So I'm done blogging for this class, but I've been re-inspired to go back to my other blog, Fundamental Uncertainty. It's a blog about me and my life as a physics major.
I abandoned it a while ago, but blogging has been so much fun this semester that I've decided I want to start it up again. Soon to come: path efficiency and how annoying walking to class can really be.
Also probably something about graduation.
So yes. Read my blog.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
My blog is mostly read in Russia.
This doesn't really have much to do with the class, but...
I always find statistics interesting. According to my statistic page, mostly Russians view my blog. This makes me very happy for some reason. I wonder if they understand English, or if it was just a bad redirect from Google.
Also, someone accessed my blog using Windows NT 6.1? Get with the times, yo.
It also makes me unreasonably happy that only one pageview is from internet explorer. Terrible, terrible program. Firefox is way better.
Also based on a nebula. Take that, IE.
The beginning, and the end.
One thing that caught my eye in class was when we looked up Hindu eschatology -- it seems they believe in a "Big Crunch", where the universe contracts on itself and then begins anew. That reminded me of something: the Big Crunch theory of the fate of the universe.
The Big Crunch theory happens if our Universe stops expanding, then begins to contract back down to a single point - kind of like the Big Bang, but in reverse. I think it's incredible that this is also a theme in the Hindu culture, long before science knew that the Universe was not static and changes size.
Is it possible that Hindi had it right all along, and science was just slow to catch up? Possibly. It's those little "coincidences" like that... they really get me.
Of course, there's no such thing as coincidence.
The Big Crunch theory happens if our Universe stops expanding, then begins to contract back down to a single point - kind of like the Big Bang, but in reverse. I think it's incredible that this is also a theme in the Hindu culture, long before science knew that the Universe was not static and changes size.
Not to mention that we see death and rebirth as a cycle throughout mythology: humans and animals and plants are born, live, then die, paving the way for different evolution of those that come next. A good example of this is Ragnarok.
Of course, there's no such thing as coincidence.
An Evaluation
This class was very eye-opening after almost two years of physics and math classes. It reminded me how to think outside of the numbers and to see things I might not have seen if I spent too much time bent over my notes and scribbling my homework frantically down before class. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will try to keep my horizons beyond just physics and math to the best of my ability.
Maybe I'll start by re-reading Ovid.
Maybe I'll start by re-reading Ovid.
An ordinary day... it was not.
This was a really difficult week to have an "ordinary" day -- Celebrating Einstein was this week, so every day was an eye-opening experience into the life and theories of Einstein. But I'll try.
Today is a Friday. I wake up, suddenly remembering that I had procrastinated my particle physics assignment that was due at 10 AM. Whoops. Not a great start. But procrastinating is ordinary... right? Everyone does it to some extent - intentionally or not - and must deal with the consequences. For me, it meant busting out a few properties of the Dirac equation in about two hours.
But I got it done and hurried my way off to class to turn it in. There we started talking about something called "Bilinear Covariants". We defined something called Ψ that solved our equation nicely and its properties for a while. Hey, look! A greek letter! A symbol used to denote a sound that helped tell stories over and over -- the same stories we've been looking at in Ovid. It shows up everywhere...
After particle physics, I have a two-hour break before Mythologies, so I sit down and start working on some homework. My friend Laura comes and sits down next to me, doing the crossword. Soon I forget about my homework and am working on it with her. The structures of those puzzles are incredible. How does someone take twenty-six letters, arranging them time and time again on a grid and somehow have words that make complete sense? That's the beauty of language, I suppose: So many patterns, so many meanings.
Of course, in Mythologies, Frederick Turner was visiting. That alone was more than enough to make this day extraordinary. I particularly enjoyed him talking about cosmology and the need for it in epics. I think it's incredible how he was able to build bridges for us we might never had imagined; science to mythology to epic and back again.
From that, I had to go to my thermodynamics class. Back to the numbers. Sigh.
Today we were talking about the partition function. This is a magical function where if you know what it is (Z) you know everything you ever need to know about the system. It was about drawing connections between this mathematical construct Z and real, measurable things. Again, it was all about making bridges where none had existed before.
That's the amazing thing about education. You can use it to memorize fact after fact, but the really good classes are the ones that have you make connections between things you already and know and use that to discern something about the world. That has been true of all of my classes this semester, and for most of them throughout college. It's been a great four years.
That night was the "Shout Across Time" event for Celebrating Einstein. It was a huge project that brought together artists, physicsists, musicians, architects, dancers... pretty much every discipline you can think of. This outreach event was geared towards the layman, towards kids even.
It started with a danced lecture on gravitational waves; someone told us about Einstein and his theories as the dancers visualized the words on stage, forming elastic sheets and interferometers with their bodies.
