Month: May 2021

Hello everyone, guys!

Some time ago, I received news of the possibility that, in ancient times, an ancient species of tuna could have gone as far as polar latitudes. Obviously, given the abstruseness of all this, I wanted to check for myself and I departed.

It was certainly not an easy expedition and, as expected, no trace of primitive frozen fossil tuna … I was also about to seriously risk not being able to get food for the return trip, if it wasn’t for physics, that still one once got me out of trouble and allowed me to remain unharmed.

On the way back, I was sailing on a river not yet completely frozen when my boat ran into threatening rapids and tumbled down a waterfall. I lost all the food, the tools, the notes… but don’t worry, my memory is iron! Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about my stomach, you have to live on something, what the heck! And science alone, as we know, only satisfies the mind.

I have wandered a lot in the vain search for something edible, but – alas! – at those latitudes, so close to the Arctic Circle, food certainly doesn’t abound and we walk along inaccessible paths. The cold had devastated my paws, but I knew I had to continue at all costs: from what I remembered seeing on the map, not far from the river from which I had escaped there should have been a lake. And lake meant fish, I had to believe it and to proceed at all costs. By that moment, this hope was the only force that moved my paws. Once I regained my strength and got some supplies, I could even reach a town and return to civilization.

I still had to light a few fires before seeing the much coveted stretch of water among the conifers, hunger had exhausted me. Then, you can imagine what anger when I discovered that the lake was completely frozen! Obvious, you say, at those latitudes what did you expected to find? Sure … I knew it very well, but part of me was expecting a stroke of luck…

Usually, the ice is less thick in the center and I might have had a chance to carve it with my nails to make a small hole and catch some fish. However, if I had walked on that hard, frozen surface, the damage to my paws would have been worse than that caused by the fresh snow up to that point, because it added the risk of sticking my pads to the ice itself.

I inspected the shore, looking for something that could help me and suddenly I saw it. No, it wasn’t a mirage: it was just a wooden sled about 1.5m / 2m from the shore. If I had managed to make a good leap, I would probably have been able to reach the center of the lake, also helped by the thrust that I would have given to the sled landing there after the jump.

Hi guys!

I have a rather curious habit: I love falling asleep on top of an old TV in my living room. It’s spacious enough to lie down and take a nice nap, without risking that anyone step on my tail.

Unfortunately, given the repetition of certain episodes, I think it is now evident that it is not wide enough to complete my nap without… falling!

Yep, guys: I am forced to admit that, while I’m sound asleep, I relax, I stretch out, I turn around and … I fall (even if I don’t get hurt, because like all cats I always fall on my feet)! 

It only happens from time to time and, precisely, it’s all gravity’s fault. But these are other stories: what I want to tell you today concerns the motion of bodies in free fall.

All of us are subjected to the gravity force, which causes all falling bodies to be attracted to the ground with the same acceleration, defined as g = 9.8 m/s². This scientific conclusion was first formulated by Galileo Galilei, father of the experimental method, and was openly in contrast with what was believed before him, namely that bodies with greater weight could fall faster than lighter ones. Nothing more wrong!