Yearly Archives: 2011

You’re in Facebook and you need help.  How do you find help?  Just click the down arrow and more menu choices appear.  Of course.  It’s so obvious.

It is bad interface design to conceal controls.  Not only that, the fact that Facebook hides controls they don’t want you to use (namely Log Out) is a display of arrogance.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook has hired old software designers from Lotus Notes.

Sometimes (like now) when I wake up at night and can’t get back to sleep, I go to arxiv.org and browse through recent physics papers.  Topics that interest me include dark energy, the physical basis (if any) of free will (if it exists), and alternatives to the the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (I never grasped how a wave function “collapses”).  Don’t worry, keep reading — I’ll keep it simple, and there’s no test at the end of the page.

What is odd is that I am not particularly adept in physics, or more specifically, the math used in college physics and beyond.  They lost me at Hamiltonians, probably even earlier:

At left is the Hamiltonian.  That triangle is called nabla.

Physics wasn’t this complicated in high school.  In high school, I recall that we were taught Newton’s Laws; how things tend to expand when heated; how to calculate the horsepower we generated running up a flight of stairs; how “particles” of light that are absorbed by the fins of a radiometer make it spin; and maybe something about electric and magnetic fields, I don’t know.  Mostly I remember how our teacher, Ron Noel, would take thirty-minute smoke breaks in the second period of the class, during which I would help my wife-to-be with her shorthand (yes, shorthand!) assignments.

As my wife relates it, Mr. Noel told her that if she were to remember only one thing from physics class, just remember F = ma.  And she did.  And that is basically what I remember about high school physics too: a world of laws and formulas, where you plug some numbers into an equation and you get an answer, and that’s that.

But things fell apart in college, when they started teaching us how the world really works.  I found out electrons don’t really “orbit” the nucleus of an atom, but instead the energy of an electron is more like a cloud around the nucleus.  I found out space is not an invisible three-dimensional stage on which the universe’s events take place, but more like a fabric that itself curves and stretches due to the mass and rotation of stars and planets.  And I found out there is no “master clock” ticking away the seconds as Newton thought, but instead… well, the phenomenon we call time is still a matter of debate in physics!

I submit that much of my stone-headedness comprehending modern physics has to do with having been taught classical (Newtonian) physics in high school — a primitive view of the universe became wired into my brain, and once it took hold, it was hard to displace.

In first grade, we learned 2 x 2 = 4.  Luckily, 2 x 2 remains 4 the rest of our lives.  We don’t have to rethink 2 x 2 or find a better approximation to 2 x 2 as we learn advanced math.  But the subject of physics is treated differently.  Our kids are taught only an approximation of reality, things they will need to unlearn before they discover the truth about nature (if they ever do have that opportunity).

Why don’t we trust our high school children with the messy truth-in-progress that is modern physics?  Why don’t we teach them from the start how space is like a fabric and how the flow of time may be an illusion?  Is there no way to teach high school physics without using simplistic concepts like grids and universal clocks?  I would like to see the imaginative leaps students could make, if their minds were not imprinted with the world views of four centuries ago.

We would do our children a greater service by teaching them physics without the tests, without the grades.  Do lots of classroom experiments.  Don’t ask them to plug numbers into formulas. Talk about time and space, forget F = ma.

We live in an incredibly fascinating universe, about which we (by we, I mean physicists) have an incredible amount to learn.  I can see the challenge, how to introduce high school physics students to the intricate workings of our universe without overwhelming them.  Unfortunately, I don’t see much effort to that end.  Look at the online Physics Classroom.  It is so Newton!  It is still all about F = ma — nothing at all about the shape of the cosmos that Einstein helped reveal 100 years ago.

High-school physics curriculum needs a complete overhaul.  If Einstein isn’t mentioned until the last week of class, something beside F = ma is fundamentally wrong.

Zoroastrianism is a religion based on the teachings of Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) and was  probably founded around the 10th Century BC.  It was once the state religion of Persia.  Followers believe that “people’s good works are seen as gradually transforming the world towards its heavenly ideal” and that if one’s “good thoughts, words and deeds outweigh the bad, then the soul is taken into Heaven.”  If your neighbor told you he was a Zoroastrian, would you think he was a member of a cult?

Calvinist Christianity, based on writings John Calvin published in 1536, “teaches that fallen people are morally and spiritually unable to follow God” or escape his condemnation.  This tenet of Calvinism is referred to as Total Depravity: “The heart, emotions, will, mind, and body are all affected by sin.  We are completely sinful.  We are not as sinful as we could be, but we are completely affected by sin.”  If your neighbor told you she was a Calvinist, would you think she was a member of a cult?

Mormons (or Latter Day Saints) trace their origins to Western New York in the 1820’s.  The LDS website claims “The Lord has laid a mandate upon the people of this Church that they should learn by study and by faith, that they should seek not only after spiritual knowledge, which is most important, but that they should seek after secular knowledge.”  They also believe the United States Constitution was divinely inspired.  If your favorite Republican presidential candidate told you he was a Mormon, would you think he was a member of a cult?

Christopher Hitchens, the acerbic author, journalist and atheist, now living with cancer, argues that “free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization,” and says of the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, that “he wanted not to be Jesus of Nazareth but … to be the Mohammed of North America.”  If your neighbor told you he was Christopher Hitchens, would you think he was a member of a cult?  Or would you invite him to dinner?