omenti

finding the right position for the slider between education and vocation

William Rowan Hamilton had become obsessed with the idea of a three dimensional number system - sort of analogous to complex numbers being a two dimensional system.  The story he later told was every morning his son would say 'papa, can you multiply triples?' to which Hamilton would sadly shake his head and say 'no, I can only add and take away'.   Then, on a walk on the 16^th of October, 1843, he  crossed the Broom Bridge in Dublin and suddenly knew how to do it.  Rather than adding a single dimension to the complex plane, he'd add two giving three imaginary dimensions and one real dimension perpendicular to them.  In his excitement he carved it into the bridge with his knife:  i² =  j² = k² = ijk = -1

 

He called them quaternions.  They had some use in the day, but when people invented linear algebra, the technique fell by the wayside ... that is until quantum mechanics  came along about eighty years later.  And then computer graphics further down the road.

 

It turns out they're a lovely way to think about quantum mechanics and perform real calculations. Erwin Schrödinger knew enough about forgotten math to realize it was a beautiful gem.  Decades later, trying to improve the speed of computer graphics, a physicist realized they could be a key to quickly calculating rotations in space -- and Tomb Raider became the first computer game with smooth graphics on using relatively primitive personal computers.

 

Hamilton had other accomplishments that deeply impacted physics and math, but the quaternion story has a certain romantic element. To this day physicists gather at the Broom Bridge on the 16^th of October to celebrate.

 

The story of physics is that it's extremely important to think broadly and to keep expanding your learning.  It is also is relevant to education and work across many fields today.  That's what I want to get to, but first this wonderful parody of a certain song..  perhaps the best math song ever.

 

What prompted all of this was an email with a link describing the most contrarian college in America.  It's laser focused on a vision of an education seemingly without much a nod to vocation ...  seemingly..   I'd argue that it's too focused on a narrow piece of education, but have no doubt its graduates have learned how to learn..  they have the beginnings of a real education.  Mark Roosevelt, its President, sums it up:

Education should prepare you for all of your life. It should make you a more thoughtful, reflective, self-possessed and authentic citizen, lover, partner, parent and member of the global economy.

It  takes a special kind of student to thrive in a school like that.  I wouldn't have survived - my interests, those that I was motivated to dive into, lay elsewhere.  I'm happy it exists and that there is spectrum of schools for those who look.

 

My belief is a deep education with at least a few focuses creates the second type of person Claude Shannon describes:

“There are some people if you shoot one idea into the brain, you will get a half an idea out. There are other people who are beyond this point at which they produce two ideas for each idea sent in.”

The ability to get multiple ideas is core to serious play and creativity.   I'd claim focusing on education rather than finding the minimally easy path helps create the neural connections that make this possible.

 

A worry is that many, if not most, schools and students tend more towards vocation.  Focus on what is important to get a degree that will get you employed to pay off that mountain of debt.  Many (not all) businesses, on the other hand, would do well to have broader employees who are still learning and growing - those who can think creatively.  There is a disconnect. 

 

I hope this focus on vocation changes.  The rate of real change is great and people will keep up better if they are broader and more adaptable.  When recommending colleges I tend to focus on education ..  often to the consternation of those asking.  Of course I may be a poor example.  My education was far too narrow, but I've been lucky and curious enough to have been able to expand it a bit.  The other note is you can get a wickedly broad experience at many more places than you might imagine.

 

 Finally there's this odd emphasis on over-scheduling many pre-college kids, but I've probably written on how it kills creativity enough.

 

the desire for desires - tapping the power of boredom

About a week ago the Manhattan-bound bus I was on broke down in rush hour traffic.  I had been daydreaming most of the way, and now I had to take out my phone and say I'd be at least an hour late.  The text went out and the phone went back in my pack.  

 

'Why is it our Universe has three dimensions ..  well, three spatial and this crazy one we call time that sets everything in motion?'  One of those fundamental questions that is almost too basic to address, but it reminded me of a problem.  I was about fifteen and Kip was trying to get me to think about spaces and objects with dimensions greater than three.  He asked where the volume was concentrated on a hypersphere with five dimensions and one with a hundred.  I couldn't solve it and somehow remembered it.  Suddenly the answer came out of the blue.  Like so many things it seemed so easy in retrospect.  It led me to think about something I had never thought about - after all, the alternative was sitting on the bus and getting bored.¹

 

More than an hour had passed when the rescue bus came.  Everyone else seemed to be occupied with their smartphones or laptops. It turns out I'm reasonably self-entertaining and quickly got lost in thought again.  By the time I walked out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal it was too late for the meeting and there were two hours to kill before meeting a friend for a walk (the real excuse for the trip). I ordered a bagel in a coffee shop and took out a notepad and pencil.   It could have been that problem or a hundred other things.

