I am not a physicist. (That sounded like some sort of confession, didn't it... Hello, my name's Gill, and I am not a physicist.) However, I do still understand a little of the physics I learnt at school. I feel I should apologise to Mrs Johnston; possibly the best physics teacher in the world, for not understanding more - but it has been a while... I'm sure she would forgive me.
Whilst cycling with Nathan today, I felt I had a lesson-worthy demonstration of momentum... As we cycled together, it was a lot of effort to get moving - after all, moving myself, Nathan, my bike and our tag along bike '
Caroline' is a lot of weight, and thus a great deal of inertia to overcome. Actually, maybe the greatest inertia was getting myself off the sofa... Still, we got moving.
What surprised me though, was how much less effort it was to keep going at a steady pace. Whilst we were cycling a long at an even pace (not fast you understand... I wasn't built for speed!) we could pootle along quite happily. If however, we slowed down for some reason, it was so much more effort getting back up to speed. On the way home, when I was getting a bit tired, I found myself not wanting to slow down - as I knew I would just have to use more energy to get up to speed again. When we were up to speed, we were benefiting from momentum.
Whilst cycling, I realised that inertia and momentum are not just physical phenomena; they can be emotional and spiritual too.
Did you give up anything for lent? I didn't actually; mainly because I didn't want to give myself more hoops to jump through. I just wanted to concentrate on doing the things I was already trying to do. One of the things I am doing is trying to read through the Bible in a year. This is something I started half-way through January. It took a bit of motivation to overcome my inertia, but now I'm reading it each day - it has become a good habit, and thus I have some momentum.
I guess this thought could apply to anything where you get in the groove of doing something, so it just gets that little bit easier. Giving up smoking / going to an exercise class / speaking to new people when you're a bit shy / playing a piece of music you find challenging... The list is huge when you start to think about it.
I guess it's also worth remembering that negative things can have a way of gaining momentum too... Once you're in a group of people gossipping and saying negative things about someone, it's a whole lot harder to back out of the conversation. Your mouth can gain momentum much more quickly than your brain I think... The best example of this however, is probably how hard it is to stop eating Maltesers when there's a pack of them open, and you've already eaten three... I guess Einstein never worried too much about the addictive powers of confectionary.
Here's hoping we can gain momentum with all things good.
