A claim has now been made that the world's first commercial fusion reactor (that can plug into the power grid) will be online in "the early 2030s", in Richmond, Virginia.
THIS WILL BE A BIG DEAL if successful! But for decades, scientists have made claims fusion would be available in ten years, and it is not clear if these power companies and startups will be ready in a few years, but let's certainly hope they or someone else will be successful soon. Should be interesting!
Going into the 2nd semester, the seniors will be changing focus from electricity to magnetism. This is a new discovery about the very nature of magnetism, and is still trying to be fully understood and explored. It is a quasiparticle found roaming in magnetic materials of all kinds, and at all temperatures.
In the coming years, we will almost certainly hear a LOT more about this, and how new applications and understandings of magnetism develop, in industries such as computer engineering and how memory and other aspects of computers work.
Check out this paper by two high school students, who found trig-based proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, once thought to not be possible! Very cool!!
See the Science News article about this here.
This is a summary paper about the Nobel winners in economics (2 from MIT, 1 from U. of Chicago), who contribute to our understanding of how and why some countries such as the USA have accumulated massive wealth, while many other countries have not and whose citizens are sometimes desperately poor.
Generally, it largely depends on the types of institutions developed in a country - the more inclusive the institutions, such as in countries leaning towards or practicing democracy, the more wealth is generated and the higher the GDP per capita. If institutions are extractive, such as in oligarchies and authoritarian countries, the less wealth per citizen, and whatever wealth there is tends to be concentrated with the few in power.
Equipotential lines and surfaces are a big thing in electrostatics. Graphically, these provide a way of trying to visualize an abstract quantity such as voltage, and mathematically it makes use of a gradient - E-field = dV/dr
The graphing program and site DESMOS has a wonderful visualization and simulator for this. We just wanted to be sure everyone has access to this, and hopefully it will help make sense out of this abstract, mathematical concept.
What great timing, where an article in Science News about a projectile method of spreading pollen for a certain type of plant, came out while we are studying projectile motion.
The Brazilian flower Hypenea macrantha has evolved a catapult-like mechanism that can launch its pollen when hummingbirds have their beaks in the flower, sipping out nectar. This does two things: it helps knock other, competitor flower's pollen off the beaks of hummingbirds, and then increases the amount of the flower's own pollen that sticks to the beak, thus increasing the odds of having its pollen transferred to a female flower. Nature is awesome!
It appears that the College Board has changed the way some of the AP subject exams are scored. For example, the percentage of students getting scores of 4 or 5 on the US History, US Government, and European History nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024. Others, like Chemistry and Biology, have seen dramatic recalibrations a couple years ago.
Grade inflation is something that has dramatically risen since the Covid shutdowns, mostly done to help alleviate the severe and oftentimes traumatic stresses that were present for everyone, both students and adults. But as we have come out of the shutdowns, perhaps a key question should be "is getting a B or C the end of the world?" It doesn't make any sense if everyone gets an A in classes if they clearly have not mastered much of the material...'average' is a concept that has seemingly been dismissed. On an AP exam, a score of 4 or 5 is supposed to represent high levels of mastery of the subject. Perhaps we all have done ourselves a disservice by boosting up the acceptance of mediocrity and confusing it with mastery and excellence. Where this tends NOT to happen, though, is when trying to get jobs ultimately.
So let's work on the excellence part of all this throughout the school year, and have some fun learning all about how our world and universe work fundamentally, and become excellent problem solvers who will have the ability to truly fix some of the problems in the world and discover new bits of knowledge that can be useful in our understanding of life and nature! The scores on tests will come along for the ride, and if we are successful building up our knowledge and skills, they will be representative of our excellence. BUT, it is also true that it is likely NOT EVERYONE WILL GET THERE! AND THAT'S OK! We all learn at different rates and have different strengths and weaknesses, so sometimes it takes many of us longer than others to master topics and courses. If some of us need to take some classes over when in college, THAT IS OK, TOO! You will be well-prepared for that scenario because of the background from the high school course, and AP classes are called 'Advanced' for a reason - they are challenging!
Let's have fun learning, together, and see where it leads!
Scientists have found a feature of photos that can be added to a list of things to determine if a photo is authentic or a deepfake. Deepfakes are electronically created photos or videos, using AI, that are nearly impossible for untrained eyes to determine if the photo/video is of something real or made-up. There are countless examples online, and perhaps the most deepfaked person is former President Obama.
Using techniques and information learned primarily from astronomers, and how they take and analyze photos of distant galaxies, it turns our that for photos of humans the key is to check out the eyes. In real photos, generally the reflections of light in the eyes should be the same. AI has not learned this correctly - YET - so presently one can check the colors and reflections of eyes, and that can help determine if it is a fake or not.
This is especially important right now, heading into fall elections, when different individuals and groups are trying to smear candidates and get disinformation to go viral online. Deepfakes have become so easy to create that the average person looking at ads and content would likely not be able to tell the difference, making it SO challenging to determine what's real or not.
