Fun little anecdote:

A blue care is travelling along at 70 units, and a red car (exact same make and model) is catching up to it going 100. When they're both right beside each other a bend in the road reveals an obstacle blocking both lanes, so both cars brake at the same intensity and deceleration.

The blue care stops right before the obstacle. Since the red car was going at a faster speed, and braked at the same rate, it doesn't managae to stop: but what speed is it going when it hits the obstacle?

The blue car, using ½mv², shed (~70²=) 4900 units of energy (we'll hand wave away the constants). So the red car, which had (100²=) 10000 units of kinetic energy to start, also shed 4900 units, which means it had 5100 units of energy when it collided, and so was going (√5100~) 71.

* Numberphile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0

Physics is an endless source of frustration to me. It feels like a mix of random tricks, most of which I don’t understand.

I find math and compsci reasonably understandable, can read research papers in both fields ( and have published papers) etc. There’s something specific about physics I don’t get but I’ve never been able to figure out what. The main symptom is that most cause -> consequence in such demonstrations , which are seemingly obvious to everyone, make no sense to me.

Am I the only one ? Are there good resources to learn it?