Physics Week Five-Energy, Matter and Force

E=MC2 is a formula that explains how energy in a piece of matter is equal to the mass of the matter multiplied by the speed of light squared. How does this affect me and you? It affects us at a daily level. Historically it helped explain and develop nuclear science. Also, it basically applies to any chemical reaction whether it be simply from photosynthesis with the plants we eat or even the way we break down energy from our food in our bodies. There's a constant conversion of energy going on in our day to day lives. When I ride my motorcycle, combustion occurring in my cylinders is another form of energy conversion from one state to another.

The "four forces" are a way of explaining interactions between substances. Three of the interactions, strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic and weak nuclear (which can be combined and called electroweak force) can be looked at as a group called the grand unified theories. Gravity is a bit of an oddball because rather than a force, it is looked at as the "curvatures of spacetime" rather than an actual force. The general consensus of this group of interactions is that substance/objects don't actually touch, but rather affect each other by generating a field around them which affects the objects and their fields. This can be looked at as like the "energy" we bring when we walk into a room full of people, and even though we aren't touching them, we can still affect others by our own "energy field."

The function of gravity can be explained by Newton's law of universal gravitation that states, "every object in the Universe attracts every other object with a force directed along the line of centers for the two objects that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the separation between the two objects" and even further explained by Einstein's general relativity theory that states matter warps spacetime. Generally speaking, gravity involves the attraction of forces to one another. The gravitational force of the earth pulls everything on it towards itself which is why we tend to, in our perspective, fall downwards towards the earth. Otherwise, we'd all be floating around without anything to keep us "grounded." Our muscles would atrophy and our bones would become brittle without the opposing force of stress on the body for us to counteract.