Final Grades

The final grades are in and can be found in this pdf. The quiz grades include the removal of the two lowest scores. You'll recall that I promised that if you came to class and did the work, you'd be okay. Almost all of you "did okay."

I actually had a final art segment, but went on too long about my own work. I've turned it into a flash file which you can find at this link. If you click on the window it will go through the transitions.

Have a good summer and thanks for coming!

final journal

A couple of you have asked about the final journal. It should be a regular journal with the added "plus" of the conclusion. You can think of the conclusion as the reaction for this last issue.

slides are up

Last time.

another evaluation

I have evaluated myself separately in this course from the beginning. So, what I do is ask that each of you fill out this pdf form and bring it to the final exam. Sign the cover sheet and detach it (because you will have stapled it, right?)...and put it in one pile and the rest of the evaluation in another. That way I'll not know who wrote what, but I will know that you wrote something and I'll reward you with 5 points. Big deal....but helpful to me.

evaluation(s)

Please go to the university class evaluation page and complete that... https://rateyourclass.msu.edu/ .

FINAL EXAM Location

The Final Exam is next wednesday at 5:45pm in ROOM 1400 BPS. We can spread out there... I'll bring some relish and fruit trays as compensation for hearing me talk some more.

grades to this moment

Here is a pdf of the grades to this moment: all quizzes (without throwing out the lowest 2), journals through #13, midterm, and all changes/corrections/late submissions that I know of. The whole enchilada. This does not include the movie reviews yet. Please, please check it for mistakes and write me a "gripe" if you find anything. thanks.

journals

A couple of you have asked about the journal end-game. There are 15 journals, the last one of which is to include the conclusion which is supposed to react to your first journal's expectation for the course. That one is due at the final exam.

The journal due on monday (tomorrow) is #14, which is just a run-of-the-mill journal.

slides are up

The slides from Relativity and early quantum theory are up. No reactions.

the end game

So. We're within sight of the end of the semester and so I thought I would tidy up a bit:

1. We needed 12 quizzes, and we've had 12 quizzes. So, we're done taking quizzes.
2. Movie reviews were due day before yesterday.
3. Biographies are due on April 30 at the final exam.
4. Book reviews are due on April 21, which is next monday.

Here's how the final exam will work:

a. You come to the final session (5:45-7:45 pm on 4/30) and I will, for no extra charge, talk about some elementary particle physics issues that involve us here at MSU in our experiments at Fermilab and CERN.
b. You'll eat stuff that I'll provide.
c. You'll give back an anonymous survey which I'll provide next week for points.
d. You'll get the final exam worth 40 points and have 24 hours to do it and get it to me. That is, it's take-home. It will cover the material since the midterm.

experiment

I have never missed an ISP213H class. But, this year I had to be at an American Physical Society meeting in cold St Louis since last Friday, through tomorrow.

So, you ask, how do we have class today? Well. I've got a small army of people with whom I've been tuning a set of computers to allow me to continue to talk to you and manipulate my slides from here. I was going to do it in my jammies from my hotel room, but the internet bandwidth was so low, that I had to waterboard a hotel person to give me a meeting room with better connectivity.

So, ISP213H will be taught to day remotely from the beautiful Hyatt Regency St Louis Waterfront Hotel. It's an important lecture on Relativity, so while it may be not quite as comfortable as having me pace in front of you, I hope it will still be okay.

My biggest regret: I'm in St Louis and forgot to bring a Cubs hat.

slides are up

Check out the due-dates! They're coming...

Krauss lectures

As I mentioned in class, Lawrence Krauss is giving two lectures this Thursday, the 10th of April. The first one is a regular department colloquium and will have some physics in it. The title is "

Our Miserable Future

" which I suspect will follow the recent (cover story) Scientific American article that he wrote on the "end of cosmology". This is at 4;10pm in the middle lecture hall, 1415BPS. The evening lecture corresponds to the handout I gave you in class and is entitled,

Science, Non-science and Nonsense: From Aliens to Creationism

. It's at 8pm in Kellogg Center Centennial B & C.

