The Drive

Every morning, I drive to school. For most students, their drive is not long. But since I live on the other side of the island from school, my drive averages an hour to an hour and a half each time! Pretty soon, "no can handle". Nah... can handle. Anyways, as we are always surprised at how much physics is related to our daily lives, I realized that each time I drive to school and back, I am causing my truck to accelerate. Acceleration is the difference of speed. Every time I press the gas petal or brake petal or turn the wheel, my truck is accelerating! It starts off when I pull out of my drive way. Though the acceleration of pulling out of my drive way is not as great as when I accelerate on to the freeway. Coming out of Wahiawa, I have to accelerate quickly from about 25 mph to roughly 60-65 mph which is the flow of traffic. The reason why I have to accelerate quickly is because the on ramp merges to the left and the cars behind me are also accelerating quickly. So I do not want to be the one holding traffic up by accelerating slowly. Then, as I am driving, I hit traffic. That is when i have to hit the breaks and slow down. Although I am slowing down, I am still accelerating. Because traffic is stop and go, I have to accelerate faster and slower repetitively. Then when I reach school, I decelerate to a stop where I reach school.