I've been wondering how much I'd get paid by teaching semester courses at the local community college. Seems weird but they are not required to let you know more than the base amount per credit hour (for new instructors)
I got my contract today and to my surprise I'm getting $132.00 per credit hour more than the base. I should not be surprised since I have many years of teaching experience, but it was good to have it confirmed. With seven credit hours this semester, it gives an acceptable boost in income over a beginning instructor.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
LHC Set back - a poem
Read the following like the "Night before Christmas"
Twas the night before LHC start up , the tension was king
Not a proton was stirring, none flying around the ring
The magnets were placed in the ring with care
In hopes that the physicists soon would be there
The technicians were awake, not cozy in bed
While visions of Higgs particles danced in their heads
Joanna in her lab coat and mine in my lap
Were taking a respite from checking a magnets correct gap
...
It ran a few for a few days, when a magnet gave out
I sprang from my computer screen and gave an angry shout
Away to the ring, I went in a scurry
Checked all the monitors and shut it all down in a hurry
The hum gave way to a silence all around
Gave way to a chatter of what had been found
When what a thought to my wondering mind should appear
A "squelch" in the system brought all the fear
More rapid than eagles we all got to work
To test various theories it was acting like a jerk
Oh crap, oh damn, sh_t and f_ck
We need to get to work and hope for some luck
To the top of the ring, the top of the magnet
We scampered and checked every little gadget
As theories for a new particle fly
The physicists were throwing their hands in the sky
So to the white boards and computers they went on their way
Hours and hours of computations they spent, their moods not gay
As I punched the enter key and looked at my screen
Up popped the reason we all had not seen
It was all right there, clear as day
I knew it could be fixed, we'd figure a way
The others who had worked hard, looked over my back
as the director verified I wasn't a quack
His eyes -- how they twinkled! his smile quite merry!
His cheeks were getting rosy and his nose like a cherry
His pleasant smile took up his whole face
and he stroked his goatee with a measured pace
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth
as he looked at my result and checked piece after piece
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
that shook, when he typed like a bowlful of jelly
He was smart and keen, a right jolly old director
I laughed when I saw him, look at my answer
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
checked all my calculations; then turned with a jerk
And laying his down glasses and pinching his nose,
he pushed back his chair and slowly arose.
He sprang to his computer, and emailed our calculated guesses
that the failure was caused by internal mechanical stresses
But I heard him exclaim, as the last email was out of sight,
we'll be back on-line soon, so have a good-night.
"Always make new mistakes"
Twas the night before LHC start up , the tension was king
Not a proton was stirring, none flying around the ring
The magnets were placed in the ring with care
In hopes that the physicists soon would be there
The technicians were awake, not cozy in bed
While visions of Higgs particles danced in their heads
Joanna in her lab coat and mine in my lap
Were taking a respite from checking a magnets correct gap
...
It ran a few for a few days, when a magnet gave out
I sprang from my computer screen and gave an angry shout
Away to the ring, I went in a scurry
Checked all the monitors and shut it all down in a hurry
The hum gave way to a silence all around
Gave way to a chatter of what had been found
When what a thought to my wondering mind should appear
A "squelch" in the system brought all the fear
More rapid than eagles we all got to work
To test various theories it was acting like a jerk
Oh crap, oh damn, sh_t and f_ck
We need to get to work and hope for some luck
To the top of the ring, the top of the magnet
We scampered and checked every little gadget
As theories for a new particle fly
The physicists were throwing their hands in the sky
So to the white boards and computers they went on their way
Hours and hours of computations they spent, their moods not gay
As I punched the enter key and looked at my screen
Up popped the reason we all had not seen
It was all right there, clear as day
I knew it could be fixed, we'd figure a way
The others who had worked hard, looked over my back
as the director verified I wasn't a quack
His eyes -- how they twinkled! his smile quite merry!
His cheeks were getting rosy and his nose like a cherry
His pleasant smile took up his whole face
and he stroked his goatee with a measured pace
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth
as he looked at my result and checked piece after piece
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
that shook, when he typed like a bowlful of jelly
He was smart and keen, a right jolly old director
I laughed when I saw him, look at my answer
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
checked all my calculations; then turned with a jerk
And laying his down glasses and pinching his nose,
he pushed back his chair and slowly arose.
He sprang to his computer, and emailed our calculated guesses
that the failure was caused by internal mechanical stresses
But I heard him exclaim, as the last email was out of sight,
we'll be back on-line soon, so have a good-night.
"Always make new mistakes"
Monday, September 15, 2008
If the Auto Industry.......Microsoft
If the auto industry had developed technology like Microsoft, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash...twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over, close all windows, shut the car off, restart it, and reopen all windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive but would only run on five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed a hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash...twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over, close all windows, shut the car off, restart it, and reopen all windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive but would only run on five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed a hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
LHC Facts
* The £4.5 billion machine has a circumference of 27 km (17 miles) and lies an average of 100 metres (330 feet) under the ground, straddling French and Swiss territory.
* At full power, trillions of protons - subatomic particles - will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11,245 times a second. It is capable of achieving 600 million collisions every second.
* The machine counts as the world's largest fridge. All the magnets will be pre-cooled to -193.2°C (80 K) using 10,080 tons of liquid nitrogen, before they are filled with nearly 60 tons of liquid helium to bring them down to -271.3°C (1.9 K).
