About Science is wrong. I love to turn student’s worlds upside-down with that statement. I’ll give you some examples:
- There is no such thing as suction, there is only the absence of air. Its called a vacuum. Many students are heavily vested in this particular misconception, especially since it is such a part of our vernacular. Basically, atmospheric pressure is very, very strong! Check out the Madgeberg Spheres as an example of just how hard it will resist. Think of vector arrows pushing in on the spheres from all directions.
- There is no such thing as cold, only the absence of heat. Its called the Kinetic Theory of Gases. Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the molecules of an object, whether its a gas or not.
Yes, its late. Yes, I’m tired. I’ll continue this list in another post. Stay tuned and as always, thanks for reading.
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!
