Shifts in Priorities

Part of my job in the IT department includes patrolling back and forth in a computer lab, straightening the place and making sure people are following the rules (no food, drinks, talking on phones, loud conversation, or watching porn). I spend up to half an hour at a time doing this, so I sometimes occupy myself with surveying the room, noting what people are doing.

Usually, this is to note just how many people are using Facebook. During our busiest hours (11am-1pm), Facebook and/or Youtube account for the activities of the majority of our users. Walking around and seeing an entire row of computers occupied by people on Facebook amuses me. Homework would account for some of the users' activities, but Facebook was the more dominant. Admittedly, though, while I'm doing this, my laptop is sitting at our Front Desk, often with my Facebook account open as well.

However, today it was a little different. My school is presently two weeks away from Finals. As a result, when I looked around most of what I saw was Word, Powerpoint and Blackboard. For the first time in the semester, our users are focused on homework. There are a few Facebook accounts open, but most people were focused on homework. This was reflected in my own activities: yesterday, open on my laptop was on a paper due soon (though I was too busy during the shift to work on it).

Whether these busy students were the previously slacking students with changed priorities, or different students altogether, I don't know. Far too many users come into our computer lab to keep track of who's there. Regardless of that, the shift in the use of the computer lab is a clear reflection of close Finals are.

Frictionless Vacuums!

(Click comic for full image: http://xkcd.com/669)

The above comic is AWESOME! It also got me thinking today about frictionless vacuums.

You see, in any physics course, the instructor will use many examples to help you learn the concepts and how to solve problems. Unless the problem is specifically about, or involves, the effects of work or air drag, the problem will have two characteristics that you simply won't find in the real world: that every surface will have no friction associated with it, and that air drag is no taken into account. So the problem is frictionless, and takes place in a vacuum. This makes the problem much simpler to do. It also makes it a frictionless vacuum.

So yes, it sounds crazy, but many physics problems are done in frictionless vacuums.

Nuclear-Powered Car - A Concept From A More Naive Era

In 1958, Ford developed a concept car known as the Ford Nucleon. Rather than being powered by an internal combustion engine, which is found in every automobile on the road with the exception of those cars produced by Tesla Motors, it was to be powered by a small nuclear reactor. The concept car looked like this:

Born of the Atomic Age, the atomic energy that the car was run on promised clean, safe electricity that would be "too cheap to meter". At the rear of the car is the power capsule which of course held the reactor. The power capsule, which was expected to go for 5,000 miles, would be replaceable, easily swapped at the full-service recharging stations that were expected to replace gas stations. Without the need of a hood to house the engine, the passenger compartment was farther forward, to keep the passengers safely away from the radiation of the reactor. Though the technology was not yet available at the time (hence the concept part), it was expected that further technological development would shrink the reactor to the necessary size, along with the shielding that would be needing.

Okay, yes, I know what you, dear reader, are thinking right now and I share your thoughts that this is a bad idea! Just so that we're sharing the same thoughts, I'll list my concerns about this concept, with the gut reaction being last.

1) You can't get efficient nuclear power at this scale. Nuclear power works by using the energy of a nuclear fission reaction to produce heat to boil water into steam. The steam is sent across a rotor, which causes the rotor to spin which spins an attached shaft which goes to an electric generator. Among other issues, the greatest problem would lie in the rotor, and the steam going across it. You see, the rotor in a modern steam turbine looks like this:

Notice how complex this thing is. Blasting steam across a fan blade to get it to spin isn't a very efficient process, so the rotor has to have lots of individual fan blades. And as you can see from the photo, these fan blades are small. Good luck making a rotor of a size small enough that has that much detail.

2) You couldn't shield it well enough. That reduction in the amount of shielding necessary that research was expected to supply? That has yet to happen. The best we've got even today is shield nuclear reactors is good old-fashioned lead. And that lead has to be at least a couple feet thick to do its job. That along would make the power capsule much to large to be practical. Looking at the drawing above, by my estimates of how big that power capsule looks to be, the lead shielding alone would take up that much space, without even having a nuclear generator.

And saving the best for last:

Who would want to actually drive one of these?? Would you want to drive around a nuclear reactor in the back of your car? Can you just imagine what would happen when you got into a car accident? The power capsule would likely get damaged and turn into a nuclear bomb! And just imagine the people that work at the recharging stations that handled all those power capsules. Talk about occupational hazard! How would you like to have a job where you were around miniature nuclear reactors all day?

Conclusion: While the Ford Nucleon reflected the creativity and ambition that drove the Atomic Age, nuclear-powered cars were just a dream of the Age's naive optimism that likely never bear fruit.

Paths Crossing

Normally, when we're driving, we don't think much about the drivers of the other cars. We only see their cars, and the inconveniences they pose to us. We think about how they're driving too slowly for our liking, how much we'd like it if they'd stop tailgating us, or how we must faster we'd be able to get to where we're going if 90% of them weren't there.

Sometimes, however, I'm at the head of the line at an intersection, waiting to turn, and I watch the opposing traffic go past me, and I look at the faces of the drivers. And I think about the thousands of drivers I past by every day. Each one of them has their destination they're trying to get to, a starting point from which that journey began. Each of them has their reason why they're trying to get there, and their plans for what to do when they get there. Look beyond the immediate circumstances of the where and why of their trip, each of them has something different going through their mind. Each of them has their plans, their goals, their desires, their hopes and their dreams.