Here is Krauss' website

. You're all invited to either or both lectures.

reaction for monday's journal

I've provided a simple "reaction" for monday's journal in the assignments section.

calendar was busted

I just realized that the calendar page was broken. I've restored it and will begin to put back the due dates for the projects. But, the final exam is there. You may have to refresh the page.

there will be a "reflection"

...as soon as I figure it out! Stay tuned.

Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing

This book by Margaret Livingstone is just beautiful...the science and the art. It has caused me to look at art appreciation with an entirely different perspective. Here's an Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Art-Margaret-S-Livingstone/dp/0810904063

new grade post

Here i

s a new accumulation of the grades to this moment. I think I have everything!

Gripes

If you have a question or complaint about a grading issue, I handle these with "Gripes." You send me a Gripe by writing out your concern, attaching it to the paper in question, and give it to me within a week of my handing it to you originally.

piano jazz

Someone asked me about local broadcast of the radio program by the very astute Marian McPartland, who was 90 years old last week and still swings like mad. It's locally broadcast on Lansing Public Radio (a great jazz station), WNLZ at 89.7 MHz on your FM radio dial. Many of her programs are archived at NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15123605

pizza

Remember, you're letting me know about pizza for the Curie's movie Monday night...

slides are up

...from the end of Precise and the beginnings of Modern Representation.

3/31 Monday Movie is special!!

The biography of Marie Curie, starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon in 1943. The science is well done and there will not be a dry eye in the house. Plus, there will be pizza (stay tuned for a count of who wants cheese and who wants peperoni). From rottentomatoes.com:

Runtime:

2 hrs 4 mins

Synopsis:

Mervyn LeRoy directed this excellent biography of the life of Madam Curie, the Polish woman who discovered radium. The film presents the scientific and romantic life of Curie with great authenticity, basing the story on the biography by Curie’s daughter, Eve. Greer Garson stars as a stunning woman too in love with science to have time for men. Walter Pidgeon plays her perfect complement, a man who thinks of an effective marriage as a form of chemical compound. He's right--the chemistry between the two stars is excellent, and the black-and-white photography by Joseph Ruttenberg is gorgeous. From the work in the lab to the honeymoon, the story line is treated with an integrity and intelligence that makes it as educational as it is intriguing.

grades to date, almost

This link takes you to a pdf of a summary of grades to this moment, with 2 caveats. 1) There is the dumb and dumber issue below and 2) the midterm is not yet added. Stay tuned for this to update as I become less dumb and get the midterms finished.

dumb and still dumber

I am afraid that I managed to hand back quiz 8 (the tennis racket) without entering it into my spreadsheet. This is unforgivable, but hopefully correctable. Would you please email me with the score that I gave you on that quiz? If you gave it to me as a redo...um, I've got that at least. Sorry.

websites for the SARV prevention program

Nice of you to let my son tell you of the program he's administering for next year's freshman class. He asked me to give you the web sites for:

the program:

http://www.studentlife.msu.edu/current_students/sarv/sarv.htm

and the application:

http://www.studentlife.msu.edu/current_students/sarv/documents/sarv_app_08-09_000.pdf

Danielle, not.

Our TA, Danielle, is visiting graduate schools this thursday and next thursday and will not have her office hours these weeks. Chemistry Departments at Yale and Carnegie-Mellon (my alma mater) really want her badly!

Q berates B

who deserves it.

need to know:

a. what book(s) you are reading

and

b. what biography you are doing (Jack Lambert was a joke, right?).

One mail message from each of you...containing that information, okay? thanks.

Mercury: Don't try this at home.