 

I was lucky enough to have been bored more often than I'd admit at the time. I was also lucky enough to have ways to deal with it and the desire to do so.  Sometimes boredom was coupled with procrastination.  (I think some procrastination can be a good thing, but that's another subject).  In high school homework would pile up.  I had free time and I'd start feeling guilty.  If I wasn't up against a deadline sometimes it would push me to building something, draw, ride my bike or just daydream.  My father was demanding about chores, but both of my parents gave my sister and I enormous freedom to manage our spare time - probably because they were too busy with making ends meet and keeping up the house. There wasn't a lot of spare money, but somehow money for projects always turned up.²  We had learned to turn our boredom into play.

 

The desire for desires

 

That's how Tolstoy defined boredom in Anna Karenina. Researchers are learning that's how our brains work.  When we get bored, it's looking for novelty.  It appears to be such a strong drive that it can reward us with a dopamine hit..  That can be a problem. When you are in FOMO mode looking at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or... you get a little dopamine burst when you find something new.  You move to the next novelty (which is usually really inane) and get another.  We can become numb to the dopamine response so, like a lab rat pushing a lever, we keep going.  Not everyone is equally susceptible, but for some it's a computer mediated addiction.  

 

Perhaps more important is you're always being entertained these days.  It's an easy escape from some types of boredom and can  keeps you from the type of creativity that is now being associated with boredom.  There may be some interesting bottom lines - particularly for kids as they're developing their neural wiring -  how much passive FOMO behavior is reasonable.  Some have called social media the 21^st century tobacco - time will tell, but that may be accurate.

 

Researchers speak of four or five  types of boredom.  Early stages can be healthy leading  to daydreaming and creative dot connecting while others can be toxic.  A continued state of boredom with no outlets can lead to depression, drug addiction and even violence.  In the past few years Iceland has embarked on a major program to fight juvenile drug addiction and alcoholism by making it easy for kids to find other paths.  It isn't inexpensive, but they appear to be making real progress and the alternative is unacceptable.

 

It's fascinating that reactions to boredom are cultural.  Japan, China and the US link boredom with not having enough to do and admitting that you're frequently bored is taken as a bad sign.  It's apparently different in France where it is seen as social commentary and an excuse to shift what you're doing.  

 

Only recently has boredom become an area of active research.  It will be interesting to see how attitudes and perhaps the nature of work and study change as we learn what it really is and how it works.   Maybe more of us will have quiet places and times and the learned ability to let our minds satisfy that desire connect.   Or perhaps not ..  maybe Facebook, Google and the others will have managed capture our attention and reduce creativity. 

 

So many open questions.

__________

 

¹ I won't go into detail unless anyone's interested.  The second item was how spikey (is that a word?) are hypercubes.  It turns out to be not a difficult problem if you know how to compute the volume of a hypersphere for any positive dimension.   There is real pleasure learning about things so foreign we can only know them by their shards and shadows.  

² From the eighth grade on there would always be a check for forty-two dollars in my Christmas stocking with "experiments" written in the comment line.  That was a large sum back then.  It was before Douglas Adams let us know why forty two was important.  He must have liked the number for some reason.

 

how to paint like kandinsky

My artist sister sent a link to this short video from The Tate.  It's not quite what it claims, but that turns out to be useful.  Go ahead..   I'll wait.

 

Without a bit of background in the fine arts this isn't exactly a step-by-step how-to-paint guide.   For most of us it's somewhere between art appreciation and art creation.  It reminds me of learning physics as an undergrad.  You spend a few years learning bits and snatches thinking you're learning physics.  Silly you -  in reality it's just a little background.  Slowly you begin to focus on technique - mostly math - and come to think this must be physics.  It isn't, but you're beginning to get an appreciation.  You can go to serious academic talks without getting totally lost and you start to get the sense that this is much deeper than you had imaged. A talk might give a sense of how someone did something, but rarely offers much where the creative piece came from.    A few more years and you begin to get the hang of it - at least a small corner.  Back to the video.

 

I imagine art students would see some interesting hints.  I like what Sui said about her own inspiration.  That  led me to some notes from The Tate on Kandinsky.

Painted between 1910 and 1911, Cossacks is an expression of Kandinsky’s belief in the power of art “to awaken this capacity for experiencing the spiritual in material and in abstract phenomena.” The dynamic tension between abstract form and concrete content may be read as a manifestation of the wider conflict between the forces of political oppression – Kandinsky had been deeply moved by the strikes and upheavals in Odessa a few years earlier – and the hunger for spiritual rejuvenation consequent upon the rise of soulless modernity. Like his contemporaries Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse, Kandinsky saw painting as an extension of religion, capable, as he wrote in his Reminiscences (1913), of revealing ‘new perspectives and true truths’ in ‘moments of sudden illumination, resembling a flash of lightning.’ The echo of the Ancient Greek writer Longinus’s notion of sublime speech, which similarly strikes like a bolt of lightning, is carried over into Kandinsky’s description of the spiritual mission of the modern artist. In his 1911 essay On the Spiritual in Art, he compares the life of the spirit to ‘a large, acute-angled triangle,’ at the apex of which stands the solitary artistic genius dispensing spiritual food to the multitudes below.

Impressively deep.

