Balinese physics 101

Eka was busy preparing for her 9^th grade physics exam. I asked her what it was on. "Effort and energy". Hmm…I never studied physics in school back in the 60's, for some reason, and I thought that was pretty interesting learning about effort and energy. I asked her what she meant by it. She stood opposite the wall and pressed it with her outstretched arms, as if she was trying to move it. "We need to calculate how much effort and energy is needed to get the desired result. The distance, the height etc. it is all kinds of calculations. I don't like it"

I laughed. "I think you Balinese have your own natural internal physics that has nothing to do with all of those calculations from the western mind! ". She asked me what I meant. I explained to her that I had just come from the sea where I watched an old woman, carrying a heavy basket of goods on her head, cross the river to get to the other side. I myself was too cautious to cross it since I couldn't tell how deep it was. But the woman stood erect, parallel to the river and lowered her right foot slowly into the river until it touched ground. Only then did she move the rest of her weight on her other foot into the water to cross. I had seen the women go down the temple steps this was too and wondered why. Possibly because they were wearing a sarong and there wasn't a lot of width to put a leg forward, so they go down the steps sideways. But now I understood. It was all about balance. At the temple they were walking with large offering boxes balanced on their heads, without any hands holding it. This allowed them to stand erect and lower themselves onto the next step without jeopardizing losing their balance. The old woman kept the basket on her head, all of her weight still on the leg that was on dry ground, and only lowered her other leg. This was physics! What effort and energy is necessary to safely enter the river. As a westerner I would have put my right foot forward and possibly, losing my balance as I grappled to touch ground,  and falling head first, along with the basket, into the water!

From the first time I saw the Balinese doing things, there seemed to be something different about the way they used their body. They seemed to walk very erect, and that everything was always in balance. Their never seemed to be any visible strenuous effort being made when they lifted or chopped or moved things. Firstly, they usually did things together with others, so the weight was divided among them. Secondly, they would use a minimum of movements to get maximum results, just by learning the inner sense of what they were going to cut, carry, chop or move.

If it is a coconut, they know the structure of it and with one fell swoop of their knife, held just so in their hand and hit at just the right angle, the coconut beautifully splits in half, or whatever. Even the other day when I heard the chain saw going to cut down a coconut tree next door, it was only for a few minutes. Then I watched as the very tall tree fell to the ground exactly between two banana plants, without touching any of multitude of trees in the forest. How?! When I asked my friend, he said that the worker knows the exact angle to cut so it will fall exactly where he planned. But it is even in the way they light the incense sticks! Of course when you have been doing the same activity daily for years, you can develop a good system, but I had to laugh as I can use up a half a box of matches just trying to light the 18 incense sticks I need each day, as they break or extinguish or whatever. But when I asked Eka how to light them, she just took 3 matches all at once, struck them once on the box and quickly lit the sticks without a problem, holding them downwards so the flame grew stronger instead of snuffing out. An American friend of mine observed," they don’t seem to be too big on time and numbers!" With an inherent inner sense of physics, possibly as a result of being an agricultural people and knowing the laws of Nature from their real life experiences, calculating physics is more of a challenge then just using their natural instincts.

Watching my Balinese friend in the garden is always a pleasure. With full attention on what he is doing and the desired result, he makes one swift movement of his knife to remove branches and shape trees. It looks so easy and simple, until I observe a westerner doing the same thing but with much more effort and much more energy. This could also give the erroneous impression that the Balinese are lazy, yet in fact they simply know how to conserve their energy and make minimal effort.    Balinese physics  101.