What would you write in
a physics journal?
By Sue Stack
What is the purpose of a
journal? Who is it for? What sort of things could go in it?
I am trying to help my
students connect physics, not only with the greater world, but also with their
deep inner selves. I want to align great themes of physics with students’ own
quests for meaning. I want them to develop an aesthetic appreciation of the
world around them. I want them to be intrigued, puzzled, to be motivated to
solve and tease at an idea. I want them to use their imaginations, to know how
to synthesize a sense of wonder and exploration with critical thinking – to
enable these to dance together, spurring on greater insight and deeper
questioning.
Many students want this
too. They just need permission.
They just need their first
tentative loose thoughts encouraged, not criticized or analysed. They need to
feel their journal is a safe place – a place for possibilities and imagination.
Because there are plenty of other places where they have to be logical,
plausible and pragmatic. They start
slowly, remarking on the fairly common place – seeing things with new eyes.
Then, like a snowball effect, that first wondering leads to further
possibilities, higher flights of imagination. They know that their imagination
will need to be reeled in at some stage, made more realistic, but not too soon.
Too soon and they won’t go far enough, deep enough to see the meaning of the
extreme, the fanciful, to understand the possibilities and the consequences.
Because perhaps we need to go to the very edges of reality to be able to
appreciate the everyday middle of existence we live in.
So how do we give
permission for this? I have a cover
sheet for their journals – a guide of what can go in it. Different students
adopt particular preferences, some moving around different styles – some
stimulated by the permission to cartoon, write poetry, not stick to a coherent
report. Then there is how I respond to their entries – reflecting on how their
entry affected me – how did it spur my thoughts. I value what they say through
acknowledging how it is challenging and stimulating me. I enter into a dialogue with each student in
their journal which moves beyond the classroom. Then there is the class itself
– a class which invites students to question deeply about the meaning and
plausibility of the physics they are learning – to be participating scientists,
thinkers, wonderers – to develop a practice where they deeply connect to world
and themselves. It is a whole package.
So what sort of things come
out of these journals? Surprises. I am constantly surprised at what I read. A seemingly
pragmatic boy writes about a dream. A seemingly together girl writes about her
deep uncertainty about life. Another surprises me with her amazing flights of
imagination. Others reflect on how they are learning and getting on with
others, and how they are constructing models of what science is and isn’t.
Activities and discussions in the class spur students on in further
explorations and thinking. I learn so much about these students - and begin a dialogue with them that
enables deep and meaningful relationships – we all benefit. It creates a
wonderfully warm and stimulating place to be.
Examples of student
physics journal/scrapbook entries:
The universe dream
This afternoon, after
watching an episode from a video called "Stephen Hawking's Universe",
I decided to take an afternoon sleep since I was feeling tired from a busy
morning. After falling asleep I had
some weird dream about black holes and the creation of the universe. I think I will try to explain as best as I
can of what I remember of the dream, even though it may seem very abstract.
To start off with, I was in
some kind of garden party with a few people in it, and the weather was fine, it
was sunny and there was a great oak tree in the centre of garden. The garden wasn't the kind of garden you see
in people's backyards, it was more like
it was surrounded by an open field of green grass with forests scattered around
the edges. The next thing that happened
was really weird. One of the people
close to me suddenly turned into black hole.
The black hole wasn't exactly black, but it was like a ball of blue gas
that had such a strong gravitational force that I could feel. I managed to run away from the black hole to escape its gravity so I
was out of danger. Eventually people on
the right and left of me suddenly turned to black holes as well. They became orange and yellow coloured black
holes and I found I was standing directly between them (by this part of the
dream, I was no longer in the garden, but I was in outer space). While standing between the two black holes I
could not feel any gravitational force from either of them. I assumed that they both exerted the same
gravitational force on me, so the gravitational forces were annihilated
(cancelled each other out) at the point in space at which I was standing.
Later, I did something
weird. I grabbed both of the colour
black holes with my hands (they were the size of basketballs to me) and pulled
them together to form one big black hole.
Now, the next part of the dream was completely out of this world. I saw that the newly merged black hole had
formed some weird and wonderful spherical like shapes. These are hard to describ in words, so I will
try to sketch them (think of these sketches as computer-generated images because
that is quality of the image I saw in the dream.) The shapes keep changing.
After awhile, I felt I was
being sucked towards this anomaly as it had an extremely strong gravitational
force. As I got closer to it, it seemed
to shrink and become unstable and violent as it kept changing shapes. All of a
sudden, it stopped pulling me in, and became a singularity (infinitely small.)
