7. Universal Law of Gravitation

Sir Isaac Newton, the same man who made our lives hell back in high school, came up wih the universal law of Gravitation about 300 years ago. One wonders, would it have hurt him if he had chosen another profession *sigh*, we do share your anger students. Anyhow, coming back to the topic at hand, Sir Isaac gave this law which helps us calculate the gravitational pull between any two masses. The law can be stated as F = G × [(m₁m₂)/r²].

F -Gravitational force between the two objects

M₁/ m₂ -Masses of the two objects

r– Distance between them.

G– Gravitational constant

Yeah, a bunch of Mathematics, what’s the use? Well, this law will help scientists put up a satellite in orbit or when they are planning a trip to the moon.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk5E-CrE1zg[/youtube]

6. Newton’s Laws of Motion

Ah, finally, the three laws of motion as Sir Isaac Newton called them. These three laws are the basics of modern physics and you definitely can’t pass your physics course without understanding them. They are quite simple and somewhat rather based on basic observations. The first law states that an object in motions stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force. Example being of a trolley moving down a frictionless road, it will continue to travel unless it is acted upon by another force. The second law is an essential one to remember, F= m x a. F is the force in Newton, m is mass of the body and a, acceleration. The law gives us the relation between a mass of the object and acceleration and the force required to generate that acceleration. The Third law is simple, you reap what you sow; every action has a reaction that is equal and opposite in direction.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVdqxYyFRKY[/youtube]

5. Laws of Thermodynamics

A novelist and a physicist, C.P. Snow once said ‘A nonscientist who didn’t know the second law of thermodynamics was like a scientist who had never read Shakespeare’. The statement sure tells us the importance of the law and the fact that even non-scientists should know it.

Thermodynamics is the study of how energy works within a system and can be broken down to some basic laws. According to Mr. Snow; you can’t win, you can’t break even and you cannot quit the game. Let’s understand these statements; the first one tells us that we need to give up something to have something and when it comes to producing work, let’s say, we need to provide the engine with heat and some of it is lost and not converted entirely. So, you can’t win. The second statement deals with the entropy and tells you that you can’t get back to the same state of energy. Energy will always ‘flow’ out to places of less concentration. The third statement refers to the absolute zero; where all the molecules just stop, bringing all their movement to a halt. But that is not possible in the real world.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK2XlsS80bQ[/youtube]

4. Archimedes’ Buoyancy Principle

Naked and running in the streets of Syracuse yelling ‘Eureka’, this is what Archimedes did when he discovered his principle of buoyancy. As to why he was naked, the Greek scholar had realized the principle when he got into the water tub and saw the water rise.

As per Archimedes’ buoyancy principle, weight of the liquid that is displaced is equal to the force applied on that object.  This principle has wide applications when it comes to submarines and oceanic vehicles.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YOZgtWFik0[/youtube]