s a way of introduction, I should say that this is my first attempt to start a blog. I have, generally, been a private person and I cannot imagine why anyone might be interested in the musings and ruminations of a person they have never met. However, I have developed attitudes, thoughts, reactions, etc. that pertain specifically to physics. By airing them in PF, I might elicit reactions and comments from like-minded individuals and perhaps resolve issues that I have never resolved, reach conclusions that I would have otherwise never reached, adopt new attitudes and so on. I intend to post on this blog material that will always have a physics angle and my personal take of it. Feel free, gentle reader, to comment if so inclined and, by the way, just so that I can be placed in the order of things, I earn my living teaching university physics in the US.
Next: Why the hatred?
Next: Why the hatred?
Physics and I
What happened to Anna? Followup and denouement
I did not mention a few of details about Anna in order not to detract from the narrative. Anna was a physics major headed for medical school, the course was intermediate Electricity and Magnetism and the question was the somewhat involved boundary conditions problem of finding the magnetic field inside a long soft-iron cylinder placed in a uniform magnetic field perpendicular to the cylinder's axis. Anna was not a novice; she had already shown her ability to do physics simply by advancing to that stage. One might think that she would have developed her confidence by that time, but this seems not to have been the case. Yes, Anna had acquired the confidence to do simple introductory physics problems, but her confidence at the more involved intermediate level was, at best, shaky. Going back to the driving analogy, I've had a driver's license for a number of years, I feel confident that I can go safely from A to B, but if you place me in a race car and ask me to drive with other race cars at 200 miles per hour, I would be scared out of my wits, at least for the first few hundred times.
Fear of the unknown or unfmiliar, I suppose, is ingrained in the human psyche. The intrepid primieval ancestor who embarked on an enterprise to boldly go where no humanoid had gone before (as in a sabertooth's cave), probably did not survive to pass on any genes. Near the end of my career as a graduate student, when my doctoral dissertation was almost written in its entirety, I was fairly confident that I "knew my physics." Yet, the first time I stood up before an audience at a conference to present some of my findings, I was very apprehensive. I was allowed fifteen minutes for my talk, and that went smoothly for I had spent some time memorizing it, but then came the dreaded five-minute Q and A period. As I answered one question after another, I suddenly realized that the people before me were there not to nail me, but to learn from me; in their opinion, I knew more about the subject, which I spent years researching, than they did. They considered me one of them, what an epiphany! Borrowing the imagery from lisab's earlier comment, I realized that I could run just as fast as the other kids in the playground.
Anna too must have had that epiphany at some point in her career. I kept track of her for a while through a common acquaintance. She went to the medical school of her choice and finished her specialty. Last I heard of her, she learned how to fly a small plane so that she can move easily from one Indian reservation to another and tend to the health of Native Americans.
Next: For thee I sing.
I did not mention a few of details about Anna in order not to detract from the narrative. Anna was a physics major headed for medical school, the course was intermediate Electricity and Magnetism and the question was the somewhat involved boundary conditions problem of finding the magnetic field inside a long soft-iron cylinder placed in a uniform magnetic field perpendicular to the cylinder's axis. Anna was not a novice; she had already shown her ability to do physics simply by advancing to that stage. One might think that she would have developed her confidence by that time, but this seems not to have been the case. Yes, Anna had acquired the confidence to do simple introductory physics problems, but her confidence at the more involved intermediate level was, at best, shaky. Going back to the driving analogy, I've had a driver's license for a number of years, I feel confident that I can go safely from A to B, but if you place me in a race car and ask me to drive with other race cars at 200 miles per hour, I would be scared out of my wits, at least for the first few hundred times.
Fear of the unknown or unfmiliar, I suppose, is ingrained in the human psyche. The intrepid primieval ancestor who embarked on an enterprise to boldly go where no humanoid had gone before (as in a sabertooth's cave), probably did not survive to pass on any genes. Near the end of my career as a graduate student, when my doctoral dissertation was almost written in its entirety, I was fairly confident that I "knew my physics." Yet, the first time I stood up before an audience at a conference to present some of my findings, I was very apprehensive. I was allowed fifteen minutes for my talk, and that went smoothly for I had spent some time memorizing it, but then came the dreaded five-minute Q and A period. As I answered one question after another, I suddenly realized that the people before me were there not to nail me, but to learn from me; in their opinion, I knew more about the subject, which I spent years researching, than they did. They considered me one of them, what an epiphany! Borrowing the imagery from lisab's earlier comment, I realized that I could run just as fast as the other kids in the playground.
Anna too must have had that epiphany at some point in her career. I kept track of her for a while through a common acquaintance. She went to the medical school of her choice and finished her specialty. Last I heard of her, she learned how to fly a small plane so that she can move easily from one Indian reservation to another and tend to the health of Native Americans.
Next: For thee I sing.
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