Asteroid Crisis: Star Challengers Book 3 Read Free Page B

his Laws of Motion online as part of my Three New Things that Commander Zota assigned us. Newton’s first law goes like this.” He picked up a billiard ball and set it down carefully in front of him. It stayed perfectly still where he put it. “An object at rest wants to stay at rest. It doesn’t want to move unless something comes along and moves it.”
    Tony laughed. “Just like me on Saturday mornings.”
    Dyl pulled a note card and mechanical pencil out of his pocket, and made a note. “Newton’s Law 1: an object at rest tends to stay at rest.”

    “The first law also says that something in motion will just keep on going at the same speed in the same direction, unless something else affects it.”
    Dyl wrote, “An object in motion will stay in motion.”
    “Are you sure?” Tony asked. “Because if this table was a mile long, and I rolled a ball down it, the ball wouldn’t keep going for the whole mile. Watch.”
    Tony grabbed another ball, and gave it a light nudge across the green felt that covered the table. It slowly rolled to a stop.
    King nodded. “So some kind of force is affecting it.”
    “Like gravity,” JJ pointed out. “It was a lot easier to jump or to throw things a long way when we were on the Moon, because it has so little gravity.”
    “And friction,” Tony pointed out. “It’s rolling on something.”
    “Okay, I get it. So things want to stay still if they’re still, and they want to keep going if they’re moving, unless something interferes with that,” Dyl scribbled furiously. “And I suppose that Newton’s next law is about whatever makes something stationary move, or something that’s moving stop or change direction.”
    “Something like that,” King said. “It’s about how force comes from speed and mass.”
    “Hmm, I go to Mass every Sunday,” Tony chuckled. “But believe me, it’s not very fast.”
    Song-Ye rolled her eyes. “As in, you really don’t know what mass is?”
    “Of course I do,” Tony said. “It’s something about size, isn’t it? Or … density or something?”
    JJ said, “I think it’s closer to weight. Or not weight exactly, but how much stuff is in something … density and size?”
    King nodded. “Yup. The size and density of an object gives us its mass. Okay, what happens when something big hits something little?” He hummed the theme to The Big Bang Theory.
    “Trick question,” JJ said. “It depends on more than size—it’s how much stuff, or mass, the big thing and the little thing have.”
    King rummaged around in a box beneath the table and pulled out a hollow plastic ball with air holes in it. “What happens if I roll this at a pool ball that’s standing still?” He rolled it slowly toward the cue ball. The lightweight plastic ball tapped the cue ball, which only jiggled a bit.
    “Doesn’t do much,” Tony said. “So a holey plastic ball hardly affects the billiard ball, because the swiss-cheesey ball has a lot less mass?”
    “Sort of,” King said. “But what if I change the plastic ball’s speed by throwing it at the cue ball really really fast?”
    “It should have a lot more effect on the cue ball, even though the cue ball is heavier than the ball with holes in it,” Dyl said.
    King grinned as he demonstrated. He threw the plastic ball hard at the cue ball. The collision was loud and moved the cue ball a few inches on the table. “See? I told you that you knew this stuff already. It’s easy.”
    “But what about things that are the same size, shape and weight?” Tony asked. “Like these balls on the pool table? Don’t they have the same effect on each other?”
    King gave Tony a high five. “And you’ve just discovered Newton’s third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
    Dyl said, “So, I must be affecting Song-Ye, because she always has the opposite reaction to things that I do.”
    Tony ignored him. “I think I get it,” he said. He grabbed the cue ball and rolled