Atoms and how we can literally take images of them

 This is a video showing some of the microscopes and techniques used to get images of INDIVIDUAL ATOMS!! Incredibly cool!!!

Status of rivers around the world - drying up in northern hemisphere

 The world's rivers have had a very hard and bad summer around the world. Many are becoming impassable for shipping because they are so low, and also these are water sources for tens to hundreds of millions of people. It is clear they are drying up from so many droughts that have been in progress, especially in the northern hemisphere where most of the land-mass of the earth is located. And those droughts have been accelerated and made worse through human-induced climate change. Check out this link where you can see satellite photos of 6 major rivers in the past compared to today. 

This photo is from 2019 in India - the Narmada River in the Narsinghpur Province. There's little left for this and many more farmers along that river. 

Welcome, Juniors!! Check out before school if interested!

 This is meant for the incoming juniors for 3 Chem/Phys Mechanics. For those who want to see the slides from our Chem/Phys Boot Camp, here they are.

I can only hope you've had a wonderful, restful and fun summer! We are so looking forward to meeting you and working with you this year. We tend to have a lot of fun as the next two years progress!

While we have no summer assignments for the course, some students like to get a preview of the first week or so of the course, and in particular reviewing some of the mathematical concepts and topics we will need from here on out. This generally boils down to remembering how to do vector algebra, and starting the process of learning basic calculus (derivatives and integrals). Just about everyone will be in the same boat if you have not yet had any calculus, whether in BC/AB calculus or Pre-calculus. Don't worry, if you know how to graph and find slopes, you can begin to understand and do calculus!! 

Below are some links to videos that introduce some of the math, as well as a welcoming video for the program. 

Vector addition is most important for vectors. Vector multiplication we won't need for a while.

Derivatives are important in STEM from now on. These re-define things like velocity and acceleration, and MUCH more as time goes on. We'll worry about integration once school starts. 

Here's a summary of the program.  And for anyone who might have an interest in independent research, this summarizes our CABS site. We'll talk about this and so much more the first couple days of school! 

All our videos are listed at http://docvphysics.blogspot.com/p/list-of-all-how-to-videos.html. If you want a sense of how I think about education in general, feel free to check out my new TED Talk, released a couple weeks ago (we'll talk a lot about this over time, as well as SO many other topics!). Here's my experiment from back in graduate school, one of the giant detectors at Fermilab: 

TED Talk - Quantum Revolution of Education

 If you're interested, it may be good for a few laughs! #TED #TEDx #TEDtalks

Netlogo - learn to program and use it for any type of gent-based research!

 Northwestern University researchers created a programming platform called Netlogo some years ago, and it's likely a million students, graduate students and even professors have used this to learn how to program, run its hundreds of prewritten simulations in just about every STEM field for assignments, or used it for actual, high-level research that is agent-based. 

By agents, we mean individual objects or even organisms. Netlogo is designed to, as easily as can be done, develop programs and simulations where individual entities interact with each other by some set of rules or mathematical law. You can do orbits, for example, since this is just individual objects interacting through Newton's law of gravity. You can do growth of bacteria, since those are individual organisms that follow some statistical rule for reproduction. You can simulate forest fires since each tree is an individual organism (an agent), and the spread of fire follows a relatively simple rule (if a neighboring tree catches fire, those trees next to it will catch on fire). 

It is worthwhile to check this out. You can download it, or run it on the Web, so even ChromeBooks can use Netlogo. There is a library with hundreds of examples, and you are free to modify the code for any of them to learn the language and create your own versions of the original simulation! 

STEM Research for ETHS

 Check out some videos that focus on how and where to find reliable STEM information for research, research contests for high school students, and what's up with a science research report for a project you might do. Watch each on YouTube and find the links to the Slides in the video description. 

Series about the Quantum Revolution of Education!

 Check out a 5-part series describing the gist of what I call the Quantum Revolution of Education. The idea is that we need a new MINDSET for students, which is actually inspired by Particle-Wave Duality found in quantum science! I call it the Quantum Mechanical Student. This is also the topic of my TED talk, which will be linked once published on the TED platform. 

The first episode is linked below, and links to the other 4 episodes are in the description of this video (must watch it on YouTube to see the description). Here are the links for convenience: 

Episode 2: Inspiration from particle-wave duality: https://youtu.be/MNfRYM2eawY Episode 3: Newtonian education - where we are and have been: https://youtu.be/SwG6oV4-VVA Episode 4: The Quantum Mechanical Student: https://youtu.be/OymOFEg8Jck Episode 5: What Quantum Education can look like: https://youtu.be/xL30Lhw9gt0

CONGRATULATIONS, CLASS OF 2022!!!

 Today the Class of 2022 officially graduated!! I am SO PROUD of each and every one of them I had in my classes, and it is such a talented, compassionate group who will do wonderful things in their futures!! While I'll miss them tremendously, I am also thrilled they have the chance to go into the world on their own terms and figure out what they want to do with their education and careers. All my best wishes to them, always!!

TEDxNorthwesternU conference article

 This is the Daily Northwestern article on the TEDx conference at NU on May 18. Just a few days afterward, this commentary article was published and distributed in the NSTA journal The Science Teacher, about the quantum mechanical student, a central theme and change in mindset for the TED talk. 

An inspiring scientist - Templeton Prize Award winner

 The Templeton Prize is given to inspirational people, in any field, who has helped humanity with big, fundamental questions and has inspired generations to improve the human condition. This year's winner is Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize winning physicist who thinks deeply about 'what it all means.' Get inspired in a few minutes of watching this announcement: