I’m happy to report the winner of my giveaway basket is Tammy H.! I’ve been in touch with Tammy, and the giveaway box will soon be on its way.
Congratulations, Tammy!
It’s been a fun week checking in on the progress of the contest—so much that I’m sure I’ll be doing another soon. I’ve always enjoyed shopping for gifts, and collecting items for this basket was a bit like doing that. So I’ll keep that up!
I was glad to read in the comments that many people enjoy slice of life posts. The ones I’ve written usually come from discussions with my husband, during what we call our “debriefing” sessions. We’ve been doing this every day for more than a decade, mainly because we’re blessed to be similar in many ways. Oh, he’s a science guy and I’m a writer, which means what we do have in common is displayed in different ways. But we’re both creative, and both generally curious people. When we come across something interesting, we keep it in mind to talk about with each other. It’s amazing how much we enjoy discussing something that, on our own, we probably wouldn’t have thought about without the other one of us bringing it up.
Just yesterday I was recounting how I’d seen a portion of a debate on the television and that the format tallied the opinion of the audience coming in and then, once the debate ended, if any minds were changed on that particular topic. It’s difficult to change your thinking on things, particularly if you’ve held certain views for some time. Even when presented compelling arguments, there are some beliefs that are hard or even impossible to let go.
When I mentioned this to my science-teacher husband, he just laughed and said every school year in his class shares that format. He teaches Physics, and tells the students that the way they understand something may not be the way things really are.
Huh?
Physics must convince the students how things really work, not necessarily what they see. Case in point: if you slide a hockey puck across the floor, eventually it stops. Why? Because it runs out of energy from the push? Nope. The kids are surprised to learn that without other forces on this hockey puck, such as friction and air resistance, once that hockey puck was set in motion it would have continued going . . . forever.
So you wonder what would happen if you slapshotted that puck off a table? It would hit the ground and once again come to a stop due to those previously mentioned forces. This is where Einstein and his thought experiment ideas prove useful, something Isaac Newton understood. Newton said if you hit that hockey puck fast enough and could do it off the ground and outside our atmosphere, it would still try to fall to earth—but if the hockey puck were given just the right speed, the path of the puck would trace out a circle and match the earth’s shape. That’s how satellites work, by the way. If you shoot that puck this way, you would have humanity’s first hockey puck in orbit (along with thousands and thousands of other orbiting debris).
All I did was mention a bit of a debate I watched, and was reminded that sometimes it’s hard to change your mind, even if what you learned was incorrect. Relearning something might be harder than learning something for the first time!
Thanks again to everyone who participated in my contest this time around, and I hope you’ll check back when I do this again!
Join Me!