# Kinematics Part 1: Where am I?

I claimed that my last post was not going to be foundational, and then I went an wrote about pretty much everything which lies at the foundation of classical mechanics. Now it’s time I feel to distill all that down to the bare fundamentals, without the wrapper of a falling coin that my previous post provided.

# Aristotelian Physics is a Drag

Suppose you dropped a penny at exactly the same time you threw another penny sideways. Which one hits the ground first? Suppose you also dropped a quarter, what then?

# No, this August, Mars will not appear as big as the full moon in Earth's sky... Part 2!

In my last post, I shared a bit of my history with the "Mars Spectacular," and I encourage you to take a look at that if you have not already.

But, alas, I can't just stop at refuting this claim by demonstrating that it's been made before. No, I have to refute it with math!

# Getting to Work

Everything I write here involves learning physics, but it's time to go over some fundamental material that will serve as a foundation for upcoming posts I have in mind and provide much-needed background for one of my earliest articles.

# Standing In the Shadow of the Moon

I have gotten a couple of requests from family members for me to share my eclipse experience. They are itching to see my pictures and hear my stories, and I have been so focused on school that none of this material has been forthcoming. Until now!

In a recent post, I calculated the $$\Delta v$$ of an unladen Saturn V rocket and concluded that the maximum speed of such a vehicle, when launching from Earth, is over $$36,000\,\mathrm{mph}$$. As I explained then, that is fast, but not fast enough for our purpose! Furthermore, as is typically the case, we want to use our rocket to carry something into space, and the addition of a payload will slow us down even more!

# A Quick Proof: 08/11/17

I am busily working on another post called The Problem with Payloads, within which I make that claim that for any positive numbers $$A$$, $$B$$, and $$C$$, where $$A>B$$, $$\frac{A}{B} > \frac{A+C}{B+C} > 1. \label{081117frac}$$