Although obsessed with bicycles for longer than you've been alive, I never ever owned a bicycle repair stand. Shameful. Now that I've become independently wealthy as a high school teacher I figured it was time. I stay rich by making my own whenever possible.
Somebody somewhere attached a hitch mounted bicycle carrier to a work bench. I have the bench and I have the carrier so it'd be a quick job that I could do with wood scraps and screws - just a bit lower cost than the $200 repair stand I was considering.
First I had to make the 2" receiver. Wood is plenty strong for this type of project so I plugged in the 1960s Shop Smith Grandpa gave me twenty years back and cut the 2x4 scraps down to just over 2 inches in thickness.
I graduated from high school in 1988 without a single confirmed exoplanet discovery. Today, according to Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we count 5,003 planets of other suns and have independently confirmed 1,804. Science has changed and keeps changing so check the link.
Walking Sharpsburg last week I visited the "James Sharp Landing" and wandered about the boat launch. The private marina has this tractor so I trespassed and got these.
I want them to but they don't. Honors Physics students begin my class with a no-questions-asked attitude. They seem to expect that I will anticipate every possible question and supply everything they need to assure that they remain passive learners.
One knowledge source? Bad idea. Use your resources.
I cannot be what they want. Nor do I want to since I would have to read their minds
Albert Einstein, one of the earliest quantum physicists, was famously opposed to the "random" nature of the universe represented by that very field. "As I have said so many times, God doesn't play dice with the world." Einstein was often wrong.
Einstein's special theory of relativity stated that not even information could travel faster than the speed of light, but tiny particles do weird things. The Speed of Gravityis the same as the speed of light but certain quantities are always conserved in our universe and some particle pairs are linked.
Pay close attention, in the video to follow, to the debated interpretation of the the experiment and the final statement on Einstein and his special theory (7:30).
Dr. Fred ... was my Geology professor Grove City College. He taught Geology and Biology and was purportedly called as an expert witness in geology and water hearings. The worst professor I ever had, he was commonly known as Elmer Fudd.
"Hewwo. My name is Doctow Fwed .... I teach Biowogy and Geowogy at Gwove City Cowwege and I named my daugtew Ewaine ... (just so I couldn't pwonounce hew name)."
I would walk into Geology class, check his book to see what page was open, and highlight sentences that he read to us. He would try to copy boldfaced words from the text three letters at a time but his dislexia was so severe that he would usually give up and erase the attempt. I quickly figured out that an A was easy if I just studied the sentences he read to us and the words he tried to spell.
I learned such expressions as "a few french fries short of a Happy Meal" and his favorite "Basically, the aspects of...." We started counting and he averaged more than one "basicawwy" and "de aspects" every minute of every class.
My description may seem far-fetched but I have witnesses. His upper level lab classes were apparently a completely different experience, but I hated my time with him. Fwed was essentially the only poor professor I had in my time at Grove City. Some were dry and boring and overly technical, but nothing like him.
I just put up with it since that's how I was raised and I was a young 20 at the time.
My wife is obsessed with German. We took an introductory German class together a few years ago and it was almost as bad as my Geowogy expewience. He didn't read from the book nor did he have speech impediments we could ridicule but he sucked at his chosen job.
I and a few others had zero knowledge of German but a pair of young ladies had taken four years of German in high school and they were his favorites. They smiled and giggled and were the only ones who could participate at the level he expected.
The conceited American lawyer had moved to the US at 7 years old. He spoke the language well from what I could tell, but he did not understand the basics of grammar.
Students asked the question "But why is the word order like that in German?" - "I can't explain it, that's just the way it is" was his response. Since I had actually read the book that he chose, I raised my hand and referred to page 34 where it clearly explained the rule and reason. That happened three times. Same question. Same answer. Same page reference.
I paid for the book and I paid for the class. I expected better. Not only arrogant and essentially unprepared for class, the professor also refused to modify anything when I requested specific changes in person and by email in the nicest way I could muster. Less than half the class was left by the end of that angry semester.
The dean of his school and I had a conversation concerning this professor's incompetence at the end of that semester but nothing came of it. I didn't like German. I was stuck with a book I would never use again. I should have requested a refund.
The most important stakeholder in education is clearly the student. Yet we train them to sit silently in the face of what could be called educational neglect and abuse. We need to raise up aggressive learners not willing to put up with inferior education.
No snow for the 25th annual classic bicycle swap meet. Hosted by Rapp's Bicycle Center in Butler, there's always something interesting going on. Here are some pictures from last year.
After hosting a gun show the week before in the same venue, the Day's Inn opened up early and by 6:30 the organizers were searching for more vendor tables. There's nothing else to do in January but grit your teeth and pedal, visitKraynick's, and travel hours to the swap. It's well attended even in treacherous travel conditions.
Wedding Reception Chandeliers
It seems that many 'vendors' are more like private museum curators willing to pay a small sum to display their collections. The $3 charge is totally worth a trip to the museum.
