Week 8 assignments

Newton's Three laws and me

It's hard to notice it in everyday life, but my car got recently hit when it was parked on the street, and was damaged quite severely. A car of the person who hit was damaged pretty bad, too. My damage cost about $3,800. I wonder their damage amount was about the same as mine according to Newton's Law?

Our "Energy Efficient" Culture

Even though Americans here seem to become more conscious on energy efficiency, if I compare here and Japan, it seems that the Japanese pay more attention to it. It is mainly because we lost the war and during and right after it, we had so little resources so we had to use as much of what we've got. Plus, Japan doesn't have much natural resources like here in the U.S. like minerals, woods, food and so on. So knowing we have limited resources forces us to be more conscious. I noticed that when I spent time in the South, many of them still didn't recycle at all (even cans and bottles) and weren't very conscious of the energy saving because it's abundant there and the utility bill was so cheap. I think people will only start to be conscious when they physically realize what we've got is actually limited.

Descartes has a lot to answer for!

I think it's important to have the Cartesian way of thinking. It did answer many questions and helped us understand the nature. But I think they should not deny the phenomenon which they still haven't figured out the formula for it.