What is IT?

Newton did IT while the apple fell from the tree.
Pascal did IT under pressure.
Hertz did IT frequently.
Faraday did IT while rotating.
Maxwell did IT under magnetism and electricity.
Boltzmann did IT randomly.
Thompson did IT while shooting particles.
Rutherford did IT with an atomic model.
Bohr did IT excitedly.
Heisenberg did IT abstractly.
Schrodinger did IT realistically.
Pauli did IT but excluded his friends.
Feynmann did IT jokingly.

Weakling. I gave in to my fears, I surrendered to my desires. I tell myself no, but yet I cannot control it. Failed in the test of wills. Rarr..I must not give in..I must not give in. Train myself in my mind I must.
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Its funny how decisions made a long time ago come back to haunt you with a vengeance. Future activities all decided by past decisions. One wrong move, you lose the game devastatingly.
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On happier sidenote, floorball is FUN! Even though it leaves me completely drained out physically after it. Haha here is something that I can do better than in soccer I think. Though I feel that the match that we lost to the IP was not exactly in taste. We did not lose gloriusly. We lost because the judge felt pressured by all the arguments from the IP side. I still don't see how they could have claimed that point though. The bloody net is inelastic, any ball that went in would have been caught inside it. Yet the ball bounced out with all the hallmarks of an elastic collision. Such a collision could have only occured if it hit the rock solid sides of the goalpost. Bloody hell.

But still I liked badminton the most. Its good that our class guys have warmed up to this game.

We contemplate whether we can are ever free. I think it has extremely strong correlation to randomness. Think about it, predictability makes one think that everything has been predestined, that is, all the events were afore-decided by a Supreme Being. Whereas non-predictability or randomness is what defines choices. Surprised to hear choices are what define randomness? Perhaps you are skeptical that the outcome of a coin toss, a throw of the dice is decided by choices. Well, yes, the coin toss and the throw of the dice are not controlled by choices, but that is because these events are not completely random. In fact, if you could had information of the conditions such as air flow, force of throw, shape of dice/coin, angular momentum, angle of force application, you could theoretically calculate exactly how the coin would spin, and how exactly in would land. In other words, if you knew enough information, you could actually calculate the outcome of coin toss. In other words, the outcome of the coin toss is no longer random. It is predictable. The only reason why it appears random to us is because no one alive or dead has been able to calculate this. Because so many minute factors are involved in the physics of the flight of the coin, there would be so many calculations involved that even the fastest supercomputer on Earth would blow up.

On the contrary to what other people think, I believe choices truly defines a random outcome. Consider 2 piles of carrots that are equidistant to a donkey, one on his left, the other on his right. The donkey could either choose the pile on his left, or choose the pile on his right. Both piles are equally tasty to him, and hence he has no extra incentive to favour any pile over the other. So we set up this situation and we observe that the donkey chose the left one. In this case, the outcome will be truly unpredictable, because it is up to the donkey to make a choice. This test would be even more reliable than a coin toss for randomness. If we set up the situation again, the donkey could have chosen the right one this time. One could conceivably conduct this a hundred times, or a million times and still cannot predict accurately the next outcome.

That is of course assuming that the donkey has no directional favourite. And so we proceed to define a free choice. Because our choices are most of time affected by factors such as emotions, desire, and personal purposes, we are no longer unpredictable. We become predictable. I could predict with almost 100% accuracy if I whack kyan hard on the head, she would hit back with 3 times the force. We know she has the choice of either not hitting me or hitting me. But we already know what is her choice because, her choice in this case is coloured by her emotions. Revenge or just irritation in this case.

And so we discover that we are actually imprisoned by our emotions. We are no longer free under influence of our emotions and we are easily manipulated by other people. Though we continue to make choices, our choices are already predetermined. Slaves, in other words, to our fears and desires.

We come at last to defining free choice. Free choice is only possible when we free ourselves from our fears, our desires and our personal purposes. We are spontaneous when we make free choices because the outcome is random. No one will then able limit us, for they cannot predict what comes next.

Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

Today, the class had a wonderful class outing..the kind that we have not seen for a a very long while. It was at least heartening to see the class getting to gather like this.. Went to watch "Click" at old place, orchard cineleisure. Wonderful show, in my opinion. You laugh your way through the show, but at the end of the show, you find that the director of the movie have been laughing at you all along. This show is similar to the situation where God gives you infinite riches, and asks you what do you want to do with it. In this case, God gives you infinite control of time, and asks you to make your choice on how you want to use this power. The character in the story chooses to fast forward less enjoyable parts of his life. In doing so, he misses some of the most integral parts of life. He fast forwards for the most part of his life, till in the end nearing his death, he realises that he have missed half of his life.

When you have everything in life, the result does not matter anymore, only the process matter. Imagine you have godlike powers; initially you would use this to great effect to achieve results instantly. One snap of fingers, gold appears in front of you. Another snap of fingers, food and luxury appears in front of you. True, you would enjoy this initially. But after while you would get tired of this. There would be no meaning in life this way. In a sense, when you have godlike powers, you would value the process more. The process of getting the result.

Perhaps we are starting to realise that what is the meaning of education. More genereally, what is the meaning of life then. Recently I myself have begun to lose confidence in what I am learning. People gain knowledge in view of a better future. But once you gain enough knowledge, you see it is much better off not to know anything, "Ignorance is bliss". You begin to doubt what you are learning. But the answer to this seeming paradox, is that what matters is not the result, but the process. The process of learning. It may have been enjoyable, it may not have. You might have sweated and cried over countless exams. You might have gained innumerable friends during the process. You could have picked up other skills. Why bother about the results? You have enjoyed yourself in the process, and that is all that matters.

Finally, a proper class outing for the new S18..

Ahaha, I heard this marvelous problem that I want to include here for everyone's laughter, and to remind that physics is not some useless subject, but a subject about common sense.

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer."
The student had answered: "Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."
I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit since he had answered the question completely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit was given, it could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at answering the question I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the student did.
I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute he dashed off his answer which read:
"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula S = ½at², calculate the height of the building.
At this point I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit.
In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said he had many other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Oh yes," said the student. "There are a great many ways of getting the height of a tall building with a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer and the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building and by the use of a simple proportion, determine the height of the building."
"Fine," I asked. "And the others?"
"Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement method that you will like. In this method you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method."
"Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of 'g' at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference of the two values of `g' the height of the building can be calculated."
Finally, he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the problem. "Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: "Mr. Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer."
At this point I asked the student if he really did know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think, using the "scientific method," and to explore the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of the subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of America.

Hmm..We should of course ponder too about such situations where the answer is technically correct, but is not what the examiner wanted.