What is Worship - The Conservation of Angular Momentum and the Figure Skater
Many people wonder what worship is. Worship is not going to a building and singing once a week.
Do you know when I experience worship? Actually many times a day. But there is a time when I never fail to gasp in awe and wonder. It is every time I see a math equation that describes a physical reality.
Even more so, do I marvel when I see that the manipulation of the math continues to describe reality. For example in the equation for the conservation of angular momentum, L=mvr, with r being the distance between a massive object and a smaller object executing spin around a fixed point.
when you do simple algebra to get v=L/(mr) it means that when you decrease the distance r the velocity of the spin increases.
That is why when an ice skater pulls her arms in, her spinning speed increases.
I cannot help but marvel at how the relationship between the terms can be expressed in different ways and the result is still true.
Another example is E=mc^2 Many people do not know that Albert Einstein first wrote the equation as m=E/c^2 Increasing the energy increases the mass a little. That is why when you click the spring on your ball point pen, the energy in the spring makes the pen a tiny bit heavier.
