Whoa.

A summer research position in Vancouver is now official out of the pipe-dream category and firmly in the realm of possibility.

The last couple weeks or so I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about people’s future prospects. Grad schools offering huge stipends, big fancy engineering jobs, law school acceptances, and so on. Even though I have another year before graduating, meaning I don’t have any grad school acceptances or rejections to tally up, all of it made me feel a bit jealous. Like everybody else has been getting their life together except me.

Now yes, this is only a summer position on an as of yet unspecified research project, and the decision about whether I can accept it or not has yet to be made, but it sure feels good to be wanted.

Once upon a time, as little as two years ago, I would sit at home with my pencil, paper, and textbook, and actually get some work done. Somewhere in 2004, that particular work skill ran away and has yet to return. Since then I’ve been working on a new routine for working on my assignments.

The library itself tends to be too quiet and intense for me to concentrate. Listening to music helps, but generally I start listening intently to the lyrics (or just an instrumental melody) and forget all about the differential equation waiting to be solved.

Study rooms, such as the one in the Physics building, are better in that they allow some talking and even discussion with other people who might be able to help. But I still find this lacking. The general state of the physics study lounge may not be as intense as the library, but it is still only occasional perturbations from this ground state that make it any more bearable.

The idea study environment is one with a nice level of background noise, but not so specific that I can focus on one source. Listening to some music about a room of chatter is perfect, since the regular melodies blend with the ear-drawing conversations into a blurry white noise. Though I could use the group study floor in the Schulich Library, the second requirement—something to snack or sip on—rules that out. A large workspace for my notes, books, and papers puts the final nail in the coffin, putting the numerous Montreal coffee shops and their intimate little tables firmly in the category of impracticality.

The old solution was Redpath’s Info Cafe, where Tim Horton’s sissy cappuccino flowed and two people could share a big round table with plenty of room for a plethora of educational paper products. Unfortunately, as of late, the dipping temperatures has put indoor space at a premium, and the loss of two of the big tables makes the supply scarce.

So, for the protection of both my weekly budget and my internal body temperature, I’m attempting a switch to the old ways. I will make my tea at home, I will put on music at a low enough volume that I can hear it but not sing along, and I will settle into to making use of the whole 8 feet of my desk.

I guess I already have everything I need right here. Maybe my quest for a perfect workspace has always just been a quest for someplace that felt like home.

Jstor.org seach query: argument against a right to privacy based on philosophical considerations which have become important in the last decade with a particular emphasis on the underlying moral theory

Search results: 0

Dang. Too specific, maybe? Why don’t any other philosophers agree with my position? Now I have to argue for it all by myself.

There’s something about this book that looks very inviting. It’s got a nice velvety matte burgandy cover, simple text layout, and a artistic phographic inset right in the middle. I see this book and I think it will be filled with similar artistic renderings, bright and colourful, illustrating all the wonders of the universe, like an art history of cosmology. But alas, upon opening it, we see the same old stuff from every one of my plain cover physics and math textbooks:

I suppose I just built myself up for disappointment. But there’s something deeper doing on here. I think everybody, at some point or another, gets a semester or at least one class in their university careers where everything starts being woven together. For me I suddenly saw complex variables being applied in signal processing, differential equations solving mechanics problems, mechanics in quantum physics, quantum physics explaining particle behavior, and looking at particles in special relativity. Suddenly it was obvious that all these classes were talking about the same thing. Here it happens again, except this time the connection is of a much different nature.

It is this: The page above, in my General Relativity textbook, covers the same material as a textbook in one of my philosophy classes, even with the same terminology. I always said there was a connection between physics and philosophy.

Such thoughts always bring me to think about where I want to take my studies after undergrad. I still can’t decide if I like philosophy because it’s just one step higher in abstraction than cosmology (one step too far, say some), or if I like cosmology because it’s one of the areas of physics that has the most philosophical implications. I tell people that I want to study “Philosophy and Physics” but not “Philosophy of Physics”. Unfortunately there are many graduate programs in the latter but only a couple of the former.

But what would a program in “Philosophy and Physics” be, anyway? Today I realised what was lacking about the phrase, and refined it. What I’m really interested in, what’s been my motivation all along is this: The Philosophical Consequences of Physics. In particular, the philosophical consequences of cosmology. Now all I have to do is find a graduate program for it.

A part of me was sure that I was simply going crazy.

I was sitting deep in the bowels of the Leacock building, at the front of the cavernous Room 132, one of (if not the) largest lecture theatre on campus.

