All technology we trust, from cars to smartphones, engineered using physics. You don’t have to know science to use these things. But a well-known person must understand at least some of the main concepts – with some music, art, history, and economy. Robert Heinlein said everything It’s enough time in love:

“A person should be able to change the diaper, plan a promotion, grill a pig, connect a ship, design a building, write a soneto, balancing accounts, balance with accounts, balance with accounts, balance with accounts, balance with accounts, balance with accounts, balance with accounts, Build a wall, set a bone, relieve dying, take commands, give orders, cooperation alone, solve the equations, analyzes a new problem, Putting fertilizer, computer programming, cooking delicious food, fight well, die bold. The specialization is for insects. “

So, in interest non-insects, here are my top-five physics equations you need to know.

1. Newton’s second law

I’m sure you’ve seen it before – over 300 years of age, and it’s popular with science and t-shirt memes. It says that the net force of something corresponds to its mass (m) times to accelerate (a). But what is the meaning of that? It’s about interactions-like you kick a soccer ball or drop a water bottle on the floor.

Newton’s second law says that we can describe these interactions with the concept of “force.” And what do forces do? The net force of something changes the movement of the object. But wait! There is a set of cooler things in this simple looking equation.

See those bowels above F and a? That indicates variables vectors, means it has more than one piece of information. For example, if someone asks you to “socially distant” yourself in 1 meters, where do you go? Who knows? You can go to 1 meters east or west or 39 degrees from the north. The distance of himself is not the whole story; You also need to set a direction. This is true for forces and pursuit. Other numbers (such as mass or temperature) no direction. We call scalar values.

Newton’s second law is more useful, but weird, people seem to believe it. The average misunderstanding is that a constant force makes something work at a constant speed. What this equation says, however, is that if you enter something with a steady force, it will keep fast.