what we do with our time...

On the drive in this morning, I was listening to an interview with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. The interviewer, Bob Edwards, asked them "what would you do different?" The unanimous response was "not take drugs, that wasted a lot of time". This statement got me thinking, "what would I do different?"

I've been reading a biography about Werner Heisenberg, the guy who developed the aptly named "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle". This principle states (my interpretation) that you cannot know both the position and velocity of a particle (such as an electron) with any degree of certainty. The reason for this that the mere act of measuring either the position or velocity will change the other value. I know, its deep and hard to grasp (for me at least). Anyway, I have been reading, in depth, about his family and his early years (I'm still at the beginning of the book) and it goes into detail about how young Werner spent his idle time. It seems that he didn't have much idle time, actually. He spent a good deal of time doing schoolwork. This raises a question for me: "what would I do differently if I didn't have the internet or television or other "Time Wasters".

Where would we be as a society if we didn't have as much free time? Does our dependence on technology make us more lazy since it gives us so much more free time? One of the goals of technology is to make life "easier" and I think in many ways it has done that; but has it also made us a group of people without the same work ethic our parents or grandparents had, simply because technology encourages a lifestyle of ease?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying technology is bad. I'm really asking myself these questions while my kids are still at home and I have some time to make a difference in their lives. Should I be working harder? Should I be studying and working to gain knowledge? Should I be just "doing" whatever I can to spend time with my kids? Should I try to set an example to them to spend their time wisely? Or should I enjoy life and reduce the amount of stress in my life by letting technology "do its job" instead of placing a huge guilt trip on myself?

Of course I ask these questions after telling you I have been reading a book about a physicist. I write this as I am preparing for my day while working on a physics research project. But, I did watch a couple of hours of TV last night when I could have gone for a bike ride with one of the most amazing teenagers you will ever want to meet. On the one hand, I did do some house cleaning, but on the other hand there is still more to do. Of course I realize the house will always be there to clean.

So, how do you spend your time? Looking back, how would you spend your time differently? Should you make some changes to what you do? Should you make some changes to how your kids spend their time? Would we, as a society, be in a different place if our kids had less free time?

Thoughts? Comments?

thanks for reading,

jb

some thoughts on mass and energy

In Physics we teach students about both Conservation of Mass and Energy. Before we can do that, students have to understand what mass is. One of the ways I teach students about it is to describe mass as the inherent "laziness" of an object. In other words, the more mass an object has, the lazier the object is; the harder it is to get the object to change its motion (or lack of). I was thinking this morning that I may have to change the way I teach that.

I was listening to my mentor lecture about the mass of a Z boson which is right around 91Gev (giga-electron volts). Its a very massive particle and therefore very short lived. It decays to other particles within about 10^-25 seconds. That being said, you have to understand that when talking about particles, it doesn't matter if you are talking about energy or mass, they are measured in the same units because they are effectively the same thing. In high energy physics, scientists don't create matter from nothing. They collide particles with enormous kinetic energy (energy of motion) and that energy, coupled with the mass of the particles (usually protons or electrons) are converted into other particles.

So, if a particle has a lot of mass, (following my previous logic) it has a lot of laziness. However, following the logic of particle physics, if a particle has a lot of mass, it has a lot of energy. Therefore, using those two statements, something with a lot of energy is very lazy. Hmmm... yeah, I'm gonna have to change the way I teach mass, because that doesn't really make any sense, now. :-)

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks for reading,

jb

Research Week 2

Here I sit, frustrated staring at 3 lines of code, trying to understand why the program keeps telling me I am trying to divide by zero. I honestly have no idea. I'm not sure just why I refuse to go and ask my mentor. I'm sure it's probably just a single variable out of place. Its amazing that coding can be so frustrating and so enjoyable all at the same time. I have made a ton of progress as far as C++ goes and my understanding of it; my ability to make it do what I want. But as I said, here I sit, frustrated.

On a positive note, as soon as I can get this figured out, I am going to start working with some real numbers, not with made up randomly generated numbers. I am looking forward to that! I want to see some real data.

And just that quickly, with another quick glance...its like putting my glasses on and seeing the code fresh and new! I realize that I have (for the umpteenth time) tried to abbreviate "parameter" as "p" instead of "par" as it should be and the program starts to work for me.  Now if I can just figure out why parameter #0 is "infinitely out of range". Curious.

edited update: of course! I had one single variable out of place and once fixed it worked perfectly!

jb

Physics on the 4th

Any of you who have ever taken one of my classes will know I can't resist the urge to encourage thinking in terms of physics. Basically, I get joy out of ruining movies, football games, and the like. So, why should a fireworks display be any different?