Each and every one of those drivers represents a story. There are thousands upon thousands stories to be found on our roadways every minute of every day. And no matter how different we all are, no matter how different our backgrounds, or our stories, we all have one thing we have in common: we're all on that road. Our stories can be and are very, very different, but they're just similar enough to find us on the same road at the same time. That driver in that car next to you might be completely opposite from you. They might be blasting music you find repulsing, loving an outfit you think is a fashion nightmare, and you might not even want to say hi to them if you walked by them. And yet there you are, driving next to each other on that road.

This world, and everything that goes on in it is creating by those our stories crossing paths. Sometimes, we help write each other's stories. Other times, we're tiny little footnotes scribbled at the bottom of the page. But together, all of our stories combine to form one very large, complex, fascinating story: the human story.

Hang In There, Nice Guys!

(Click comic for full image http://www.xkcd.com/513/)

Does the above comic seem a little too similar to your life? My thoughts today are directed towards my male teenage (including 18-19 year old) readers, assuming I have any. Are you one of those guys that keeps hearing "You're such a nice guy", but never seem to get anywhere with girls? Do you see the guys around you that are players getting all the girls and wonder, despite the fact that you're kinder, more reliable, why you aren't getting any attention?

My message to you is: hang in there! You will find the girl that's worth your time in the long-run! One sentiment that always makes me chuckle is "Hard work pays off later, but laziness pays off now". That easily applies to this as well: Being a player pays off now, but being a nice guy pays off later. There is a girl out there somewhere that will like you for you, will want to be with you, that when you find her, will make it all worth it.

Some things that I know will be true about that girl:

• Yes, she is out there!
• She wants a guy that she wants to bring home to mom and dad.
• She wants a guy that she can depend on.

Let's focus on that last one for a bit. To a player, she'll be just another girl. If he sees a more attractive girl, a more valuable "prize", she'll be left behind. She wants a guy she knows will be there for her.

So, hang in there. Do not change how you are just to get a girl, or at least, don't lower who you are. Do not compromise who you want to be for temporary pleasure. I know, it can be rather frustrating sometimes. Just be patient. The players might be having fun now, but they don't get a "happily-ever-after".

In the meantime, I have one key piece of advice for you: be the guy that the girl you want will want to be with. The girl that is worth your time will want a guy that is worth her time. The best place to start with is improving your relationship with the female members of your family. The girl that is worth your time will look at how your mother and your sister(s) (if you have them around you) to gauge how you are likely to treat her. So respect them. Not only will it help you after you find her, but it will also help improve who you are and make you more attractive in the first place.

Hang in there, gentlemen. She is out there.

Democratic Education (An Exploration)

I was sitting in one of my engineering classes, reviewing at the time for an upcoming test. When one of my classmates proposed how to make a problem more interesting, which also made it much more difficult. I called out that said classmate, and later the problem, was "fired". That got me thinking about what it would be like if students could vote on decisions about their educations. What would a democratic education process be like?

Imagine an education system where students could vote on when they took tests, what would be on them, and a system in which they could elect to remove a certain number of questions from the tests. Or extend it even further, to a system where they also decided what they learned at all. Such a system would have to have some checks and balances, with students not having say in who their teachers were, like the original role of senators who were chosen by the governors.

Such a system would be too likely to result in a system not unlike mobocracy, controlled by the popular, like the cheerleaders and jocks, with education determined and catering to those that are often referred to as the lowest common denominator. Peer pressure would take on a whole new dimension, with many of those that might want more knuckling under, for fear of retribution.

Would different tiers arise, the minority that wanted a proper education strongly enough to do something about it having separate classes? Or, would the education system take on a more political feel, with opposing political parties representing the groups already mentioned? For ease of discussion, let's call the first party described the Common Party, and the later the Scholar Party. The Commons would have physical strength and intimidation on their side, but the Scholars would not be without their own resources. With greater knowledge and intelligence comes more tools, and the Scholars would likely display more cunning strategy. Student government would become much more complex.

And like the American political system is dominated by the Democratic and Republican parties, but has its minorities like the Green and Constitutional Parties, would this system have its own equivalent? Perhaps there would be an Authoritarian Party, whose agenda would be to see the control and decision-making power over the education system being given over to the teachers.

After proposing these ideas and posing these questions, I should clarify that I do not intend to promote the adoption of such a system, nor to make veiled criticism as democracy. This is merely an exploration of an idea.

Priceless Moment in my College Experience

I was in my Differential Equations class the other evening. Out of nowhere, in the middle of class, the phone in the classroom rings. Dr. Cappeta (the instructor) stops teaching and goes over and answers the phone. It turns out its a telemarketer, offering a chance to win two free boarding passes for a cruise for answering ten questions. A bit odd, of course, to have this call come to a classroom phone at a college. The more amazing part....

Dr. Cappeta proceeded to ANSWER THE SURVEY!

It's an automated call, with him pressing numbers on the phone to answer questions about his gender, age, and education level. He said aloud, "Since you don't have an option for 'highly overeducated' (PhD in Mathematics), I'll go with "College graduate." Other questions included marital status, smoker/nonsmoker, etc. On one of the last questions, he apparently pressed an invalid number, and get connected with a human operator. "No, thank you. I'm in the middle of teaching a Differential Equations class, so I should probably get back to that now. Have a nice day, good bye."

As he went back to the front of the room amidst chuckles from many of us, he commented, "You have to have fun every once in a while."