Some have everything laid out in display cases
Others have more interesting organizational plans
The newer parts and frames seem almost out of place but that's where my money goes. Slim and I happened upon a table as they were writing up the sign "TWO ITEMS FOR $1." Too excited to remember to take a picture, I spent seven whole dollars and grabbed another stem since they didn't have the two quarter change for 13 items. Here are some other modern pieces.
Some two-wheelers seemed to have identity crises
Bamboo masquerading as carbon fibre A 6-cylinder bicycle
I loved it even though some of the smelly kids showed up just like at FreeRide Pittsburgh - cycling sometimes means never bathing and always wearing knickers. I might have even seen a classic Mercedes wagon in the lot with a "biodiesel" sticker on it - the hipster zipcar. Maybe they all shared a ride and condemned the American car culture while strumming a guitar and consuming local produce. But at least they've got passion for something.
Inspecting old bikes and talking to old friends is great. Next year in the depth of winter you must get out to the swap meet. You know you've got nothing better to do early on a Sunday morning in January.
We spent a few more hours on the crick ice of Etna this weekend. Friday's man adventure lasted until TheBoy fell into a gaping hole in the ice and wet his boots and legs with ice-cold water.
Smashing ice with sticks is our favorite activity
We happened upon some animal tracks - mouse runs and bear-like raccoon paws.
And my obsession with ice photos (here, here, here, and here) continued.
Saturday was warmer and we included the ladies.
The rough ice is slippier than the smooth ice.
It reminded me of this treatise on Olympic curling. See 3:30 for information on roughing ("pebbling") the ice to make the stones run better.
and LittleBoy walks on four legs. He didn't fall; He just likes walking like a puppy.
Crick ice fun is only for the winter. Get out there and play but don't do it on the river because when you break through river ice you get stuck under it and die. And always buddy up.
My kids are radioactive and so are you. It's just one of those things.
Hopefully neither they nor you will grow up to live in the sewers and run with rats like these guys.
Superheroes are real. The most modern Spider Man was injected with nanobots but the original was bitten by a radioactive spider.
I remember watching Lou Ferrigno as "The Incredible Hulk" back in 1979. His exposure to gamma rays made him the Avenger he is today.
David Banner's transformation into the monster whose pants grew with him gave me nightmares but we know that radioactivity can't do that to people
Because we've tried.
Radioactivity is nuclear, not atomic. Unlike chemistry, it has nothing to do with those infamous valence electrons. It's all about what happens inside that teeny tiny nucleus that makes up an incredibly small part of every atom.
The scale is horrific.
At this size the nucleus wouldn't even be the tiniest pixel.
Sometimes the nucleus that was formed in the sun is unstable. Those unstable nuclei will eject energy or particles to move toward more stability. Other unstable nuclei are the products of nuclear fission or cosmic ray interaction in our atmosphere (like Carbon-14).
It's a complicated process but it's what we use to date organic materials.
We have to use different radioisotopes for rocks since it only works up to about 60,000 years.
Traveling the world is great but here are some places you probably don't want to spend much time.
Low sodium salt and bananas are both radioactive because of their potassium content but bananas are good for you and so is low sodium salt.
So we live with radioactivity hoping to become superheroes.
I knew the trail at Fall Run Park would be icy and rutted so I figured I'd try out the spikes that only Grandma wears. It hasn't been cold enough to freeze the stream, but the falls are lovely.
Don't follow the squirrel
Big Falls
10' icicles from below
Better than "Disney on Ice," next time I'll take the family.
And thanks for the idea, Grandma - those mini-crampons are great.
Multiple Choice is tough. It requires good written language skillsthe extended attention span of a Sumatran Tiger stalking it prey in Borneo. Tigers, however, don't read signs and they stalk for survival so we're asking a lot of our students.
Plus, unless you're a genius, your best hope on the SAT and the Physics Mid-Term is to eliminate obviously wrong answers and use the clock method to pick your final answer.
Since we have limited testing and correcting time, multiple choice is a large portion of this test - 50%+. And since January happens to be the peak of delays and cancellations for cold and snow it's tough to get all the Mid-Term Review done.
The week prior to the big test, I open all the online class resources and direct my Honors Physics students to excellent resources like ThePhysicsClassroom.com where they can review concepts and practice their multiple choice skills. But external resources aren't enough since I write or modify all the MC questions.
Three years ago I happened upon a method that would give MC test practice using my language and the elimination thought process of multiple choice. Previous reviews were linear and weren't so successful. This one requires less time from the students, does a quick concept review, and improves their test skills.
First is a chart in which I have organized all the major terms and quantities - name, symbol, units, definition, equation. It's twisty because I've intentionally placed dozens of mistakes in the two page chart.
Corrected Chart at Right
Students prefer it since they don't have to write a lot and it's like a game. Finding a teacher's mistakes is a fun thing to do.
Lying to children is good sometimes. Part II of this review includes more than 50 of these lies representing common physics misconceptions. Students are to correct these statements, 15% of which are correct as they stand.
For three years I've done this for Honors Physics and for Nuclear Science. I like it. Students like it. It works.
