You can't fight physics!

You can't fight physics!

So my husband's parents were in town this past weekend and we decided to go to the Museum of Natural History. My husband's mother is a polio survivor so she uses crutches to get around...everywhere. Needless to say, we requested a wheel chair from the Museum so we could "easily" move through the exhibits. We will get back to this word - easily - in a bit.

So the tour started off in the Rocks, Mineral, and Gens exhibit. This took about one hour so I knew we needed to make some choices on which exhibits were the priority to visit or else we were going to be at the museum until midnight. Thank fully, the dinosaurs are right after the rocks and minerals exhibit so I knew I was going to see my favorite exhibit, and I always linger at Archaeopteryx  because it's just really cool! Here is a link for anyone not obsessed with the common ancestors and the missing link: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/archaeopteryx.html. 

Next stop - bird exhibit!

For the most part, the wheelchair was doing its job - my husband's father was pushing the wheel chair and we secretly knew he was using the chair to assist him in moving through the exhibits but the bottom line - we were moving through the exhibits and everyone was still smiling :) 

The bird exhibit is a long hallway and at the end of the hallway are stairs on the right side of the hallway and a ramp on the left-side of the hallway - approximately 6 meters (about 20 feet for those of you still working with the English system) so it was a gradual slope, perfect for wheelchairs. Or so I thought. We had just started down the ramp - I was walking next to the wheelchair with my in-laws and my husband was already at the bottom of the ramp ahead of us (this is another blog on his gift for tuning out the external world) and for some reason, I looked over at my husband's father and he was looking at me...and in both of his hands were the two rubber wheelchair handles that had somehow come loose from the metal handles on the wheelchair. I'd like to say everything happened in slow-motion but kinetic energy took over... the wheelchair started to move down the ramp, sans the handler and the wheelchair hand grips, and I looked back at my husband's father and, I cannot be absolutely sure because I was still distracted by the gravity-propelled wheelchair, but I think he was smiling! 

Kinetic Energy

The wheelchair started to pick up some speed and I heard my husband's father say, "don't grab the wheels!" I assumed this was because my husband's mother would get her fingers caught but realized that perhaps he just thought this would be an efficient - and easy - way to get my husband's mother to the bottom of the ramp. My husband was in his own world at the bottom of the ramp with his back to all of us. And then the chanting in my head... "an object in motion stays in motion... an object on motion stays in motion...an object in motion stays in motion... unless acted upon by an unbalanced force - in this case, my husband, who thankfully has a solid center of gravity. All ended well, the physics worked just like it was supposed to work - and my husband's mother was unharmed at the bottom of the ramp stopped by the unbalanced force of my husband’s legs and buttocks. I looked back at my husband's father and we both started laughing since he was still standing at the top of the ramp with the wheelchair handle grips in his hands. My husband's mother turns back to us and says, "Now that was kinetic energy!" True - it could have ended much different - but really, knowing Newton's Laws, could it really have ended different? It made for a good story and a visual I will never forget. And thankfully, my mother-in-law is a teacher :)

Jackie Speake
Independent Education Consultant 
NSTA Author, Designing Meaningful STEM Lessons (NSTA Press)
Jackie.Speake@DrScienceGeek.com
DrScienceGeek.com 
@JackieSpeake 
www.linkedin.com/in/jackiespeake