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The book on my bedside table is Robert H. March's "Physics for Poets." I borrowed it from the library when I wrote an essay about my former Physics teacher. It was a Brother who recommended to me this book. I was browsing through this big astronomy book and he seemed pleased that someone was interested in the sciences. He then told me about March's book and how good and comprehensive it was.

Indeed it is. What is good about the book is that while it is an introductory text to Physics, the author, Robert H. March, approaches the subject in a way that he tells a story. The story of Physics.

Here are some of the things that I find enlightening that I wish to share with you, dear reader/s:
An idea must be more than right--it must also be pretty...

. . . .

...It has become a cliche to call a scientific research a great adventure. Well it may be; but the student approaching his first hard science course with this maxim in mind is in for a rude shock. Rarely does mu…

In Creative Non-Fiction class, we've been asked to write 30 journal entries. Why is it that after having that requirement, all things that are happening to me suddenly seem trivial and uninteresting?

The truth is, all things that are happening to me are trivial and uninteresting. The difference is, I make a big deal out of them. I am a master of sensationalizing my life.

Now that a journal is required, the word and act of contemplation becomes icky.

You see, last Saturday, I went home as I usually do, I rode an FX. In that particular night in that particular FX, there was this huge cockroach. I sat at the middle part of the vehicle, beside the right window. The cockroach was walking at the back of the front seat. It was very near me. It was the first time I've seen such ugly and big cockroach that it made the cockroaches in our house cute. Here is an illustration:


I was terrified and disgusted to death. But since God is good, that particular cockroach, unlike the cockroa…

An afterword from R.H.M.'s well-loved Physics book:
To be human is to wonder. Children wonder for a while, before we teach them to be smug about the obvious and to stop asking silly questions. It is easier to pay someone to retain a little of the child and do our wondering for us. We then take comfort in the assumption that anyone devoted to such esoteric pursuits must be insensitive, perhaps even inhuman. With our artists, we perform the equal disservice of regarding them as too sensitive.

Occasionally we are given a glimpse of the finished product. the baby is displayed beind glass, well-scrubbed, and one need not know about the delivery room (it is soundproofed). Thus we are spared the agony of wonder, which is not unlike love and makes as little (or as much) sense as love. But wonder is just too human to fully repress, and it does turn up elsewhere. Some of us turn to fads for the occult, which, interpreted by our twentieth-century minds, becomes a "pop-art" s…

I want to write something better than this
(I strive to be in a better state of mind):

Am about to finish my first year of graduate studies and time has never run faster than this. I'm still sort of--floating. Not that wind association. Meaning directionless. The wind has direction, I don't.

I completely appreciate Carla's job hunting accounts. She's able to articulate some things (feelings) that'll take me years more to talk about, simply because I got so frustrated. Therefore her mere act of telling such stories is something I envy. One thing we have in common is that we both finished with a BA degree in Literature. Now, no matter what the professors in the Lit Dept. say about how wonderful Literature is (yes it is truly wonderful and I believe that with conviction), they will never convince me that it is something you take up as a major if you envision yourself working in a corporate environment.

Ah, the corporate world...

It's true (this is the part whe…

1. Notes on Distance and Displacement
"I took the one less traveled by." - Robert Frostdistance - length of a travelled path; without direction
displacement - how far an object is from its starting point; a quantity with definite direction

scalar quantity - has magnitude only
vector quantity - has both magnitude and direction


2. Law of Interaction

- There is no single force;
- forces act in pairs;
- 2 forces are equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction;
- they don't act on the same body.


3. Law of Momentum

In any collision, the sum of all the momenta before collision is equal to the sum of all the momenta after collision.


4. Notes on Universal Gravitation

- Any two masses in the universe attract each other with force.
- The force of gravitation between any two masses is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.


5. Notes on Relative Motion

Every thing moves. Even things at re…