’Twas the Night Before Finals…

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My always-ignored advice to anyone studying for exams is that the best thing you can do the night before is get a good night’s sleep. Long study periods long before the previous night should have been used to build up your skills and knowledge. Late-night cramming at the expense of being fresh and having your wits about you in the morning is not really going to help much, if at all. (Heh… long study periods….call me old-fashioned.)

On this very matter, Yvette (one of our regular commenters here) has outdone herself once again with her literary skills! Here is part of her seasonal (as in finals season) poem:

The Night Before Finals

By Yvette Cendes

T’was the night before finals
And all through the dorm
Crazed cramming and panic
Was quite the norm.

The students were restless
And none touched their beds
While theorems and formulas
Danced in their heads.

With textbook in hand Click to continue reading this post →

Finally

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Well, it’s been a crazy week here in my corner of the universe. I’m still trying to find the time to break off from several things in order to update you on things from last week and the week before. Meanwhile, new things have this way of happening anyway, and sometimes I’d like to mention them too. So it is with teaching matters. Two Fridays ago was the last lecture of my electricity and magnetism class. We’d done magnetization, they’d waded through another couple of class worksheets I prepared for them on the topic, we’d remarked upon similarities and differences with respect to polarization in the electric case, and with a few hints about what phenomena were to come when they do electrodynamics (the second part of the course – we’d strictly been dealing with statics) a feeling of some sadness came over me as I said the last words of the class. I’d liked this group. They got it. I was going to take them out of their comfort zone and get them to work a bit harder and stretch themselves a bit harder, and the benefits (I hope) became apparent to them when they could see further, run faster, and jump higher (with respect to their abilities as physicists, I mean). (See some earlier thoughts on that here, as I prepared to start teaching the class.) They responded well by not whining about the extra effort required, but instead rolling up their sleeves and having a go, with good humour, a good sense of camaraderie, and remaining reasonably engaged and interactive right down to the very last lecture. They got it. I love it when that happens.

electricity and magnetism physics 408a final exam.

Monday of this week was really the end – they had their final exam (see photo above – Click to continue reading this post →

Transcendence

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seed december 2007 coverI noticed last week that the December issue of the magazine Seed has the short piece I mentioned I was working on a while back. I actually completely forgot about it, and just looked at it on the newsstand on the off-chance, and there it was. It is part of a larger cover story by Jonah Lehrer about science and art (which I’ve not yet read), with a number of other scientists giving their take. I was asked to contribute by picking a piece of art, and writing 100 (they said) words about how it connects to my science, Or I could talk about how a piece might have inspired me, or some combination of those sorts of things showing the intersection between science and art. It took me a while to come up with a short answer to this many-faceted and interesting issue. I actually did two completely separate pieces, before later focusing on one and polishing up the words for the magazine. and I’ll put the latter here (below), and later in the week the other will appear (probably over on Correlations). I’ll use the text I have here as I submitted it… I have not checked to see if it is identical to what appeared in the magazine yet. Go along and look at the magazine for the contributions from others. It is very interesting to see what pieces people chose, and why. What would you choose?

Tell us in the comments.

My choice:

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1485

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1485 (Click for larger view.)

Leonardo da Vinci’s pencil study stunningly illustrates for me the key parallel Click to continue reading this post →

Painterly

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Still utterly swamped by many things (more later), including setting the final exam for my electromagnetism course which is scheduled for 8:00am tomorrow, I must delay on several planned posts a bit more. With apologies, I leave you with a view I saw on a quick hike early this morning in Griffith Park. It’s certainly not a great photo, but it is relatively unusual. There’s the city, shrouded in early morning mist from middle ground to far, and a remarkable sky. (Click for a view that’s a bit larger.)

Los Angeles City Scape

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Categorically Not! – Beginnings

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Bob Miller at Categorically Not!The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday December 16th (upcoming). The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series – started and run by science writer K. C. Cole – of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area.

Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Above right: The artist Bob Miller speaking at the event entitled “Really?” on 23rd April, 2006. He died recently on Oct. 28th 2007, and this week’s event is dedicated to him.)

The theme this month is Beginnings. Here’s the description from K C Cole:

Every thing (and every body) began sometime. Even matter, space and time have a history. So do music, religion and galaxies (and along with them, musicians, religious scholars and astronomers.) Of course, how things begin determines to a large extent how they evolve and go on to influence both human culture and the universe at large. So for this month’s Categorically Not, we’ll look at beginnings from three widely (and somewhat wildly) diverse perspectives.

categorically not! Beginnings Speakers
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Gell-Mann on Fundamental Law

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Got fifteen minutes? Murray Gell-Mann spoke at TED this year. For a fifteen minute talk, he really crammed in the essentials, and with good humour too. His subject? What we do in the search for the fundamental laws of nature, why we do it, and some of the key things that make it possible: Symmetry and beauty, and nature’s tendency to re-use a good idea again and again.

