Water in Crisis around the world, and check out UN SDGs

 There is a major issue that just a decade or two ago people were beginning to worry about, and now seems to be here at an accelerating pace - water shortages. 

With population growth and climate change, more regions of the world are suffering changes in rain and snow falls, extended droughts, and changes in agriculture. Water is in shortage in more locations around the world, and perhaps Americans will begin to realize this (although those living in the west and southwest are already living it) as rivers and watersheds in the US begin to dry up. 

Check out CNN's feature on the Colorado River, the most important river running through the southwest. In fact, just one week ago the federal government declared a water shortage for the Colorado River for the first time ever. Parts of the Mideast are becoming uninhabitable. The path much of the world, certainly coastlines, can and will need to take for fresh water is desalination (if you can develop a cost-effective, large-scale process for this, you will be among the billionaire crowd and will help hundreds of millions/billions of people in the process). This has already started in very limited locations, but here is a 2015 article outlining the thinking for the past decade. 

Having water, the most basic consumable humans and all life as we know it need to survive, is, of course, one of the great problems and issues the world faces, and is highlighted by the United Nations in its list of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These will be referred to on occasion, and we will have a 2nd quarter project built around whichever goal is most interesting/important to you! 

Former life: Particle detectors over the years

 A good Science News article about particle detectors, which allow us to figure out what we are all made of! There are hundreds of particles, most of which are combinations of the six quarks! We'll get into this a bit in classes!! Here is the CDF detector from Fermilab; I helped build, maintain and run this thing. I'm still impressed these most complicated machines and experiments even work! 

A Study Effectively Confirms Energy Imbalance of the Earth Due to Humans

 A Princeton study confirms the growing energy imbalance of the earth is due to humans, and not natural processes. By 'imbalance' we mean there is no longer an equilibrium between the energy entering the earth's atmosphere and the energy that is re-radiated back into space. The warming of the earth is the result of the imbalance - caused primarily by greenhouse gases trapping more of the energy that should be making it back into space. 

Satellite data over two decades, then fed into numerous independent computer models for climate, all confirm there is no set of natural processes that have occurred over this time period to account for the warming. Only by adding in human contributions does one even approach the observed imbalance. This is but one more of many studies that all reach this conclusion that global warming and the climate change that results is due to humans, as it has a less than 1% uncertainty in these results. 

A pretty good list of how we can be happy and successful - from Michael Jordan

 I grew up watching Michael Jordan play basketball, from college through his entire professional career. Many believe, myself included, he is the best, most complete player of all-time, but of course this sort of thing is subjective and simply fun to think about...and it is not the thing to focus on. 

Instead, remember not to put anyone on a pedestal. Every human being is a flawed individual, we all make mistakes, and we all have struggles to overcome. Having said that, what we can get from the 'greats' in any field are insights and suggestions for how to approach life and find happiness and success (personally I think success in life is achieved when one is happy and healthy, whatever that means to each individual based on our own passions and joys in life...do what you love, that doesn't hurt others!). 

Take this for what it's worth to you, but here are 10 things MJ did that worked for him, and kept him motivated and the fire lit inside to always want to use each day to make himself better. For anyone who has ever read or thought about personal growth methods, this follows along with tried and true methods many have used in some form over centuries of time...some of these could work for YOU, too! 

Point is, each of us can always improve and try to become a better human being every single day of our lives by helping ourselves and others, and that's a pretty cool realization to reach!!  

What is Electrical Resistance?

 Every electrical device you have used has something called electrical resistance. If you've noticed electrical devices get warm - perhaps a calculator or cell phone or a stereo or computer that's been on - that heat is the sign of electrical resistance. 

When electric current flows through anything, where the current is a flow of electrons, those electrons collide with atoms within the lattice of the material. Even good conductors like copper wire and gold, will get warm...there are no perfect materials, and atoms get in the way of the flowing electrons! 

