Dependence and Physics

I am in a physical science class this semester, so I am learning a lot about physics and the laws that govern our universe. In high school I did rather poorly in my physics class and passed the course with a ‘C’ average. I was just glad to be done with the mathematics of that branch of science. I still loved science, though. This semester was a hard one to begin. As always, I was excited to begin a class that dealt with science. Then the math hit me and I began to struggle.
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At that point I started to pray that God would help me to understand it all. So did my wife and my mother-in-law (an avid prayer warrior). Prayer had a curious effect upon my ability to grasp the math. I actually began to understand it! That being said, I am now interested in the reasons I began to understand the math of physics. Was it an attitude change, did something just click, or was it God being faithful by helping me in this challenging situation? I think it was the latter of the three. God actually helped me to get it.
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My wife and my mother-in-law have a classic line whenever something is bothering me or becoming an issue: “Did you pray yet?” I hate it when my wife brings up prayer, it makes me feel so dependant. Wait a minute…doesn’t God want us to see that we are completely dependant on Him? Yes. My wife gets it. I still don’t, most of the time. Yet God is faithful to us in spite of our false sense of independence. And looking back at physics, I can see something incredible: where did the laws of the universe come from? The Lawgiver: God Himself. How do I exist and where is my dependence? God.

Eritu’s Defeat Part 2 - The Warrior’s Surrender

Eritu arrived at the invisible walls of the invisible fortress and something held him back. Again, he could not see or feel the walls, but it seemed as though hundreds of small hands were pushing on him, poking him in the eye, and pulling his hair. He stepped back in wonder. The glory of the King was still shining bright and he could barely see around himself.
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Suddenly an unseen feminine voice spoke “Surrender.” Eritu knew what to do, for his people used surrender as a form of worship. And who was worthy of worship more than the King? He bowed and weaved his hands over his head as though he were locking himself to the ground. This cued the unseen fortress to levitate him and bring him into its security. Eritu looked up and saw nothing. Not ‘nothing’ in the sense that it was dark or bare. No, he was somehow departed from everything that is mass and reality. It felt good and safe.
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Then he saw the King. He was tall, light-skinned, and similar in appearance to Eritu save for the headdress he was wearing and the warm clothing. He was not glowing like his glory, though. He was quite bearable to look at, and very attractive. The King was walking in the nothingness as though there were a floor, and Eritu felt as though there should be a floor, but there was not, not even the feeling of a solid structure beneath him. Eritu was bowing, looking up at the King and saw that He and the King were on the same level. How great his goodness, thought Eritu, that he defies this world and its discomfort. For Eritu felt healed of his battle wounds.
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The King spoke, “You are the last of your people?”
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“I think so, my King.”
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“It is right that you come to me, then. I will make you great, then, as the last surviving warrior of all your tribe.” The King looked at Eritu with piercing eyes. Eritu stood up and saw that he was several hand-widths shorter than the King.
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“My King, what do want me to do to worship your goodness?” Eritu spoke impulsively in the rhetoric of reverence. For the King was great.
The King looked at Eritu for a moment longer. Then Eritu felt the immensity of the moment: worship is more than just surrender.

The Gravity of a Situation

(I wrote this short story with some physics math in it to review for a physical science test I have today. I thought it was a fun idea, and I hope you enjoy it.)
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Rick woke up with a splitting headache. As his eyes began to work, he noticed that he was in a metallic room. Panels of metal, riveted together, surrounded him above, below and on all sides. There was a window framed into the metal wall opposite him, a breeze was blowing through. Surrounding him were several seemingly unrelated objects: a scale, hairbrush, tarp, towel, bathtub, stopwatch, some slippers, a Geiger counter, pencil, basketball, and calculator. He thought out loud “Where on Earth am I?” Then he noticed a metal plate with red letters on it, written was:

“Captain!!!” Rick screamed. As his breath left his lungs in this scream, he noticed something very odd. He felt light…very light. He felt like he could jump higher than ever before. So he tried. The ceiling of this strange metallic room was about 15 feet, he estimated, from the floor. He jumped, and made it approximately 5 feet off the ground. MARS PROBE IV. “I must be on Mars.” He began putting the pieces together, “I am a captain with NASA. And it is the year 2025!” Rick thought, why do I not know any of this? “That explains the headache!” Rick began laughing giddily. “And the O2 must be getting low, because I sure am out of it!” Rick slapped himself. He needed to stay conscious and find oxygen.

