Hello! I hope you had a good weekend. Today I ate at Panera after church and talked about the movie Interstellar. Which, if you haven't seen, I highly recommend it because it was amazing. That being said, I also discussed with my family about a new book that I discovered, called The Science of Interstellar,  by Kip Thorne, an American Physicist who helped director Christopher Nolan on the set of Interstellar, with all things QUANTUM related!!!
             So, I decided to read a new book for this weekend, just to take a break from the real nitty-gritty stuff. This weekend I read all of the foreword, preface and chapter 1. It is fantastic! So here I go, I'll begin talking about what I read.
             First off, director Christopher Nolan talks about how fantastic it was to work with a man as enthusiastic as Kip was, and how science to him was something to explore, and not to memorize or school. After that, Kip begins the preface by talking about his 50 plus years as a scientist. He talks about how it is our duty to show to others how science is something that is not just for scientists, but can be mystifying and interesting for everyone! At the end of the preface he explains that it is his fault if he fails to explain the physics well enough; he seems to think that his take is still developing, just like the science itself.
             In the first chapter, Kip talks about his personal life living in California. How he raised a teenage Daughter alone and how he felt he was not very good at that, and then the woman he met in the 80's named Lynda Obst. He talks about how he had never imagined himself making a movie, but in the end really liked the ideas. Finally, they found Steven Spielberg, who joined them before admitting that he couldn't do it. After that they found Christopher Nolan.
              So through reading the book, I will establish all the knowledge I can about my recently-favorite movie. Ever since I saw Interstellar in IMAX, I was in love with the beautiful visuals and story. I definitely recommend that you see the movie as soon as possible!
            
             EDIT: Could not add pictures, computer would put them in but wouldn't display them. Will try later on another computer.
            

This week, I read page 93-95 in my book, The Quantum Moment. It was more about the very micro topic of what goes on inside an Atom. Let's take a look.
                First of, the authors start out with a sort of confusing statement. "On the one hand, the exclusion principle implies that electrons have no identities; two electrons in two different states are completely interchangeable" (93) Well hold on. Didn't we JUST go over how unique all of these different particles are, and how this seems like an additional, ridiculous prospect? They go on to say, "Individuality in the macroworld is somehow made possible by lack of individuality in the microworld." (94) Which is basically scientists excuse as to why they are still figuring out the secrets of the universe. Go figure.
               

        Satyendra Nath Bose was a Bengali physicist who studied with Einstein on a lot of his theories and experiments. He was one of the scientists around Einsteins time to take a look at many electrons and atoms fitting into one small space, like one wavelength. Bose grew up in a time where India was being colonized by the English, and therefore, he had to leave the country to attain the highest level of education. Universities were not so developed in India, so he had to leave to be educated properly. Later on his life, he was able to look at Plancks law different, and change the way we look at it. Now Plancks law is presented  to physics students using the Bose derivation. Its good to see that a scientist such as Bose was able to team up with Einstein and crack the theorems of Quantum, and leave an impact on this "Microworld" for years to come.

           

                                                                                           

Over spring break, I read page 87-93. I heavily analyzed the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and having just learned about this a few months ago in my Chemistry class, found it interesting all over again.                                                                                      
             Much like my last post, I found that the Exclusion principle can be closely related to individuality, in many aspects of life. Like the identities of people, and such. The principle states that no two ions in an electron can have the same "spin quantum numbers", and therefore they are all different and no two are alike, yet they offset each other. These numbers also say something to the stability of matter- they can be seen as offsetting each other, and therefore, like a yin and yang. Good and evil, keeping the equilibrium inside an orbital of an atom. It is quite micro, in the grand scheme of things, but that is what is so brilliant about it. There is detail in even the finest of details, in the smallest of the small.








                                                                 -Griffin

         This weekend, I read pages 86-89 , and it was very interesting. What started out talking about social identity ended with talking about identity of atoms and particles. It was very philosophical and thought-provoking.

unique-ness

          "Identity overlaps with, but is not that same thing as, individuality." We are are consistently ourselves... that is out identity! Our individuality is what makes us distinct from another who is consistently themselves. This implies that not every is the same, but every has many different things that make them all unique.  This scale of uniqueness is gigantic! The idea is, quantum with all it's randomness is even bigger, and much harder to discover on such a large scale.
         The authors go on to write about how in the past, gods and men both have disguised themselves as another to hide their true identity... but this doesn't take away from the individuality of things.





