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"Pushed forward?"



When I was young and knew no physics I was in a vehicle of some sort
(train? car?) that was stopped but suddenly lurched forward a bit. I
complained to my father (not a scientist - he taught French and Spanish
at Rice Institute) about being "thrown backward" so hard, and he
remarked that I was now forward of my previous position, so I must have been
"pushed forward" rather than "thrown backward." (He tended to be very
logical about things.) I couldn't see any fallacy in his reasoning, and
ever afterwards thought about this differently. Years later, remembering
this incident, I got to wondering if this was an original observation on
his part, or something he learned in some physics course back in the 1920s.
Does anyone remember reading an old explanation using a term like "pushed
forward"?

Here's what made we wonder about the phrase: In addition to a
regular electric refrigerator, my father still has an extra
refrigerator in his garage which is an old gas Servel he bought used
about 1945 - it was the one we had when I was growing up. When I asked
him once if it had ever required any sort of maintenance, he said no
and remarked that "it has no moving parts." When I saw the play
"Radio Days" (I think that was the name of it) I realized this phrase
was Servel's advertising slogan years ago and it was still rattling
around in his brain.

Laurent Hodges, Professor of Physics lhodges@iastate.edu
12 Physics Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-3160
(515) 294-1185 (office) http://www.iastate.edu/~lhodges