Gravity |
|
|
|
Chapter 1 |
|
| This story was inspired by the large pile of homework I’m supposed to be working on at the moment. I thought to myself, ‘Glynn Flanders doesn’t have to do homework!’ and I decided that wasn’t fair, so I gave her some. And the funny thing about it is, The force created by its spin, Is the force that stops the chaos, flooding in. ~ Tim Minchen ‘Not perfect’ “Who cares?†Glynn wondered allowed, staring down at the homework problem, the last of the questions she’d been given for the week. Given that the mass of the Earth is 5.9 x 10^24, its average velocity is 29.8km/s, and assuming a circular orbit, calculate the mass of the sun. Maintaining her schoolwork was just another responsibility on her list of things she had to do in order to maintain guardianship of Ember. Quite honestly she couldn’t see the point. The councilors said that she needed to think about ‘after’ – that was how the said it, after, as though she was too delicate to contemplate her twin’s death. Never mind that she dealt with the doctors. The problem was that Glynn couldn’t imagine an ‘after’. Ember was everything. All she had left. Death had already taken her parents and Wind. It seemed only natural that it would take her when it came to collect her twin. And it was exactly those kinds of thoughts that made the councilors nervous, so she said what they wanted her to and did as she was told, anything to maintain responsibility for her twin. With this in mind, she lifted her pen and began to write; The Earth takes 365 days, or 31 356 000 seconds, to complete one orbit. Velocity equals distance over time, so the circumference of the Earth’s orbit is 934 million kilometers, making its average radius 148 million kilometers. Glynn stood for a moment and, striding over to the window, opened the curtains to let the sun in. Keeping them shut was a habit formed through living with Ember, whose current medication brought light sensitivity as a side effect. Her twin was still being kept in the hospital for observation and it was nice to be without the restrictions for a change. She stood there a moment, enjoying the feel of the warmth on her face. One hundred and forty eight million kilometers between the sun and them; strange that something so far away could shine so bright. The force applied to the Earth, is described by the square of its velocity, multiplied by its mass, divided by the orbital radius, giving F= 3.49 x 10^22 Newtons. Now that was a lot of gravity. “And it never even messes up my hair,†she muttered wryly. It was hard to imagine really; the amount of force acting on every atom of her body in every moment, the speed with which they were swept around the solar system. It was all so big and her own bubble so small. Perhaps this was why she felt disconnected with the universe, her entire world was falling apart and everything just kept on spinning, paying no mind. What was she in the face of that? This value is also equal to the gravitational constant, multiplied by the mass of the sun, multiplied by the mass of the Earth, divided by the square of the orbital radius. Thus, rearranging, it becomes clear that we can determine the sun’s mass by multiplying the force it exerts by the square of the orbital radius, before dividing by the mass of the Earth multiplied by the gravitational constant, giving a result of M = 1.9 x 10^30 kg. Glynn glanced back over her work and, satisfied that it was correct, replaced the workbook amongst her correspondence things. The exercise had been entirely pointless. AN: Glynn's a bit of a weird character, she's quite angsty, but not self pitying or depressed and that's really hard to write, so I hope I've done her justice. Having thought about it, I actually think it's quite likely that she'd be made to continue her school work. Its not normal for a minor to be given responsibility over another minor and while Ronaall probably had a hand in it, I think they'd probably have some government person keeping an eye on them. Ember has an excuse not to be in school, but Glynn doesn't and if they thought caring for Ember was the only reason she dropped out, they'd probably take that responsibility away from her. |
|
| Views | 349 |
