Getting to Alpha centauri on aspirin, caffiene and adrenaline
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
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My friend Turtle and I had this idea of travelling to Alpha Centauri last year. We were both Advanced Placement physics students, so we figured we could use our rudimentary knowledge of time-velocity-distnce and Newton's three great laws and figure out the equations that would allow us to get there before the ends of our respective lives--after all, we were high school seniors; what did those geeks at NASA know?
Well, one night after about three successive hours of physics and upper-level calculus homework, we were both running high on the right-brainedness, caffiene, and I on cold pills---and we worked out a feasable, reliable, proven formula to get us to Alpha Centauri in 4 years, 8 months and some-odd days. It was a workable thing; at 1:30 in the morning, we had made space travelling history, us, two anonymous yet brilliant high school seniors.
Next morning, after sleep (sweet sleep) and breakfast, our brilliant equations turned into incomprehensible chicken-scratch that made no sense to anyone: not our friends, not our physics teacher, and certainly not us.
So much for that Nobel Prize.
Maybe next time
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My friend Turtle and I had this idea of travelling to Alpha Centauri last year. We were both Advanced Placement physics students, so we figured we could use our rudimentary knowledge of time-velocity-distnce and Newton's three great laws and figure out the equations that would allow us to get there before the ends of our respective lives--after all, we were high school seniors; what did those geeks at NASA know?
Well, one night after about three successive hours of physics and upper-level calculus homework, we were both running high on the right-brainedness, caffiene, and I on cold pills---and we worked out a feasable, reliable, proven formula to get us to Alpha Centauri in 4 years, 8 months and some-odd days. It was a workable thing; at 1:30 in the morning, we had made space travelling history, us, two anonymous yet brilliant high school seniors.
Next morning, after sleep (sweet sleep) and breakfast, our brilliant equations turned into incomprehensible chicken-scratch that made no sense to anyone: not our friends, not our physics teacher, and certainly not us.
So much for that Nobel Prize.
Maybe next time
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