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paradoxes and possibilities

In paradoxes and possibilities, I learned about how a Copenhagen interpretation functions. A Copenhagen interpretation is an expression of the meaning of quantum mechanics. The purpose of the author incorporating the Copenhagen interpretation is to demonstrate is to demonstrate how adversity against a certain theory essentially makes it stronger. This is because defenders are able to refute all of the attacker’s arguments. A point made by Heisenberg is his book Physics and Philosophy, pointed out that counter proposal of the Copenhagen interpretation must sacrifice the symmetry of the quantum theory. These symmetry properties cannot be sacrificed though because they are held to genuine features of nature. This made me think differently about how I approach arguments. I shouldn't take counterarguments as weaknesses of my own argument, but use that counter argument to demonstrate why my argument is correct.

           Something else I have acquired from this reading is the idea of time. In the reading the author mentions how a photon traveling to the earth would take thousands of years on the journey measured by time on earth, but according to the photon, time is not a concern. This brings up how things can be subjective. Since experiences are different, our perception is going to be essentially different. Since we have different perceptions, we might not be able to come to a conclusion since experiences and essentially different. How can we say something is definite when everyone experiences a different reality? This ties into the Fabric of Cosmos reading  because it discusses how everyone’s reality is actually different.

           I enjoyed that the author compared Einstein and Bohr’s conflicting arguments about the energy of photons. Einstein came up with a box, that if you weighed a box, the waited for a photon to escape, you can calculate the energy of the photon that escaped. Bohr saw a problem with measuring how the box was weighted, which resulted in uncertainty. This example that the author included of conflicting ideas demonstrates that theory and practicality will have some problems with each other.

           Overall, this reading was very insightful and changed my thinking.  

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A strength of the of the presentation is that the presenters actively engaged the listener. They weren't just passively saying the information but trying to say the information in an active way to keep the listener interested. Another strength of the presentation was that most of the presenters were well versed in their topic. They knew their information well and appeared to passionately care about the topic that they were discussing.

A weakness of the presentation was voice projection. Often I found myself leaning in so that I can hear the presenter better.

Poster Presentation Assignment:

This is a simple one. DUE Friday.

You will identify and briefly discuss 3 things about the presentations that you found interesting. 

2 will be strengths: something a presentation did well that you would like to copy. Example, something that made the presentation more enjoyable, easier to understand. 

1 thing you think could be improved on. Example, something you as an audience member would have liked to seen but wasn’t there in one or all of the presentations. 

This won’t take a whole paragraph. Just a few sentences for each strength and weakness. 

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I do agree with you that this reading does a very good job of captivating the reader. As I was reading the passage, I became very intrigued into what the writer was discussing. I felt like compared to the other readings writer did the best job of keeping the attention of the reader. He did a good job of incorporating questions into the reading that really requires the reader to think. I also agree with you that his use of philosophy was great because it demonstrated that science is not something that is fixed, it is something that is continually evolving.

THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS

In the reading of “The Fabric of the Cosmos” by Brian Greene, there is so much that captivates your attention. This reading is mainly about space and time and how they interconnect to create the sum total that is the universe itself. Additionally, the reading has a touch of philosophy which I liked. For example, when it asks “did something exist before the universe itself?” It keeps me caught with the attention of, “I don’t know. Did something exist before the universe?” Furthermore in the reading, Einstein and Newton are introduced. Einstein, with the theory of relativity, proved Newton wrong; he showed space and time are flexible and dynamic. Which is interesting how other scientist can prove with other wrong and come up with new theories.

There were so many concepts that caught my attention during this reading. For example, when the reading talks about velocity and position. First, classical physics and relativity say that if you know the velocity and position of any object you can determine its position and velocity at any other time past or future. Yet quantum mechanics, states the best that can be done is to predict a probability of position and velocity. So now it’s up to the person to decide what’s best for them because there is no right answer. Likewise, quantum mechanics describes a reality in which things are partly one way and partly another, which for a moment confused me. Furthermore, quantum mechanics implies that something done here can be instantaneously linked to something done elsewhere no matter how far away. Which is a pretty cool idea because I can be dancing and maybe there’s something linked to my actions happening elsewhere.

Overall, this reading made me realize that science shows us that our experiences are a misleading guide to reality.                   

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The Fabric of Cosmos Response

Something that I have acquired from this reading is the notion that we as humans do not know what reality is. It is too many unknowns to truly define what he reality are. The author brought up a really good point when they discussed about how there is multiple perspectives about reality. If we really knew what reality was, then we would be able to have a definite answer on what it is. There are too many different perspectives on what reality is to have a definite answer on what it's truly is.