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The Captain went to the window and looked down. There was a surface with three doors and some cylinders below. He had to strain to see the floor though, the lighting was poor and it was a long drop. I wonder how far that is. Suddenly, an equation came to mind:

“How can I remember scientific equations, but not remember where I am or what I am doing?” Rick thought for a moment, and then began working to figure how far of a drop he would experience in order to get to the surface below. He needed to know the acceleration of gravity on Mars and the time it takes an object to fall the distance. His initial velocity would be zero. Rick grabbed the hairbrush and the stopwatch and proceeded to measure the time it took the hairbrush to hit the surface below. POUNG! The brush hit hard. He read the stopwatch after stopping it when he saw the brush hit bottom: “5.23 seconds.”
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“Now, how strong is the gravity on Mars?” The captain weighed himself on the scale lying on the floor. “Here, I weigh 84 lbs. I think (if I remember correctly) I weighed about 220 lbs. on Earth.” Rick fidgeted with the calculator “84 divided by 220 equals point three eight, 38 percent! So the gravity on Mars is 38% that of Earth, which is 9.80 meters per second squared.” The calculator figured the math for Rick: “Downward acceleration here on Mars is 3.72 meters per second squared.” Rick wasted no time writing out the equation with the pencil he had found on the metal floor:
He then worked the equation into the calculator: d=50.88m. “51 meters, well.” Rick thought again. Would a jump that far kill him at his weight and acceleration? He needed oxygen.
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Rick stood on the edge of the window and jumped spread-eagle to get as much air resistance as possible. He hit with a bone-crunching thud. He looked up and saw on the metal floor before him several cylinders marked “O2.” Rick barely moved. The pain was so great that it caused his headache to seem pleasurable. He looked up further, propping himself on his bruised arms. He saw that one of the doors was not a door, but a porthole. He could see the Martian landscape, red sand blowing at an odd angle to himself. Rick gathered his thoughts and then spoke “It would seem my spacecraft has crashed, and now I have some oxygen before me, but these broken bones will prove to be a problem. Maybe I should have used the tarp for a parachute. Just my luck.”

Eritu’s Defeat Part 1 - The Warrior’s Retreat

Over distant hills covered with smoldering grass a slender figure was running steadily. Sixteen miles had been covered by this man’s weary feet already. He was skipping over the fieldstones and short-stepping over the puddles of blood. The man’s eyes were pouring water that cleansed his brown skin of filth and war-scarring. He was breathing with a metallic taste in his mouth as he cleared the battlefield, nearing his goal.
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The people to whom this man, Eritu, belonged were all but completely dead. He was not sure whether he was the only one left. Eritu had been fighting alongside his comrades for several days now, and had escaped death several times – as its sword was swinging for his neck. Cowards did not belong to his family, but he thought himself one, because he eventually tired of battle and hid until the fighting had passed farther into his country. Free of any risk of being captured, several hours later, he had risen and began running toward the only fortress he knew of.
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He was now so close to his goal, the indefatigable King, that he could see the King’s glory. He winced, not because of the pain his muscles felt, but because the goodness of this legendary King was intense. Eritu had never before visited the King, he had only heard of him in stories. And, as all young warriors are told, he was to go to the King if his people were at an end. This King fought not with swords and bullets, but with goodness that no man could understand. Eritu would have peace when behind this great King. As he neared the fortress he saw that there was no actual physical structure for the Ruler to live in. But yet this place was the King’s palace – as real as any palace that we can see with our eyes and hands – only, Eritu could not touch this palace, he would find that he could only be there, and that his senses would prove useless to detect the fortress’ boundaries.

Marty's Revenge

Young Marty Adkins decided to conquer his enemy at last. He left the funeral of his father with a false smile of appreciation to all of the guests. No one expected him to be grateful for the work everyone had done, but welcomed his recognition of their quick assistance. He got in his car, a blemish-free 2002 Honda Civic, and calmly drove from the mortuary. When he got home, he went into the basement and searched for his gun. His father had purchased him the gun when he turned 15 as a rite of passage. Marty was so happy with the gift, he went paint-balling with his friends the next day. Marty had not touched the gun in over a year. But he could still remember the sting of paint-balls hitting his skin. He likened it to the stinging in his eyes. He had not slept for over 24 hours because he was contemplating. Contemplating his father’s death, figuring out what to do about it. He knew that there was only one thing to resolve the hatred he held.
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Marty went into his room and found the paint balls he had left over from the last time he had gone out. He kept them under his bed because he never knew when he’d need them to throw at his sister. They rarely exploded when he just threw them, but he could still make them sting his sister’s skin. He took a paintball between his thumb and forefinger and rolled it around. He watched the yellow as the sun hit it through the window. He suddenly felt the sun warming his body, and pulling him away from his anger.
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He awoke at 2:09AM. He thought his dream was real and began to cry. How could he have killed anyone with a paintball gun? He laid in the darkness forever, thinking about the possibility. He could not have killed anyone with a paintball. In his dream the paintball entered a man’s chest like a bullet. Paintballs don’t do that. No one had really died, except his father. Again Marty felt his blood pressure rising. He will conquer his enemy now. His enemy took his father without a fight because he was fooled. His father was snared into a trap and was corkscrewed into oblivion by a power he didn’t understand.
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Marty got up quickly and opened his bedroom door. The lights in the rest of the house were out, and his mom’s car was in the driveway. They must have found him sleeping in mourning and gone to bed without stirring him. He quietly opened the front door of the house and slipped out with his paintballs flashing in the streetlights. He got in his car and headed out into the city. Marty lived in the suburbs, so it would be a while before he made it downtown. His enemy was waiting, fully unaware.
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He stopped in a vacant parking lot and loaded his gun. He pulled back out onto the street, sweeping his head inconspicuously looking for cops. He saw his target ahead, on the corner of 8th Avenue and McCollister Street. She was dealing like usual, pulling the masses into her cold embrace only to disease them, to kill them silently. Marty drove by slowly and stuck his arm out car window, pulling the trigger 5 times. He heard a scream and screeched away. He turned down lots of back streets so no one could follow him, he wanted vengeance, but was not willing to go to jail for it. He had destroyed his enemy. No one would ever paintball a bar. The McCollister Pub is a warm and inviting place. But now the perfect exterior was blemished, the people driving by could no longer read the funny quip on the sign: “Beer is the answer; I forgot what the question was.”

