Stephen Harper Hears a Who - but Ignores it

I sat down to watch the movie, "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!" with my three-year-old daughter the other day.  The only Seuss books that I recall from my childhood are "Green Eggs n' Ham" and "Hop on Pop", but I was very impressed with this 2008 animated film from top to bottom.  While my daughter was very entertained by the many jungle animals, I gradually became quite focused on the real world symbolism that is not so subtly embedded within it.

Happiness Not a Consequence, Merely an Assertion

Science is all about measurements.  Scientists try to determine the model that best fits the data to gain insight into the behaviour of the world around them.  They measure everything, from temperature to charge to chaos.  These measurements are dependent upon a number of things.  In thermodynamics, an engineer may like to measure the temperature of a body as a function of time for a specific set of conditions.  Here, temperature is a dependent variable, and time is an independent variable.

It is appropriate to consider the measured temperature of a body to be a consequence of several factors.  It may seem sensible then to apply this approach to assess our state of mind on a given day.  I aim to show that this is a misguided way to perform a self-assessment.  That is, it is nonsensical to attribute our mental state to a given set of conditions that is present in our lives.  The measured variable that I wish to focus on is happiness.

Happiness... That state of being that we are all encouraged to pursue from a young age.  But, how does one measure it?  How does one know when one has achieved it?  Whatever the answers to these questions, it is certain that the assessment is anything but absolute.  I would even take it one step further.

Domesticating our Kids

I heard today on the radio about how more and more pet owners are abandoning their pets on moving day.  This is negligent, because domesticated animals are ill-prepared to fend for themselves in the wild.  While such negligence may be punishable under the criminal code, and is, of course, morally wrong, it seems to me that there is a more general issue at play here. 

On some level, there is an inherent disservice in the practice of domesticating animals at all.  By sheltering them and feeding them, we undermine all of the instincts they have developed over the long adaptive road of evolution.  This article will not explore this debate any further, but will use it as a backdrop for a discussion on how we raise our kids.

I am about to become a parent for a second time, so, naturally, the question of what constitutes effective parenting is on my mind.  If one were to summarize the role of a parent in one sentence, it might look like this: "To ensure the safety of your child, while empowering him or her to take on life independently upon reaching adulthood".  Though parenting is anything but a bland activity, it can be viewed through an engineer's lens, as an optimization problem.

If one hovers too close (helicopter parent), one's child will never attain the level of independence that is needed to tackle life on his or her own.  On the other hand, a completely 'laissez-faire' parenting attitude at too young an age can place a child in an unneccessarily risky situation.  Thus, the parent must find the sweet spot, where their child is free to explore the world, but with reasonable boundaries imposed on them.

Career Advice for New Grads

A few days ago I was describing my old engineering job to one of my physics students.  I summarized the role I played as a structural engineer for an astronautical space company, ensuring that satellites that were launched into space would not break during rocket launch or during the thermal cycling of Low-Earth orbit.  I would optimize the parts for cost and mass, and then know that these multi-million dollar hunks of metal and composite fiber would encircle our planet relaying electromagnetic signals for years to come.

Then came a question that I get asked a lot: "Why did you leave?"

I left a few years ago, and had a difficult time answering this question clearly and accurately at that time.  Now, having practiced my response to "Why did you leave engineering to teach physics?" about a hundred times, I am beginning to better understand it myself.  While major career decisions are seldom one-dimensional, the ultimate reason that I left my 'cool' job tinkering with high-tech space equipment is quite straight forward.

Carl Sagan: The Greatest Storyteller of Science

When I mention the name "Carl Sagan" in my physics classes, only a small minority of my students recognize it.  It is a shame, as in my view, he is the greatest author of science non-fiction of all time.  It is also surprising, as he was the leading physics rock star of his time: His masterpiece, The Cosmos, has amassed an audience in the area of five hundred million (it exists as a TV series and an accompanying book).  A leading astrophysicist and genial communicator, Sagan inspired wonder, and helped to attract a generation of scientists to their field.

Sagan has been on my mind over the past month as I made my way through what has become my new favourite non-fiction book: The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark.  It happens to be the last book that Sagan wrote.  Published in early 1996, it was his love letter to science and his parting message to us all; he died later that year at the relatively young age of 62 after a long battle with myelodysplasia.

Unlike much of his previous work, The Demon-Haunted World deals less with the behaviour of nature and more with the practice of science.  He details the importance of critical thinking among all members of society and methodically rips apart the practice of mysticism and pseudoscience through detailed analyses of ghost mythology, astrology, witchcraft and, in particular, UFO 'encounters'.

What makes this work so special is the complete treatment that each of these diverse topics receives.  While most readers of science non-fiction are skeptical of alien visitors, they rarely go the extra step, and ask why a non-negligible proportion of people claim to have been abducted by green extraterrestrials.  The conclusions presented in this book enter the realms of psychology and psychiatry, and the discussion follows  fascinating directions that I did not see coming.  For example, I had not considered the fact that most alien abductees claim to have been taken advantage of sexually in a space ship, and most of them also have a history of being sexually abused.

