Freaky Fzx Friday - Exoplanet Travel

An earlier post on Finding Exoplanets included the "Exoplanet Travel Bureau" on JPL's Planet Quest.  It helps us make sense of what different planets might be like if we could experience them.

But we can't get there.

It would take a hundred lifetimes even to send a probe to the closest exoplanet around the closest star system.  Sadly, we can only look on from afar using our best telescopes and hope that we find new science.  But science fiction would be boring without alien contact.

     

  vs.

Teach Fzx Tuesday - Projectile Independence

Projectile motion is normally taught before the students know any physics.  They just have to believe what we tell them.  It's a bit dumb.

Since we did Newton's laws of motion before projectiles this year, projectile motion began with diagrams of net force and acceleration.

Then we moved to the resulting velocity diagrams.  They sketch - then we discuss.

Teach Fzx Tuesday- THREE Significant Digits

The AP Physics test evaluators care not a whit about significant digits.  If the answer is 3.62 m/s and you show some basic work and write "4 m/s" - full credit.

Our physics and chemistry textbooks are inconsistent with their own rules in problems and answers.  They promptly drop significant digits after introducing the topic.  From chapter 20 in the physics textbook shown below we can see that they truncate or round depending upon their mood.

     

A civil engineer builds a bridge that is capable of supporting 90 tons.  Since it has to survive hot and cold, rust and salt, the rated limit is 10 tons so after 30 years it'll still be standing.

Freaky Fzx Friday - Exobiology

How did life begin?  How did the transition from non-life to life happen?

We have no clue.

Pancake Fzx

Making pancakes last night with fun shapes for the parents and round ones for the kids,

I happened upon an observation.  Note the bubble circles in all the pancakes below.  Click to enlarge.

Teach Fzx Tuesday - Public Interrogation

1 Corinthians 13 (NIV)

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but [ask not questions], I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not [query the individuals under my care], I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not [risk embarrassment by asking them questions in class discussions], I gain nothing.

[Questions] are patient, [Queries] are kind.  They do not envy, they do not boast, they are not proud [when properly asked].  They do not dishonor others, they are not self-seeking. ... [Public interrogation] does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres [and always has the best interests of student learning at its heart].