Sandy Supposes....

A Bike And Physics' Lessons

PROMPT March 16th

What lesson do you remember most vividly from your childhood?

         

         

         . I'm surprised I did not suffer any residual brain damage when I navigated my childhood. At least, I believe most of my faculties lived to blunder along. I'm not bragging per se, yet I learned to balance atop a careening bicycle free of any safety gear whatsoever. No helmet cinched under my chin and bobbed along. No elbow or knee pads cushioned my sharpest and most vulnerable joints.

         Have I mentioned bell bottoms, the flared denim jeans I stuffed myself into? Most of those flares were so exaggerated, my jeans could've subbed as the mainsail for a sail boat. Oh, and my sneakers came equipped with extra-long shoe laces that refused to stay knotted. They preferred to drag. Are you getting the picture?

          Apparently, I was setting myself up for the perfect storm, or calamity. I learned a few valuable life lessons which I repeated as my fractures, road rash, and contusions can verify. I discovered that what goes up must come down. I met gravity more than once. I proved speed is a contributing factor in most accidents. I relived the physics mainstay. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

         Yep, flares and shoelaces are not ideal biking gear. Maybe it's the law of attraction, but they could not resist the lure of the chain. An entanglement ensued. Imagine my surprise, especially the first time my bike stopped without warning and I felt myself jet-propelled to the unforgiving road.

         Now, I have realized that much of my childhood mishaps just happened to be physics lessons. Unwittingly, I recreated the formula for velocity. A falling object, me, is 'v.' The letter 'g' is free fall acceleration while a 't' stands for fall time measured in seconds. Oh, and 'Vo' is initial velocity. This is velocity: v=Vo + gt. I can attest to falls occurring in seconds, perhaps even micro seconds.

          I also lived and breathed impact mechanics on a daily basis. "An impact is a high force or shock applied over a short time period when two or more bodies collide." Oh, I can attest to the 'bodies' colliding. My body, my bike, and the pavement know all about shock and collisions. This science also alludes to resilient materials having a better impact resistance. Is that what my infrastructure, my bones, and my surface material, my skin proved to be?