Books line the back wall of my study.<\/p>\n
Morse and Feshbach; Poincar\u00e9; Jackson; Goldstein; Misner, Thorne and Wheeler; Courant and Hilbert; Margenau and Murphy; Abraham and Marsden. <\/em>And others.<\/p>\n I am my father\u2019s son. Many of those books were his. And more than a bit of my father’s theoretical physical nature runs in my veins.\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019ve known for some time that the neighbors\u2019 Walnut tree was going to be a problem.<\/p>\n Many years ago, they cut back the branches overhanging their house and their power line, leaving the those hanging this way (although truth be told, at the time they probably did so out of deference to the then-owners of this house who might have enjoyed the tree).<\/p>\n Then a few years ago, twigs and small branches began dying and dropping into our yard and onto our roof \u2014 mostly small stuff. We had our tree guy cut back some dead branches when he was here.<\/p>\n Finally, the first sizable branch fell a few days ago. And wouldn\u2019t you know it, it got hung up on our power line. The taut line seemed to be growning under the load but didn\u2019t seem in jeopardy.<\/p>\n F\u00a0<\/strong>= ma<\/strong><\/em>, as the saying goes. A little bit of dynamics. A little bit of statics. Theoretical physics of a sort \u2014 visible just outside our kitchen window.<\/p>\n Our tree guy had told us, \u201cOnce the branches start dying, the tree goes fast.\u201d<\/p>\n So we talked to the neighbors about it. But that was a while ago. And now they were out of town. And that branch was on our power line. So I gathered my loppers and my saws and and went into the back yard.<\/p>\n I had a plan \u2014 a strategy based on my estimation of the relevant physics, my general expectations for the branch\u2019s trajectory after I lightened its load. It was a good plan, because the branch would fall away from me. Which it did.<\/p>\n I know you expected me to say that the branch fell top of me. I am happy to report that it didn\u2019t. It followed the trajectory I expected and fell away from the ladder, away from me.\u00a0But here\u2019s the thing of it.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>When the branch hit the ground, it twisted. And when it twisted, a small sub-branch of it swung around. And when that sub-branch swung around, it\u00a0clomped<\/em> me on the shoulder. Hard. And I\u2019m lucky it didn\u2019t break my collar bone.<\/p>\n So you see, the problem here is this\u2026\u00a0I am indeed my father\u2019s son. I have a theoretical approach to things. I understand Newton\u2019s laws. I can work with Lagrangians and Hamiltonians. I can derive the Planetary Equations. I can tell you about the mathematics of the Earth\u2019s gravity field. Hand-wavy, general principles, big-picture physics.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s the nitty gritty<\/em> that gets me. And that, my friends, is why I shun power tools. Because sadly,\u00a0theoretical<\/span><\/em> physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. Son of a Theoretical Physicist Books line the back wall of my study. Morse and Feshbach; Poincar\u00e9; Jackson; Goldstein; Misner, Thorne and Wheeler; Courant and Hilbert; Margenau and Murphy; Abraham and Marsden. And others. I am my father\u2019s son. Many of those books were his. And more than a bit of my father’s theoretical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3957"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3969,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957\/revisions\/3969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Fallen Branch\u00a0<\/h3>\n
3. Applied Physics at Work<\/h3>\n