an example of a failed simulation: 15 year skis to north pole

Here's an example of the "failed simulation" idea we were discussing yesterday.

In order to raise awareness for the effects climate change is having on the arctic (unprecedented ice loss, temperature shifts, melting of permafrost and destabilization of homes built upon it, and species dislocation), 15 year old Parker Liautand is about to attempt an expedition to be one of the youngest person to ski the "last degree" to the north pole. Its a 14 day expedition, skiing 110 km across shifting ice, and occasionally requires one to get into an immersion suit and swim across freezing waters).

This sounds like a crazy feat of endurance, and probably makes most people wonder how such a feat is even possible. But the article describes the "deliberate practice" Parker has been doing in order to prepare.

He's been training vigorously in preparation for the trip, working extra hard to add weight to his teenage frame. His strength training has consisted of wearing a 25 pound weighted vest while dragging a weighted sled around a track in his native country of England. And that's a good thing because come March 31, Parker will have only his training and the aid of Doug Stoup to help him on his journey. Parker has very limited experience in this arena, having only been to the North Pole on one other occasion for an eco-tour.

You can read more about the expedition here.

So what is your "last degree adventure"?

Happy Valentine's Day--seeing hearts

Here's a really cool video that shows just how much we are pattern seeking animals. We can find hearts anywhere.

Backyard Ballistics Packet

Here is the reading from backyard ballistics that will tell you how to build a tennis ball morter, catapault, or potato cannon.

Backyard Ballistics

Burj Dubai Base Jump

Two basejumpers just set the world record for BASE jumping from the world's tallest building the Burj Khalifa (formerly called the Burj Dubai), from a height of 828 m.

Check out the video below:


Two questions:
1. Why didn't this video take the 13 seconds you calculated take an object to fall to the ground?
2. What was the average velocity of the skydiver? How does this compare to the velocity an object falling only under the influence of gravity would have when it hit the ground?

How to study distraction free

More last minute advice:

How to study distraction free

Mr. Burk's Top 5 Places to Study in Atlanta

One more great suggestion from Study Hacks is how Adventure Studying is a great way to prepare to study.

What is adventure studying? It's finding a cool, beautiful and quiet place for you to go away and study (and adventure doesn't involve Starbucks).

Here are my top 5 suggestions in the Atlanta Area:

1. The High Museum of Art—admission is a bit pricy ($15), but the cafe across the courtyard is free, rarely crowded and a great place to sit and admire the physics of the alexander calder mobile in the front (ever wonder how it stays balanced?)

2. Chuck E Cheese. You know you loved it 5 years ago. Why not go there, work for 45 minutes and then play some skee ball to put your physics knowledge to the test? If you go, bring headphones and find a quiet corner away from all the dancing robots.

3. A local college—Agnes Scott, Morehouse, Spelman, Emory, Georgia Tech—all of these places have beautiful campuses and libraries. It can be great fun to go to a college library for the afternoon.

4. The Carter Center--Recently completely renovated, you can visit a full scale model of the Oval Office (and that's a place where you really need to understand physics--check out Physics for Future Preisdents--a real course at UC Berkeley).

5. Outside—yes, it's supposed to be a bit rainy and cold this weekend, but it it would be great bundle up, to throw some FARMIPS and and some blank paper in your backpack, and go hike to some quiet, isolated place and solve physics problems under a tree.

how to create an online calendar for the upcoming week

I've created a google spreadsheet to help you plan out your success week to help you demonstrate your best understanding on the exam. To use it, go here

Study Plan for Finals Week

The spreadsheet is read-only, so you'll need to make a copy.

To do that, click on "File > Make a copy" as shown in the image below.

If you'd like me to see your study plan, simply share it with me via google docs (this is completely optional).

5 Mistakes to avoid during finals

Here is more great advice from study hacks:

5 mistakes to avoid during finals.

We'll talk about this a bit tomorrow, but here they are briefly

• Mistake #1: Not Having a Clear Schedule
  
  You should set up a plan for using the time you have to maximum benefit—giving yourself time to rest, and reflect so you achieve maximum understanding.
  
  
• Mistake #2: Not Purging Your Obligations
  
  Avoid letting the little things in your life keep you from having the
  time you need to seriously prepare for exams.
  
  
• Mistake #3: “Studying”
  
  Focus on specific action. Solve problems.
  
  
• Mistake #4: Social Working
  
  While it can be helpful to work with others, often, working in a noisy space with friends can be very unproductive.
  
  
• Mistake #5: Calculating Your Final Grade
  
  I'll let Cal speak for himself:
  
  

  
  Don’t do this! No good can possibly come from such a superficial focus on the numbers. It will add stress. This, in turn, will make it harder for you to execute a reasonable, specific, and efficient study plan. Also, it’s just plain crass. You don’t want to be that person…
  

  
  

LHC is on!

THe LHC produced the first collisions of protons today.

Gamma Ray Satellite may have found dark matter

Here's another great post that describes a recent discovery of what may be dark matter, which makes up 20% of our universe (regular matter is only 4%).

The excess gamma rays could possibly be coming from a hypothesized dark matter called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), colliding with one another and annihilating themselves into pure energy.

Fermi may have spotted dark matter.

Want to conquer stress? Exercise is key

Here's a great article from the NYT about a new study on rats showing that exercise allows our brains to better handle stress.

