Living physics

Back in my senior year in high school, I developed an immense affinity with my physics subject. Not only did it challenge me with different formulae and computations, it also taught me various lessons that I apply in my daily life up to now.

In learning, we are comparable to a white light passing through a prism, which embodies the knowledge and education that we obtain. As a result, we come out in different colors, from red to violet, darkest to lightest, showing us that initially we are all the same, and our outcome depends on how we understand lessons and apply these in our lives.

Dreams start merely as thoughts, fueled by perseverance and determination, immortalized by passionate people who never cease to do the impossible.

Our dreams are like vectors represented by arrows. The arrow’s tail, the origin, shows us the starting point where we first imagined, wished, and desired. The length or body of the arrow symbolizes the distance we took in attaining our wishful thinking. The arrowhead leads us to the path where we will succeed, overcoming all strife and achieving our vision.

We are continuously changing our position; thus, we are constantly in motion. We speed up and keep up with the external forces that enable us to carry on with our plans. Once we accelerate, we are restless, always seeking progress and growth. There will be instances when we decelerate, but the point is that we always go back to where we started: our reference point.

As the First Law of Motion states, “every object continues to remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless a force acts on it to change its state.” We look at this force as our inspiration, the driving element that starts our engine, fueled and kindled by a blazing zeal and passion for success and fulfillment.

A person attains power when he/she does work over a period of time. It’s a lesson in perseverance, as stated well by the old Filipino saying “Kung may tiyaga, may nilaga.” In order to succeed, we must work hard in spite of the time we must spend. All the efforts we exerted will be worth it once we attain the dreams we’ve worked hard for.

We are all projectiles thrown in different places, in different circumstances, in different ways. Yet, we all have our own path we call our trajectory, which determines the direction of our journey and the time that we have to spend in reaching our destination—triumph and glory.

We are magnets, constantly attracting what we imagine and what we aim for.

We have to attain internal equilibrium in our lives. We have to feel a state of inner balance in our system. It’s either we are stable or unstable. When we are stable we become firm and strong, forces equally distributed throughout our whole system. On the other hand, when we are unstable we are frail, easily toppled. Our equilibrium is affected by the position of our center of gravity, the society that either makes or breaks us.

The people around us are called forces, for they are the ones who push and pull us, either for the better or for the worse. These so-called forces are unpredictable for there will be times that we won’t see them coming. There will also be times when these forces will help us rise from our fall or, the opposite, push us to the edge.

Gravity is a natural phenomenon. It is “an attractive force that exists between all objects in the universe.” It pulls objects down, similar to how problems pull people down and let them fall. Problems are tests that God gives to people for them to surpass, not to weigh on them. Another thing gravity teaches us is how to keep our feet on the ground, regardless of how much life has graced us.

Interaction with people is represented by the two intermolecular forces: cohesion and adhesion. We are cohesive when we interact with people of the same interests, adhesive when we interact with those of different interests and preferences. Although being adhesive also means having contrasting pursuits, we still keep the affinity among our differences in order to work as one for progress.

Our parents, mentors, and peers are the buoyant forces that push us up when we are engulfed by various difficulties in life.

When we are stressed, we are physically, emotionally and mentally distorted. And when we fail to find solutions for our stress, we become strained, our ego is deformed.

The Law of Interaction states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” I believe in karma, and that whatever we do to the people around us returns to us, whether good or bad. That is why before we do or say something, we must first discern the repercussions of our actions and words. When we do good, we are blessed. When we do otherwise, we are condemned.

The greatest lesson I’ve learned in physics is that for every problem there is a solution. The formula of each solution may not always be the suitable one, but if we explore further and devise new formulae to solve our problems, we may find the right answer.

Vinny Denise Gabrielle T. Real, 18, is a second year pharmacy student at the University of Santo Tomas.