Just a few seconds after it shrunk, it suddenly made a huge gigantic explosion
that made me recognise it as the "big bang". As it exploded, I could see visions of
elementary particles flying past me (quarks, atoms, radiation, neutrinos). Then seconds later I saw the universe as we
see it in the night sky today.
I think immediately after I saw the creation of the universe, I had some kind of uplifting feeling that made me think I had the ultimate answer to how universe was created. Immediately after that I think I must have woken up because the dream was a bit of a shock. Well, I spent most of dinner time trying to make sense of the dream and trying to convince myself to write this all down. At the moment I don't think I'll try to interpret the dream to any sort of meaning, because I am running short of homework time for other subjects. Anyway, this dream probably contains something very important which I shall find out later. For this is probably the way the world's greatest minds like Hawking and Einstein get their great ideas - through dreams.
The
Scientific Method
The
scientific method is like a rolling ball, a snowball effect . Sometimes it
rolls you where you want it to go, but you have to get it exactly right for it
to do it, to keep the snowball effect going…. A method needs to be planned
first so I can see exactly how I am doing something. That way I can predict
more elaborately rather than a small comment like hypotheses are. I like doing
physics experiments but I’m too much of a perfectionist and tend to fins faults
too readily. I like analyzing though. Saying what I believe to be wrong – it
makes me feel powerful. I love dealing with unexplainable things as well, like
what we have been discussing in class – the HOLLOW EARTH!!!!!
Robots and other thoughts…
What
is the real purpose of momentum? Can physics explain how people get teleported
in star trek? Why does the blood rush to the top of your head when you hang
upside down, yet nothing is abnormal when you are the right way up? Where does
the matter go when it is sucked into a black hole? Could a black hole be an
opening into a parallel universe? If we finally understand the universe would
it collapse? What is behind reality?
From Robot Dreams: you’ve
made a positronic brain pattern remarkably like that of a human brain. Human
brains must dream to reorganize, to get rid periodically of knots and snarls.
Perhaps so must this robot, and for the same reason. I am reading some of
Asimov and am thoroughly enjoying it. Could I do my talk on some of his ideas?
My comments
I love Asimov’s
positronic brain ideas - it would make a great talk. How might understanding
the brain from a physics, chemical, biological or spiritual view help us in the
design of robots? The teleportation problem is, I think, also related to our
notion of what a brain is. I have wondered for some time, that even if
teleportation technology could capture the organization matrix of our atoms,
could it capture our personality, feelings and soul? Thinking about
teleportation and robots forces us to really think about what it means to be
human. Is our mind more than buzzing electrons? Are our emotions more than
chemical reactions? What evidence might we find that we are something more than
mere matter and physiology? Where could we look? Dreams? Or can robots even
have them?
Albert Einstein, what do you know?
“God does not play
dice.”
What a dumb quote!
Albert Einstein, you are an idiot! How do you know?
That’s one thing I
can’t stand about good old Albert – he was so arrogant. He refused to believe
in an expanding universe, that black holes could form even when his theories
pointed to it. And now in quantum he says “lets make up this photon thingy – it
has no mass, no charge, but it does have momentum and energy.” Correct me if
I’m wrong, but I thought to have momentum , you have to have mass! Even if it
is 1/10100 of an electron,
that’s still mass. If a photon doesn’t have mass, how can it move?
What is reality?
Reality is what we believe to be real. However do we really know what is real?
There are so many possibilities, we could be living on
a hollow earth, all atoms could be galaxy's, human beings could be combinations
of infinite galaxies, we could all be figments of our own imagination, all be
someone else's dreams, singularly matter and not any mind, and if so what do
other people perceive us to be. Are we
all lumps of mass that people view and create our own personalities for.
Are colours colours? Do people see the same? What would it be like to see the world through another person's eyes? (get people to go in pairs and one to close their eyes. Draw a picture on the board and get person to describe it, then people with eyes closed to open them and see if it is the same as what they thought it would be)
What would happen when all the planets aligned? Will the gravitational effect be so great
that we would be sucked into the middle of the earth, or would the effect be so
balanced and great that we would float?
What are people? Are they bodies wandering aimless around the earth looking for a purpose they can never find? Are they real? Do they appear the same to everyone? Am I always the same to everyone, the same matter, but different mind? And if so, how can we say that we know someone, if we can only really define their matter. And even then, matter appears different to every one. What is beautiful to one person can be the inverse and opposite to the other. That is the way the mind works. It is different to every one. I view my mind as my own, something secret kept hidden under rocks and stones for no one to see. No one ever sees the real me, my mind. It is fucked as all shit. Hidden under a lot of grass, in which no one can ever graze. But if no one can ever graze it, is it really grass. If it's not grass what is it? An un-comprehensible cover that no one can understand and interpret. And if no one can interpret it is it real?
