Post Hovercraft

Normally when hearing that one will be riding on a hovercraft, he/she will be extremely excited and curious as to how it would work. Although I was curious as to how it worked, I was nervous to ride it. Unaware of how a hovercraft worked and functioned I was worried that I would be 'too heavy' for it to work. Even though this feeling was just my 'teenage girl body issues' act of resentment, I got on the hovercraft. While riding on the hovercraft, as ironic as it sounds, I felt weightless. There were no forces on me while I was gliding and I've never been in that state of movement or at least I have not been aware of it. If I brought a friend with me to ride a hover craft at another time I would tell them that the experience is one of independence and dependence. In one phase, you need another person to push you and make you go but once you're in the second phase, you're on your own and have zero control of what is going on until you need to be stopped. A unique thing about riding on a hovercraft opposed to a skateboard or a sled, there is not friction. While on a skateboard you are riding on a surface with friction that can slow you down. While on a hovercraft, there is no friction because you are gliding. The thing I learned about inertia was that it can change in force. When a heavier person gets on the hovercraft there is more of a push to get the person started opposed to a 90 pound body. During this lab I learned to connect net force and equilibrium. A net force is the total amount of force added to an object. In order to be in equilibrium an object must be at rest or in constant movement. If the net force is at 0, the object will be in equilibrium. Proven in this lab, acceleration depends on the net force given to an object. There must be a net force other than 0 applied to an object for there to be any form of acceleration, negative or positive. In this lab, there were three phases. 1) starting 2) gliding 3) stopping. Because phases one and two both require a form of acceleration, the only phase that has a constant velocity would be when gliding because there is a 0 net force. Because of mass, the greater the mass, greater the inertia. Inertia requires a force so when a body is heavier than another, the inertia must work harder to push and to stop. My first hovercraft experience definitely took me by surprise for the better for it was entertaining and extremely educational. I very much enjoyed it.