I was reading one of the many physics blogs I follow this morning and thought the exercise to find the size of fireworks displays was quite interesting. I mean, who among you has never thought about it? I constantly (and I am being totally serious) think things like "how do they get those fireworks to be big circles?" and "would this display look the same from everyone's perspective?". If you are interested in a simple method to determine the size of these fireworks, using only your brain, your eyes, and your knuckles, try this. If you have ever done any astronomical observations with me, you will find this method of measurement is remarkably similar to some exercises we have done together. In fact, while you are waiting for the fireworks to start, use the moon to see just how accurate your calculations are. The nearly full moon will be rising right around sunset, so you will have some time to kill while you are waiting for it to be completely dark (look East or opposite of Sun). Be careful! The equation given uses time to measure distance and it is in feet. I don't think you want to know the diameter of Moon in feet.

Sure, it will be mentally challenging, but if everything were easy, where would the fun in life be? Please, if I have ruined fireworks for you, let me know about your experience with a comment! Happy 4th of July to each of you and your family.

Research Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of a research project I began through Quarknet at OSU. It was actually an interesting day although not necessarily what I had expected.

I arrived with plenty of time to spare and met my mentors, Dr. Flera Rizatdinova and Dr. Sasha Khanov. They are both high energy physicist who teach at OSU and are involved both with Fermilab and the LHC. They have so much knowledge and are more than willing to share it with me.  It seems as though Flera is into the actual data analysis side of things while Sasha is really good with computing and the hardware side. He is quite knowledgeable in different types of particle detectors.  BTW, they are actually married and have a couple of children who are both younger than 6. Apparently their son is obsessed with how things come apart and go back together. Sounds like a little scientist in the making. Both Flera and Sasha are from Russia, but met at Kansas State.

My morning was filled with a computing class from Sasha and some general knowledge from Flera about the Z boson and how they use the Root program to detect different types of particles.  Root is an open source program which was written by the physicists at CERN to analyze their data. I got a brief intro to it coupled with an introduction to UNIX. I have never worked in either, so it was quite a morning.

After lunch, we met again and I was instructed to play around within the Root program and UNIX.  Its kind of like learning to drive a car without understanding how the car actaully works. This a problem for me since I really like to understand how things actually do what they do. Suffice to say I just accepted my lot in life because there is no way I can learn everything!  I am just going to try to pick up some data analysis skills and computing knowledge during these 4 weeks.

I am beginning to feel a little more comfortable just navigating around within UNIX and Root; now its time to actually start manipulating some of the different code modules so I can get a handle on how to make Root do something for me, instead of me just looking at other peoples data.

Stay tuned...

Back to the Moon!

Here we go. Tomorrow, if all goes as planned, NASA is RETURNING to the Moon. Now I say returning because there are many conspiracy theorists out there who "believe" we've never been to the Moon. A couple of problems with that:

1. All of the conspiracies are based on a mis-interpretation of facts and faulty logic. I won't get into those things here, but feel free to look around and see what you find, you can start here.


2. The other problem here is that word "believe". There's no room in science for belief. A belief in anything conotates some kind of faith. I believe in God. I believe He created the Earth. I DO NOT believe in Evolution. I ACCEPT Evolution. I see evidence for it and I accept that evidence. I don't believe in anything in science. There is either evidence for something or evidence to refute it.

So all of that to say, conspiracy theorists are about to have to shut up. Why, you say? Because tomorrow, there is a rocket launching with the LRO (Lunar Reconnasiance Orbiter). This little gem is going to orbit about 31 miles above the surface of the Moon. That means, with the optics on modern space vehicles, the LRO will be able to resolve objects smaller than about 1.5 feet. So, anything left behind by the earlier lunar missions will be able to be seen. As soon as those images come back, the conspriacy folks will have to clam up. So NASA, be sure we get those images!

Technology at the district level

This week I was "allowed" to teach a class on Wikis, Blogs, and Discussion Boards. It was actually the first day of a class I was able to take called AIT Beyond, with AIT being Advanced Integration Technology. This has been a good class, really for collaborating with other teachers, but also to be able to get the new 13 inch Macbook Pro as "payment" for being in the class. It has been interesting to hear some of the anti-technology sentiment, even within this class. And therein lies my question:

How do you get teachers to start embracing technology and stop complaining about it down all the time? How is it that we expect students to be prepared for a tech heavy workplace? How can we expect them to be successful in college where virtual learning platforms are the norm? Do we need to do away with all of the old school teachers? Maybe we need to adopt more alternatively certified teachers? How do we solve this problem? I hear it all the time in my building, "I don't use technology in my classroom" or "I can't use technology in the classroom". Some can use it, but choose not to. Why? Is it too time intensive? Is it because its different? Is it too scary? Is it not scary enough?

I certainly don't know the answers. I do know some of the questions, though. Anyone want to weigh in on how to get teachers comfortable with technology? Why does it have to be a bad word to some teachers? And I am talking web2.0, not just using powerpoint and video for teaching. I am talking computers in the kids hands and students adding to the body of knowledge! Project based learning via computing.