 

It turns out they've done a few of these of how-tos ..  If you want to move a bit beyond art appreciation, even though you may never try painting or printing, there's more here: print like Warhol, paint watercolor like Turner and cast like Whiteread.   They're quite wonderful and I hope they keep making these. 

 

A couple of interesting issues immediately come to mind.  How to you communicate at a variety of levels and why is art so important in unexpected areas?  Since I've written quite a bit about the first, I'll skip to the second.  What is the utility of art? 

 

I find visualization critical my own thinking - particularly at the playful stage that some might call the creative piece.  You get to the point where the questions become visualizations that you manipulate.  A mathematical expression might take the form of a visualization that you play with without formally solving it.  It's part of what some call intuition.  Sometimes these are on paper or a blackboard and sometimes they're in your head and you copy them, or at least their flavor, to move the court you're playing on. 

 

I've been drawing since I was a little kid and still will sit and sketch something on a tree trunk for an hour as exercise.  I'm guessing that the ability to visually focus, something art and photography can teach you, is central to improving your ability to visualize.  It's much more powerful than anything I've seen with a computer and I suspect is very useful in many disciplines. 

 

With all this practice you'd think I'd be an ok artist, but that isn't the case.  No complaints as the practice has undoubtedly shaped my neural connections that let me, for good or not, think how I think.  I believe there are rather deep connections between our perception of beauty and Nature and this can allow us to use visualizations as a rather powerful guide.  That's conjecture, but it keeps popping up over and over.  As a physicist friend says:  If there is a God, it's almost certain she's an artist. 

 

Others have noticed the impact of the visual arts on scientific thinking and a few physics and math programs recommend students take at least a semester of a class that involves drawing.  I'd like to see that practice expanded and have been trying to encourage my undergrad school to link with a nearby art institute.  STEM is only part of an education even if you're working in one of it's fields.  Adding a visual art or music (or .. ?)  may be essential if your goal is to be creative (whatever that means).  So many stories.  It probably doesn't need to be a fine art for everyone, but the current focus on narrowness in hopes of finding employment is approximately wrong. 

 

the magnificent violence hidden in a single raindrop

 

The sound of a skater on thin ice.  Predicting a rainstorm of molten iron on a star fifteen years in the past.  

 

It's been a year since I worried about participating in the first March for Science and two Earth Days have gone by.  I've been thinking a lot about the place of science in society.   Somehow it's often perceived as disengaged, from culture, cold, dispassionate and disconnected from almost all of society.  As if it is irrelevant.   At the same time there is widespread confusion global warming, GMOs, evolution,  the impact of technologies, and vaccines along with confusion about the relationship of religion and science and the big fundamental questions such as the origin of the universe and life, the mind and the fundamental laws of physics. 

 

It isn't that way.  Science is very relevant, but there's a communication and image problem.  While formal science and math education need to be fixed, perhaps fixing science communication is something that needs to happen first. 

 

It takes real work and a good deal of thinking to express ideas usually addressed by equations and dense manipulations of experimental data in such a way they're clear and accurate enough.   There are some people who make it look easy.  My thesis advisor made a big point of it and I've gradually become a bit more adroit, but if someone was to ask about something I haven't thought about translating, I stumble and fail.  

 

Issac Newton was arguably the first mathematical physicist.   As an undergrad I made the mistake of trying to wade through the Principia Mathematica - his magnum opus.  Its notation is obscure and the Latin is approximately  dense.  Asked why he didn't write it in English he replied "to avoid being baited by little smatterers in mathematics" .  He wanted to make it obscure.  

 

It's an easy trap to fall into.  Flying home to Montana at the end of my junior year I found myself sitting next to a pretty girl.  Too shy to start a conversation, I pulled out pencil and paper and worked out a solution to a problem a little more cleverly than in the exam.  The paper filled with what must have been unintelligible scribblings as I killed any chance of conversation.

 

Galileo Galilei had a different approach.  He had a deep conviction that ideas were to be shared and understood by almost everyone.  He created stories with good dialog and characterization and used the tool of metaphor to make his points - the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems being a fine example.  His work was readable and interesting enough to become popular and that made him powerful and his science a threat to established dogma.  A few followed in his footsteps as great storytellers  - Darwin and Faraday come to mind.  But science became an institution in the late 19^th century with its own culture and language.  

 

That's the challenge..  to use metaphor, images and even characterization to tell the story.  It has to be accurate enough and not dumbed down.  This is important even when scientists talk to scientists in different fields. You tend to think what you're doing is clear - and it is for anyone who has been working in that field for five or ten years.  Many scientists suffer from imposter syndrome.  Science in other fields can look very hard - much harder than what you're doing.  You fail to realize they've been working at what they do as hard and long as you have and they may feel the same way if you gave a talk.  Science is hard won with a lot of work.  It is the best description we have of how the Universe works and is often how we find ourselves on the threshold of the unknown.  That's the basis for ripping good tales.   It's worth creating them.