There has been much speculation over the centuries about the peculiarities (oh, really?) of Newton's personality. I had forgotten about this, but just stumbled on this account of analysis of locks of his hair, searching for heavy element content. It looks pretty hard to ignore that maybe he inadvertently poisoned himself and that his strange traits, including the referred-to exchange with John Locke:

"The Principia immediately raised Newton to international prominence. In their continuing loyalty to the mechanical ideal, Continental scientists rejected the idea of action at a distance for a generation, but even in their rejection they could not withhold their admiration for the technical expertise revealed by the work. Young British scientists spontaneously recognized him as their model. Within a generation the limited number of salaried positions for scientists in England, such as the chairs at Oxford, Cambridge, and Gresham College, were monopolized by the young Newtonians of the next generation. Newton, whose only close contacts with women were his unfulfilled relationship with his mother, who had seemed to abandon him, and his later guardianship of a niece, found satisfaction in the role of patron to the circle of young scientists. His friendship with Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss-born mathematician resident in London who shared Newton's interests, was the most profound experience of his adult life...

Almost immediately following the Principia's publication, Newton, a fervent if unorthodox Protestant, helped to lead the resistance of Cambridge to James II's attempt to Catholicize it. As a consequence, he was elected to represent the university in the convention that arranged the revolutionary settlement. In this capacity, he made the acquaintance of a broader group, including the philosopher John Locke. Newton tasted the excitement of London life in the aftermath of the Principia. The great bulk of his creative work had been completed. He was never again satisfied with the academic cloister, and his desire to change was whetted by Fatio's suggestion that he find a position in London. Seek a place he did, especially through the agency of his friend, the rising politician Charles Montague, later Lord Halifax. Finally, in 1696, he was appointed warden of the mint. Although he did not resign his Cambridge appointments until 1701, he moved to London and henceforth centred his life there.

In the meantime, Newton's relations with Fatio had undergone a crisis. Fatio was taken seriously ill; then family and financial problems threatened to call him home to Switzerland. Newton's distress knew no limits. In 1693 he suggested that Fatio move to Cambridge, where Newton would support him, but nothing came of the proposal. Through early 1693 the intensity of Newton's letters built almost palpably, and then, without surviving explanation, both the close relationship and the correspondence [with broke off. Four months later, without prior notice, Samuel Pepys and John Locke, both personal friends of Newton, received wild, accusatory letters. Pepys was informed that Newton would see him no more; Locke was charged with trying to entangle him with women. Both men were alarmed for Newton's sanity; and, in fact, Newton had suffered at least his second nervous breakdown. The crisis passed, and Newton recovered his stability. Only briefly did he ever return to sustained scientific work, however, and the move to London was the effective conclusion of his creative activity." (http://www.class.uh.edu/phil/faculty/brown/leibniz/britannica_pages/newton/newton.html).

A reaction is posted.

There is a reaction posted in Assignments.

Slides are up.

The lecture slides are up from this week.

Slides are up from last week.

Nominally...a journal is due on next monday. But, since I was so ridiculously busy, I left town without really performing due-dilligence on the site with the lectures. So. Now that I'm renewed, I've uploaded the slides. But, you may have until Wednesday next week to turn in your journal. You might have to hit "refresh" or "reload" on the home page...

Midterm

The midterm is posted in the Assignments Section. It's due at class the Wednesday after break. I'm going to Mesa for a couple of days to watch the Cubs before they implode. I hope you're going somewhere warm! (You saw that the Biography project was posted a few days ago, right?)

BIography Project Posted

The Biography Project is described in the Assignments section. Notice that a) it's due at the final exam and b) I gave it more credit and took away some points from the final. I'm guessing that's okay with you? (No, you can't do Jack Lambert...that's a joke.)

Movie!!

If it's Monday, then it's Movie!

no reaction...did I forget to mention?

Sorry...lots to assimilate last week. More...um...this week.

slides up

The Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, and Boyle notes are up.

Danielle's office hours

Danielle's making a grad school trip and she'll reply to this post with her plans...

slides are up

Slides from last week are up...no reaction this week either. Just concentrate on basketball.

