UW Update Friday Feb. 20

1.     UW Update Friday Feb. 20

a.     Woke up at 5:50, registered for classes for next quarter when the registration came online at 6:00, then went back to bed. Classes for next quarter:

                                                 i.     Honors Humanities: Maker and DIY Movements (we’ll actually get to make some stuff in the class)

                                               ii.     Matrix Algebra (3 credits) (prereq for the second-year honors calc series which I may want to take next year)

                                              iii.     Physics 123B (waves, quantum, and thermodynamics! Yay!)

                                              iv.     Homo Mysterious (1credit) (This psychology professor wrote a book on unsolved evolutionary mysteries and wants students to debate it with him, and the book got a good review from Steven Pinker, so it should be interesting)

                                               v.     University Singers (1credit) (I wanted to take Glee Club again, but it conflicts with the Maker class, so I’m taking a different choir class taught by the same awesome professor)

b.     Woke up again, headed straight to physics. We talked about the differences between three different ways to measure the time between two events: coordinate time (in a given inertial (non-accelerated) reference frame), proprietary time (“proprietary” to a given clock that is present at both events) and the frame-independent spacetime interval, which is the proprietary time for a clock that moves at constant velocity between the events (i.e. is inertial), and is also the coordinate time for a reference frame such that the same clock in the frame is present at both events. These different types of times have interesting relations between them, which I’m finally starting to understand.

c.      Walked back to dorm and read for a couple hours. I have about 300 pages of reading to do over the weekend. The book I read this morning is called “Creatures of Empire” and it talks about the role cattle played in early colonial America and the complex ways domesticated animals affected relationships between colonists and Native Americans, who had wildly different perspectives on animals.

d.     Went to lunch at the HUB: more reading.

e.     Returned to dorm and did some physics hw.

f.      Went to the gym and played basketball for two hours. Very fun, although my instincts are still not up to par, since I haven’t played very often this quarter.

g.     Went back to the dorm and read in the lounge. Sang Happy Birthday to Nicholas. Nicholas left with a group of friends to grab Chinese food and play poker; the group was getting too big for the restaurant (or later, the frat where they played poker) to accommodate, so August and I, on the fringes of Nicholas’s friendship, stayed behind.

h.     Grabbed dinner at the 8 with Kate and Mel, a floormate I hadn’t talked with before but who is interested in computer science and statistics. We had a good conversation.

i.       Did some more reading, Skyped with family.

j.       Played some Ping-Pong with Donovan, did yet more reading, chatted a bit with Donovan and then with Eleanor, Brianna, and August, then wrote this log, took a walk and listened to the end of Serial, and went to bed.