Something else I've learned from the reading is how there is a direction associated with time. When events happen, they do not go back and reverse themselves, they just happen. These asymmetries do govern our lives because these events that occur go in a direction. If they were not going in a direction they would be able to be reversed.

Something else I learned from the reading is how you can never actually predict something, just the probability of it. According to quantum mechanics, the universe participates games in chance. When envisioning reality, it has endless possibilities of what it could be. Using quantum mechanics , you consider all possibilities. When something is definite, the possibilities are thus relinquished.

I enjoyed that the author opened up the story with an anecdote. That had an impact on how I read the passage. The author effectively enthralled the reading in the initial paragraph to keep the reader going. Compared to other passages I have read, I feel this passage did the best to keep my interest. I also feel like I could relate to the author because he used an example of when he started to read. To read the books on his father bookshelf.  I also enjoyed how the writer challenged laws of physics in his readings such as Einstein’s and Newton’s laws. This reinforces the idea that as a learner you should always be questioning what you’re learning to question its accuracy. It shows the writer is truly invested in the subject of physics and they are not just passively gaining information but challenging the information to improve it and advance the subject of physics.

The author brought up the notion that the impact of new understanding on evaluation of life and reality are insignificant. I disagree with this point. I feel that new understanding about life actually has a very big impact on the evaluation of life. If Darwin never went to the Galapagos Islands and studied several different birds and realized that the birds evolved based on their environment, we would not have the theory of evolution. We probably would know very little about DNA.. So new understanding actually brings a lot of our evaluation on life in our opinion because we come closer to the truth each time some new understanding is gained.

This reading helped me realize that reality is truly undefined.

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I do agree with you that it was intriguing that the content of the reading mostly dealt with chemistry even though the topic was supposedly physics. Through the reading though, I did sort of see the connection between the topic brought up such as wavelength and frequency and physics.This makes me think in a more interdisciplinary way instead of thinking of science as simple subjects. Everything is connected somehow.

           You do bring up the notion at the end of your paragraph about if sound is affected by force. I do think that forces somehow affect the volume of sound. The more loud your sound is the more force it has. Louder sound would require greater force because it requires more imoact to create a greater sound.

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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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The Dancing Wu Li Masters

Organic essentially means something that is alive. Zukav makes the assertion that physics does apply to living things even though it was not thought of as this way. He utilizes the example of rocks and how they may be organic items, but we would not be able to observe them in the process of living because they move at a much slower rate. They may have reactions just as humans do. This made me wonder about what really is a living thing. Previously, I thought of something living as something that grows and is able to respond to the environment. This reading made me rethink about how I classify living things, just because I can’t observe a certain characteristic from an object does not mean it is not living because the object does possibly posses the ability to be organic, but it is just not visible to my eye. Zukav then starts to discuss subatomic particles.

Another assertion that Zukav makes is that everything in the universe is a part of one organic pattern. I do not agree with this statement. I feel that if everything was in one organic pattern, that everything was in synch, then there should be no conflict. In my opinion, everything being in synch and flowing together would allow for no disruption. If there is no disruption, then conflict cannot occur. Since conflict is inevitable though, everything is not working together in one big organic pattern.

           The part of the reading that piqued my interest the most was when Zukav started to talk about the experiment that Thomas Young conducted in 1803. Learning about light diffraction really intrigued me because I always wondered why when light entered a space it did not make the shape that it exited out of. It is a topic I would read up on my own to gain more information about it.

Overall, this was a pretty interesting reading.

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Tech- Com argument

           Objects do in fact reflect the creator of the object’s personal belief and values because culture has an impact on behavior.

           The short readings that were assigned in class touched upon how racism could possibly be shown in technology. Some technology in the past has made faulty mistakes that could be perceived as discriminatory. The articles discussed solutions to these mistakes made by technology and why the technology made this mistake. There were two longer readings titled “The evolution of useful things” by Henry Peltroski and “Do artifacts have politics” by Langon Winner. In the “Evolution of Useful things: it was discussed how inventors invent certain objects and how subjectivity does play a role the end product. In “Do artifacts have politics” how objects do hold political and social power.