* The LHC is the emptiest place in the Solar System too. To avoid colliding with gas molecules inside the accelerator, the beams of particles travel in an ultra-high vacuum - the internal pressure of the LHC is 10-13 atmospheres, ten times less than the pressure on the Moon.
* When two beams of protons collide, they will generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the sun, concentrated within a miniscule space.
When the experiments get running at the LHC, the four great "eyes" of the machine start observing collisions, they will generate 15 million gigabytes of data every year, that is equivalent to one thousand times the information printed in the form of books annually.
* A network of around 80,000 computers worldwide is being readied for a deluge of data that could fill a stack of CDs more than 12 miles (20 kilometres) tall.
So in our spare time maybe we will schedule some time at the LHC (not!)
* At full power, trillions of protons - subatomic particles - will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11,245 times a second. It is capable of achieving 600 million collisions every second.
* The machine counts as the world's largest fridge. All the magnets will be pre-cooled to -193.2°C (80 K) using 10,080 tons of liquid nitrogen, before they are filled with nearly 60 tons of liquid helium to bring them down to -271.3°C (1.9 K).
* The LHC is the emptiest place in the Solar System too. To avoid colliding with gas molecules inside the accelerator, the beams of particles travel in an ultra-high vacuum - the internal pressure of the LHC is 10-13 atmospheres, ten times less than the pressure on the Moon.
* When two beams of protons collide, they will generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the sun, concentrated within a miniscule space.
When the experiments get running at the LHC, the four great "eyes" of the machine start observing collisions, they will generate 15 million gigabytes of data every year, that is equivalent to one thousand times the information printed in the form of books annually.
* A network of around 80,000 computers worldwide is being readied for a deluge of data that could fill a stack of CDs more than 12 miles (20 kilometres) tall.
So in our spare time maybe we will schedule some time at the LHC (not!)
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
The Large Hadron Collider will be turned on this Wednesday (9/10/08), with the first proton being shown down the collider.
There is no collision that will take place this Wednesday, as the start of the process will only have the machine running at 1/10 its full capacity.
Scientists are definitely on edge though, as many against turning on the Large Hadron Collider are making their voices heard.
CERN scientists have been receiving death threats, among other things.
The fear is that the collissions created by the Large Hadron Collider may create a black hole, and could result in the end of the world.
I do not think this will happen but other than being directly hit by an asteroid, CAN YOU THINK OF A BETTER WAY TO GO?
Go LHC!!!
(by the way, the title of the post can be positive or negative. No matter what, the world as we know it is probably about to change -- maybe only from a scientific perspective.)
There is no collision that will take place this Wednesday, as the start of the process will only have the machine running at 1/10 its full capacity.
Scientists are definitely on edge though, as many against turning on the Large Hadron Collider are making their voices heard.
CERN scientists have been receiving death threats, among other things.
The fear is that the collissions created by the Large Hadron Collider may create a black hole, and could result in the end of the world.
I do not think this will happen but other than being directly hit by an asteroid, CAN YOU THINK OF A BETTER WAY TO GO?
Go LHC!!!
(by the way, the title of the post can be positive or negative. No matter what, the world as we know it is probably about to change -- maybe only from a scientific perspective.)
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Rational and Irrational Numbers
We are all familiar with rational and irrational numbers. For example 5/4=1.25 is rational,
the square root of 2=1.41421356237309504880168872420... is irrational, 11/4=2.75 is rational, PI=3.1415926535... is irrational.
So here is my question for which I have not worked on a proof one way or another.
Are there ever two irrational numbers where one comes right after the other or is there always at least one rational number in between?
Similarly, are there ever two rational numbers right together or is there one or more irrational numbers in between?
Basically. If we could draw an actual number line with all the numbers, what would it look like?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The answer looks like NO. Thanks with a little help from my friends...
Is it always possible to find a rational number between any two irrational numbers.
Is it always possible to find an irrational number between anytwo irrational numbers.
The desired rational can be constructed by "truncating" the decimal expansion of the larger irrational at a certain point and then considering the average of the two rational numbers.
or for the other,
if the average of the two irrational numbers is rational, an irrational number satisfying the requirement is the average of one of the irrationals and the rational average of the two irrationals. The desired irrational between rational numbers can be found by adding a sufficiently small irrational number to the smaller rational number.
the square root of 2=1.41421356237309504880168872420... is irrational, 11/4=2.75 is rational, PI=3.1415926535... is irrational.
So here is my question for which I have not worked on a proof one way or another.
Are there ever two irrational numbers where one comes right after the other or is there always at least one rational number in between?
Similarly, are there ever two rational numbers right together or is there one or more irrational numbers in between?
Basically. If we could draw an actual number line with all the numbers, what would it look like?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The answer looks like NO. Thanks with a little help from my friends...
Is it always possible to find a rational number between any two irrational numbers.
Is it always possible to find an irrational number between anytwo irrational numbers.
The desired rational can be constructed by "truncating" the decimal expansion of the larger irrational at a certain point and then considering the average of the two rational numbers.
or for the other,
if the average of the two irrational numbers is rational, an irrational number satisfying the requirement is the average of one of the irrationals and the rational average of the two irrationals. The desired irrational between rational numbers can be found by adding a sufficiently small irrational number to the smaller rational number.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
