I SEE Things

A week has already gone by and the Penn cohort has officially started classes. I'm taking the Experimental Physics course and I must say, Professor Berner (his proper title is Mr. Berner but I'm going to call him Professor Berner) is an engaging, yet eccentric, teacher. He has been teaching since he was 22; he's taught high-school for about twenty years and as a demonstration coordinator for sixteen years. He's seen both sides of education and I'm sure he knows how to teach and handle high school students.

 From the first day, I have a general idea of what the teachers want to achieve and the goal of the class. The class introduces its students the methodology and mindset of a physicist and scientist. They hope for us to adopt this mindset and approach science as a subject of study rather than just another class. This is especially promoted through the classroom system. We will not be assigned grades but rather it will be up to us to evaluate ourselves and see if we have learned anything from the course. I absolutely love this because my personal goal for this class is to improve myself as a scientist. Back to the teacher! He's exceptionally good at teaching high school students because he knows what level of physics we're at. I don't know how he does it but it's probably a skill he's developed over the fifty years of teaching. Although he does ramble often, but the rambling has gave me much more insight on both life and science. He talked about the Battle of Gettysburg (it's closes to its anniversary) and that lead to the importance of history and the dormant realization that the battle happened 100 miles away from where we were.

 After a short introduction to kinematics, (the study of motion) we head off to our lab stations. I'm working with a fun group of four people. Algebra class teaches about graphs and introduces us what graphs look like but NEVER does high school algebra ever TELL us about the relationships of x and y. Sure, calculus class extensively expands on that relationship with derivatives and integrals but it's still extremely hard for struggling students. It's because they don't have a vivid imagine of what exactly is happening on a graph. A student can't get
a clear image from "2x^2 + 5x - 7" if he or she is


unable to understand what's the relationship between x and y. For many of the "scholars" at our schools, this is a piece of cake but the relationship is completely neglected; high school math, at times, is just step and solve at times, never analyzing. This may only apply to lower level of maths but it greatly affects those who are planning on taking higher level classes. Anyways, relating this back to the class, we used an ultrasonic device to measure the displacement of objects (for this experiment, we're using our body). Then, we had a set of graphs (x^2, 2x, etc) and we had to match that graph with the movement of our bodies. It's simple but it made it much more apparent the relationship between x and y. On a distance vs time graph, the slope would be velocity so if the slope suddenly rises that must mean that the object moved a large distance in a short time. Looking at  graphs with this perspective is much easier and engaging. 

The ultrasonic device in use while my lab-mate Malachi is moving with the object.

After a three hour introduction, I confronted Professor Burner with questions regarding particle and field physics. He was able to answer at a level where I understood and learned but like any scientist, he gave me insight to more research about the question.

 After a short intermission, we continued the lecture but into optics! I was really looking forward to optics because I had never learned about it - it was a first-time experience. To give an overview, optics is the study of the behavior and interaction of light with matter. Light can either be refracted or reflected. In this picture, light is reflected; we commonly know this from our everyday uses with mirrors. This picture has a picture with a mirror reflecting a virtual image. A virtual image is a reflection of an object that makes it seem as if it's behind the mirror. As you can see, this is shown through the professor's two left legs. However, we know that the image is not real because it would defy Newton's Third Law. In essence, a person should not be able to lift himself up but in this picture, it seems as if the picture is floating; therefore, the image is not real. This is common sense but a methodical approach should be used on ANYTHING, no matter how common it is. A real image is any image that is reflected so that it shows a location in the actual place it's being reflected, meaning that it does look like the image is not behind the mirror. The major difference of a real image is that it's flipped upside-down. This is due to the concave (parabolic) nature of the mirror used to create a real image (you use a straight mirror to create a virtual image and a concave mirror to make a real image). You can check the math and geometry behind it through Google as I do not have the diagrams to post on this blog. Hint: The angle going inward should be equal to the angle going outward. Also, search up "focal point".

Then, we had an optics lab. It was a long three hour lab and it was very tiring. We learned about refraction; this is most commonly seen in a glass of water. If you put a straw into the glass of water and if you look at the top of the cup, the straw seems closer than it actually is. This is due to refraction; the image created (the light bends because of its interaction with matter) seems larger than the actual object. We related this back to the equations and I won't post it on the blog because it would take too much time.