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"In Search of Schrödinger's Cat"

I enjoy paradoxes since they are a way to play with your mind and there's never a wrong answer in my opinion. There is always an explanation to them but the answer is not limited to it. The passage about electrons reminded me of my chemistry class. One of our lessons was about quantum mechanics. We can't know the position of of an electron at an exact time, and we can't know the time when an electron is somewhere. That really made me think because we are able to know position and time of things in our realm, but at a subatomic level we're not. What's the difference? We were able to calculate the speed of light; the fastest thing known to men. Do electrons move faster than light? Why is it that we can't know both the position and time at once? I was really confused when my teacher talked about it during class. I thought science was advanced enough to solve this problem, but we haven't reached that point quite yet. I did some research but it's a really technical and complicated topic. After some time, I decided to accept the fact that we don't have an answer to that yet. Before reading the passage, I never thought that was a paradox. Now that I read it, I can see it be a type of paradox, not entirely, but it definitely has the traits of one. Since we don't have a concrete answer yet, all we have are theories. There's an explanation behind them, but we can't really say if it's right or wrong.

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Poster Presentation

The presentations gave us an idea of what ours could look like. One of the strengths I saw was that the presenters knew their topic really well and knew how to handle questions. The second strength I saw was that they didn't read anything from their poster board. They talked about their topic and seemed to enjoy it. One of the weakness I saw was that diagrams or images were not present, and if the poster had images they weren't very clear. The images were supposed to portray the topic as clear as possible but it only confused the audience.

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The Fabric of the Cosmos

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Brian Greene

I found it interesting the way the author introduced the topic. He narrated his story of how he would look at books and not think anything great about them but then one day he started feeling curious about one of the smaller books. This curiosity grew with time and eventually lead him to grab the book and read it, unveiling an endless source of information.

No one really thinks of physics as a philosophical field of science, but it all begins when one formulates philosophical inquiries. No one would know (and no one really know to this day) what happens to space as something moves around without first asking what happens to space when something moves through it. Personally, I was intrigued by the warping and distortion of both space and time. We have the idea that they do occur under very extreme conditions, although I don’t believe in that totally since they are so difficult to record and there isn’t much concrete evidence about it besides black holes.

It’s also interesting how most of the laws have been derived from previous ones once thought were correct. If it weren’t for those wrong claims we wouldn’t have the laws we have today and that serve as the foundation for everything science-related. I was compelled to read more about realities when the author mentioned the differences between classical reality and relativistic reality. Who would have thought there were different versions of the same reality? Is it even the same reality? Einstein stated his theory of relativity and how space is directly related to time. That made me wonder, however, if they are actually related. What if they are completely different versions of the same reality and occur in different dimensions but there is another dimension that serves as a link between them two?

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The Dancing Wu Li Masters

“The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics” brought many questions to my mind as well as connections. To start with, I learned about light wavelength and frequency in my chemistry class, not in physics, which is interesting. Although different fields of science often overlap on one another, it’s quite intriguing that we focus on physics in a chemistry class. Very similar situation happened with quantum mechanics. Primarily a physics-related topic learned in a chemistry class. However, what really caught my attention- and led the way for many questions-is how energy behaves.

I used to think light was both a particle and a wave, but apparently, it is not any of those and at the same time it is. Depending on how you see it, light behaves like a particle, a wave, a particle in a wave and a wave made out of particles. Several theories have been presented but nothing really concrete has been stated since our technology isn’t advanced enough to further the studies on the field. We also have yet to find out if light is organic or inorganic energy. One particle cannot be in the same place at the same time; nothing really can. Nonetheless, this is not what really caught my attention.

How does energy really behave? Not only light but sound as well. Is energy affected by any outside force? It must be. If the humongous gravitational force of a dark hole is able to distort and suck in light, then other forces (in insanely huge amounts, that is) should be able to affect sound as well. I wonder, is sound distorted as you get closer to Earth’s core. What type of energy is more resistant, light or sound? It’d be interesting to conduct a study on how forces affect sound based off of human perception and actual measuring devices.

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Thesis: Human-made objects do say something about the person who designed them and can clearly convey that person’s culture because cultural backgrounds influence the way a designer thinks and the market they are targeting. 

