It seems those crazy scientists are ready to play with their toys again; I guess they are still interested in finding out just exactly how the Universe works. Of course you know I’m talking about the Large Hadron Collider. I’m following the success (hopefully) of this venture as they go, step by step, using twitter. If you tweet and would like to follow CERN, go here. I am getting live information as it happens; where the beam is located, what systems are running, etc. And its all LIVE! I love social media!
I’ll just be here, in my classroom, with students who are retaking tests, listening to music, and getting updates on the most expensive, most complicated machine known to man, learning how what causes the Universe to exist in the state in which it does. That is all.
This was the question posed to me this week when we were discussion particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider in our classroom by an exceptionally bright student. She followed it up with “This just seems like an enormous waste of money.” I surely see her point. When you have friends at school who come from homes were there’s not enough to eat or when they can’t (or won’t) keep the electric bill paid.
I imagine its also due (at least in part) to the idea students have that “everything that can be known, is”. As a student in high school, a person who has a constant inflow of information everyday, its easy to think the world is pretty well all figured out. I would say this is not the case, nor will it ever be. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop questioning. In fact, even if we, as scientists, think the world is all figured out, it would be a huge mistake to stop asking questions. According to Humphrey Davy: “Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer.” It is worth mentioning that Davy was the mentor of Michael Faraday, who produced the theory that electrical force and the magnetic force are the same thing. This was the first Unified Theory of Physics, which laid the groundwork for all other unification theories in Physics. So in essence, we can thank Davy for everything we know about Physics, for without his encouragement of Faraday, we might not understand physics much better than we did back in the 1800’s.
I think Albert Einstein said it best: “The important thing is not to stop questioning”. That is the point! That is why we do research. All of the technology we gain from particle physics research is just a bonus. The reason to do the research is for the knowledge gained.
Thanks for reading.
Today we had a special speaker in our Pre-AP Physics class, Dr. Flera Rizatdinova (who is originally from Moscow and has a very strong Russian accent, which makes the talk much more interesting) from the Oklahoma State University Dept. of Physics. She is a scientist working on the ATLAS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider. She shared some of the writing she has been doing for the DOE (which I mistakenly confused with the Dept. of Ed. initially) towards the end of her presentation. She was writing for them about the “benefits of particle physics research” which is a subject that arises frequently in my class. I hear something like “Mr. Bowie, isn’t this just an enormous waste of money?”
Dr. Rizatdinova talked extensively about what the questions the LHC is trying to answer (see previous post). This was the deepest part of the presentation and was probably a little above level of my students (but if I don’t set the bar high, they won’t achieve as much, right?). At the end, she took some questions which was really good for the students. I’m glad they have some opportunities to interact with college professors/scientists.
There wasn’t really any ground-breaking material in her talk. I have been keeping up with the goings-on of the LHC recently and did some research over the summer with Dr. Rizatdinova, so much of this was a review for me. I’m not sure how the students will react to it, I’ll try to get some feedback tomorrow. I was simply excited about having a real, live scientist in my classroom and wanted to share the experience!
Literally, why are we here? What was the cause of our existence? I’m not asking “what is the meaning of life?” I’m asking “what is the mechanism which causes our Universe to exist?” This is the goal of the LHC: to find the reason our Universe is ordered the way it is. Many talk about this as “The Hunt for the Higgs Boson”. I learned today (via a special guest speaker in my classroom) the only particles needed to build our Universe are two types of quarks, electron neutrinos, and electrons. Wow. Our physics research (worldwide) wants to know “why do these particles exist?” “What causes our these particles to exist?” “What is it that tells those particles to form?”
Talk about some big questions! Its a really difficult issue to wrap your brain around. In fact, I’ll admit, I can’t do it. I’m not sure I could ever be a part of the collaboration(s) which are trying to study this. Its some big picture thinking, and I’m not great at that. I try, in class, to impress on my students the level of thinking at which top scientists work. I admit freely to them that I am not capable of this level of thinking. I suspect that every now and then I will run across a student who is and I hope I can inspire them to choose an area of physics which suits their level of thinking.
I realize you came here to get an answer to this post, but I have only raised more questions. That is part of my job as a teacher, not to answer questions, but to encourage students to ask “the right questions” (see critical thinking). So, have I done my job? Do you have more questions now than you did a minute ago? Go ask the right questions!
Immediately following my previous blog post I saw this commercial. I mentioned to @mishelleyb that I found it interesting that there was no data given in the commercial. I found it remarkable that BK is so bold as to expect us to “swallow the Elephant whole”. Burger King expects us to buy into the idea that 31 seconds of information is enough evidence to show that the Whopper “tastes” bettter than the Big Mac. My bias against the Big Mac notwithstanding, there is just not enough information in this short commercial to settle the issue. Besides, how do you measure taste anyway? BK’s use of the commercial as a good argument against the Big Mac is something akin to using this rap video as a good argument to fund the LHC.
After watching the commercial, @mishelleyb came up with the brilliant idea of asking my students to analyze Burger King’s experimental design. What was wrong with it? What was right with it? I also asked them to analyze the manner in which the data was presented. We had a very productive discussion during which my students found some flaws with Burger King’s methods, in both design and presentation. We then went here and got some more information about their “cultural experiment” and revisited our tasks. We decided that while Burger King was not completely free from fault by serving us this ad, we at least got a view of a larger section of their data set and were able to mark a few of the issues we had with their methods off of the list.
It was very rewarding to collaborate with @mishelleyb, who teaches english, on a critical thinking assignment as well as discussing critical thinking with my students. As I told them, one of my goals in physics class is to make them better at analyzing evidence and sometimes just getting them to dig deep enough to find it. I’m afraid some of them may be dangerously close to being cynics and not accepting ANY evidence; but I do think I am at least pushing them towards “looking closer at evidence” before drawing a conclusion. Some of their cynical issues are mostly due to their maturity level; I think most of that will work itself out as they get older.
Overall, a rewarding day. Don’t even get me started on Physical Science.