The Space Between the Gate and the Sanctuary

My uncle Steve is a HVAC (heating and cooling) contractor. He once told me a story about a job he was called to do. He went to work at a house whose owner was at work. Having made arrangements with the homeowner, Steve knew that he needed to park in the alley and that he could go in the house through the back door, which could be unlocked by a key hidden beneath the door mat. Steve pulled up to the fenced-in back yard and, after gathering his tools, proceeded through the gate, and began walking across the large backyard to the house.
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Approximately ten feet into the sixty foot span, he heard something behind him. It sounded like a small bell or the rhythmic clanking of tags on the collar of a running dog. It was the latter. The dog was of formidable size and fierce looking– one which could easily remove the calf of its opponent with a quick bite followed by a tearing motion. Needless to say, my uncle quickened his pace considerably. He was running at his top speed, he estimated, burdened still by two handfuls of tools.
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The clanking tags closed in on him quickly. He was just halfway to the sanctuary of the house when he gave up and braced for the worst. He took a wrench in his hand and turned around to face his assailant. The dog, being quicker than Steve’s reflexes, quickly grasped Steve’s shin in its massive jaws. My uncle started flailing and beating the dog with his wrench when he noticed a curious twist to this drama. There was no pain. Was he numb? In shock? No – the dog had no teeth.
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(This story has been modified from the way it was originally told to me in order to increase the dramatic effect it would have on you, the audience.)

The Frog Kid

You may be wondering about the picture that I chose to represent this blog. The picture is of me when I was about 6 years old. In it I am focusing all of my inquisitive attention on a small American toad (Bufo americanus), which a relative is holding for my inspection. I am fortunate to have had a family member snap a picture at this moment because it has shaped my life. Beginning at that meeting, I fell in love with the incredible world of nature and, specifically, the reptiles and amphibians that live within it. During my junior high and high school years, I was labeled “The Frog Kid” by my peers. And, I was proud of such a title.

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For a long time my career goal was to become a herpetologist (a scientist that works with reptiles and amphibians). I even started down the road towards a career in zoology through a volunteer program at a local zoo. But dreams seem to be the hardest things to attain in reality and, when I decided to go to college, I abandoned herpetology to study something more fiscally responsible. I am now just one year from graduating with a secondary education certificate in English. Is it a loss? Not completely; I love teaching, literature and language. I look forward to teaching, but I sometimes sit alone, in a quiet place and ask “Where has that boy gone?” “Why did I give up my dream to study some of God’s most incredible creations?”

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Yes, college happened, and then my wife came into the picture. The truth is that, through all of this, the boy whose heart beat in tempo with the frogs’ singing was still there. And, slowly, the childish dreams I had buried were being dug up by my wife and those who love me. No force of will could ever cause me to give up the financial security I could give my wife or future children if I just did what is normal. But few things are stronger than my wife’s love – and she is drawing that child back out with her love. Ironic? Yes. She, whom I planned to protect with a “wise” career choice, is causing me to remember my heart buried in a career that is not about money, but about joy. I will find joy in teaching, but perhaps, someday again, I will descend into a swamp for the sake of the most joyous career: herpetology.
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For more Information on Herpetology:

The Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles

The Smithsonian National Zoological Park Website

The Upside Down Sea

(This is a poem I wrote after seeing the painting Rain in August, Platte Valley (2005) by Keith Jacobshagen - I have inserted a picture of one of his other paintings: Power Station, Missouri Valley, Near Hamburg (2002))


Out a window we see
a vast upside-down sea.
The blue with white cotton candy
floats atop broken verdigris.

This window frames the reality
that we know from our nativity.
The ground that we work and know
is only a fraction of the ocean below
and when on the plain we see,
upside down, above the ground, a sea.