Problem 1: Two weights are connected by a pulley system at the corner of a tabletop. The lighter one sits on the table while the heavier one is suspended from the edge. The classic question: what is the acceleration of the heavier weight?
Each year, once my Physics 1 students learn about Newton and his apple, about free body diagrams, about the rate of a rate, about weight versus mass, I give them this question. They are given the whole period to figure it out.
Alicia Dorman folded the candy packet over three times, stuffed it back into the box upside down and pushed it toward Casey: “Put that away where I can’t see it. If I can’t see it, I won’t remember we have it. If I don’t remember it, I won’t want it.”
For the entirety of our brief time in the state, what few trees there were seemed to me to have a wavering, shimmering quality, as if they were projections you could slide your hand through. In lofty moments I think I saw my own presence there the same way. I loved Oklahoma because it had nothing to do with me.
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