“I’m sure,” said one half of my brain, “that I am indoors right now.”

“Nay, we must be outdoors” said the other half, “for I can clearly hear that it’s raining right here around me.”

And it was true. I was sure I could hear it raining in the room. Best not to dwell upon it, I thought. Far better to pay attention to the class. The prof was throwing out a few depressingly canonical moral dilemmas for us. Roughly:

Five people are tied to train tracks with no hope of escape. A train is barrelling down on them, meaning they will most assuredly die. However, you have the power to flip a switch and divert the train onto a different track, where only one person is tied. Do you sacrifice the one to save five? What if you can’t divert the train, but rather must throw something heavy in front of the train to stop it? Unfortunately, the only heavy thing you have around is a sumo wrestler. Should you throw him in front of the train to save the five?

My only response was, “What would Jack Bauer do?” The answer, of course, depends on who knows where the bomb is.

Regardless, it was still raining. With the lecture material largely trivial at this stage in the game, I focused everything on the source of that pitter patter of rain. It came to me rather quickly then.

Laptops.

More to the point, keyboards.

Dozens upon dozens of keyboards.

Each little keystroke on those little laptop keys would otherwise be unnoticeable in such a large room, just a proverbial pin dropping. But dozens of people dropping hundreds of pins a minute becomes a quiet cacophony at the edge of perception. It’s there just below the whispering and lecturing, drilling away at my consciousness. Pitter patter, pitter patter.

I don’t know whether to blame “kids today” for their fancy technology or “artsie fartsies” for their need to express notes in actual sentences rather than simple equations, but if I start to go mad in a few weeks time, showing signs of schizophrenia, and freaking out at the sound of someone typing, it’s this class that did it.

… that I’ll mention this negative one twelfth business. From my string theory final exam this afternoon:

1. (g) What is the physical significance of the sum 1+2+3+…, and how can it be evaluated? What does it evaluate to?

I must have known it was coming somehow. Who ever said blogging isn’t good for my studies? I totally nailed that exam today. Where by “totally nailed” I mean “at least passed”, but that’s pretty good for this class.

I was worried I was going to sleep in today, or be really tired all afternoon, after having some trouble getting to sleep last night. I just lay in bed for at least a couple hours. Eventually my craving for a big glass of milk grew too great and I had to get out of bed. And of course once I was in the kitchen I had to have a cookie, and then make some tea as well.

Before long I was settled onto the couch watching i heart huckabees. There was a strange connection between that and my string theory studies, so I like to think the movie ended up putting things in a nice perspective and helped me pass. It’s all about the blanket. It’s all about space-filling D25-branes and their excitation modes. One and the same, oh baby yeah.

Monday morning, 10:25. Intro to Deductive Logic. Professor Carson has told us what to expect on the exam, where to pick up our assignments, and tied up all the loose ends in the course material. As if finishing a thirteen week stage show, the auditorium full of students give her a round of applause which she modestly acknowledges.

Tuesday morning, 9:50. String Theory. Professor Cline has finished his own thirteen week performance by introducing the “brane action”. The last line in my notes reads “Branes cannot go faster than light”, next to an equation that says the same thing in mathematical terms (dx^a/dt squared less than one, for those interested). The last assignments are laid out to be picked up and class is over, but there is no applause for the end of a physics class.

Tuesday afternoon, 13:05. Electromagnetic Waves. Professor Lovejoy finished teaching 45 minutes prior, and the floor has been passed on to a group of students to make a presentation. Time is short, so we rush through each of the questions. Roughly two minutes is given to the topic of a particle starting to move before you start to move it. We didn’t even get a chance to start talking about how a particle in a gravitational field radiates energy even though you don’t give it any to radiate. It doesn’t matter—the few people that stayed until the end of class aren’t paying attention anyway. Being pushed out by the next class I don’t know if anybody heard the last things the Professor was saying, but I’m sure if it was important we’ll hear it in the next electromagnetism class.

That’s the way it goes in the physics department. No class is ever really finished, since there’s always another one to continue on. Themodynamics was followed by Statistical Mechanics, which is followed again by Advanced Stat Mech, and probably further still by graduate school classes. Within one semester there is no sense of wonder. There may be a few plot twists along the way as we find that one of Newton’s Laws is violated, or that a particle might have a negative mass, but there is no climax. No denouement.

