The formula for calculating the velocity of a falling object from a given height is: v = √(2ad), where v = velocity, a = acceleration (9.81 m/s²) and d = distance.

Reading Journal Post #2

Reading Journal Post #2
Chapters 7-11


Summary:

After seeing his friend Lucy, Tom Harvey leaves Lucy alone in her mother's bedroom and wanders over into the living room, where her brother Ben is watching TV. There, he questions and threatens Ben. Ben cracks, and tells about how the Crows wanted him to stab some kid, and Ben refused. Since he didn't want to take a knife to an innocent, the Crows decided to pay Ben a little visit. Lucy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somewhat satisfied, Tom leaves the apartment, before intercepting a call from a few floors down through the iPhone embedded in his brain. A gang member, Jayden Carroll, checks in with his superiors reporting Tom's visitation to Lucy, and his superior tells him to go and threaten Ben. Tom becomes so enraged that he waits by the elevators, tracking Jayden's cell, and he accidentally glances in the steel frame, observing that his skin is glowing and flashing different colors all over, a sort of camouflage so complex that no one could see who he really was. When Jayden arrives, Tom pushes him back into the lift, shocks him (by accident) and threatens him, stating "'If you go anywhere near Lucy or Ben Walker again, I'm going to make you wish you'd never been born.'" (65). When Jayden asks Tom what he is, Tom only responds with "'[Y]our worst nightmare,'" (65).

After this confrontation, Tom goes home, shocked at himself, a person who is usually non-confrontational, and starts to do some research to see exactly what he can do. The possibilities are nearly limitless, and Tom even admits to himself, "I could overdose on information" (75). He hacks into the police database and learns the names of three suspects in Lucy's rape, and also intercepts a video from a Nadia Moore, who filmed the incident. In anger after watching the video, he sends a few texts pretending to be another person to ruin Nadia's relationship with a gang member, Carl Patrick. A little while later, Lucy wrote on her Myspace blog for the first time since the violation, admitting she is lost, confused, and messed up. Tom decides to make a Myspace, and he writes back to Lucy under a code name; iBoy.

The next day, Tom decides to go to the school to ask his friend Davey, a new gang member, some questions. While there, he finds out that Davey was the one who threw the iPhone at him, and that he was there at the break-in. He forces Davey to reveal the names of the kids who violated Lucy, and then leaves the school. Before he leaves, though, he witnesses a relationship spat between four people, the result of the texts he had sent. One of the people was killed by a knife, and Tom Harvey has to deal with the guilt of it being his fault.

At the end of the chapter, Tom goes to visit Lucy, and sees a bunch of Crows tagging her door with derogatory words, and iBoy comes out to fight.

Analysis:

In these chapters, there is a development in Tom's personality. Where before he would shy away from a fight, he now jumps in, unafraid. This is a direct result from the new powers he has discovered, and that with them he feels indestructable and powerful. So the question here is "Is the power going to his head?". When he sees the mobsters outside Lucy's door, he states "..but I didn't care. He wouldn't be smiling for long." (113). This kind of thought would never have crossed the mind of the normal Tom Harvey.

Questions to Consider:

How could a sudden influx of power influence a person?
What would you do in Tom's position?

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