We’re having some technical difficulties on the ScienceBlogs back end, so this may be futile, but I’ve got a 9am lab class, so here’s a Dorky Poll in hopes that the comments will work well enough to be entertaining. Today’s lab is the “ballistic pendulum,” in which students use conservation of energy and conservation of momentum to measure a projectile’s velocity, and next week’s lectures are on conservation of angular momentum, so the poll topic seems obvious:
What’s your favorite conservation law?
Conservation of energy? Conservation of linear momentum? Conservation of angular momentum? If you’ve got a favorite, leave it in the comments.
If I had to pick (which I guess I do), I’d go with conservation of angular momentum. That one produces the coolest and most surprising consequences of any of the classical mechanics conservation rules. Gyroscopes are way cool. And angular momentum is critical for all sorts of things in my own field of AMO physics.
Conservation of energy, on the other hand, is just kind of annoying. Life would be so much easier if perpetual motion machines were possible.