Here's a quote:

It looks more and more like the positive stress of exercise prepares cells and structures and pathways within the brain so that they’re more equipped to handle stress in other forms,” says Michael Hopkins, a graduate student affiliated with the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Laboratory at Dartmouth, who has been studying how exercise differently affects thinking and emotion. “It’s pretty amazing, really, that you can get this translation from the realm of purely physical stresses to the realm of psychological stressors.

Posterous: another super cool tool!

Have you ever wanted to share a file, mp3, photo, or video without having to email everyone, or post an elaborate facebook status? Perhaps you have some great notes you want to share on the blog.

Well, here's the solution.

Just send an email to post@posterous.com, and attach whatever it is you want to share. Posterous will send you a link to the website you created with that attachment.

It couldn't be easier.

great career advice from the creator of dilbert

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has a wonderful post on his blog with some great career advice.

Here's a quote:

If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1. Become the best at one specific thing.

2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.

The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it.

Suddenly, becoming extraodinary doesn't sound so hard.

FAILCON: a conference dedicated to failing

It turns out that in the business world, just like the rest of like, of the of keys to great success is failing often and learning from one's mistakes. It can literally be worth billions. Good thing they now have a conference to teach you how...

Will the world end in 2012?

Answer: No.

Read for a thorough debunking of this pseudoscientific meme that is percolating through popular culture.

Sleep tips from the Mayo Clinic

Here are some great sleep tips

What is the best study break? Taking a walk in the woods

Scientists are interested in all sorts of questions, including "what is the best study break." Here's a study that tested how taking a short walk as a break from studying affected student's ability to memorize a series of numbers. It turns out that taking a walk in the woods significantly boosted student's memory compared to those who took a walk along city streets, or did not take a break at all.

What is the best way to take a study break?

Master the art of stealth studying

This is another great post from Study Hakcs on how to master the art of stealth studying.

Some tips:

1. Construct study guides on the fly.
   When taking notes — in class or while doing a reading assignment — start constructing your study guide at the same time. The easiest way to do this is to copy the questions from your question/evidence/conclusion clusters and paste them at the top of your document as you go along.
   Print study guides immediately after construction.
   This is a great way to do FARMIPS—simply write out a question during our discussion and save it for later
   
   
2. Print study guides immediately after construction.


As the professor winds down, or as you finish your reading assignment, send your notes to the nearest public printer. (Or e-mail them to yourself so you can load it up on a public computer connected to a printer). Before doing so, however, reduce the font to the smallest size you can still read. (This will prove useful later.) As you walk out of the classroom, or library, swing by the printer to grab your printout.
Review using the “10-Minute Detour” method.

As soon as you have your first study guide printed, start looking for ways to add a 10-minute detour to a walk across campus you already need to do. Make these detours pass through somewhere quiet and unpopulated. During these detours take out one of your expanded study guides and start doing a quick quiz-and-recall review. Do this out loud. As you walk. (It’s okay to do this quietly to prevent unexpected institutionalization). In 10 minutes you might knock off 2-4 questions. Some additional notes on this process:



• Get in the habit of sprinkling these detours throughout your working hours on working days. (If you’re between classes, your mind is probably already in a deep thinking mode — or a mild coma, depending on the professor).



• Try to review new material within 24-hours to help cement it while it’s still fresh.





3. Ask questions every class. Attend every office hours.

To make stealth studying work, you need to understand all the material as quickly as possible. This means you need to come to class attentive and be a question-asking fiend. When you don’t quite understand how something fits a broader point, ask. If you don’t want to keep interrupting the class, save a collection of specific, concise questions to ask the professor immediately following class. Attend office hours most weeks to discuss the topics you found most difficult. Think of this as a pain-free, advanced review session. We have no time to spare for you to re-learn this material later on before the test. If you don’t get it down the first time, we can’t get your study time down to an hour.

The physics of free throw shooting

Now that basketball season is here, it's a good thing that physicists have worked out the best way to shoot a free throw.

See here: The physics of free throw shooting

Some tips from the article:

First, the engineers say that shooters should launch the shot with about three hertz of back spin. That translates to the ball making three complete backspinning revolutions before reaching the hoop. Back spin deadens the ball when it bounces off the rim or backboard, the engineers assert, giving the ball a better chance of settling through the net.
Where to aim? Tran and Silverberg say you should aim for the back of the rim, leaving close to 5 centimeters - about 2 inches - between the ball and the back of the rim. According to the simulations, aiming for the center of the basket decreases the probabilities of a successful shot by almost 3 percent.

The engineers say that the ball should be launched at 52 degrees to the horizontal. If you don’t have a protractor in your jersey, that means that the shot should, at the highest point in its arc to the basket, be less than 2 inches below the top of the backboard.
Free-throw shooters should also release the ball as high above the ground as possible, without adversely affecting the consistency of the shot; release the ball so it follows the imaginary line joining the player and the basket; and release the ball with a smooth body motion to get a consistent release speed.

“Our recommendations might make even the worst free-throw shooters - you know who you are, Shaquille O’Neal and Ben Wallace - break 60 percent from the free-throw line,” Silverberg says with tongue firmly in cheek. “A little bit of physics and a lot of practice can make everyone a better shooter from the free-throw line.”

Great Quote on Intelligence from Mindset

I think intelligence is something you have to work for ... it isn't just given to you. Most kids, if they're not sure of an answer, will not raise their hand to answer the question. But what I usually do is raise my hand, because if I'm wrong, then my mistake will be corrected. Or I will raise my hand and say, 'How would this be solved?' or 'I don't get this, can you help me?' Just by doing that I'm increasing my intelligence." -- 7th grade girl.