Andy Morales and The Rain - $5 Physics Quiz

  • Andy Morales and the Rain - $5 Physics Quiz


     


    It's 6p.m, time to leave the railway station - Andy thought to himself, with a big sigh. Living a lonely life since the demise of his wife two years ago, everything to him seemed monotonous and tedious. Andy had forgotten to smile, stopped contacting his friends, preferred not to socialize and thus his days were filled with agony.



    Nevertheless, as soon as he stepped outside his station, the gloomy weather struck some lightnings and a heavy rain broke out. He seemed irritated and disappointed. He clawed back into his office room and stretched for his umbrella. "Hey Andy, want to grab a cup of coffee?" - Andy's associate, Jennifer had her eyes glittery and had high hopes when she asked him out. "Nehhh!!!" was the blunt response before he stormed out and started to walk back to his home.



    The rain stepped its gears, and it was growing fast. Andy was disgusted by it. He took shelter near a store. After a good five minutes of waiting for the rain to halt, there was a loud noise. He looked up with his drowsy eyes and saw that a tree had fallen onto a moving car across the street. He seemed stressed yet desperate to come to an aid. By the time, he crossed the street, some of the pedestrians had gathered to move the tree. The crowd tried to lift the tree from the bottom side, which had not fully uprooted. Andy came screaming and said, " You all are doing it wrong. Come help me lift it up from the other end".



    For the first time in two years, Andy Morales had a smile on his face, as his prompt idea saved the life of the person behind the wheels.



    Now, for our quiz question today, by applying Physics Concepts, explain why force acting away from the tree's roots made it easier to lift the tree, in comparison to near the roots.


    Please try to write your answer in 185 words or less in the comments section below. Please submit your answer by July 16th midnight, Bangladesh time. Then, we will share everyone's answers and start a discussion on this topic. The person with the most best, clear, easy to understand and non plagiarized answer will get $5. Runner-up will get $3. Try to explain your answer to a non-technical audience with zero physics knowledge.  So its not what you say, but how you say it to make your answer interesting to read!


    --Quiz prepared by Mr. Hans Ankur, Physics Teacher


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    The winner of this quiz is: 



    Syeda Anmol (Winner, $5)


    Syeda Anmol's answer was very easy to understand for someone who has no physics knowledge. It was written clearly with good practical examples. It was scientifically correct as well. 


     


    The runner-up of this quiz is: 



    Arika Afrin (Runner-up, $3)


    The best part of Arika's answer is it was extremely short, but very easy to understand to anyone, even if you don't have much idea about physics!  It is usually very rare to describe physics concepts in such a few easy words, but Arika did a  good job in doing that. 


    This quiz topic was based on the principles of moment and how it applied to the particular scenario in this story. We chose the winner based on who could explain the quiz answer in a clear, concise, easy to understand manner. It was more about how you explained it to the general people rather that what you said. The easy to understand and scientifically correct answers made it to the top. So your style of explanation was important.   The following are the rest of our contributors in this quiz and everyone did a good job by describing this quiz answer as best as possible and enlightening us on this topic. So thanks to all the people in the following:


    Hasnain Tariq


    Zarin Sadaf Snigdha


    Shadman Chowdhury


    Tanveer Tausif Ratul


    Rohan Deb


    Moneera Chowdhury


    Wafeeqa Hoque


    Abeer Muhammad


    Jawadul Islam Chowdhury


    Nishat Tamanna


    Farhan Shahid


    Abdullah Masud


    Nafisa Binte Fahad


    Raheeb Arman


    Thank you everyone for all your participation. More quizzes to come soon!

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Comments

19 comments
  • Hasnain Tariq likes this
  • Farhan  Shahid
    Farhan Shahid Andy's idea concerns the effect of moments. The idea about moments is that the further a force acts away from the pivot(the turning point of an object), the more effective it will be in turning the object. For example, the knob of a door is situated the...  more
    July 15, 2021 - 1 likes this
  • Abdullah Masud
    Abdullah Masud Mr Andy was able to use the principles of moment in the above scenario. As mentioned in the scenario, the roots of the tree were fixed with the ground so it was a fixed point and a fixed point is called a pivot. This pivot allowed the tree to be removed...  more
    July 15, 2021 - 1 likes this
  • Shaikh Nafisa  Binte Fahad
    Shaikh Nafisa Binte Fahad Andy told others to help lift the tree from the other side, as the force acting away from the root of the tree made it easier to lift the tree than near the root.
    The car was acting as a pivot here because the weight of the whole tree was on the car. The...  more
    July 16, 2021
  • Raheeb  Arman
    Raheeb Arman Andy uses the idea of moment. Moment of a force is a measure of its tendency to cause a body to rotate on a pivot. Moment justifies that closer you are to the pivot, more force is required to move the object. This law is obeyed by many objects which we...  more
    July 16, 2021