String theory

First and foremost, I would have to say that String Theory is a very complicated thing for me. I understand the concept of it, but there are so many question that I asked myself when I think about string theory: e.g. Why is the universe have to do with " strings" connecting to them?
Some of my feelings when I finished watching this video about string theory is that I now firmly believe that there is god. Lots of people had been questioning me " why did you believe in god if he does not exist?" I replied " well you can't proof that he doesn't exist since you don't have any evidence of him doesn't exist, right?". God, or some kind of energy that governs the universe, exist. If there is no god, then why does the universe came out to be this way? and the asteroid that hit earth billions years ago that made the volcanoes erupted and therefore created a chain of effects resulting life was a coincident?

Another question I asked myself was that why we can do so many good and amazingly well things about the universe, but why we couldn't solve global warming? or solving issues such as the problems between China and Taiwan? We humans have the potential to do good things, but some how we humans have " let it be wasted" by our own desire and selfishness. If we humans are capable of putting desires and selfishness aside, we WILL succeed and will be able to discover more and more things we might not even thought about it.

HOW and WHY THINGS MOVE REFLECTIOn

Over the past few weeks, our science class had been focused on a project about Newton's second law of motion. We were broke up into groups and assigned with different tasks we must complete in about 2 weeks. The group members I was assigned with were Eira and Elaine, and our task was to find the theoretical acceleration down an incline plane with absence of friction. I have to frankly say that we were VERY confused as there were lots of terms that we didn't know their definition. With the help of the internet, we managed to find the answers towards our problem, which was crucial towards finding the solution due to we had a concept of what the question was asking. We found the solution of the question immediately after we found the formula for solving this problem, and we solved our challenge problem 2 days before the due date.

In my opinion, I like the way of how this experiment was organized as we were able to work and think independently. I think that the purpose of this was to train our mind in becoming a critical thinker and a good problem solver, which I believe that its basically what we lack the most.

If I have to say something I didn't like about this experiment, I would say that by the very least, the teacher should have given us some " clues" or something to start with instead of just " throwing" the problem at us ( At least provide us with some background information about the topic!).

Through out this experiment, I had learned a lot about Physics that I had never learned before. Before, my impression of physics were " hard to understand" but now, my impression had changed. I never thought Physics can be this interesting and deep, and how does it directly relate to our lives.

Finally, a change I would like to see in the future......... interesting question, but I would say that we should focus on one concept deeper ( There will be an explanation or a small " class discussion" about the topic to make us " experience" the topic deeper instead of just finish a topic and move on). Other than that, I think the class is fine, and I would like it to stay as it is.

The Giver by Louis Lowry

"Dystopia- an imagined place where everything is unpleasant; opposite
of Utopia "
- Oxford Dictionary

The book that I am going to talk about, The Giver, revolves heavily on the word above. It made people think, thought and ask what is the meaning of the word society, and if humans should or should not have emotions.

The story takes place in a medium size community where human emotions, and memories were taken away from them and was " stored" inside a man name " the giver." The giver's job is to keep all of the " dangerous" memories, as they so called in the book, away from people, so people can have a peaceful life. Jonas, the main protagonist of this book, is selected to be the successor of the giver. The reason why is selected is that he tends to dream about colors and have feelings, which the people in the community shouldn't have. When Jonas learns all of the horrible memories that he is consistently receiving from the giver, he starts to think about what is the meaning of life and whether this society is " suitable " for living. When he learns from the giver that his father is killing babies with out even feeling painful about it, he starts to collapse and decides to run away from the community. Although the giver warns that if he runs away, all of the memories and feelings he bears will be release back to the community. Ignoring the warning, he runs and takes one person with him, Gabriel, Jonas 's little adopted brother. They ran as far as they can, avoiding search teams.

The ending of this story can depend on the readers' judgment, as the ending ended hastily, and didn't really stated about whether Jonas and Gabriel survived or not. Below is the ending line of the book:

" Behind him, across vast distances of space and time from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too, but perhaps it was only an echo
The Giver, P 180"

The dilemma that the author was trying to make when he wrote the book was to let the reader have an unlimited amount of imaginations, and guesses about the story. Normally, most books usually provide the ending directly, which limited the amount of discussions and the " re redablility" of the book relatively low. However, if you had ever read book like " Crime and Punishment" " The Stranger" " Anna Karenina" and all those " big books", they tend to make the ending a bit " Mysterious" as they gave us lots of rooms to think and wonder about the meaning of life. The Giver, I believe, sort of fits in the middle between the " normal book" and the " big book" due to although it has the quality of not providing the ending directly, but some how, the questions they tried to make us think of was relatively shallow, meaning that it doesn't really make us think of how our modern society is connected in the book.

