Showing posts with label physics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label physics. Show all posts

Thursday, February 12, 2009

An Introduction To The Collision Theory

Welcome Students! Please take your seats. We shall shortly begin...

Let us start with what is a collision? Simply put, a collision is what occurs when two bodies having mass attempt to occupy the same coordinates in space at the same point in time. Since this is not possible, it results in what is known as a collision. If either or both the bodies are human, then this invariably is accompanied by sound waves comprising signals that our detected by our human ears as "Ouch!", "Aah!, "That hurt", "Look where you are going!", "Stupid!", "Idiot!", "Are you blind?!", and/or various other expletives.

A very common and apt example of a collision is what is popularly known to the laymen as a "punch". This occurs when some smart Alec feels the need to push his jawline (or other vulnerable part of his body) in to the coordinates of 3D space which is being attempted to be occupied by another persons closed fist. Needless to say, mostly such an attempt is painful and leads the person whose fist was there to try it himself too. Whereupon nearby creatures intervene and create/apply a repulsive force strong enough to separate the two of them. Thus, the two mutually injured persons part, often not on very good terms due to the failure of their experiments on the collision theory.

With respect to the human civilization, collisions are a very important part of life. So much so that young homo-sapiens have an inherent instinct towards calculating (without external help) exactly what should be their velocity when they attempt to occupy what point in space and thus cause maximum damage to any who stand in their way. Indeed, perhaps this is the origin of the word "headstrong" as their heads do seem extremely strong when they crash it into the region of your pelvis, oblivious to the fact that unfortunate you had no idea that your paths would cross.

As the young 'uns grow, they learn to exploit the power of collision in more ways than one. I shall discuss a few of them here.
Firstly of course, games and sports make very good use of collisions. One such example would be cricket. American football is another prime example, as are soccer and baseball.

Another prime purpose their in-depth knowledge of collisions students put to, is in harassing their teachers and/or professors. Taking up assault positions at the back of the class so as to have a wider view of the battlefield ahead of them, they time and launch small missiles of a commonly available chemical compound - Calcium Carbonate. This compound, being a small white (in some cases colored) hard object is often successful in delivering a weary student with a welcome exit from the class, whereupon they proceed to practice and hone their knowledge of collisions by one of the earlier methods (cricket, football, etc)

I think that shall be all for today. Perhaps, after a sufficiently long length of time has passed, we may delve deeper into this extremely interesting branch of physics.
Thank you for attending this lecture of mine. It has been a great pleasure.