Equal and Opposite

…in which our hero learns the important lesson of Newton’s Laws of Motion.

The job could not be more straightforward. (I have learned to say that only afterward, but this one truly was.) Dinah had asked me to remove a hive from a house on her property so that she could move the house to another lot. The movers, of course, were not very keen on loading up the house and its occupants. Prior to the move, there was to be an eviction notice.

I am the Evictor.

The siding of the 100-year-old structure was made of wide planks, and the walls were simple studs. Only a few places to nail the boards onto the frame, so I removed some trim pieces and then started prying at the siding.

You may ask, ‘So, Crorey, how does this relate to Newton?’ Let’s see how it applies:

1. Inertia. An object at rest tends to stay at rest until acted on by a greater or opposite force. Those boards had been in place for a hundred years, remaining at rest. To counteract that level of inertia, I was going to have to apply some serious pressure.
2. The acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the force applied. Let’s come back to that one in a moment.
3. Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first. So I (for I am object one) had a long prybar, and was applying all of my 230 pounds of force against it. Really pushing hard. The second object – the siding board, which was attached to the whole house – was pushing all of its weight in the equal and opposite direction. A whole house has a much greater mass. I twisted and turned and swapped end of the pry bar, stance wide to exert maximum force with the legs and PUSHED….

….and the piece of siding gave way. Suddenly. And just as suddenly, all three laws simultaneously come into play. Let us review:

Law #1. An object that is now in motion will stay in motion until acted on by an equal or opposite force? Check. The board is now swinging away from the house.

We come back to the acceleration law – Newton’s Law of motion # 2. Acceleration depends on the mass of the object and the force applied. I mentioned that I had applied all of my weight to the task? Check.

Law #3: Equal and opposite force. I stopped the motion of the board by the act of standing in front of the board as it swung upwards. The wide-leg stance I mentioned? Yep.

That’s right. Direct hit. Not glancing blow. A full-blown, double-over-and-feel-like-you’re-gonna-throw-up kind of blow. Full transference of force.

In the words of Mark Twain…

When I was able to breathe again, I looked under the board, and found not one, but two bee colonies there. Dinah had originally sealed up the cracks in the siding to try and limit the bees and other occupants. But when the bees moved in, she removed it, hoping that they would decide to move out on their own. Instead, a swarm had decided to make a home for themselves in the new space.

The actual removal took very little time, and I wrapped it up with some light vacuuming to move the bees into their new home.

But I did so with a profound respect for Sir Isaac Newton.