into the wood. “Because the

nail would never get into the wood”, I answered. And continued to ask “why”. “Because it’s easier for

the tip to get into the wood than it is for the head”, a classmate answered. But the professor was

pressing the question, why?

In the end, he told us that the reason was because of its area, he spoke about pressure and its formula

“pressure is the quotient between the force and the area”, applying a force in a little area you get more

pressure than applying the same force in bigger area. I thought a lot about he said with what he said,

and the fact that there are formulas that explain our natural world and the things that happen in it.

This new world, called Physics, was ready to be discovered, and I was more eager and excited to explore

it. Physics is the science that studies the matter and energy, and how they are related. Physics describes

phenomena such as the motion of particles, forces that produce acceleration, Gravitation and electric
fields. I was amazed by the things I learned in that class. I was able to explain what velocity is, how the

acceleration in a body is produced, why friction is important in the motion of a body and transference of

energy between bodies with different temperatures. Since that year, my freshman year, Physics has

become in my passion. I had decided that I would study Physics as a major and my goal would be to

understand the world like no other. This has been my