Peer Instruction Beats out Lecturing by Factor of Two

In the early 1990s, Harvard physics professor, Eric Mazur, was teaching advanced physics courses to bright students. He gave exciting lectures, complete with compelling, thought-provoking demonstrations.  He was praised by students for his clarity in delivering the material.  Then, something unusual happened.

Mazur set out to gauge the effectiveness of his teaching scientifically.  He employed a standardized test known as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) to assess his students' conceptual understanding of mechanics, before and after teaching his courses.  The results surprised him.

He was not surprised that most students entering his class came in with a relatively weak understanding of mechanics.  He was, however, astounded that after having taken his mechanics course, his students performed only marginally better on the FCI.  Mazur was dumbfounded.  In the years that followed, he set out to determine, scientifically, what constitutes effective pedagogy for science education.

Traditional lectures, where a teacher communicates information to students who dutifully take note of the content, are fairly useless.  At its best, such an approach can be entertaining, but not cognitively stimulating for students.  In fact, cognitive function in students while attending a lecture (even a good one) has been shown to be lower than while sleeping.  In this context, who can fault a student for sleeping through a lecture?

Mechanics in an Elevator

Though the title of this article is less catchy than the Aerosmith classic rock tune that it alludes to, an elevator is, nonetheless, an excellent place to solidify one's understanding of mechanics.

I rode up an elevator from the ground level to the eighth floor of a condo building long ago with my daughter, who was three at the time, to visit her great-grandmother.  As we approached our destination, and the elevator began to slow down, my daughter asked, "Daddy, are we going down?"

"Amazing," I thought, "kids can sense acceleration, and have already developed the same false preconceptions about it that they bring to their introductory mechanics courses."

It makes sense that people, and all animals for that matter, can sense acceleration, as we live in a dynamic world, and acceleration, which is the rate of change of velocity, may be thought of as the forecaster for motion.  If one can detect one's own acceleration, then one can accurately predict one's future position (provided one knows one's own current position and velocity with accuracy).

Hybrid Cars Finally Worth Considering

Until recently, I harbored mixed feelings about hybrid cars.  On the one hand, they decreased fuel consumption significantly, while on the other, they were very expensive, and entailed more parts than a standard combustion engine car, which translates to more maintenance costs down the road.  I would never have recommended that anyone buy one.  At best, an environmentally conscious consumer could undertake a lease, pay a bit more in total costs, but feel they'd done a small service for the atmosphere.

In 2012, it seems to me that hybrids have rounded the bend, and crossed a very significant threshold.  In some cases, it appears that the purchase of a hybrid is, in addition to environmentally considerate, cost beneficial.

A new technology like hybrids had a lot going against it in the early going.  Purchase prices were high since production quantities were low and R&D costs were significant.  Also, new technologies are less reliable than tried and true ones; they have not been through the iterations that come through multiple generations of development.

Life is Just One Big Experiment

This coming Friday, a friend and I will be performing music at a bar (pop, rock, reggae).  It will be our first show together.  Our band is shamelessly called, "The Acoustic Love Explosion."  We have been practicing together for a few months.

I will be playing the drums, he the guitar, and we will both be singing.  I have never witnessed a performance having this musical arrangement before, and am curious to see how the audience will react to it.  In particular, I wonder if the lack of a bass guitar will be noticable, and whether the sound will feel empty.  This first show really feels like an experiment - one that, if successful, will spawn similar ones in the future.



Sometimes, life, from the moment we are born until the moment we die, feels like a giant series of experiments.  Some might prefer to substitute the word "experiments" with "experiences", but really, the difference is quite subtle.  An experiment is possibly even more accurate, as it implies that some lesson will be learned, and retained in our memory.

Airplanes That Seem to Hover

Last year I posted an article about the fundamental principles behind how a subsonic aircraft works.  In summary, an airplane takes off once a critical speed is reached: the greater the speed of the wings relative to the air being cut by them, the greater the pressure difference between the air on the top and bottom of the wings, and the greater the lift force.

Now, I would like to address a particular concern about airplanes that some of my students have had.  Have you ever looked up at an airplane, and had the impression that it was barely moving?

Helicopters, hot air balloons, and some supersonic aircrafts possess the ability to hover, but subsonic aircrafts do not.  As already mentioned, the only reason that a commercial plane can maintain a given altitude is because it is moving horizontally with respect to the air around it.

So, what is going on here?  I too have looked up at aircrafts as they descend and have remarked, on occasion, that the plane seems to be moving at a snail's pace.  Sometimes an airplane flies above me as I cruise along the highway, and my impression is that I am in fact moving faster than it relative to the ground.  Is it an optical illusion?  Let us investigate.