While opening door number 14 on the Strachan advent calendar this morning, something suddenly struck me……. The bloody holly wreath above the fireplace landed on my head! Thankfully it’s predominantly plastic so the damage was minimal…… Incidentally, that’s the bells on the wreath not my head!
I took a valuable lesson from this minor incident. That being a blob of Blu Tac applied to the wall is not fit for purpose in holding a holly wreath against its gravitational force. Not unless its a piece of Blu Tac the size of the town of Dudley!
Science wasn’t my strong point at school, but my understanding is that gravity causes any two objects in the universe to be drawn to each other. Not in the form of on-off relationships of the heart, similar to late actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; moreover an objects attraction to the curved earth.
Despite my knowledge voids on most things scientific, I’m pretty sure that Burton and Taylor’s capricious attraction was not the result of gravitational force. The root cause for their drawing together was more likely the result of lust and a misguided belief that ‘it’ll work this time’.
If Richard Burton had have jumped from a wardrobe and landed on Ms Taylor, then that would have been the result of gravity. However, I think there was probably more to their sporadic associations than leaping from furniture onto each other…….. I’m not close to the facts, though, so my personal theory maybe well wide of the mark.
Although scientists were already aware of its existence, legend credits Isaac Newton with providing the first cohesive explanation for gravity, after an apple fell on his head in the 1600’s.
Born from the English physicist’s inquisitiveness, which led him to question what attracted the apple to drop, Newton’s gravitational theory was formed. Shortly after, he returned home to misguidedly treat the resultant bump on his head with a foolhardy strategy of drinking witch hazel.
From this incident, Newton identified that gravity was a predictable force that acts on all matter in the universe, and is a function of both mass and distance.
The theory states that each particle of matter attracts every other particle (for instance, the particles of “Earth” and the particles of “you”) with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional.
He also identified that witch hazel was good for treating bruising, but only if applied externally. His foolhardy ingestion proved to have no bruise remedy qualities whatsoever…… Although, drinking it did rid him of the diarrhoea that had plagued him for a week.
When an apple fell on Isaac Newton’s head in the 17th century, an epiphany of such magnitude was derived that massive strides were made in understanding the science of gravity. When my holly wreath fell on my head this morning I said the word “bollocks!”
I suspect history will record both incidents differently. My epiphany, that particles of a Blu Tac blob cannot sustain a long term attraction to particles of a holly wreath, will no doubt be ignored by the Nobel Prize for Science judges.
One thing for sure is there’ll be none of the fuss about my discovery that Newton’s findings achieved.