 

Years ago there was this wonder public talk as part of a Caltech lecture series.  The speaker described being on the rim of the Grand Canyon and those millions of years of erosion.  Thousands of feet below a river thundered and raged.  In the distance a thunderstorm - the source of those waters. The words of Lauren Isley came to him as he watched:

 

the magnificent violence hidden in a single raindrop

Indeed. 

 

A few people are good at code switching, fluently moving among different descriptions..  I'm working on it.

 

BUT its not enough and this is the problem I've been struggling with for the past year.  Some areas of science have become politicized.  Human-caused global warming is almost universally accepted by the scientific community, but that has an impact of some of the largest businesses in the world and a massive misinformation campaign has been conducted.  Scientists and expertise are actively being ignored and ridiculed in some corners.  Science education in much of the country is under attack and has been damaged. These issues led to the March for Science.  That wasn't enough.  Much more contact than a simple attempt to raise consciousness is required.   I think storytelling is part of the solution, but you have to understand the audience.

 

I'm most comfortable chatting with one curious person.  With a two-way conversation the level of the storytelling can be adjusted and, if I'm really lucky, they'll tell me their story about something that interests them.  This is even true talking with scientists in other fields.  If I'm speaking to a class I have a sense of the expected level.  A general audience?  Let's just say that hopefully can learn from failure. 

 

I thought about dividing up - segmenting - the population so I would know a how to address, or even ignore, different groups.  Looking around I settled on the Six Americas segmentation from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University.  Designed to ferret out beliefs on global warming, it breaks the US population into six separate groups identified to reasonable accuracy using a 36 question survey.  The nice thing is it works for science in general.

The Alarmed are fully concerned about the danger of global warming and are taking personal and political steps to combat it. The Concerned believe it is real, but isn't that important to them yet - maybe it's a top ten issue, maybe not. The Cautious, Disengaged and Doubtful represent a range understanding and acceptance of the problem and none are meaningfully engaged.  The Disengaged and Doubtful generally will vote against those who want to do something about the problem as they see the fight as wasteful.  The Dismissive are convinced it isn't real for a variety of reasons.  They fight it actively and well-funded powerful groups support their cause.  Dismissal has become part of their personal identify. (this is important as it is true for other areas of science)

 

I've wasted far to much time combating the dismissive with evidence.  They simply will never buy it. The doubtfuls are also a tough group to talk to.    That leaves the concerned, cautious and disengaged as potentially useful audiences and each has different information needs. In fact, when it comes to global warming, the only group seriously interested in actions and steps are the alarmed.  Mentioning that to other groups can be counterproductive.

 

Let's say you have a message and understand which of the six Americas are in the audience.  Now you have to be trusted.  A Ph.D. in physics has negative value in some of the groups that might be important to address.  It has been noted that celebrities taking up the cause can be more impactful if changing minds is the goal.  So if you are an athlete, film star or other person in the public eye...

 

 

what films influenced your direction?

minipost

A friend and I were discussing films that had a major impact on people even influencing our path in life.  She mentioned Contact - the film adaptation of Carl Sagan's book.  I've run into more than a few astronomers and astrophysicists that cite the original television series Cosmos. For me it was mostly books - even comic books and a planetarium.  

She suggested getting your comments.  It can be any kind of inspiration and any media type - including public talks.  What films or books had a big impact on your life?  Comment below or send me an email if you prefer.   I'll add mine, but will keep it short for this mini-post.

Oh ..  a friend was the science advisor for Interstellar.  Here's a very accessible talk he gave on the science behind it.  About an hour, but Kip's a good story teller and you'll find out how Carl Sagan setting him up on a semi-failed blind date turned out to be important. 

ps - One of you makes films for a living.  She probably has something interesting to say. 

 

 

 

refocusing science education

° It was 1956 and the cold war was raging.  Billions of dollars were being poured into the effort, but it was becoming clear that the pipeline for scientists wasn't working very well and strong science was a national priority.  Pre-college science education was in poor shape - particularly in physics.  Textbooks were boring and classes were failing to approach problems like a physicist. A group of university professors and high school teachers came together at MIT to form the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) to come up with solutions. Progress was being made, but education as a system had an enormous inertia,  Then October 4th, 1957 came and a little sphere orbited the Earth.   Suddenly Washington DC was pouring rocket fuel all over the PSSC.

 

By 1960 a program was developed that emphasized understanding rather than memorization and created films, inexpensive laboratory kit, experiments and teaching material to provide hands-on experience and thinking.  Topics were organized to underscore overarching conservation principals.  Almost overnight high school physics teaching had been revolutionized.  Spurred by the success of the PSSC similar programs were created and successfully implemented for chemistry and biology.   Mathematicians had their own approach,  They'd focus on the beauty of math and get away from the mindless arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry and algebra that had been taught since the late 19^th century.  While the science programs succeeded, the new math failed - it made too much of a leap.  Parents and teachers alike fought and quickly killed it.