It's Monday...and you know what that means?

That's right! It's Movie Night!

Reaction?

Nah...no reaction for this week's journal.

movie! Monday, February 4...one night only!

We'll do the "other" one tonight. A Nova program about Richard Feynman, 58min.

reaction assignment up and Q snoozes

slides are up...from this week

May have to "reload" or "refresh" remember...

book and movie assignments posted

The assignments for the book review and movie review are posted. They are not due until late April, but stuff will pile up, so don't put them off!

incredibly stupid

I laid them out...and then walked out of my house with out: the graded journals. Sorry.

Monday Movie

Tonight is a movie night and you have your choice:

A is for Atom, B is for Bomb

. This is a Nova program about Edward Teller and the Manhattan Project. Many interviews with physicists about their participation. Or

The Best Mind Since Einstein

. Another Nova program about Richard Feynman.

that was fast...lectures up.

The slides on greek astronomy and the middle ages are up.

journal reaction is up

I've posted the reaction question for the journal. Working on getting the slides up.

Warning

: I have modified the assignments page...you may need to "reload" or "refresh" it!

Q and B spar in Postgame

...and I think I'm having trouble with the chipclass email address again. Experts have been called. In the meantime, if you need to get ahold of me during the game - too bad. I'll be at Jimmy's. If you need to get ahold of me after the game, better use my brock@pa.msu.edu account.

Plato and Aristotle slides are up

Like I said, "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

links fixed

The links to some internet readings in the Classical Representation lecture topics list have been fixed. You may have to reload your page to see them. Sorry 'bout that.

interesting site

A set of 184 women mathematicians...from Pythagoras' wife to nearly the present day. I didn't know that Pythagoras' wife was a mathematician!

Here is the link

for your entertainment.

quiz wednesday...

You'll notice on the calendar that we have a quiz. You'll be embarrassed at how simple this is. Try to contain your disappointment.

journal reaction up for next week

A little early, but I would like you to read a little Plato and think about it.

slight change to uploaded lectures

The slides are uploaded as high-quality html files that you can cycle through like class. The pdfs are just too clumsy.

tips on writing

Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.
Don't use no double negatives. Don't never use no triple negatives.
No sentence fragments
Corollary: Complete sentences: important.
Stamp out and eliminate redundancy.
Avoid cliches like the plague.
All generalizations are bad.
Take care that your verb and subject is in agreement.
A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.
Avoid those run-on sentences that just go on, and on, and on, they never stop, they just keep rambling, and you really wish the person would just shut up, but no, they just keep going, they're worse than the Energizer Bunny, they babble incessantly, and these sentences, they just never stop, they go on forever...if you get my drift...
You should never use the second person.
The passive voice should never be used.
Never go off on tangents, which are lines that intersect a curve at only one point and were discovered by Euclid, who lived in the sixth century, which was an era dominated by the Goths, who lived in what we now know as Poland...
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I hate quotations."
Excessive use of exclamation points can be disastrous!!!!!
Don't use question marks inappropriately?
Don't obfuscate your theses with extraneous verbiage.
Never use that totally cool, radically groovy out-of-date slang.
Avoid tumbling off the cliff of triteness into the black abyss of overused metaphors.
Keep your ear to the grindstone, your nose to the ground, take the bull by the horns of a dilemma, and stop mixing your metaphors.
Avoid those abysmally horrible, outrageously repellent exaggerations.
Avoid any awful anachronistic aggravating antediluvian alliterations.
This sentence no verb.

http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/grammar.html

added some information to the FAQ about writing assignments and other stuff...

slides uploaded

Slides from Wednesday are uploaded.

no quiz on 1/9!

I didn't say it explicitly, but we're not having a quiz tomorrow (1/9).

slides uploaded

A pdf file of the introductory lecture is posted in the resources/lectures/classical tab.