Afte that, the dancers changed and performed a piece with a Cirque de Soleil trained aerialist; she spun and spun as the other dancers whirled around her, a black whole dragging along an accretion disk. It was really quite incredible.
Today is a Friday. I wake up, suddenly remembering that I had procrastinated my particle physics assignment that was due at 10 AM. Whoops. Not a great start. But procrastinating is ordinary... right? Everyone does it to some extent - intentionally or not - and must deal with the consequences. For me, it meant busting out a few properties of the Dirac equation in about two hours.
But I got it done and hurried my way off to class to turn it in. There we started talking about something called "Bilinear Covariants". We defined something called Ψ that solved our equation nicely and its properties for a while. Hey, look! A greek letter! A symbol used to denote a sound that helped tell stories over and over -- the same stories we've been looking at in Ovid. It shows up everywhere...
After particle physics, I have a two-hour break before Mythologies, so I sit down and start working on some homework. My friend Laura comes and sits down next to me, doing the crossword. Soon I forget about my homework and am working on it with her. The structures of those puzzles are incredible. How does someone take twenty-six letters, arranging them time and time again on a grid and somehow have words that make complete sense? That's the beauty of language, I suppose: So many patterns, so many meanings.
Of course, in Mythologies, Frederick Turner was visiting. That alone was more than enough to make this day extraordinary. I particularly enjoyed him talking about cosmology and the need for it in epics. I think it's incredible how he was able to build bridges for us we might never had imagined; science to mythology to epic and back again.
From that, I had to go to my thermodynamics class. Back to the numbers. Sigh.
Today we were talking about the partition function. This is a magical function where if you know what it is (Z) you know everything you ever need to know about the system. It was about drawing connections between this mathematical construct Z and real, measurable things. Again, it was all about making bridges where none had existed before.
That's the amazing thing about education. You can use it to memorize fact after fact, but the really good classes are the ones that have you make connections between things you already and know and use that to discern something about the world. That has been true of all of my classes this semester, and for most of them throughout college. It's been a great four years.
That night was the "Shout Across Time" event for Celebrating Einstein. It was a huge project that brought together artists, physicsists, musicians, architects, dancers... pretty much every discipline you can think of. This outreach event was geared towards the layman, towards kids even.
It started with a danced lecture on gravitational waves; someone told us about Einstein and his theories as the dancers visualized the words on stage, forming elastic sheets and interferometers with their bodies.
Afte that, the dancers changed and performed a piece with a Cirque de Soleil trained aerialist; she spun and spun as the other dancers whirled around her, a black whole dragging along an accretion disk. It was really quite incredible.
Then, there was a live interview with Jim Gates, an incredible theoretical physicist whose job is, and I quote, "to make stuff up." I think he views his job much as a novelist or composer, only instead of adhering to the rules of language or music theory, he makes stuff up using the language of mathematics. I think that's an incredible way to think of physicists, and it was definitely something I'd never thought of before.
Finally, there was a film on Einstein and gravitational waves, interweaving ideas of time, math, technology, and, of course, the cosmos and black holes.
I was spellbound by the entire night, and couldn't wait to come back on Saturday and see it all again.
Today... was definitely not ordinary. I met Frederick Turner. I spent some quality time with friends. I procrastinated. I watched an artistic event about scientific concepts. I made connections.
It was a day I will not soon forget.
My Life as a Mythic Detective
My
Life as a Mythic Detective
As a physics
major, I’ve had an interesting time this semester. As I go through my homework,
I’ve been thinking of the Ovidian stories in the back of my head and have drawn
some interesting parallels.
For instance, I
can be working on my particle physics homework – a subject that Ovid could have
never imagined – and I can make connections to the stories we’ve been reading
in Mythologies. How?
Well, the premise
of most particle physics is figuring out how to understand different interactions
of elementary particles. Richard Feynman was a Cadmus of particle physics, if
you will. He arrived in a place unknown by scientists, taking to the photons
and electrons with a fiery vigor. He fought with integrals and derivatives and
delta functions, bravely questing to conquer the knowledge held by the photons.
He finally vanquished his foe with the invention of Feynman diagrams, planting
the photons in them as squiggly lines, and thus, the field of quantum
electrodynamics was born. But I digress.
One of my most
recent homework problems was on electron-muon scattering.
The first thing you do is draw a diagram
showing the reaction, then label particles with variables that will help us
keep track of them.
 |
At this point, we
need to check to see if there are any other diagrams. For this reaction,
there’s only one of this type of diagram, so we’re good (at least for only two
vertices). As we add more and more
diagrams, it’s like we’re getting more and more threads to put into the
intricate fabric that is particle physics. Truly, this must be the fabric that
Arachne wove to contest Athena. This tapestry, once fully completed, will
reveal the quantity M, which will reveal to us
everything we could possibly want to know about this reaction.