Insiders, outsiders, newcomers alike, I recommend having a look at the video. While I think he overemphasizes the beauty-over-experiment point a little bit at the beginning in a way that might be a bit misleading (Einstein and some others can get away with it, but not most of us), it’s a gem of a talk – great to see one of the legendary masters in action, at a widely accessible level:

murray gell-mann at TED

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Many Meetings

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I’ve had a huge number of meetings and other activities going on in the last two weeks. A great deal of it involved things I’d love to blog about. But I’ve found myself rushing off to the next thing, eventually coming home, having some time to myself, and then falling into bed before I can summon the energy to type. So what to do?

One option is to spend the morning catching up on the blogging… but that won’t happen because I’ve decided to devote the entire day to an engaging project (not physics) that’s I’ll tell you about later.

So let’s see… I’ll end this post with a trio of pictures I was probably not supposed to take a couple of nights ago (so have a wicked shiver down your spine from handling contraband goods), and leave you to guess what the occasion was. Daily Show fans might recognize the central figure, if not the set.

root of all evil

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Nerdiometer

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I am nerdier than 87% of all people. Are you a nerd? Click here to find out! Well, I don’t like this whole “nerd” business, a term that’s somewhat about marginalizing people who actually care to devote themselves to something*, but I lightened up for a while to take this test**. As you can see from the score on the left, I get to keep my membership card. I might even get to sit on some committees in the club. But I don’t think I get to chair any, and certainly won’t be president. That’s probably a good thing.

Why do it? Some of the questions are just really funny!

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Political Science

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Ok, a sidestep into politics for a short, but important moment.

With all that’s going on with all the presidential debates and press conferences and other appearances, has anything struck you as a major topic (or class of topics) that is simply missing from the national discussion? A topic that affects our lives in so many ways, and helps shape our futures in a most profound manner?

I’m thinking of science. I’m thinking of it in all the forms in which it intersects with politics – where decisions made by the president involve policy directly related to science (climate change and stem cell research are two of the most obvious), scientific research (both basic and applied), safety and security issues (consider the EPA, Katrina and other natural disasters), resources (the ongoing and coming battles about water sources, for example, pollution and air quality go here too, as well as under other headings), and energy (well, take your pick of example issues there). There’s also science education, on which there ought to be coherent effort for many reasons Click to continue reading this post →

Hope Comes in Yellow and Green

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I decided to do Griffith Park for my Sunday morning hike today. It’s been a while – I’ve mostly been doing Runyon. I thought it would be nice to see how things were doing up there since I last went and saw them dramatically spraying the hydromulch to protect the ground from erosion until regrowth from the fire damage (see here and here). The (very) occasional rain we’ve had in the last couple of months seem to have begun something wonderful – there are hints of green everywhere. I saw this beautiful photograph at one point – which sort of says it all – only to find that my camera (which seems to be on its last legs these last few days) had died again. So I had to take it with my camera phone, and so it is a bit below par:

griffith park hope

I think this is wonderful (blurriness aside) – it has the striking image of the burned tree Click to continue reading this post →

Odd Direction For Compass

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AlethiometerOn Friday after a very busy week (the last teaching week of the semester), I decided to go to a 21+ screening at the Arclight. This splendid event is held in a special part of the Arclight complex which means that you can buy a cocktail (gin and tonic in my case, made with Tanqueray No. Ten) and wander into the movie theatre with it and relax in a comfy chair and watch a movie for two hours.

Hmm… Sounds good. Was good. Why don’t I do this every Friday?

What I saw was about multiple universes and particle physics. Oh, and fighting polar bears.

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Swept

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Not a big surprise, but a notable event nonetheless – the top Siemens Mathematics, Science and Technology annual prizes were all taken by girls this year. From the New York Times*:

Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, both 17 and seniors at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School on Long Island, split the first prize — a $100,000 scholarship — in the team category for creating a molecule that helps block the reproduction of drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria.

Isha Himani Jain, 16, a senior at Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pa., placed first in the individual category for her studies of bone growth in zebra fish, whose tail fins grow in spurts, similar to the way children’s bones do. She will get a $100,000 scholarship.

Congratulations to them – and all the winners and finalists, male or female – for their achievements!!

On another note, I was reading the project descriptions of the rather well-resourced Click to continue reading this post →

Southern California Strings Seminar

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michael gutperle talking at the first SCSS at USC, Sept. 2005The next regional string meeting is a one-day one at UCLA, organized by Michael Gutperle and Per Kraus. It’s going to be full of interesting talks and conversations, as usual. Please encourage your graduate students to come, especially, since special effort is made to make sure that each talk begins with a pedagogical portion to help non-experts in that subfield navigate and see the motivation. (Photo: Michael Gutperle talking at the first SCSS at USC, Sept. 2005; click for larger view.)

The speakers are:
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Cosmic Holey Moley!

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A quick note of interest, particularly to those interested in these science outreach matters:

Last night’s “Cosmic Holes” episode on the History Channel (part of their new science series “The Universe” – see here and here) apparently had an unusually huge audience. Word must be getting around that the History Channel’s got this fun and informative new series, and it is spreading beyond their standard viewers it seems. Apparently the episode’s first showing at 9:00pm got well over a million viewers, which I’ve heard the Channel was rather pleased about.

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