Obi Wan Kenobi: “Use the Force, Luke.”

Luke Skywalker: “But I’m not in equilibrium in the x direction!”

Obi Wan Kenobi: “Damn it, Luke, there’s friction in the real world.”

If your social life is crumbling and your best friend is a rock, come and read the rest of my script for the new Star Wars film, The Net Force Awakens. For the presumably largely uninitiated readership, his name is Justin, and pebbles have feelings too.

Speaking of presumptions, the realm of pen-and-paper physics is remarkably abundant with counterintuitive simplifications. You would think that the science that puts the rad in radiation involves physicists squabbling over 1/1897th of a centimeter, but exactitude was never of paramount importance. In fact, the simplifications are often startling – pulleys are frictionless, ropes are massless, air resistance is negligible and FOS students sleep nine hours a night.

These estimations are important because even rough ideas go a long way in helping comprehend complex phenomenon, especially those concerning forces. This week, we pay our respects to Isaac “2Frenetic4Arithmetic” Newton, the creator of calculus and the king of kinematics, and attempt to understand the stuff of pulls and pushes.

Chances are that at any given time, there are several forces being exerted on you and vice versa, be it the resistant force of wind on the Highline as you Usain-Bolt it to class, or closer to home, the repeated muscular contractions of your heart pumping Red Bull through your body. Simply put, a force is an interaction between two objects or an object and its environment. It’s a vector quantity, which means that both its size or magnitude and the direction in which it is exerted matters. To put things in perspective, here is a handy diagram:

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The word “net” implies sum total or resultant force that is exerted on the object. A force is measured in Newtons. No, Isaac was not a narcissistic megalomaniac. Yes, the SI unit of swag is Pranav.

This brings us to the First Law of Newtonian mechanics: "Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, unless acted upon by a net external force."

This means that if you bungee-jumped hard enough to achieve a constant speed of 11.2 km/h, you could endlessly float in space because the force of gravity will no longer act upon you. Best results are achieved when this is done with rockets, not ropes, or when you do not pay your bungee jumping co-pay.

Following closely is the dangerously potent Second Law, which postulates: “The resultant force on any body is the product of its mass and acceleration.”

This is the reason why you will probably drive much faster if your friends are not in the car — less mass, more acceleration — notwithstanding the freedom to blast Taylor Swift without being judged.

It is important to distinguish between mass and weight. While mass refers to the amount of stuff you are made of, weight is the force of gravity that pulls down on the stuff you’re made of. The more massive an object, the greater the force of gravity. This turns the idea of fat shaming on its head, because science says heavier people are more attractive.

Finally, the Third Law of mechanics states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction – this is where weird things begin to happen.

“Did you know, that if you push a door, the door pushes back on you?”

“Bruhhhhh.”

“Bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

So how does one reconcile all these forces? The simplest visual representation of these forces culminates into free body diagrams. If this conjures up images of bald, bespectacled men whispering, “Paint me like one of your French physicists,” we could schedule a psych appointment together. A free body diagram simplifies any object to a dense point where all of its mass can be assumed to be concentrated and shows all the forces acting on that mass.

If a mass does not accelerate in a certain direction, it is said to be in equilibrium in that direction.

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As we hurtle across the universe at 828,000 km/h, forces take us places yet keep us rooted — fumbling in search for fruition, friction included. In the grand scheme of things, chaos theory states that a butterfly’s wing flap has the potency of creating a whirlwind; forces are powerful agents of change and govern every interaction we have, or will have. If this makes you feel small, or insignificant, just think of Justin. May the net force be with you.