Escaping a Crazy Semester

It has been a long semester for so many reasons.  There were so many distractions outside of the classroom - too many to list.  Civil unrest around the world, marches in the streets, a provincial government cutting budgets and enforcing exhausting laws.  On top of that, my lab was situated in a loud construction zone, so I could not hear myself think, let alone communicate with my students... I sometimes must remind myself that we reside on a celestial spec sailing through the cosmos; it helps me remember to keep life's small nuisances small.  

What I know for sure is that time spent with my class in my classroom is my refuge and an escape from the worries of the world.  I decided to celebrate the end of my mechanics course this morning by setting up and running a 'Physics Escape RoomTM'.

This semester's escape room was Christmas-themed

For those less nerdy than me and unfamiliar with Escape Rooms, they are enclosed spaces where participants need to decode many puzzles to eventually escape in an allotted amount of time.  My wife and I have spent countless hours in these rooms; our intensity and determination to succeed often scares the friends who join us.  

My escape room is a bit different than the regular kind, in that there are fewer logic puzzles, and more physics scenarios with unknowns that can only be solved by applying physical laws.  It is a fair bit of work to set these rooms up, but it serves as a great review of what my class learned in Mechanics class this semester, and ends it off on a fun note.  Many students expend so much energy feeling anxious about performing well in college, that they forget to ever have fun.  I would argue that if you can learn while having fun, you will remember those things for longer.

My students feel trepidation over the final exams that are around the corner.  On top of teaching physics, I often feel like a councilor or life coach, urging them to take care of themselves, take deep breaths, and not to overstress.  Just like an escape room, to succeed in final exams, you need to strike a balance.  Success is arrived at by students who are a bit stressed (enough to be continuously engaged) but not so stressed that they cannot focus on the task at hand.

I got the idea to create escape rooms for physics years ago.  I always enjoyed escape room challenges that went beyond code breaking.  I liked when prior knowledge of things, like chess for instance, could be called upon.  Like, your knowledge becomes this superpower that is valued by your group.  I want my students to feel that way about physics.  Throughout the semester, they have developed new ways to see the world, and they should feel empowered by their new knowledge and ability to analyze nature.

Lab Layout in Mechanics Escape Room

When I was in college, I had a biology class where many stations were set up, and you could spend 15 minutes, say, observing a station and drawing conclusions, like a bunch of mini labs.  This was way more interesting to me than one long lab where you measure this, then that, then change this and re-measure, etc.  Those labs are necessary, but they can get boring after a while.  As seen above, demo stations form the basis of a Physics Escape RoomTM.

Another difference between traditional escape rooms, which have one team at a time, is that my room has many teams competing to get out first.  This year, three teams managed to escape the room in the 1 hr 15 min time allotment.  To their dissappointment, no bonus points are awarded for getting out first.  Still, the top team in each section happily posed for a pic afterwards to be featured in The Engineer's Pulse.

Group 1 victors (left to right): Xavier, Amélia, and Luc

[notice the hole in the ceiling at the top of this photo - with all the work going on in and outside of our lab this semester, I am just pleased that no student fell through the floor]

  

Group 2 victors (left to right): Nicholas, David, Avoy, and Trong-Don (missing from photo: Malik)

Dear my beloved Fall 2024 mechanics students, whether or not you physically escaped the room today, you have completed the semester, and I hope you found it to be an enriching experience.  Now it is time to lock yourself in a different room and study ;)

Good luck on your finals!

'Orbital' has left me breathless and musing about weightlessness

The summer is half over, but the winner for my top read has already been determined.  Orbital: A Novel, by Samantha Harvey, has enraptured me.  It is a story about one day in the lives of a crew of six astronauts in low Earth orbit.  We orbit with them, experience sixteen sunrises and sunsets, perform weightless tasks, but mostly, follow their inner monologues, which I would describe as meditations on nature and space.