 

Science teaching, if the metric is the supply of Ph.Ds. in science, is too successful.  There simply aren't enough research jobs to match supply and the number of posts in the US is shrinking.  One might argue that a Ph.D. in physics is useful in other areas - I've been told physicists think differently and the same is probably true for all of the physical sciences - but if anything the pipeline is working .  

 

Consider just what that pipeline is.  There were probably one or two nerdy types in your high school obsessed with science or math.  My high school had two in an informal astronomy club.  One of us discovered astronomy had too much math and became a doctor and I went into physics.  It takes five high schools in the US to produce one student who makes it as far as a BS or BA in physics.   At the doctorate level more than thirty high schools come up with one who makes it all the way through. The field just isn't that big.

 

I remember the PSSC courses.   When I took physics as a junior the teacher suggested I already knew too much physics and math and let me read the books and suggested more at the local air bases's library.  To get credit I became a teaching assistant for my junior and senior year.  It was great - I became familiar with the quirks of the experiments and learned developed a profound mistrust of wires that  served me well.  He'd talk to me after class.  I began to think like a physicist.   The fire was lit in me about the time I was eleven, but this oddball  version of high school physics I had kept it burning.  By the time I went off to college I was focused.  I'm fairly convinced the PSSC series would have kept me focused had I not had any background.

 

A curious factoid mentioned in a note from the American Physical Society.  Over 90% of physics Ph.D.s never changed majors in college.  I'd be surprised if other Ph.D.s in the physical sciences were different. Folks who make it through the pipe found their focus early on.

 

Although the pipe works there's a huge problem.  What I think is really needed is to give the much larger group - those who will never major in science - a clearer picture of what science is and perhaps why it is beautiful.  It is possible to teach the tools necessary to think like a scientist.  In a way I'm suggesting something similar to my piece on physical education.  Give people a life long appreciation even though they won't become pros.  I'd never make it in sports, but I love recreational rowing and watching volleyball.  Don't get  rid of the professional track, but keep it alive and perhaps improve it a bit through separation. At the same time  make popular level science fascinating and relevant.  

 

I'll stay away from ideas of how to do this, but offer something simple.   Invert the order of the subjects.  You start out with something simple like physics, then add the complexity of chemistry and then biology branching into extremely complex systems like biochemistry qualitatively.  Memorization should be avoided at all costs.  The Krebs cycle can be cleanly explained at a qualitative level.  I've seen some very nice biophysics and biochemistry at a tenth grade level.  

 

The next Monday, when the fathers were all back at work, we kids were playing in a field. One kid says to me, “See that bird? What kind of bird is that?” I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is.” He says, “It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you anything!” But it was the opposite. He had already taught me: “See that bird?” he says. “It’s a Spencer’s warbler.” (I knew he didn’t know the real name.) “Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts.” (I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.  - Feynman

 

Berkeley used to have a version of first year physics called Physics for Future Presidents taught to non-technical majors usually in their senior year.  Although it would be out of reach for 45, it was one of the most popular courses in the school.  I'm convinced smart people and teachers could do the same for ninth graders. 

 

Education has many more issues - I sometimes get into trouble when I mention I'm not a fan of the current STEM approach.  Not only would a discussion in this post be diverting, but I'm not smart enough to offer much clue.  But huge changes can be brought to science teaching.  

 

For fun take a look at the  physics popularization by the theoretical physicist George Gamow.  He was smart enough to know how to write about real physics for people who had curiosity, but little background.  Equations are rare and he resorted to story telling.,  It was about seventy years ago, so it's a bit corny now, but inspired teaching is possible:  the Mr Tompkins series. (the songs aren't very good, but a world where the speed of light is 10 miles per hour is fun).    Many libraries will have copies too.  There are some excellent books reflecting current physics too.

 

 As always contact me if you want a deeper discussion.  

 

__________

Recipe corner

 

Brussels sprouts are still sort of ok if you roast them.  The apples have been not so great, so roast 'em too..  Here's another variation.

 

Brussels Sprouts and Apples

Ingredients

 

° a pound of brussels sprouts halved

° 2 tbl olive oil

° a bit of kosher salt

° 2 or 3  tbl nuts broken up small ..  I used almonds because that's what I had ..  seeds, like sunflower seeds would be good

° 1-1/2 tbl apple cider vinegar

° 1 tsp whole grain mustard

° 1/2 tsp honey (or something sweet..)

° 1/3 cup apple diced small.. like 1/4 inch pieces

 

 

Technique

 

° oven to 375° F.  put bs on a baking tray, toss with 1 tsp olive oil and a bit of salt . Roast for 30 to 45 min on middle rack 'til brown, crisp outside, soft inside

° put the nuts on a sheet on a lower rack and toast for about 7 or 8 minutes until they start browning.

° whisk the extra olive oil, vinegar, honey and mustard

 ° when bs come out toss with vinaigrette and nuts and apple

education comments - physical education

To encourage folks who might write a bit for the upcoming education post I offer a small piece on physical education.

