A Day In The Life Of A High School Physics Student

By Natalie Parker:

When I accelerated myself out of bed this morning with a force greater than the force due to gravity, I looked in my favorite rectangular plane of glass that reflects wavelengths on the visible light spectrum and noticed that, due to a rearrangement of electrons, several strands of my hair stood perpendicular to the plane of the floor and parallel to the plane of the walls. The simplest possible solution, which involved using a specialized tool that had an elliptical plastic end with a multitude of small bristles in concentric ovals, failed to produce a satisfactory result. Surrendering, I activated the muscles in my legs in order to accelerate from rest in the positive horizontal direction, but the coefficient of static friction between my calculus-themed socks and the floor was not large enough to produce a sufficient force due to friction, and instead I accelerated from rest in the negative vertical direction. The unheated tile beneath me provided a large enough normal force to initiate static equilibrium, however, so I ceased accelerating.

Later on, as I traveled to school in my parents’ Tesla, which converted electrical energy into kinetic energy, I attempted to use a nearly ideal wire connected to a source of voltage to induce current flow into my cell phone, but the phone’s screen still did not produce any visible electromagnetic waves. Instead, I simply focused on my displacement on the road, but the elapsed time had already grown too large and a low-hanging branch of a sycamore tree collided into the car with a force that was equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the force with which the car crashed into the tree branch. The product of this event was that I was forced to walk the rest of the way. Right then, liquid droplets from the clouds above me started converting their potential energy into kinetic energy and fell vertically.

After arriving at the door of my first period class right after the vibration of the late bell created multiple sound waves, I pushed on the doorknob and applied a torque to the door that accelerated it counterclockwise, thereby revealing the inside of the classroom. I then saw my teacher using the coefficient of kinetic friction between the tip of an Expo marker and the whiteboard to produce the words “Test Today.” That’s when I realized that I was dripping wet, my parents’ car was completely totaled, my phone was broken, my hair was a hideous disaster, and I had a huge bruise on my ass from falling on my bedroom floor. My head suddenly began to accelerate towards the ground, and my last thought before I blacked out was this: “Fuck physics.”