This video will use a simulation to get some images in our heads as to what happens at the micro-level. And also remember this: in mechanics, all collisions have some loss of kinetic energy. So every electron loses KE in a collision to that atom, and the atom then vibrates in place a little faster. From chemistry, we know that the temperature of a material depends on the average KE of its atoms and molecules - so if there is an increase in vibrational KE of the atoms of a material, it feels warmer to us! 

Materials that create few collisions for the electrons in the current have low resistance (small numbers of ohms), and if there are a lot of collisions there is a higher resistance (larger number of ohms, the unit of resistance). 

See another video for how we handle multiple resistors in circuits, in combinations of series and parallel, that we need for circuit analysis. 

New site for our work with our Malawi friends: EMPATHY

 I just wanted to add that we will be maintaining a site for the fundraising and work done with our friends in Malawi, Africa. With some $15,000 raised and provided to Andrews Nchessie, there are amazing results on the ground as far as the farms they have planted, raised, maintained and harvested, feeding some 1500 children year-round so they can be healthier, happier and in school learning full-time! Check out our EMPATHY site: Evanston Malawi Partnership Against The Hunger of Youth. 

Public Science - Zooniverse

 You may have heard of public science, or maybe not. In most fields of science, there are datasets that are SO LARGE that there are not enough actual scientists in those fields to look at it all. And there are some things that people are still better at seeing and identifying or classifying from a dataset than computers are. How do scientists handle the analysis of such large datasets? 

Bring in the global public! 

Some non-professionals are even getting their names on published papers for their contributions to new discoveries, such as new exoplanets.

Check out the Zooniverse website - there are over 80 big data projects that you can participate in, no experience required. Check out all the options, in dozens of different fields! 

Learn About Quantum Mechanics: The Quantum Atlas

 One of the better sites I have seen in order to learn about the fundamental concepts behind quantum mechanics is The Quantum Atlas. It has wonderful animations & interactive simulations, which bring some challenging ideas to life in a more understandable way. Kudos to the group Joint Quantum Institute at the U. of Maryland! 

If you enjoy making videos...

 Here is an international contest sponsored by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC). It is called PLURAL+, and has a focus on submitting videos dealing with issues in migration, diversity and social inclusion, which many ETHS students are interested in. Could be a good chance to get your personal message out in a creative way, to the world! Check it out.

Here is one example by a Greek student, who is dyslexic and 12 years old, of a friend who teaches her English. 

Project Excite - A Model for Positively Affecting Academic, Opportunity Gaps

 For nearly twenty years, Evanston Township High School (ETHS) was part of a long-term effort, in collaboration with Northwestern University and District 65, to study and try to find a solution to a major problem seen in so many diverse communities and schools around the country - despite great effort, countless conversations and numerous programs, too often we see academic achievement gaps between white students and students of color, that are already in place at young ages and show no signs of improvement through high school graduation. How and why is it that results in things like test scores, grades, participation in honors and advanced placement (AP) classes, participation in academically inclined extracurricular activities and clubs, graduation rates, and college acceptance and attendance become very different between demographic groups, despite the fact that the students all grew up and attended the same schools, with the same resources and teachers, and in theory had exposure to the same potential opportunities? And is it possible to diminish and perhaps even eliminate such gaps before students graduate from the K-12 public school system? 

These were the research questions of Project Excite, and the goal was to determine if there is a systematic, comprehensive, sustained and long-term program or method that would have any significant effect on closing the achievement and opportunity gaps in the community.

Excite no longer exists, and there are no dedicated efforts trying to address achievement gaps in E-town. We hope to resurrect something soon, on a wider scale. It provides a model that demonstrated a long-term, comprehensive, inclusive and more holistic approach to build up not only academic skills and knowledge base, but more importantly self-confidence and self-esteem for the students as well as families, can reduce and eliminate the measured achievement gaps. We also saw consistent increases of Excite students into honors and AP courses when in ETHS, which is part of the opportunity gap that has historically seen underrepresentation of students of color at these academic levels.

Here's a summary of the original Project Excite, and how it was run.