You may have read that
Ben Franklin first became interested in the Gulf Stream because the mail
was taking two weeks longer to get from England to the Colonies then from
the Colonies to England. The mail was carried on sailing ships in those
days and thus if the ships were to sail against the flow of the Gulf Stream
it would slow them down (see image below). A good way to think about this
is to picture trying to row a boat UP stream against the flow of the water.
The speed of the boat would be slowed down because of the rushing water.
Special thanks to Erin Kelly and the students at the
Children's Institute for this image
To describe what you see
above we use vectors. Vectors are a way to express both quantity
and magnitude. So, the ship seen above will not only be traveling
5mph, but 5mph in a certain direction. A vector is always drawn as
an arrow. The direction of the arrow indicates direction and the
length of the arrow indicates magnitude.
The diagram above shows
an example of a ship traveling parallel to the Gulf Stream. What
happens if a ship is traveling perpendicular to the Gulf Stream?
In this case, you can't simply add and subtract. You infact must
take into account angles. This is where the Pythagorean Theorem and
trigonometry becomes important. To learn more about vectors and vector
addition use the following links.
|
