Merry Christmas In Chocolate July?

The Coolest View In the Morning

Today was another crazy day as I woke up super early (only 15 minutes early) to get ready to go to Hershey Park. I was kind of unsure of what to expect as we drove to the park, maybe like a dinky amusement park with a couple of rides. Boy, was I wrong! The first thing that caught my eye was the Christmas decorations lining up the parks' walls and the Christmas tree in the middle of the road. Another thing that grabbed me was the Christmas music playing in the background. Bill asked whether we had just traveled in a school bus or in a time traveling TARDIS. Turns out I wasn't seeing things as Hershey Park had something called the 12 Days of Christmas in July which seemed kind of out of place. Anyways, as we went in to the park, Craig and Bill gave us the scoop on what we were to do to get our data for our physics project so that we and they could get to ride some roller coasters. Bee lining for our ride The Claw, we set off to collect our data fast.

It's Christmastime Already!

Arriving at the Claw, we had to decide who was going to do the ride and collect the data. We nominated our group member Eric to go on the ride and collect acceleration data with a fancy accelerometer in a vest that looked like he had a ticking time bomb. Luckily, he was able to go onto the ride without any difficulties. In fact, the ride operator said Eric looked pretty cool! But not to get distracted, we got good data from the ride and didn't have to do any second takes. Now we were free to explore the chocolate themed park for ourselves! Which we did to our hearts' content riding some of the most exciting roller coasters I've ever ridden in. One of my favorite rides was the Sky Rush which was an exhilarating ride from start to finish with a drop so high that I felt I would fly out of my seat and spins that were amazingly scary! Roller coasters were something that I was always scared of doing as a child and I still get the butterflies before I always get on the ride. But after I do the ride, I'm always glad that I was brave enough to do such a fun thing as this. This kind of me reminds of what can happen in life where sometimes the best things in life seem scary at first and require a bit of courage to take hold of these things. I was scared of applying for the physics program, but I'm so glad that I was brave enough to apply and I'm so glad that I did and getting an unforgettable experience like this!

Physics in the Park

Concluding our short trip to Hershey Park, we headed back into the bus and headed back to Penn. After getting back to the dorms, I ate a quick dinner and headed off to watch the movie The Purge: Anarchy. The premise of the movie was that the U.S. government instituted a day where murdering people was legal to cleanse society out of evil, but it was criticized by rebels that it was just the rich killing off the poor. The movie was interesting, because despite the violence and killing, it had some pretty interesting questions. For example, the movie posed the question if revenge is ever okay and if killing someone because they wronged you in a personal way was excusable? Another thing they showed was the struggle between the rich and poor and how the rich were able to survive and build a good defense while the poor struggled to make it through the night. The movie asked if the killing of the poor was justified for lowering crime rates and poverty. While they may seem straight forward questions to answer at first in that killing people such as the poor is wrong, these questions also bring us to a topic debated about by people from all ages in how we should combat poverty and how we should deal with evil which have no clear answers. In conclusion, today was once again full of physics and philosophy just as it was yesterday. What physics and philosophical ideas will I see sprout up tomorrow?