1. Monday
1/12/15
a. Woke
up after staying up until 2 AM finishing RA application. Operating on 6 hours
of sleep, ate a quick breakfast at the 8 and headed to physics. We talked about
electric potential field formulas.
i. Garcia
did an interesting demonstration that involved charging a sphere; ribbons
radiated from the sphere along electric field lines. Then he approached the
sphere with the tips of a stick, grounded in the middle, that had a large metal
ball on one end and a sharp metal point on the other. When he brought the metal
ball close to the sphere, the ribbons near the ball drooped slightly; the other
ribbons were unaffected. When he approached the charged sphere with the tip
end, all the ribbons on the ball drooped visibly. I think the reason for the
difference is that the tip became strongly positively charged, so the sphere
charge leapt to the tip, whereas the ball, having more area to spread out a
charge difference, became less positively charged and could not attract charge
strongly enough for it to spark through the air. It just became positive enough
to weaken the field near it that was affecting the ribbons.
b. Worked
on essay for cow class in SPS.
c. Listened
to lunchbox seminar. I learned a few interesting things, but much of this
lecture was high-level enough, without good visual metaphors, that I got lost
in the speaker’s tricky Chinese accent.
d. Went
to teaching class. I postulated hypothetical software that basically emulated
reality, but with the messy bits abstracted out so that students could discover
models more easily. This sparked a lot of discussion—some thought it dangerous
to put this much control in the software designer’s hands, while others thought
people using the software could lose touch with reality (I disagree)
e. Went
back to dorm. The sky was blue and I needed to get outside, so I decided to
take a run. I discovered an awesome botanical garden very close to the UW, with
trails that run along the water and through brambled wilderness like at
Hovander Park. I also explored a very affluent neighborhood (maybe where the
professors live) along the lake.
f. Showered
and settled down to work on cow class essay.
g. Ate
dinner with Leah, Sophia, Jade, Emily. They were talking about possible things
to do for Emily’s birthday and frat parties they had attended. Interesting.
h. Returned
to dorm. Worked on essay and watched the end of the Ohio State v. Oregon
championship. Wow—good job Ohio State!
i. Finished
essay, went down for Rick’s. Ate a ridiculously large cookies n’ cream Sammy
while reading the first chapter of Interface, a Neal Stephenson book I grabbed
online through the Seattle Public Library.
j.
Wrote log and went to bed.
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