Earth Day

Happy Belated Earth Day! What does Earth Day mean to me? Earth Day is a chance to demonstrate that we care about the world, and are up for actually working to keep it in one piece. It's kind of like Mother's day and Father's day for me; we should really show our gratefulness to our parents every day, not just one day a year. Earth Day is the same. We should cut down on water use and turn off lights and ride our bikes every day, not just once per year. However, it is still a good way to get people to thinking about ways to help the environment. I know that I, personally, need to work on my environmental savviness every day of the year. I have to work on taking shorter showers, and I need to be more generally conscientious of how I am leaving my mark on the environment.

Motivation and Science

No offense, Mr. Grdinic, but my main motivation to learn science is to achieve a high GPA, thereby getting into a good college and having the opportunity to pursue other interests. I have always been interested in English and writing as my main academic interest; I am motivated to learn chemistry for the sake of my academic future. Because I do not plan on pursuing science-related fields in the future, it is hard for me to cultivate significant intrinsic motivation. My motivation is very much extrinsic, as I have stated above. Now that I am enrolled in this course, I try to put all of my mind toward it when it is time for me to be focused on it. As long as I am here, I will do the best I can to learn about the world and gain experience in various fields. However, I will not deny that I am much more intrinsically motivated to produce a good short story than to balance an equation. It's just the way I am wired. I was interested in reading books when I was little, not playing with a chemistry set. It's weird, because a lot of the time chemistry is much easier for me than other subjects, so it can be a good relief and encouraging feeling to succeed in this class when I am sometimes struggling in English, in which I am very intrinsically motivated.

Science & Politics

As time has progressed, science and politics have fed into each other more and more. Many of the modern issues debated in politics today would not have even existed just a few years ago. Stem cell research, for example, is a fairly new  scientific advancement that has been the cause of much heated controversy. While opinions are also fueled by religion and other beliefs, the issues themselves are surely science-based. Another issue is global warming.  The theory was developed as the product of much intense research and is a scientific discovery that has prompted debate within the fields of science and politics as some believe the theory and others do not. These examples are just a taste of all of the connections between the two fields. As we push into a century of such rapid advancements, political issues will be based more and more upon science. 

Quantum Mechanics

It's very hard for me to make an intelligent comment about quantum mechanics because I really don't understand it. I guess I'm not really supposed to understand it. Really, though, all I am able to comprehend is that it doesn't really make a lot of sense, and is not something that is easy to imagine in our known world. I don't know how to perform the math associated with electron energy levels and quantum mechanics. I'll try to find something interesting that is relevant, though... I searched quantum mechanics in google and was surprised to see the term as an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The entry looked more like a few pages out of a math or science textbook than a philosophic definition, though. The page involved vectors and many complex mathematical operations, all of which were well over my head. It is interesting to see quantum mechanics as a philosophy, because I guess it is something that isn't as solidly acceptable as other aspects of science or math. It definitely causes the mind to stretch.

Did you know? Response

Wow... that was an awesome video! It sort of heightens the phobia I have of infinity... or just really, really large numbers or ideas. The entire thing was remarkable; it's hard for me to pick just one aspect of it to talk about. It was pretty interesting to see the statistics of China and India vs. the U.S... it shows that however populated our country may be, it doesn't even come close to the drastic overpopulation in other countries, those two in particular. The idea of the enormous amount of information that is constantly being gained and provided is also pretty crazy. (There are 5x more words today than there were 400 years ago? That's insane.) As for how this makes me think about my classes... I guess school really is a waste of time, isn't it? If half of the stuff we are learning is going to be wrong in 2 years, we really shouldn't even bother coming to school... ? That's probably not true. But the statistic is still pretty incredible. When you think about the world growing exponentially, it's pretty scary. When are the resources going to run out, and the population growth is too much for the world to handle? I don't want to think about it. Hopefully it's not for a while.