This book, by far all the book I had read, is relatively easy to interpret, ( the books I enjoy reading talks a lot about morality, and whether we humans should live or not) as the story's plot and ending is very easy to follow and the message the author tried to convey was accurately portrayed. My interpretation of the ending would be that Jonas and Gabriel is alive. Possibly, the ending quote could be which Jonas could be sitting up on a hill or in a cave sitting and watching the society. Most people might think that Jonas died, and the music he heard was from heaven, but it might be Jonas sitting on top of the hill watching the society, since in the society, memories were being sent back, possibly those people were doing something or even making noises, which possibly Jonas mis heard as " music." Since the author decided to leave the ending as " open" its really hard to draw a " solid ending"

Reflection of Dr.Vilayanur Ramachandran's Brain TED TALK

Today during animal anatomy class, we had watched a video about brain research that was conducted and presented at TED talk by Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran. In the talk, Ramachandran had mentioned lots of interesting thoughts about how the human brain function. One interesting thoughts that he proposed is the idea of a " phantom hands or legs" Phantom legs or hands, as he stated at TED, was actually a conflict between the nervous system and the brain. When an arm is amputated for some reason, for the first couple of months, the brain would still believe that the hands was not amputated but actually it was still there. But the when the brain sends the message through the nervous system to that " false hand" the message bounce back to the brain due to there is no hand, resulting causing conflict with the brain and the nerve. This is actually very painful, as it causes frequent pains and problems.

To me, this idea is very interesting, as this gave us an " in depth" understanding of the brain, and also gave us an idea of how does the brain function.

Ian Thorpe

Out of all the swimmers in the world, Ian Thorpe is my choice of the world's best swimmers.
He broke 3 world records, ( 400 meter freestyle, 200 meters freestyle, 400 meters freestyle relay) and had won in total 5 gold medals for Australia in the Olympics held in Sydney in the year 200.

An Inconvenienct Truth that we can solve?

As you all should know ( or don't know) on April 22 next week Tuesday will be Earth day, and this movie will be broadcast on HBO on that day. From this movie, Al Gore will explain and present his research data on a huge problem we as human beings need to solve, GLOBAL WARMING.
By watching this movie, questions like " can we really eliminate global warming? how can we solve it? are we really " capable" of solving it just like Al Gore said in the movie?"

From my point of view, global warming is very much like a " challenge problem" by a teacher name nature, to us humans, to punish us from being so " naughty." But our teacher had gave us a huge consequence if we don't get to solve it, SELF DESTRUCTION. However, nature is not that mean, as she had gave us lots of hints in the past to signify that global warming is going to happen. For example, in 1998, Finland had reported that their growing seasons had increased 10 days since decades. In Lake Baikal, Russia, the freezing period for the river were shorter than before. In New Zealand, the temperature of the Ocean around had risen, and in China, the sea level around the cost of China had risen +0.09/-0.04 inches.
During that time, we humans were still not really aware of how serious our earth's condition is. ( with exceptions to the scientists who studied the ecosystem and the environment, as they were the first one to be aware of such issue) We continued to pollute the earth, and secretly dump garbage into the sea and cutting down trees and hunting wild animals just like global warming had never existed at all, even though nature had given us so many warnings so reconsider the act we were doing. Scientists, Biologists had warned us too about a possible dramatic change in the climate, but some people tend to ignore that warning, resulting global warming to get serious until now, where its to the point where its nearly out of our capacity, where finally we now started to freak out and yell " oh my gosh, GOD!! HELP ME!!!"


" ITs never too late for anything"
- Daniel Lin

As the quote says, we humans are capable of solving this crisis if we were able to make it in the past. If we were able to invent a computer, going to a moon, we will have the capacity to solve this crisis that we mankind had made.
IF we don't do something about this issue, its a GAME OVER for us on EARTH!!! WE ONLY HAVE 1 EARTH!!! CHERISH IT!!! AND LETS PROTECT THE PLANET TOGETHER!!!!!!!

Engagement Journal

As you can see, this blog post will be about how did I demonstrated all of the 5 student outcomes of HIS during Physics class.

During the course, I had demonstrated that I was an effective communicator due to I had effectively communicated my thoughts where its adequate, and those thoughts were carefully thought about and some were key points which the teacher or the class were looking for. Being an effective communicator would require critical thinking, and I believe that I had demonstrated such value due to I was not just able effective communicate with the class, but I was able to critically think about how to complete my physics work. I was a good community contributor due to I had demonstrated an effective communicator, and by being an effective communicator, you would need to be able to contribute in the class, which I did ( nearly all the time) due to I am not a person where I would just sit back and relax. I was an active learner due to I had actively learned lots of things today about how things work and had made lots of mistakes that were important to make me learn. Finally, I was an person of high character due to I had demonstrated all of the student outcomes efficiently and was able to defend it.



Finally, I would rate my self for effective communicator as possibly 1 due to although I did effectively communicated with other people, but it didn't happened frequently, critical thinker as 1.4, ( most of the time I didn't think critically enough) community contributor 2 ( I always participate in class, and tried my best) , person of high character 1.8 ( I didn't demonstrate some of the student out comes well enough) and active learner 1.9 ( sometimes I made careless mistakes and " forgot" to learn from them)