           The reason the argument that Objects do reflect the creator's personal beliefs and values can be made is because culture plays a huge role in behavior. Culture is defined as the dynamic system of rules established by a social group. So the rules that a person grows up influences how they think and how they act. This does create subjectivity for inventors because when they are creating objects they are only taking into account the culture they grew up in, not an eclectic approach of including multiple cultures. For example, in the article “Do artifacts have politics,” it discusses how Robert Moses built the overpasses low to the ground so that the buses could not utilize them. This caused poor people not to be able to access areas that middle and upper class people had access to. This does showcase how someone’s beliefs influence how they create things. Robert Moses had some type of disdain towards poor people and that was shown through his invention. It could possibly be in his culture to discriminate against people of lower classes, which thoroughly was shown in his creation of the overpasses. Another example of how objects reflect a person's beliefs and values is when we discussed in class how women bicycles were made. Women bicycles were initially made so that women would be able to wear dresses when they rode their bikes. The bikes were made by men. At the time, society was in a misogynistic state. So that was reflected through the invention because they did not take into consideration other factors that could aid women when riding bikes, they just created a bike so that women could sit and look pretty. This invention reflected society's beliefs at the time that women were at a lower standard than men. Essentially, an inventor's beliefs and values are shown through their invention because culture does influence behavior.

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   Taylor did an excellent job of explaining what a scientific revolution is. I liked how Taylor explained what the gestalt switch is, then using that as something that is opposite of a scientific revolution. I feel like when explaining a concept stating a dissimilar idea helps the ready with clarity. Taylor also did a great job with her use of questions. Using questions in a je response helps to get the reader to begin to ponder and more interested in the reading. I do agree with Taylor that the reading has helped me be more courageous and question things. It's okay to go against the standard view because a new theory could come out of that questioning.

Structure of Scientific Revolution Response

In “The Structure of Scientific Revolution” by Thomas S. Kuhn, I was opened to a new way of thinking, one that really hadn’t presented itself to me before, but now after reading this, makes me think more about the reality of science in the world around us. This reading explained basically what a scientific revolution was, and what caused a scientific revolution, as in what are the requirements that have to be met in order for a new finding to be called a scientific revolution. This reading opened my eyes to the fact that not everything we learn in school is proven fact.

Many theories and concepts that we learn could in fact be false, or just not completely correct. For example, take the idea of gravity. Everyone who went through elementary school knows that there is a responsible force for keeping us on the ground, which is called gravity. It keeps us from floating around as if we were in space. When going into higher levels of education, you learn that gravity pulls at an acceleration of nine point eight meters per second per second, and that it is the relative mass of the planet (earth) that keeps each person grounded. But when you take a step back, what really is gravity? A force? Then what is a force? What causes forces? Why are there forces? If someone were to solve these questions, it would be called a gestalt switch. In a gestalt switch, ideas aren’t completely proven false, but more or less renovated. On the flip side, if a scientist came out with an idea of gravity being a nonexistent idea, and forces are just a theory created to explain unnatural phenomenon (of course backed up by sound reasoning and evidence) this could be considered a scientific revolution. The idea of gravity and everything in relation to it would have to be reimagined. The view of the world as we know it today would completely change.

With that, I came to realize that there are those innovators in science and technology who come to redefine the world as we know it. They are the ones who, quite literally, shape our world. Through different theories, methods, and standards, scientists have spent years arguing over the truths of our world. Look at the arguments between evolution and creation. To every revolution there will be two sides, and with every revolution there is a completely different perspective on our world. Each scientist him or herself should not be afraid to contest the ideas of the scientist before him or herself, there is always the possibility that they are incorrect. From this reading, I learned that I should not be afraid to question the science I have always known. Questions are where revolutions begin.

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Structure of scientific revolutions

           What I have acquired from this reading is what a scientific revolution is and how a paradigm shift results in a revolution. A scientific revolution is an episode where an old model is rejected and replaced by a new model. This was useful because previously I had no concrete idea of what a scientific revolution was. Previously, I did not think a new scientific discovery could be considered as a revolution. This article caused me to have a change in my perspective. A new scientific discovery is a revolution because it causes a shift in ideas. I also walked away with how a scientific revolution functions. There is a competition with two contradictory models and one must be chosen as the right model to follow. If the newer model is chosen, a revolution must have occurred because the assimilation of the new model requires rejection of the old model. This explanation served as great clarification for me, because at first I was confused as how a revolution functioned in science.

I felt that the author made a great point when he compared a scientific revolution to a political revolution. In the analogy, Kuhn states that, members of society are dissatisfied and aim to change the current state of institutions set in place. The rejection of the institutions then occurs and members of society are drawn away from them. This causes members of a society to choose an alternate institution and ultimately whichever institution persuades majority of the members of society gets to stay in place. This analogy gives the reader clarity of how a scientific revolution functions. Since political revolutions are familiar, comparing a scientific revolution to a political one gives the reader something to build off of. I also enjoyed that Kuhn challenges the logical positivist view. The logical positivist view was that a new model is derived from or is an addition to the old model. This was the prevalent view of science at the time. By addressing this view and its flaws, Kuhn makes a great argument oh why revolution in science exists. Some of the flaws that Kuhn points out are that a theory can never be attacked and that science would not really be transformed.

