Methods being used to make AI creative

Getting a computer to be creative, to actually come up with its own, unique "thoughts" that it was not pre-programmed to do, is an enormous challenge for past artificial intelligence machines. But as is the case for most aspects of AI, progress has been made at impressive rates. Check out some of the methods being used for creative AI.

Free Online Physics Course, Textbook

Check out Ck-12, and the free, online physics course and textbook. It has simulations, sample videos, and practice problems for the major topics in physics! There are also study guides for all topics. A wonderful supplement for what we do in class, or something to use if you are interested in topics we don't have time to study. You can also get a free account to access all the resources at CK-12; just use your student email, so you can access things from school.

Link to Infographic for MLA Citations

For any type of research paper, if you are using MLA citation formats, there are some really nice templates for different types of resources. Check them out if you ever forget or aren't quite sure.

For Wednesday

I am terribly sorry for missing again, but let's make the most of it. I'll make it up somehow.

Periods 3-4, 8-9:

Now that all the groups have observations and some data for RC circuits, we want to get a sense of the theory and math behind them. There are two cases for RC circuits in series: connecting a battery and charging the capacitor, and having a charged capacitor and then removing the battery so the capacitor discharges. Check out the following videos on your Chromebooks and take notes...you probably have guessed that, yes, we will all need to be able to do these derivations. Keep in mind that, for whatever reason, this is the same math that we used last year with air friction!

Watch this for CHARGING capacitors.  Watch this for DISCHARGING capacitors.

After watching these, you can complete the lab (theory into reality, last part). After receiving the RC packets, give a try on the two AP problems on the second and third pages (2002, 2003).  If you have spare time, see what you think of the derivative calculator in the previous post....looks pretty cool.


Period 6:

We will start the process for our bridges. First, decide on who you will work with. To maximize your hands-on experience and have a chance to still talk through designs, we will work in pairs. However, you do have the option of working on your own if you wish to try.

Next, you have the period to go through the information passed out yesterday. Use the information for the various forces bridges experience, such as tension, stress, strain, compression, and so on - you will need to be able to define these. Then work on reaching a decision of design. Remember the specifications: the bridge will need to be between 30 cm and 40 cm in length, and span a 30 cm gap. Feel free to look online at designs, there should be lots of information since there are numerous bridge building contests around the country.

Keep in mind you will need to explain to Doc V and the class why you chose the design you ultimately make (think in terms of how forces are distributed in order to make the bridge stronger).

Derivative Calculator website - give it a try, does it help you conceptually seeing the graphs?

A very cool site I just became aware of is called Derivative Calculator. You can type in any function, and it will provide the derivative function and both graphs. Not only that, it will find roots of your function, and also show steps of how it got the derivative. It can find higher order derivatives, as well!

This could be really useful for any of us to gain further conceptual understanding of derivatives, as well as allow us to check ourselves with more complex functions, or simply find the derivative of really complex functions we don't see in classes. Try it out!!

For 2nd period

Thank you for helping out on this senior project!

The first Google form for the experiment is here.

The second form is here.

The final survey is here.

Super-fast imaging methods to see what the atomic world is doing!

There is always a good deal of interest when we bring up methods of how scientists observe small things - and we are talking molecular level on down to individual particles. This is the quantum realm.

A really interesting review article is posted by Nature, one of the leading science journals on the planet. Check it out to see scales down to 'atto' in the metric system. This is 10^-18, or one billionth of a billionth! Yes, we can talk about such scales both in terms of space and time scales! Enjoy!

Thank you to all who helped our African friends!!

Over the past 1.5 years, ETHS students and teachers have helped raise funds for friends in Malawi and Kenyan schools. ETHS sent $6400 to Malawi schools that are working with star teacher Andrews Nchessie, where land was purchased by the schools for their own crops. In addition, seed, fertilizer, materials for chicken coups, and funding to drill wells and put in irrigation systems were purchased so the schools can be self-sustaining during future droughts, and avoid the rampant famine from the past three years in that part of Africa.

For Kenya, $400 was wired in order for Makonjamare Primary School to purchase sporting equipment. This school is in rural Kenya, and they do not have any real balls or other equipment to play with. This school has another star teacher, Jacqueline Jumba-Kehura, who is our contact. Jacque founded the Lifting the Barriers Program in Kenya, and has helped teachers develop new teaching methods for rural, poor schools across the country. She has gained international recognition for this work!

We hope to develop some other collaborative classroom projects with these schools in the near future, which should be great fun!

JUNIORS - Fermilab TARGET Program for Summer Internship

Fermilab, which is about one hour from Evanston out in Batavia, has a summer internship for high school students. Called the TARGET Program, students work for 6 weeks and can make a stipend on top of it. This is a non-residential program, so you would need to have transportation for the full 6 weeks, and it is 8 hours per day.

The deadline for applications is February 21, 2018. Check out the link for the program, as students are exposed to how high energy particle physics is done!! There is an emphasis on underrepresented students in particle physics, which is primarily minority and female students.

Congratulations to the Global Teacher Prize Top 50 Finalists, Class of 2017!

A new batch of 50 ridiculously talented teachers from all around the world have been selected as this year's Top 50 Finalists in the Global Teacher Prize. This is run through the Varkey Foundation (in the United Kingdom), and is now known as the 'Nobel Prize for Teaching.' One of these teachers will end up winning a $1 million award in March of 2018, at a ceremony in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.This is the fourth year of the GTP, and tens of thousands teachers of all age groups have been nominated from some 170 countries. Congratulations to all of these wonderful people! One of them is from Chicago Public Schools.