Wednesday, May 7, 2008

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.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

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.