What About Physics?: Gravity

Gravity

This thing we call gravity is pretty important. Without it, we wouldn't be here. And I mean that in two different, but same ways. First: Gravity was important in the universe's humble beginnings. This force had to be there in order to bring pieces of rock and debris to one another, smallest following the biggest pieces. That would continue on until there were no pieces close enough to attach. This lead to planets being born, including Earth. Without gravity, Earth would not have formed, and we would not have been right here at all. Second: We need gravity to hold us down to Earth. If it were to suddenly disappear, we would all float up towards the atmosphere and out into space, where we wouldn't last very long. Not only would we float, but everything would float away. Cars, animals, buildings, even the oceans! That's why we need gravity.

There are other reasons gravity is so important. Probably the most important (besides not being lifted into space screaming for help!) is our moon. Yes, our moon. Remember back when I said the gravity was needed to form out planets? Same with the moons. Our moon helps us out more than you may realize. Whenever you go to the beach and see the waves, that's our moon hard at work. What happens is whenever the bodies of water are nearest to the moon, the moons gravity and our gravity are fighting over who get's the water. Now obviously Earth wins because we're a bigger body than the moon. That means we have a bigger force of gravity, while the moon has significantly less (which is why astronauts can jump higher there than on Earth.). That's how the waves/tides work. 

Still interested? Here's how our moon came to be our moon: One day (or night, we didn't exactly have the capability to tell time, because we weren't there.), something made of rock, and I mean a big something, came from somewhere. That, thing, came straight to our little new planet, which was still cooling the molten lava. Then it hit us! And we lost a chunk of us (don't worry, we formed back.) and got a moon! That something is thought to be the planet Mars, at least i've heard. 

Next up is our (very) big brother, Jupiter! He's a great brother. He's big and protects us from the incoming punches made by asteroids. Since Jupiter is so big, it has a massive force of gravity, bigger than Earths. So anything flying towards us hits Jupiter instead. If that big planet was never there to begin with, we would have been gone years ago.  

If you want to mess around a little bit with gravity, check out this link. You can change the mass of a ball and see what affect it would have on the opposite. It's pretty cool. 

Thank you for learning about gravity from me. I learned a little myself by going back in time through my brain to my high school classes. 

Game History- Written Opinion Challenge Era 1986-1994: Legal Cases

There has always been a person who sues other people and go to court. In the video game industry, this really started rising after Nintendo became the powerhouse of the game world. These cases have been over names, ideas, and even theft or graphics and code. A famous case is over a game called Karate Champ and World Karate Championship.

Data East v. Epyx. It was pretty crazy how many elements Epyx actually took from Karate Champ. Back when we first started getting these games, they were small. Few things were in a game compared to modern games. So when the two games were compared, they found 15 similarities between them. It’s like Epyx just took Data East’s game and changed the name. It was even released on the same platform, the Commodore 64! So, what happened? The court when in favor of Epyx. The judge stated, “The only parts of the game the could be protected by a copyright were the areas in which Data East made creative contributions.” Which the only areas was the scoreboard and backgrounds; the two games had very different backgrounds. The decision by the court would impact future decisions by Data East, which would come around with Capcom taking them to court over Street Fighter II and Data East’s Fighter History. Again, similar happening in the games, but this time around, Data East won the case. (The Ultimate History of Video Games, pgs. 368-371)

In a 1989 case, Nintendo was actually in court against all fifty states and as well as Washington D.C. The Tramiels (who founded Commodore and Atari) accused Nintendo of shutting the Atari Corporation out of the market and filed a 500 million dollar suit. They got accused from a number of things, including: price fixing, shutting out competitors, overregulating licensees, and bullying retailers. At the end of it all Nintendo gave out 5 dollar coupons towards their next game cartridge to everybody who bought the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) between the dates if June 1, 1988 and December 31, 1990. This resulted in less than 5 million dollars in discounts. They also had to pay the states and Washington D.C 1.75 million dollars for administrative costs and 3 million dollars for other uses.  In October if 1990, Nintendo announced that all of it’s licensees were free to make their own cartridges and put them on other consoles. (The Ultimate History of Video Games, pgs. 389-390)

References:

The Ultimate History of Video Games, Steven L. Kent, 2001