I recently reviewed Newton's laws of motion and it struck me how relevant they are when you're a baby and are just starting to learn how to hurtle your body through space. Especially the second and third laws. Whenever I see my kid waddling gleefully and with surprising velocity down the hallway, I think of how physical the equation "Force = Mass x Acceleration" has become for him. Whenever his legs give out and his little bottom hits the floor, or he falls forward, I'm painfully reminded of both Newton's third law of motion and his law of universal gravitation.
There are times, however, when he seems to defy the laws of motion: when he balances himself at an odd angle to pull a book down from a bookshelf, for example, or when he almost falls, but throws one leg forward at the absolute last moment and saves his balance like a street dancer. And that's what it is, really: learning to move is also about learning how to defy the laws of motion, thus achieving, at random moments, something like a dancer's grace.
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