Sudoku-->Physics Discovery

While I was doing a Sudoku puzzle the other night, I threw my pencil onto the table in frustration. As my pencil rolled across the smooth surface of the wooden table, I realized that I had just witnessed something that I had just learned in Physics. Since I applied force to the pencil (my motion of releasing), the pencil travelled rather quickly over the table. As the distance from the pencil and me increased, the velocity began to decrease due to the friction between the table and the pencil. The pencil began moving at a fast velocity, but began to quickly slow down until it came to a complete rest after a few seconds. The pencil had a negative acceleration rate because: (final velocity-initial velocity)/time=negative. Although it had a negative acceleration rate, the pencil had a positive displacement because it travelled in the forward (positive) direction.