 

Numerous studies suggest that fitness under the age of twenty is an extremely important predictor for health in later life. Particularly important as one gets above the age of 50.  My pre-college years were a mixed bag.  Kids were generally fit.  Most of us walked or rode bikes to school from the first grade on.  Bicycles were our mobility.  My town was about two by four miles with a handful of major roads with 35 mph limits.  Most streets were posted 20 or 25 mph and lightly traveled.   While Montana has a bit of extreme weather, the number of days when you couldn't ride or walk to school was fairly small.  I even had snow tires on my Winter "beater."

 

Physical education in the schools meant gym class.  It wasn't all that different than math or science class - the focus was on those who were involved in school sponsored sports .. sort of the pre-professional track.  (High school football and basketball were enormous in the day. A visit to the barbershop .. sort of the local bookie .. would see thousands of dollars wagered.)  Those of us who weren't good at the right sports were given Cs for effort.  By the metric of what was deemed important I felt lucky to get a C.  A tall friend was uninterested in basketball so the teacher gave him Ds as punishment.   Classes consisted of  nominal calisthenic and weight training sessions follows by semi-disorganized attempts at sports.  Probably very boring for the stars and borderline torture for someone like me.  

 

The 9^th grade saw an experiment to spend a couple of months doing very different physical activities.. things like tennis, archery and marksmanship (Montana, remember?).  As it happens I'm a good shot ..  a pacifist marksman.  My Dad would take me hunting and fishing, but I had seen Bambi and refused to kill anything.  Still I learned to shoot and have an ability to control my heart rate - a special skill in the sport that I happened to have.  I turned out to be ok at the biathlon.  I'm not that fast on skis, but have endurance and didn't miss my targets so I didn't have to ski penalty laps.  I had a good time in gym until someone stole the teacher's prize bow.   All of the boys had to do "torture cal" for the rest of the year until the perpetrator was turned in (that never happened).

 

These days kids do much less active (muscle powered) transportation.  And, at least around here, you rarely see them out playing.  On the other hand kids who are good at sports often receive serious training outside of school. It isn't uncommon for someone to spend a few thousand bucks sharpening their daughter's volleyball or their son's soccer skills.  I'd hazard a guess that the distribution of fitness levels has become much more bimodal than in the past.  Some kids are doing extremely well, while many are worse off.

 

So what would I do?

 

I'd love to see more active transportation..  visit the Netherlands or Denmark for a taste.  That seems unlikely given parental fears, a lack of infrastructure and perhaps over-scheduling.  But there are other possibilities.

 

I had come to hate gym, so when I went to college I was worried about the PE requirement.  As it turns out I was in for a surprise.  The college had come to the conclusion that it's students should find a physical activity or two they enjoy - perhaps even love - enough to continue on their own.  Hopefully for the rest of their lives.  The first two weeks of class had us meet with someone who would run us through a series of tests.  Sort of what you'd expect from a good personal trainer.

 

I was told something I knew already - that I'm terrible at sprinting and jumping.  But then the surprise.  They told me that I had endurance - a lot of it.  In fact my slow to fast twitch ratio was very high - like a marathon runner's.¹  They have me try a number of  activities.  Running didn't work out, but cycling and rowing were on the mark.  A century (100 miles  Pasadena to the beach near Irvine and back was the standard) bike ride wasn't a terribly big ride and I did more than my share.   Rowing, given the right sheet of water, can be splendid.

 

That's what I'd like to see:    PE instructors finding out what kids can do well and what might motivate them to make physical activity something to look forward to every day.  It can be done.  I know of at least one public high school that does it.  And don't detract from the kids who are outstanding at a sport - that's fine too.  It's how I'd like to see STEM taught..  something enjoyable and interesting for most kids and let those with extreme interest levels specialize.  More on that later.

__________

¹ One niece is a successful ultra marathoner, the other runs half marathons.  Both are terrible jumpers and sprinters.

 

 

from math to music and physics to phys ed

In the early 18^th century commerce had become a primary driver for education the American colonies.  Physical connectivity to move goods and information was growing rapidly.  Stores were moving beyond the basics and it was becoming necessary to let potential customers know what was available.  The amount of information was growing rapidly and with it, the necessity of connecting it with the consuming public.  Teaching as many as possible how to read and do arithmetic had become important.  

 

We've seen many periods of change in education.  Public land grant colleges, the advent of the University laboratory (one of the largest and most enduring inventions of the 19^th century), full education for women and minorities, physical education, education for it's own sake vs vocational training, the dramatic change to science education during the Cold War and the failed experiment of teaching real mathematics.  Some of these have gone through cycles and now we stand at a time where it seems clear a shift of emphasis is necessary.

 

I've written a fair amount of my experience - the gifts of play, boredom and freedom that my parents gave and two mentors separated by time and space that allowed me to focus on a core interest in such a way that I managed to learn a bit about curiosity.  I've learned and taught at a variety of levels and have some ideas on what I'd like to see change.  I also suspect many of my ideas aren't that well informed and some are controversial (in particular my views on the current STEM emphasis, how to change math and science education, precollege focus, critical thinking, physical education, and practical skills training).