What is temperature?
Is it a fragmentation of our own personal experiences. Hot is associated with extreme feelings,
whereas cold is hardly any feeling at all.
It is the expression of nothing.
Therefore if it is the expression of nothing, then does that mean that I
feel nothing as my circulation is poor.
What does that say about me? Am
I an ice object, some one who does not feel anything at all?
What is a feeling?
Is it an expression, a stable form of our mind, an unexplainable being,
influencing what we believe to be so?
The Essence of the Universe
The essence of the universe
Is what is inside you.
It’s not the smallest particle,
Nor the gluons which hold things together.
It’s not the neurons which live in your brain.
No.
No, it’s much more complex than that.
The essence is you,
Your soul,
Your emotions, your beliefs,
Your hopes, your dreams,
The disappointments you encounter,
The mistakes you make
And whether you learn from the mistakes.
The essence of life and the universe
Is the soul.
Without the soul there would be no life.
Stars would still burn and decay,
But life would not exist, at least as we know it.
Without the soul,
We would be meaningless, directionless, senseless,
Just floating along,
Fatalistic,
With no thought for today,
Tomorrow,
Or yesterday.
Maybe we were all like this once,
Until some of us pulled ourselves together
And clambered out of the jelly
In which we were suspended.
These people had a soul,
They knew what they wanted,
They weren’t happy in the directionless way of life.
Perhaps this is what happened.
Perhaps in another warp, another universe,
We are living another life.
And that’s why we experience
Déjà vu.
Maybe that’s what the essence of the universe is.
Maybe I am just a very spiritual person,
Religious, soulful
And that’s what I feel.
But you can’t have life without a soul
And that is the essence of the universe.
Issac Newton - This is Your life!
Mike Munroe (MM): So
Isaac, how does it feel to be here tonight?
Isaac Newton (IN):
Well actually, I’d rather be back in heaven.
(Nervous laugh from
MM)
MM: So Sir Isaac, you were
born on the January 4th, 1643 at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in
Lincolnshire. You had a very disrupted early life, with your widowed mother
remarrying when you were three, leaving you in the care of your grandmother….
IN: (interrupting)
Yes, Mummy was like that, always leaving me in the care of someone else.
MM: (continuing) You
were sent to grammar school in Grantham and then, in the summer of 1661, you
went to Trinity College, university of Cambridge. There you met your long time
friend (perhaps your only friend) and he has a few words to say…
Voice over: Isaac, old
pal. Gee, you look better than you did when you were alive. Well, anyway, you
have a good night tonight, through this séance. You probably thought no-one
would ever call you up, right? Either that or you refused to visit.
IN: Who’s that?
MM: Isaac, it’s your
friend George Tilnay. (GT hobbles out.)
GT: Isaac, haven’t you
made a name for yourself! Too bad I was never remembered. Just in passing. Why
weren’t you at my funeral?
IN: I, er, um…
MM: So George, tell us
about Isaac, what was he like at Cambridge?
GT: Well, Mike, as you
can see, Isaac never cared much about his appearance. It took me ages to get
him to go anywhere. I almost had to bathe him.
MM: Hmm, So Isaac,
after 4 years you received your bachelors degree. You were elected into a
fellowship 2 years later in 1667, and in 1668 you received your masters degree.
How did you feel then?
IN: (irritated) well I
felt pretty good actually.
MM: Yes, er, well. In
the autumn of 1666 you developed the fluxional method, known today as calculus.
This was a new and powerful instrument that carried modern mathematics above
the level of Greek geometry. However you did not publish your findings. The
world wants to know why?
IN: (exasperated) Well
I didn’t want to, OK?
MM: I heard because
you were fearful of criticism.
IN: Yeah, well you
didn’t hear right!
MM: OK, well in 1669
you were approved as Lucasion Professor of mathematics at Cambridge University.
In 1695 Gottfried Willheim Leibniz arrived independently at what he called the
differential calculus. He published his method and the world of mathematics
learned his notation and Leibniz’s name. How did that make you feel?
IN: (heatedly) I felt
quite annoyed of course…
MM: Well, you became
entangled in a violent dispute with
Leibniz over who developed Calculus first. This quarrel lingered nearly until
your death. Well, tonight, let’s put all these ill feelings to rest…
GWL voice over: So Sir
Isaac Newton. I really hate you. You ruined my life, my reputation. But at
least I’m remembered for Calculus, not you as you were so scared of criticism.
So there! But no hard feelings, OK? I was told I had to say that.
GWL walks on……
(continued)
Holistic Education Network of Tasmania