Now, Professor Bisson, he knew how to take his class—the topic was human evolution—and make a story out of it. His last lecture came back full circle to touch on the things he had told us on the first day and wrapped everything up nicely. It’s more important in an Arts class, I suppose, where each class tends to be more of a little unit on its own, with things in common to other classes but always with a difference scope and perspective. On the last page of my notes I have written “We are unique, in that we are the only large mammal to cover such a huge range and remain a single species.” No equation needed. That was a lecture that deserved applause.

My String Theory textbook, by Barton Zwiebach, started very well with an introduction to the topic, including its motivations, its current status, and the possibility of experimental tests. There were no equations to look at, only a qualitative summary of what our goals in the book were and why we were bothering at all. However, 543 pages later, at the end of the last chapter, we find this less than satisfying conclusion:

Once this is proven, one can finally show that G’ coincides with G. This means that S and T generate the full modular group (see Problem 23.6). It also follows that F_o is a fundamental domain for the modular group.

Nice to know, I suppose, for the context of that chapter. But is there no final word? No wrapping up of our wonderful adventure together? Didn’t our three painful months together mean anything to you, Barton!? You think you can just brush it off, teasing me by telling me what F_o can be, without any thought or care of what our separation means. No, Barton, it’s too late. Go back to your modular groups. I just wanted to say goodbye, that’s all.

My bookbag is full of my Electromagnetism notes, ready to be studied. I have a duffle bag full of gym clothes waiting to be worked out in. There’s a kitchen full of dishes that’s been sitting there patiently for a longer length of time than is sanitary, I’m sure. There isn’t even anybody online to chat with or good television to distract me, but I’m still not getting anything done! This is a typical exam period so far.

I should, at least, make an effort to leave my apartment. Sure, I’ll have to don layers upon layers and trudge through snowy sidewalks to get anywhere, but I actually enjoy a good walk in the snow. My study habits lately involve just as much, making my way to the library where I get a coffee in the Tim Hortons, mucking around in 26 dimensional spacetime for an hour or two, and then making my way back home, where I usually have another hot cup of something. I can’t go outside at this time of year without coming inside to a hot cup of something. Tea, hot chocolate, apple cider, maple milk, whatever. Maybe I should have another hot cup of something before I go, to give me some motivation.

Ok ok, enough procrastination. To the library I go. The gym can wait until tomorrow, since by the time I’m done at the library I’ll have a thawed pork chop waiting for me back here at home. And here I thought thermodynamics would stop controlling my life once I passed that class.

I really enjoyed my trip to the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference in Fredericton last weekend, and I think I know exactly why.

The format was mostly a series of 15 minute talks by undergrad students on research they’ve been doing. Topics were widely varried, from the future of consciousness to gravitational lensing to quantum computer to optimizing electronic circuits. While there was always a choice of talks to go to, I mostly stuck to the interesting stuff, i.e. astrophysics. But that’s just me.

One of the things I liked the most was actually talking about physics with people who could get excited about physics. Usually it’s just me talking about physics to people who couldn’t care less about physics. You biology friends of mine are bringing me down!

So I find I really enjoy talking about physics, but not so much churning through the equations. It’s always the math that brings me down in my classes. I enjoy the lab projects I’ve done since, even though they have a lot of theory behind them, there’s always more to it than just writing out equations. There’s acutally something physical we’re looking at.

After forty minutes of working out some equations, I always love to hear the prof say, “That’s the math, but what’s the physics?” Although a theory without a mathematical description is weak at best, a theory without a description of what’s actually happening means nothing. A mathematical description doesn’t really describe anything.

So at CUPC, where there was lots of talk about physics, I had a great time. The talks that focused on what the actual problem was and a summary of results rather than the nitty gritty of grinding out a solution were the best. I wonder if I can find a grad program that doesn’t require solving equations.

What a rookie mistake. I had a midterm this morning at 9:30 AM, so I set my alarm for 7:30 to give me plenty of time to sleep in a bit, wake up, eat a good breakfast, and mosey my way down to the Otto Maass building. You can imagine my surprise when I woke up at 10:32, just a couple minutes after the midterm ended.

My alarm was set for 7:30 PM. You’d think in my fourth year I’d know better.

So now I have about five hours left before the three hour String Theory midterm tonight. You’d think I would have started studying right after breakfast but I’ve just been goofing off for a couple hours instead. In fact I’m thinking I could redesign the look of the website…

No! Ok, the plan is I’m going to watch Degrassi, then go to the library. No lollygagging around. No checking email before I go. No doing dishes just because. My bookbag is already packed, even.

What are the chances of that, I wonder.