Shameless plug

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

            While at first it seems that no matter what you do, the math will never end and you will never regain control, the problem slowly becomes less like Phaethon’s ride. It smooths out, the variables slowly reducing to an understandable form…

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!

On Trees

This is my favorite tree. This tree has been with me through thick and thin in marching band season over the past three years.

During the summer, the color guard always wanted the shade from this tree to practice; of course, so did everyone else in the band. Yet somehow, we managed to snag this lovely tree more than any other section.

It's the perfect tree because not only does it provide shade, but its branches are high up enough that we can still do tosses without hindrance. It's a lovely tree and I shall always cherish it.

This assignment particularly reminded me of a book I loved back in middle school called Which Witch? by Eva Ibbotson.

It was a fantastic book about a dark wizard who, upon the realization of a grey hair, decides to marry a dark witch. He holds a contest for the seven witches found in the North of Great Britain. The witch that does the most cruel, awful magic will be his bride.

One of the witches decides on an the old, reliable trick of locking people into trees. She summons a particularly nasty family; a spoiled daughter, a shopaholic mother, and a quiet father. She magics them unconscious, seals them in trees, and takes a bow.

At this point, the other witches demand that she must undo her magic in order to prove her power. She does so, releasing the mother and daughter. The spirits of the trees, the dryads, come out and exclaim how terrible each one was.

When she tries to release the father, she finds she is unable to. The dryad in the tree, a tall oak, comes out and informs the crowd that the father will not be coming out. He likes being inside the tree; it's quiet without his family nagging at him, and he was happy to sit in peace in the tree.

I'm going to go buy that book for my Kindle and read it again.


Edit: I've been holding onto this because I haven't taken a picture of the tree. So belated, but eh.

Einstein and Mythology

I had the great pleasure today of listening to a talk by Dr. S. James Gates, a prominent theoretical physicist here for the "Celebrating Einstein" event. He gave a talk about Einstein geared at the general public and gave me several things to think about.

First of all, the talk was entitled "Legacies of Einstein's Concerti & Opus", in which he equated Einstein to a composer, an artist with numbers. During the talk, he also referred many times to Einstein as an author writing a novel; like every book has characters that are described by words, Einstein made characters described by equations.

The truly incredible thing is that using one equation, Einstein (and those who expanded on his theories) were able to take this equation and predict almost everything about gravity with it. Black holes come about as a solution of this equation. This equation makes your car GPS work. This theory is amazing, and it all came about purely of geometry; Einstein simply used the language of mathematics to create a story that has been able to predict the real world.

SCIENCE!

Near the end of his talk, Dr. Gates seemed to be echoing the very creation myth that I did in class; the story of the Big Bang. He talked about how everything that ever is, was, and will be was once compressed down into a single point, then inflation and the cooling of the universe. He ended his talk with this quote:

"Everything in this universe... so many possibilities, and when it comes down to it, all these unique combinations of elements and such made in stars have only been able to create one copy of you."

I am made of star stuff. Of all the possible atomic configurations, the universe chose mine. Me. Sitting here, relating the story of the universe. Completely infinitesimal to the scale of the universe, yet special.

Life is Pain

This is something that's been rattling around in my head recently due to the three "parts" of the class: Creation, Intitiation, and [endings].  If you apply this philosophy to life, then we have beginnings, middles, and ends; in other words, birth, life, and death. Dr. Sexon wanted our Initiation -- middle -- stories to be "painful."

This has made me ponder on a line from a truly fantastic movie, The Princess Bride: "Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

Yes, life can be painful. As humans, we suffer heartbreak, physical injuries, desperation, and all manner of less-than-pleasant things. But it's also true that life can be full of wonderful moments like cuddling with kittens or watching a beautiful sunset.

Without the pain, though, the non-painful moments would not seem as incredible.

Without the incredible moments, pain would still be terrible.

I think that in general, life is a blend of the two. However, as humans, we can have a tendency to focus on the negative and we don't believe we can be happy unless all the bad things from our life are eradicated. Advertisers thrive on this policy as they try to sell you something you never knew you needed, but now you know you MUST have it for your life to be more happy and convenient.

My conclusion: Life is continuously painful. It is also continuously beautiful. You need a balance of the two for life to mean anything. We are defined by the struggles we overcome, but we should always take a chance to reward ourselves for a job well done.

Hijinks in the Workplace: A Displacement

It was a brilliant spring day, but Jackson barely noticed the flowers blooming on the side of the highway while he viciously honked the horn at the driver in front of him. He really didn't want to be late to work today; he couldn't wait to see his co-worker, Adam, set off the prank he had meticulously placed last night. He had been planning this prank for weeks and definitely did not want to miss the show. He impatiently honked the horn again, but his efforts were unrewarded. Instead, the little old lady in the car in front of him turned around and gave him a rather rude gesture.