Overall, this article made me view science is a different light.

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I do agree with Christal that Feynman did an excellent job by placing the question “if only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words.” As I was reading the passage, I noticed that once I got to that question I was enthralled in the reading even more than I was before. That was an excellent point to notice in the reading. I also agree with Christal in the fact that the visuals did aid with understanding. I also had some difficulty understanding the concepts. For example when Feynman discussed  the surface of water, I had trouble understanding it. The visual, though did help me better understand the concept that Feynman was trying to get across.

Six Easy Pieces

The reading, “Six Easy Pieces,” opened my eyes to the simplicity of how different types of science, including physics, biology, and chemistry, derive the standard laws. In the first part of the reading, Matter is made of atoms, Richard Feynman poses a question asking if, “only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” I thought this was a great introductory question because it prepared the reader to read further for the answer and ponder the possibilities. After I finished the reading I understood why Feynman’s response to the question was about atoms. I learned that atoms are the foundation in science and the basis to discover the rest of science. By knowing about the function and purpose of an atom, one can experiment and conclude other laws in science. For example, Feynman explains how atoms lead to the structure of molecules, compounds, and different forms of solids, liquids, and gases.

The structure of the reading included an introduction and three main chapters. I feel Feynman’s structure of the reading was easy to follow because it connected factual information about atoms to help the reader understand the connections between characteristics of atoms in matter. In addition, the reading gradually increased in difficulty of content, which allowed the reader to learn about the concepts and then how to apply them in everyday life. I found it helpful to have the diagrams throughout the reading to refer to because it helped me visualize what was being discussed in the reading. For example, I know the composition of steam is made of scattered atoms because of the hot temperatures and fast movement. I also know that ice is the opposite, with an arranged structure. However, without the 1-4 diagram to portray the structure of ice, it would have been hard for me to understand why ice shrinks when it melts. Therefore, I learned that the gaps in the structural model of ice gradually disappears as it melts because the atoms start to get closer, filling in the gaps.

Overall, I felt this reading was structured in an easy way for a beginner physicist or any other aspiring scientist to understand. I believe the author wanted the reader to walk away with giving them the backbone to science: atoms. My favorite part of the reading is at the end when Feynman poses multiple questions to lead the reader in a direction to continue thinking about other possibilities in the world.

Christal

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six easy pieces

    Something that I walked away with from the reading that physics is much more complex than just laws governing a subject. The laws are just there to help shape the subject but there are still a lot of unknowns in physics. This changed my perspective in science because previously I thought of science as just some facts put together proven to be true. But now I know that science is continual learning about life and why things happen.

           Something else I walked away from the reading is that physics is an approximation. It is not an exact set of rules of the way the world works because everything is not known yet. Even though there are unknowns, we can utilize our imagination to fill in those gaps. I do not utilize my imagination and tend to just look at the world from a realistic perspective. This motivates me to utilize more creative thinking because it can actually be helpful in understanding more about the physical world.

           Another thing I walked away with is how all the sciences are connected to each other and how physics serves as the basis for all of the sciences. Previously, I did not see a connection with all the sciences. In the reading though, it demonstrated this. A specific example that caught my eye was when the author discussed what water is composed of.  I would think this would just biology to look at, but you can also look at it through physics because of atoms. This will help me look at things in a more eclectic way and try to make connections between several different subjects.

           What I enjoyed about the authors writing styles is the type of examples used in the passage. In the passage, the author used examples of simple things, such as water droplets and water at the shore. These examples help me have a better grasp of what physics is and how physics plays out in the natural world. Previously, I thought physics was this abstract subject where it was difficult to understand. These examples though showed me that physics could as simple as a water droplet. It gave me greater context of how physics work.

           Another thing I enjoyed about physics is the approach taken. The approach taken was sort of a philosophical approach. I liked this approach because I feel it tapped into my higher order thinking. If the author just discussed solely facts in his reading I feel like I would have gotten less out of the reading because I would not be thinking as much.

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Clarity

From the discussion had last Thursday, I thought that clarity is how clear something is to a person. Clarity is not the same for everyone though, because everyone views things differently and culture plays a role in that understanding. Essentially though, clarity is subjective because of this. Even though clarity is something that is subjective, there should be some type of consensus on certain things to make communication easier.