Summary: Architecture is a very creative career but can be heavily limited due to many cultural and social factors, or rather, be diverted to work in a certain way. Just as spikes on the ground or sprinkles to keep homeless people from sleeping in front of buildings, it can be used to target a section of society that already is targeted. Wanting to display only the nice view of it is part of being human.

Argument: Human-made objects say something about who designed them because the designer’s cultural background influence their way of thinking. This happens a lot overseas and it’s usually taken for granted by people who already have an even better version of the object. For example, one in the US takes for granted running water and showers. People overseas live a completely different reality. Back in my country, whether you live in the cities or in the country, most of the houses have this concrete box called “pila” where you store water. Even if the house has running water, it is very likely to find a pila, and it all comes down to our culture. As people migrated from the country to the cities they brought their traditions with them. One of them being the pila. In remote towns there is no running water. The only way to get water is to carry it from streams nearby and store them in barrels, and since barrels deteriorate overtime, people came up with the idea to build the storage out of concrete. These pilas are found in houses of very low income and houses with high income, so it’s more of a cultural thing than it having anything to do with social class. Because pilas are so rooted into our culture, many of the architects that design residential buildings almost always include one into their design. This serves as the perfect representation of objects speaking for their designers, and ultimately, the users, for it encompasses the culture of an entire nation.

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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

By Thomas S. Kuhn

 A scientific revolution is a non cumulative developmental episode in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one (92). Society is constantly changing; always evolving. As human beings we are regularly looking for ways to make ourselves better so it’s no surprise to see many revolutions being created throughout the history of humanity. In our search for perfection we have come together, either in small or large groups, and decided on where we wanted to go. Currently, we are free to make our own decisions but back then it didn’t work that way. Even now if whatever it is we want to change is dramatically different from the norm it’s deemed as taboo, or even a revolution.

 Revolutions have been a key component of our history. Without them the world as we know it now would not be the same whatsoever. Military and political revolutions have shaped societies for ages, but it’s the scientific revolutions that have really made an impact on every single one of us. The changes in the ways we think themselves have been revolutionary. Back to the day when people stopped believing whatever the church told them and started to inquire about their surroundings. That was a turning point. People started to study and invest time and effort into science. Most of our knowledge nowadays is based off of the studies completed during the scientific revolution of the 16th century.

At their core, revolutions, regardless of their nature, are very similar to one another. They all go out of the norm and set a trend for future events. What is interesting about revolutions is that they begin as people become aware of what’s not working in their system, whether it’s right or wrong.

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Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

Atoms in Motion is the introductory chapter to the book and it does it in the best way possible: being clear and concise while still being interesting and informative. It’s a compelling reading that makes you think about everything you once thought was correct and it’s shocking when you find out that you were actually wrong. As human beings we are always on the look for making ourselves as perfect as possible although we are well aware that that is not exactly achievable by any means. However, that does not stop us whatsoever. In our search for perfection we have done many wonderful things for humanity and Earth in general, but we have also done many detrimental things that have definitely marked us as a society; a society that had only cared about themselves until recently when we began to be more conscious about everything we do. Despite not being an actual physical object, knowledge has been by far our most powerful weapon. Everything in this world derives from knowledge. Our knowledge of physics is essential for our survival, it is what has gotten us this far. Society wouldn’t be the same without knowledge, let alone our knowledge of physics. The statement that really caught my attention was “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” (p. 4) A very captivating question indeed. So then I pondered on what the most basic knowledge of our world was. I came to the conclusion that it all comes down to the atom and what it stands for. Everything is made up of atoms, so the next generations will be able to derive every other knowledge of our world from them. The laws of atoms are so basic and really are the foundation of many of the science fields. I learned so much about atoms and molecules from this short chapter. I knew there’s always water vapor above water but I didn’t know why that happened but now it’s all very clear. The way the author wrote it was very helpful because he was clear and was able to convey the message to people with different backgrounds in an effective way; in a way everyone understood what he was saying.  

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What is Clarity?

Clarity to me is being able to express and convey your thoughts in a way people understand you. The goal is to be clear to as many people as possible. In my opinion the best way to improve your skills is to surround yourself with people and speak your mind; that way you can have feedback on what you said and find out a better way to express what you actually meant.