 

What I want to propose is a bit of homework.  The readership here is small, but extremely diverse.    I'd love to collect ideas from as many who would like to write something and post them in a few weeks,  As a constraint, keep it to one to four ideas, for pre-college education.  Feel free to point out anything you feel is being done exceptionally well that should be more broadly applied, Anything from a paragraph or two  to a few pages if inspiration hits.  Pencils down on January 14^th.  Let me know if you want it to be anonymous or associate your name.   Feel free to include anything other than text.  I'll collect everything including my bit into a long post a few days later. 

 

Remember that we all have a different take on this education thing.  Everyone's ideas are potentially interesting, so don't worry if you're not in the business.

And if you want to make a video, that's ok too...

 

__________

 

Recipe corner

 

My mother died a year ago ..  going through some old things this recipe appeared.  It's from her mother, but makes a fine gingerbread.  Better with vanilla ice cream than whipped cream, but also good by itself.

 

 

communication

 

It's almost Christmas and the candles are coming out.

 

Candles.    And Michael Faraday's remarkable gift to young people.  He's way up on my own list of favorite scientists.  In addition to making fundamental contributions to physics (like field theory even though he was poorly schooled in math), he happened to be an excellent public speaker.  Every year there would be Christmas lectures for children.  A legendary set of six lectures on the chemistry and physics of candle flames was given in 1848. While a good deal of deeper understanding has taken place, much of the lecture is still relevant.  Watch a modern performance!¹  Here's a Project Gutenberg link to the text.

 

My advisor believed his students should be able to describe their Ph.D.thesis work to a group of smart high school students.  That proved to be one of the most difficult and poorly received talks I've given.  (I've improved over the years:-)  This sort of challenge is becoming more common ..  Alan Alda's Flame Challenge is wonderful..  A question is presented every year and people attempt to explain it to groups of eleven year old students from around the world who then select a winner.    There is the five level challenge..  try explain your work to a grade school, high school, undergrad, and graduate students along with having a meaningful chat with another expert in the field.  My favorite is Neville Sanjana talking about CRISPR.  I think Faraday would have been thrilled.

And finally there's the Dance your Ph.D. competition open to STEM Ph.D.s...  This year's winner was Nancy Scherich with a focus on braid theory - a brach of topology that looks at knots in higher dimensional spaces.  Hula hoops, linear algebra and murder! 

I'm a terrible dancer, but I guess something could have been done with infrared freedom and ultraviolet slavery and the production of charm quarks...  Then again...

 

Now a few questions:

 

How important is it to communicate the beauty of what you are interested in to non-specialists?  How is it usually done and how would you improve it?  And how do you spark and sustain an interest in some?  

 

By the way.  The Christmas Lectures have continued to this day.

 

Lessons and Carols

 

And a late (10^th of December) addition

Music

 

I think songs would be great for science communication.  Although They Might Be Giants have a few good ones, pickings are sparse.  Sadly most scientists are not good singer songwriters and coming up with lyrics that communicate real science is not easy.  

 

There are exceptions.  Henry Reich put some nice lyrics to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star that are sound and current.  They work across ages and levels of astronomy experience.  The first time I heard it I thought I found something wrong, but another listen and some physics told me it was ok.²

 

twinkle twinkle little star
you look small cause you are far
lightyears out from here to there
your light is distorted by the air
so you twinkle twinkle little star
adaptive optics shows you as you are

twinkle twinkle little star
you must be a small pulsar
out away from earth you drift
this is known from you red shift
twinkle twinkle spinning star
degenerate neutrons are what you are

twinkle twinkle little star
supernova, au revoir
you got so big to big perhaps
electron capture core collapse
twinkle twinkle former star
a black holes all you now are

twinkle twinkle little star
wait actually no you’re a meteor
breaking up in the atmosphere
i wish id known you’d end up here
twinkle twinkle shooting star
became a meteorite that hit my car

 

Maybe it is enough to get people thinking and asking questions.    So in addition to dance your Ph.D., I'd love to see a sing your Ph.D. - or just sing your research.   Collaboration with a real singer is ok... witness this version of Howie Day's Collide sung by... Howie Day. The physics is quite up to date - get in touch if you want anything decoded.

 

Just don't get me started on the Big Bang Theory show...

__________

¹  The Faraday Candle Lectures

Introduction to Michael Faraday’s Chemical History of a Candle

Lecture One: A Candle: Sources of its Flame 

Lecture Two: Brightness of the Flame

Lecture Three: Products of Combustion

Lecture Four: The Nature of the Atmosphere

Lecture Five: Respiration & its Analogy to the Burning of a Candle

 

They've also produced a version with commentary if you want more after watching the remade lecture

Lecture One: A Candle: Sources of its Flame (Commentary version)

Lecture Two: Brightness of the Flame (Commentary version)

Lecture Three: Products of Combustion (Commentary version) 

Lecture Four: The Nature of the Atmosphere (Commentary version) 

Lecture Five: Respiration & its Analogy to the Burning of a Candle (Commentary version) 

 

²  Using redshift only works for distant galaxies and pulsars are observed in our galaxy (they're in other galaxies, but are too faint to measure a redshift, let alone detect).  Re-reading 

you must be a small pulsar
out away from earth you drift
this is known from you red shift

It is becomes clear that it is drifting away and we know that by it's redshift..  so the song is correct.  

the barking dog catches the car ... what next?

