5 Minute Freewrite - A Small Gap

All, doing a 5 minute freewrite. Thank you for reading.

Source

In physics class today, the teacher asked a question to her students, "Why is there a small gap between segments of railway track?"

And she gotten a whole array of funny answers but no one seem to know why is that so.

Answers such as, it looked nicer with gap, they had cashflow issues resulting in unable to ensure there is no gap, material shortage etc. All kinds of creative answers came but none were the correct reason.

So finally she shared to her students about the theory of thermal expansion and that the gap is there so that the rail can expand on a hot day without causing a bucked up rail which will disrupt the train movement.

And with this, the concepts about thermal expansion becomes more vivid to the students.