The Physics of Stuff

When you start understanding what is happening with everyday stuff in a person life from a physics perspective I think it is amazing.

Cooking

When a person starts cooking food, then you smell it -- simple task that happens in everyday life-- physically what is happening is that the substance is absorbing heat( an endothermic reaction) at the molecular level the molecules are moving faster and faster until there is a phase change, and then molecules are liberated from whatever is being cooked. Then for a person to smell the food that means that the molecules are traveling through the air, bumping into the air molecules, but still making it into a person’s nose. The odyssey does not end there. The smell is ( I think) changed into electrical impulses that then must be interpreted by the brain as a smell, then classify what kind of smell. I think that is awesome.

A Whiteboard

A Whiteboard is a board you can write on with a marker, not a permanent marker. Anyways; the marker writes on the board, and then with brush( like a chalk brush) a person erases the whiteboard. What is happening though is the molecules from the marker are bonding to the whiteboard, but the bonds between the molecules on the whiteboard and the marker are not permanent. The molecules from the marker are forming bonds with the whiteboard, so what a person writes on the whiteboard stay there until the bonds are broken a person erases the whiteboard. There is a transference of energy( kinetic energy) supplied by the brush to the molecules of the marker(which is on the whiteboard), it is this energy that breaks the bonds between the marker and whiteboard, and then the marker that is on the whiteboard is absorbed by the dry eraser.

When I think of what happens at the molecular level (how energy is transfered to accomplish whatever task) for whatever process to happen in the world I think it is truely amazing.