            The Authors quote Pesic, and ancient Greek philosopher. "Here, individuality is a sacrament: the union of something visible or perceptible." and I think that he is saying that indentity and individuality in science comes together... or in anything. Quantum is where the two come together, at a crossroads of sorts.

                                                       -Griffin

         Today I enjoyed a great lunch at Panera Bread, and after, came home to read 20 minutes of The Quantum Moment. In this section, which ended up being pages 73-75 , I read about the transition of the classic Newtonian view on physics to the new age Quantum ideas, and more about the confusing topic of probability and randomness, and it's validity as the quantum science is improved.

Ernest Rutherford

         The first transition is the coining of the term Thermodynamics. This is a science of heat, "conceived not as a single substance, as it had been, but as a phenomenon arising from motions of numerous particles." (73) I think as we begun to name these sciences and understand them better, we began to be able to find more out about them, faster. Science has grown so fast in the past few hundred years.
         Many sciences, especially mathematically based ones, can assist in the understand of other sciences. Scientists studying thermodynamics could use statistics to understand the processes better. The authors go on to use radiation as an example.
They say that because radiation seemed so spontaneous, so random, that a scientist named Ernest Rutherford studied a specific element, called  thorium oxide, and came up with one of the first quantitative laws.

Radiation spreads out as a it travels from it's Gamma or X-ray source.

       
       "The intensity of radiation, he said, fell off with time. (Now what we call it's 'half-life')." (74)
         The idea that randomness lay at the very core of nature was proposed by philosopher Charles S. Peirce in the late 19th century, "this, he felt, would prevent scientists from coming up with one final set of law valid for all scales and disciplines, and require them to keep producing new laws." (74) meaning, the spontaneity of quantum ideas and the randomness of it all should be refreshed and re-thought constantly.
          Albert Einstein had a large impact on statistics and probability when he publish his papers on quantum theory in 1916-1917. The began to talk about thermodynamics in a new light, (get it) and he tried to put some sort of probability into something that we know as improbable; the behavior of particles inside an atom. "The moment Einstein made this connection, he regretted it." (75).
           So, like last weeks reading, I am encouraging the reader to think about something... how probable is probability? How constant is constant? How likely is likely? How random is random?



          -Griffin Carlson

This week, I read pages 71-73 , which discussed at first the seemingly impossible ideas of the new physical world, in comparison to the ideas of the old Newtonian world. I was asking myself questions like, "How random is random?" after I read this section. They left me with a sense of wonder and enticement.                                                  

           "Could the dance of subatomic matter be improvisational? Can Reality be determined by a probability curve?" (71)

A typical probability curve. 

These are two questions asked on page 71 of The Quantum Moment. These ideas are so like quantum, seemingly improbably, but yet possibly possible... confused? I know, it can seem a bit intimidating. 

           Our authors go on to say, "In the classical Newtonian world, the answer to such questions is 'No!'" (72) The idea that these almost philosophical questions can be put into an idea, when they still can't be entirely sure of, is scary. To make certain the uncertain is the kind of science that Quantum theory discusses. 

           They go on to give a list of things that seem random-incalculable, like a coin toss, or the lottery. In order to compensate for these, "scientists create theories of probability and measurement error." (72) Many ideas come from the old science in the Newtonian world, that today we question. Many descriptive words came about to illustrate these ideas, and in the words of a famous Historian David Lindley, as quoted in my book, - [you] "could know the blueprint"..."but not the shape and color of every brick" (73). The idea that maybe things that seem uncertain or practically impossible, or maybe that seem valid every time are not actually valid, is the ideas expressed in this quantum theory. Confusing, yet awesome and interesting. 

Mind blown, right? 

They say, 

         "Human figures, arising from random rods, poems compiled by wandering sheep" that one is a long story... "and reality from probability are some instances where form is arising from randomness is called "quantum. How did this happen?" (73) 

                             -Griffin Carlson, 2/7/2015

2/2/2015
In this 30 minutes of reading(pages 52-64), I read how Einstein and his theory of relativity effected science in the time. How new ideas and theories came into play, and caused all of the scientists of the time had to change their ideas as the new ones of Einstein, Bohr, and others came in. The whole idea of the atom was revolutionized, and therefore, the structure and such were revolutionized. Many new writings came in, and we now have thesis on all of these new principles.