Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion – a case study
We are spending RM800 million to build a new palace for a family to live in for five years at any one time. No tender was called. Included in that awesome piece of masterful architectural and engineering project is RM130 million for a fly-over from Jalan Duta leading to the palace. And a sum of RM30 million for the upgrading of roads leading to the palace.
Art Harun
Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.
That was Newton’s third law of motion. In English, it simply means:
Law number 3: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions.
Although I disliked – no, actually I hated – Physics when I was in school (I blame my teacher for this. He was the most boring bespectacled man ever to have walked this Earth and his sole justification for his existence was to turn this whole world into one boring place by spreading his boredom into cryptic messages masked as Physics lessons), I was rather intrigued at this particular law of motion.
I must confess that I had found this 3rd law by pure accident (it was either never taught by that bespectacled man or I was in the toilet lighting up a stick when it was taught) much later in my life when I was reading about the Physics of car racing!
The thing which I understood was this. When my race car is stationary on the track, there are actually two forces at work. One pushes the car down onto the tarmac. The other one – believe it or not – is actually pushing the car up from the tarmac! Without the force which pushes the car up, in theory at least, my car would be swallowed by the tarmac.
I was like, OMG! Really ahh?
And of course when my car is trying to V-max itself (V-max is racers’ term for achieving maximum speed from your car, which in a car churning out 603 bhp, is almost completely seat-wettingly insane!), there are two forces at work too. One is pushing the car forward and one is actually hitting the car directly from the opposite direction.
Of course, I am not about to suddenly get an A+ for my Physics and change my profession (all of you who master Physics and use the darn subject to earn a living should not shudder in fear of me being a competitor, ever!).
But the thing is this. This 3rd law of motion is amply demonstrated in our daily lives.
Take Minister Idris Jala’s earth-shattering announcement that Malaysia should cut and eventually stop giving subsidies to her people or else she would go the Greek way into bankruptcy by 2019.
I mean, shit man, I thought. If I don’t start paying 5 bucks for a litre of Petrol soon, the country would go bankrupt Joe! Die!
And if Ali the driver and Aloysius Ang the ikan bilis seller do not pay 8 bucks for a loaf of Gardenia soon, our country would, in 2019, be bungkus-ed man. BUNG Kus (this is not a variation of Bung “my marriage is valid” Mukhtar, okay).
So, there is one force at work here. We should cut subsidy and the people should start paying the real price for essential goods. Otherwise we would go bankrupt.
But Newton’s 3rd law of motion would not be complete without an opposing force, right? Yes, right.
While all of us were just trying to fathom the enormity of – and come to asshole-like grip with – the whole cut-the-subsidy-or-we-would-go-bankrupt shyte (pardon the pun, but it is inevitable, today being a Friday and all), the requisite opposite force came into the picture.
And boy, didn’t it hit us like a ton of shit, eh, bricks?
Yes. We are spending RM800 million (Ringgit Malaysia Eight Hundred Million) to build a new palace for a family to live in for five years at any one time. No tender was called. Included in that awesome piece of masterful architectural and engineering project is RM130 million for a fly-over from Jalan Duta leading to the palace. And a sum of RM30 million for the upgrading of roads leading to the palace.
Awesome. I must say. Newton would have been proud.