Then we start
putting in the numbers, and our story turns into Phaethon’s ride…
Oh
goodness. What’s going on here? Where did all of this math come from? I don’t
even know these symbols! Oh god, oh god, it’s getting beyond my control!
Those bispinors - how did they become matrices? Why did I
ever think I could do this?! There goes my physics career – I can see it
crashing before my eyes. Oh, no, what will my father think? WHY ISN’T IT JUST A
NUMBER, IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE A NUMBER. …I broke physics... help.
After more insanity that I ever
thought possible, this turned out to be the final answer. But it’s so simple,
so beautiful; nothing I had ever seen before in physics compared to it after my
struggles with other problems. This equation was something I slaved on, but
then it took on a life of its own; I felt like Pygmalion upon his discovery of
his wife, a wish granted by Venus.
And
thus, I thank the physics gods.
Snakes and the Apocalypse
Dr. Sexon was talking a lot today about snakes and the apocalypse, so I thought I would share my favorite poem regarding the subject. It's about a snake called Nate: he's a very important snake. He's the snake in charge of the lever that stops the world from blowing up.
There once was a modest upstanding civilian
His name that of fame and his body reptilian
He’s Nate, Nate the Snake, oh so charming and clever
His name is so famous because of a lever
And a lever is only a symbol of status
As a modified doomsday delay apparatus
Ah yes, for this lever’s a thing of foreboding
Must be pulled every day to stop Earth from exploding
Nate the Snake’s a very important snake
He’s the snake in charge of the lever that stops the world
from blowing up
And although our hero is legless and scaly
He’s charged with a largely important task daily
Every morning at five and without any whinin’
He wakes ups and stretches, alignin' his spine and
He takes a snake shower before the sun rises
And chooses from ties of snake size that he prizes
And then without any ado whatsoever
The snake they call Nate makes his way to the lever
It’s Nate, Nate the Snake, he’s a very important snake
He’s the snake in charge of the lever that stops the world
from blowing up
Showered and dressed, Nate departs his abode
And he comes to some train tracks, and then to a road
By the light of the dawn in the thin morning haze
Nate comes to the crossings and glances both ways
Content with this small act of self preservation
Nate slithers along with devout motivation
He comes to a warehouse that holds the device
And he greases the hinge of the death lever twice
And then without much undo effort exerted
Nate pulls on the lever, devastation averted
We may never know just how much Nate is worth
But that never stops him from saving the Earth
He’s Nate the Snake, he’s a very important snake
He’s the snake in charge of the lever that stops the world
from blowing up
Now one fateful evening our hero attends
A raucous night party with liquor and friends
And all of the patrons are greatly excited
That the cold blooded note worthy Nate’s been invited
‘Cause everyone knows Nate the Snake, he’s a very important
snake
He’s the snake in charge of the lever that stops the world
from blowing up
This party was wild and joyously festive
Though a few of Nate’s actions were slightly suggestive
He drank dry martinis and vodka cranberries
And polished it off with two glasses of sherry
So Nate’s in a state of great inebriation
And gets a ride home from this loud celebration
The next day he wakes, and his vision’s still foggy
He moans and he groans, now hung-over and groggy
But he stirs from his bed like a corpse from the grave
‘Cause Nate knows that he’s got a planet to save
He’s Nate the Snake, he’s a very important snake
He’s the snake in charge of the lever that stops the world
from blowing up
Now greatly regretting the party he reveled
Nate exits his house looking sick and disheveled
He crosses the tracks without any delays
And he gets to the road but does not look ways
‘Cause Nate’s still reliving the previous night
And he looks to the left but forgets to look right
And on this very day, through the worst kind of luck
Nate finds himself right in the path of a truck
And this ain’t no passenger automobile or
An ice cream truck, this here’s a big eighteen wheeler
And the driver of such, now the victim of fate
He instantly recognized unlucky Nate
‘Cause everyone knows Nate the Snake, he’s a very important
snake
He’s the snake in charge of the lever that stops the world
from blowing up
The driver immediately started to swerve
But he stopped for a second because he observed
That if he missed Nate with his big heavy truck
The warehouse that held the death lever'd be struck
And not understanding the subtle mechanics
Of such a device, the man started to panic
If he hit Nate the snake, did he have a replacement?
Would killing Nate cause him much social debasement?
And what of the lever, if it became broken
Would that cause the travesties hereto unspoken?
And so, fearing death over social exclusion
The ill fated driver came to the conclusion...
Better Nate than lever!
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