The 19^th of October is a big day for me.  It marks the beginning of the only time I've been really depressed.  A depression triggered by something that should have been a celebration.   That afternoon I had just defended my Ph.D. thesis.

 

The audience,  while nothing like Harald Bohr's, was full of friends possibly lured by the cherry cheesecake I had baked to calm myself.¹ The committee - my advisor, a theorist and experimentalist from my department and a professor of surgery who was also a classically trained violinist.  The surgeon who took his duty seriously and I had spent many hours teaching him some particle physics.  He rewarded me with some of the more penetrating questions of the afternoon.  Years later I returned the favor serving as committee member for one of his students.

 

The cheesecake vanished and I was supposed to be preparing for the big celebration with friends.  Instead I just sat in a quiet room.  I felt directionless and a sense of despair  built.  It made no sense.  This had been a goal for years and I had done a good job.  I had a post lined up.  The feeling darkened and I didn't feel like celebrating, eating or even moving.  I just sat there with a piece of cheesecake next to me.

 

People found me and tried to pull me out.  I walked back to my room and didn't come out. The big celebration never happened.  People kept checking on me.  It went on for nearly three days.

 

The path began when I was about a month shy of turning twelve..

 

The structure was small but, despite the amazing view, there was only one small window.  A curtain kept out sunlight. A cluster of electric cables connected the building to the cable car building a thousand feet distant.  Eleven or twelve is an age when most of us are still curious and society is still encourages it.  I knocked on the door.

 

My family spent a few weeks each Summer anywhere from the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in Montana up to Jasper in Alberta.  That year it was Banff.  We had taken the Sulphur Mountain cable car to the viewing platform.  On a clear day the view was nearly a hundred miles.  The observation deck was crowded to capacity with tourists from all over the world.  My parents and sister were talking to a couple from England when I left for the unusual building along the mountain's North ridge.

 

Physicists have a primal need to explain things as deeply as time and their audience's patience and curiosity permit.  Almost immediately I was learning a bit about cosmic rays, muon showers, scintillators, photomultiplier tubes and so on until my father showed up.  He had been looking for me for a few hours and happy wouldn't be the right word to describe his mood.  

 

The ride down the mountain and back to our camp was quiet - I knew better than to say anything.  Nothing else seemed to matter at the time.  I was completely engaged in what I had seem.  Most of it was over my head, but seeing the existence of the remnants of a cosmic ray shower on a simple detector someone put together solely to explain what they were doing hit me deeply.   I saw the beginnings of how people ask questions of Nature and it had nothing to do with looking up things in a book.  By the time Lyra was overhead I feel asleep knowing I would be either a physicist or an astronomer.  It was my calling. 

 

A month later I tagged along with my Dad on a trip to Los Angeles.  He was taking a ten day workshop for a certification and I was seeing California for the first time.  Friends and family lined up trips to Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Hollywood, and the beaches - the things kids are supposed to see in Southern California.  To Dad's dismay I wasn't interested and somehow managed to get my way.  Instead I visited JPL, had a professor explain something about stellar explosions on his blackboard at Caltech, and visited the Griffith Park planetarium..  Gateway drugs all..

 

By the time I entered college I was focused on the narrow path of math and physics not letting much else get in the way.  I wasn't aimed at a career as much as it was wanting to learn more.  Somehow the title of doctor had become a goal.  And all of a sudden I had it.  All that work for something and it felt so hollow. 

 

What finally worked came from a Scottish friend.  Jack is a quiet and deep thinker.  He said something like "So you've managed to catch the hubcap you were barking at for so long.  Rest assured there are an infinite number of hubcaps of types you haven't imagined.  May you find a few."²  I didn't realize I was just at the threshold of the always new.

 

Some of you are working towards greatness.  Some are arguably there, not that the distinction matters.   It's just part of your path ..  a visible point where we take stock of things.  Important before and (hopefully) a just a happy memory as new hubcaps begin to shine.

 

 

One of these days perhaps I'll celebrate mine and I'm thrilled to celebrate those visible points along the paths of friends.

 

note:  Some of you have struggled with serious depression.  I don't discount those experiences.  My modest skirmish was a profound experience to me and continues to make me think.  I can't imagine the impact of deeper experiences.

__________

¹ Harald was the brother of the great physicist Niels Bohr.   He was an elite footballer representing Denmark in the 1908 London Olympics as they took they the silver medal.  He became a national hero and his PhD thesis defense in math was so packed with football fans that it had to be held in a large auditorium.

² I translate  roughly - he suggested a proper Hilbert space of hubcap types.