083 Swingset Friction
29 Mar 2019 · 3 min
3:17
Kim Gaskill uses a playground swing to explain how friction and external forces drain your energy and slow your momentum. She advises identifying and removing sources of friction to keep moving forward.
Kim Gaskill uses a playground swing to explain how friction and external forces drain your energy and slow your momentum. She advises identifying and removing sources of friction to keep moving forward.
It's a new day. I'm Kim Gaskill and this is the Daily Spark. Have you ever gone into a playground and jumped on a swing and sat there and watched the other kids on the swing? I say other kids like I'm a kid, but I'm a kid at heart. But I love going to the playground and watching the small kids get onto the swing for the very first time, and they don't understand that to get it moving they have to put energy to it. They know that when someone pushes them, it makes them go. They don't know that the friction as it swings back and forth, friction of the air, the friction of the chains on the bar above. That all creates a drag, and it slowly sucks the energy from that movement until it slows down and stops. And it won't move again until someone puts some energy back to it, pushes it or pulls it again to have gravity take effect. And it will swing back and forth, same distance in each direction, until the friction, the outside friction slows it down again and it stops. And what that happens to us a lot during the day, we have all these external forces that create friction and our pendulum is moving back and forth throughout the day and hopefully not moving too far in the extreme in either direction. And it will continue to move as long as we're putting energy to it. But if the energy that we're putting to it is less than the outside friction that's being applied to it, it's eventually gonna slow down and stop. We are eventually gonna slow down and stop, just like that swing. So pay attention to the external things that are happening, the external forces that are creating friction and slowing down your progress. Slowing down the energy that you're putting into things. If it's continually bringing you to a stop and you feel like you're having to grab new sources of energy to get you kick-started again. Maybe it's because these external forces are creating too much friction and you need to try and get rid of some of those things, some of those things that are creating friction and slowing you down, so that it doesn't take as much energy, it doesn't drain you as much to continue to keep that swing moving back and forth. Think about that today and pay attention to those external forces. Join me again tomorrow for another Daily Spark.