The novel is a love letter to Earth and a prayer that we will learn to inhabit it with grace.  Harvey describes the daytime view of Earth as "... the humanless simplicity of land and sea.  The way the planet seems to breathe, an animal unto itself.  It's the planet's indifferent turning in indifferent space and the perfection of the sphere which transcends all language."

Summer is a wonderful time to read this book.  One thing I've always enjoyed about physics is how it opens up amazing conversations during late evening strolls, when the stars come out.  At such times, with the Sun blocked out, we see the vastness beyond our atmosphere, and feel so very small.  This sense of awe overcomes us.  Orbital gives us this same feeling, but from a privileged vantage point some 400 km above our planet.

Many students have asked me if I would like to travel to space, and I tell them there's no point thinking about it because my wife wouldn't let me.  The truth is that while I would love to see Earth with my own eyes from low Earth orbit, I do not think my body would enjoy the experience of weightlessness.  Most amusement park rides are no-go zones for me now, which totally sucks, because they were a delight before I turned thirty.

It is not possible to experience weightlessness for a significant amount of time in our day-to-day lives, because along with Earth's gravitational force, we are always subjected to some other contact force (like the push of a chair onto our butt, say).  An orbit is a perpetual state of falling; astronauts are falling along with the capsule they inhabit.   The reason satellites don't fall down to Earth's surface is because they have a sufficient lateral speed (many km/s).  A circular orbit maintains its constant speed because there is no atmosphere to slow it down, so round and round it goes.

Okay, quick tangent... Here's a fun little question that just came to me: Standing on the surface of the Moon, with its negligible atmosphere, how hard would I need to throw a rock for it to complete a full orbit and hit me in the back of my head?  A quick application of Newton's second law leads to the result: v = sqrt(GM/R), where M and R are the Moon's mass and radius, respectively (G is the universal gravitational constant).  Plugging values in, we get a speed of 1,680 m/s (over 6,000 km/h).  I can't throw that fast, and in any case, would prefer not to get hit in the back of my head by a rock moving that fast.

Let's get back to the feeling of weightlessness.  When you jump off of a diving board, you feel weightless from the moment your feet leave the board up until your body enters the water; a few brief seconds of weightlessness.  I cannot fathom enduring that 'organs floating in the ether of my rib-cage' feeling for days, weeks, and even months, without a break, as astronauts do.

There really is no way to simulate weightlessness on Earth.  Even skydiving does not replicate the sensation, because we quickly reach terminal velocity, where the upward drag force matches the downward weight force.  Yes, we are falling, but we feel our weight.  As far as your innards are concerned, it's like lying flat on your bed, only it is the air giving the steady upward push.

A compromise between the brevity of diving into a pool and, say, a 90-minute complete circling of Earth in a spacecraft, is a zero-g airplane, which cuts off its engine for about 22 seconds, during which its thrill-seeking passengers float around the cabin.  It then repeats the parabolic maneuver many more times until someone pukes.

I guess I will have to be satisfied with musing about space.  For this earthbound physics teacher, reading Orbital will have to suffice.

Wishing you a summer of blue skies and starry nights.

Totally Stoked for Totality!

For readers far away from the path of totality for the upcoming solar eclipse, my apologies, but as a Montrealer, I will be getting one minute in the full shade of the sun on Monday, April 8.  It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I am excited to the point of losing sleep.  It inspired me to write this extended piece in the Montreal Gazette: Totally Stoked About Totality.

Totality will occur at 3:27 p.m. for Montrealers.  But as we are on the northern edge, it will be shorter than those along the middle of the path by a couple of minutes.  Still, one moment would be sufficient to sear the event in my memory.

I was inspired to write the piece by a colleague of mine and my feeling that the average person is not as psyched as they ought to be.  The one message I want to convey to anyone that has an easy opportunity to enter totality is this: DO IT!  The worst case scenario is that this few minute commitment does not rock your world, but in all likelihood, it will be unforgettable, and more so if you experience it with loved ones.

*** Remember to protect your eyes.  Wear eclipse viewing glasses whenever looking directly at the sun, with one exception: the brief minute of totality.  You must remove them during the big moment or you'll miss it.