Despite his worries, Jackson was able to slide into his cubicle by seven fifty-three. He woke up his computer and organized his pens, excitedly fidgeting. Just as he typed his login information, Adam walked in and sat in his cubicle, unaware of Jackson's plan. Jackson tried his best to bite back his laughter, waiting for the computer to boot. The login would trigger it....

As the last few workers trickled into their cubicles, music began playing throughout the the office, strong but soft chords speaking of bravery. Quietly at first, the strains of the 1812 overture grew in volume and pride. The confused employees glanced around at each other curiously, wondering out loud if HR had come up with some new evidence that classical music improved workflow or some such. Most of them shrugged it off and began working, the tap-tap-tappity of their keys providing percussion to the Tchaikovsky masterpiece.

By now, the music had reached its highest point, a brassy fortissimo increasing in volume as the music slowed dramatically, the recorded instrumentalists preparing themselves for the festive explosion of sound that the Overture is famous for.

As the celebrative music started, Adam yelled out loud. His keyboard had begun exploding with glitter, the bursts timed with the music. Keys were flying off his board and showering glitter all over his cubicle like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Jackson exploded in laughter, happy that his planning had paid off. The hours of work making the rigged keyboard and connecting his computer to the office sound system were all worth it for the shocked expression on Adam's face. Jackson's work buddies came over to congratulate him on a job well done as the rest of the office joined in laughing at Adam. Adam smiled, going along with the crowd, congratulating Jackson on his good work.

After a few minutes, the laughter died down and everyone returned to work, including the glitter-covered Adam. Jackson returned to his computer, still chuckling slightly. The remote desktop program he had used to coordinate the login with the music was still connected to Adam's computer. He hovered his mouse over the X, ready to close the program, but something stopped him. Adam had begun his work and had just clicked on a file that read "Extra Income."

Jackson knew that he should close the program and get to his own work, but he didn't. His eyes were transfixed on the window displaying Adam's screen, which was now loading an Excel document. When the document loaded, it was revealed to be an expense report. Everything looked normal until Jackson caught one of the lines in the "expenditures" column. Private Income, it read.

Jackson recoiled. Adam was in charge of some minor finances for the company, but his income was listed in a different part of the spreadsheet. This additional income column was far above Jackson's own pay, far above even the pay of their boss. Was Adam laundering money from the company?

---

Later that day, Jackson went to talk to his boss about what he had found. Daniel greeted him cheerily as Jackson stepped into the small office and sat down in the visitor chair. "What can I do for you, my friend?"

Cautiously, Jackson began to describe what had happened that morning after the prank. As he spoke, Daniel began to look more and more serious. "Are you sure?" he asked Jackson. "That's a pretty serious accusation to make."

Jackson nodded. He had kept tabs on Adam's computer throughout the day until there was no doubt left in his mind of Adam's guilt. "He's stealing from us, sir."

"All right," Daniel replied. "I'll make some calls, get it taken care of. You did the right thing by coming to me."

Jackson nodded respectfully to him and returned to work.

---

By the end of the week, Jackson noticed a general shift in the attitudes of his co-workers. When he walked in, they normally greeted him with smiles and the occasional joke. The responses to his emails became brief and curt where they had once been warm and jovial. Whenever he tried to approach someone about the sudden change in temperament, they would shrug him off with a harsh look and a "oh, you know."

Jackson tried to shake off the feeling and return to programming, but before he could open the program, the door to the office floor was opened rather harshly. Five police officers strode into the maze of cubicles. One of them stopped by Jackson. "Are you Jackson Hirsch?"

Jackson nodded. This must be about what he had discovered earlier this week.

The officer signaled the others. "I'm going to have to take you into custody for redistributing money from this company into your own personal funds."

"What?" Jackson shouted, jumping up. "No! It wasn't me, it was--"

He was cut off harshly as the officer grabbed him, rendering him immobile. "We know you've been accessing the computers of others in order to transfer the funds. Thought you couldn't leave a trail, huh?"

Jackson stuttered incoherently, unable to make sense of this new development. How could he be taken into custody? Surely Daniel would show up and make sense of it. Adam must have somehow discovered his program for the prank and used it to try to pin the crime on Jackson. Unless...

As Jackson was led out of his workplace, he caught the eyes of his co-workers, pleading for one of them to speak for him. They looked at him with cold eyes, indignant that he had supposedly stolen their hard-earned money.

Alice, who he used to flirt with over coffee. Ethan, who helped him pull all his office pranks. Ryan, Sam, and Ben, who were always helping him figure out bugs in his coding. Sandra, the intern; Anna, Brendan, Lauren, Jason... those who he used to call his friends were standing emotionless as he was pulled into the elevator. The last thing he saw before the doors closed was Daniel's hard eyes and a smirk across Adam's face.