Physics rocks. Today's physics adrenaline rush lasted long into French class, where I could barely concentrate on Claude Chabrol with my head lost in carbon paper and shiny ball bearings. Never had I been as pumped as with this Hitting the Bulls-eye lab.
The target of our projectile launchers was a 3 centimeter strip taped onto the linoleum floor. Before reaching this landing strip however, our ball bearing had to first arc through the air and pass a 10 sq cm hole. Only then could it land to crossed fingers and held breaths, hopefully within that strip. With some nifty finagling and not-so-clever math tricks, we tickled our calculators into producing the correct numbers.
To chart my emotional well-being during physics lab, I'd use the graph y= cos x: we begin at a peak of excitement, plunge to the minimum value somewhere around 3.14, and then slowly claw our up through hairy equations and crooked rulers until we reach that emotional high water of launch time. That pi mark represents the time when we were hopefully lost in the quagmire. Only through playing the "dumb girls in science card" did we get McClung to show that we could in fact change our projectile launcher to zero initial height. But after that, the sudden breakthrough sparked a torrent of calculator punching, where more progress was made in 10 minutes than the entire previous 50 minutes.
It sounds really kind of cheesy, but it's moments like these that remind me of college essays. For a moment, I think I finally understood the sweet taste of teamwork and success.
Yea, but physics. I don't often give much thought to the male/female disparity so decried by educators, but it is ridiculous in higher level classes. AP French only has 2 guys out of 20, and our physics class is 20 guys to 8 girls. I found out that Sue, Steff, and Mary are all considering dropping physics, which made me really sad. Not only will there be serious testosterone overload in 3/4 Physics, but if these are Asian girls--an especially resilient breed in math and science. How does this bode?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I'm studying Hamlet too. On thursday, I was made to read his "To be, or not to be" monologue. Needless to say, I bastardised it.
I am not dropping physics; it is dropping me. XD
Jk, don't sweat it Jinz-cakes! By the way, you forgot "LASSIE!"
Oh Jinzzy, don't hate me, I love you! =***(
Post a Comment