Freshmen Fermions

So this was the first week that we had quizzes in Physics 212 and I noticed something interesting. As the students placed their quizzes on the desk on their way out of the classroom, every single one of them oriented their quizzes the same way! All of them, across all three of my sections, placed them facing up!!

Now, the really scary part was that I found myself attempting to determine what the field they were interacting with was, and what the Hamiltonian that described the interaction was (obviously it has the same form as electron spins in a constant magnetic field). Furthermore, I really wondered how high the temperature in the room would need to be to cause a significant non-zero population of the students to orient their quizzes in the opposite 'quiz state'.

Apologies to any of them that stumble upon this. ;-)
-Tim

Darth Tater

This is just wrong on so many levels.

Cnn.com

-Tim

Delaying the Inevitable

Turns out that the Qual is not going to be tomorrow and Tuesday, as we were originally told. Instead, it's going to be next Monday and Tuesday, meaning I've just been given an extra week of wonderful stressing out about the exam.

I can't tell you how thrilled I am about it. Really. Thrilled.

It also means that everything I had thought I was finally going to get done next week is going to be postponed. I just can't seem to get anything done with this exam hanging over my head all the time. In the mean time, I've basically taken most of this weekend off from 'studying', although I have done some today (and will do more), not that I did anything else productive with that time off.

-Tim

The World Year of Physics

As I'm sure none of you know, 2005 has been declared the World Year of Physics. Basically, the idea is to motivate the physics community to participate in outreach and try to stir up as much public interest as possible.

The organizer's biggest fear is that it will pass just as quietly as the World Mathematical Year that no one even heard of.

-Tim

Do it yourself Roof Repair

Tamara and I decided that we needed to take advantage of the incredibly unseasonable weather of the last few days (it was sunny and 60 on New Year's Eve!) to survey and repair the damage to our roof. However, in order to do that, we needed to get ahold of a ladder. We ended up just going to Farm and Fleet and buying one with the theory that this would not be the only time we would need it. Since we needed to be able to drive it home in our car and to store it in our shed, we bought one of those super-folding-extendable ladders like the ones in the infommercials. It reaches up to 18 feet, supports 300 pounds and claims it can make 20 different shapes! It's very cool, even though it didn't come with a scaffold platform.

We finally got up on the roof and discovered that the damage wasn't nearly as bad as we had thought. Turns out that the branch didn't fully puncture the roof, it just broke one of the shingles. The whole shingle was still there, but there was a substantial horseshoe crack in it. The people at Lowe's were, once again, incredibly helpful and knowledgeable, we're really like that store. The manager of the roofing/building material section stopped taking inventory to come over and help us, and all we bought was a $2 tube of sealant! They said the sealant would get us through the winter at the very least, but we should look at it again before next year.

On the wedding front, we're making progress. Tamara has her dress and shoes, we finally arranged for a block of hotel rooms, and we just bought the plane tickets for the honeymoon.

Other than that, it's QUAL QUAL QUAL...

-Tim