My Journey Through Physics - Part 6

I had my first day of Physics II yesterday.

We began by discussing circuits. I was pleased because in high school we took these placement tests to determine what sort of classes we should be in. I ended up in engineering classes. He wrote a schematic on the board and I'm like "Hey, I remember that!" So I'm pleased that this may be stuff I remember.

We talked about series circuits, parallel circuits, and combination circuits.

In engineering classes we did pneumatics, hydraulics, and electricity. We had to draw schematics and connect everything up on boards we had in class.

If I remember all this stuff from high school, maybe I'll do awesome in Physics II.

Looks like we're going to have another group project in Physics II. It's the "Gadget Project." We have to create some form of gadget that uses information learned in Physics II. I'm not sure what we should do yet. But then again, we don't even have our groups yet. We decide that in lab on Thursday.

I got my final back from Physics I. I did make a lot of silly mistakes, but otherwise I did well. When the professor handed it back to me, he reassured me that I did well. I don't think I did, I think those silly mistakes could have been avoided, but he seems to think I did. And I saw some of the other grades on the final, so in comparison I did do well.

On the final, Thaddeus lost his 9th life. The professor actually kept track! He mentioned it in class yesterday. I was surprised he kept tabs on how many times we had actually killed my cat. He then apologized for Thaddeus.

The smiley faces I draw on the board every day in class manage to stay up there all through class every time. I feel happy every time it happens. It makes me feel like I'm special.

I thanked my professor for all he does for me. He really goes out of his way to make me feel important and that means a lot to me.

Tomorrow we have lab. I'm excited about it. I love lab. We're doing Experiment 26, "Using Meters". We'll have to use ohmmeters, ammeters, and voltmeters. I've used these things before in high school. I should breeze through it.

I started a self portrait.

It's me with some of my hallucinations in the background. It's far from done, but here it is so far.

So I'm excited, thoroughly, for Physics II. The topics we're covering are electrostatics, electric force, current, circuits, magnetism, electromagnetic induction, geometrical and wave optics, modern physics (relativity, quantum mechanics, and atomic and nuclear physics), particle physics and astrophysics (time permitting.) I really hope we get to particle physics and astrophysics! I really hope.

There's a story I should share, speaking of particle physics.

In 8th grade I traveled to China for a field trip. My Chinese class went. While we were visiting an old Chinese mansion, we saw an older couple also touring the mansion. After we left the mansion, we were traveling, and we decided to make a detour to a town to go to the market. While we made this unscheduled stop, we saw that same couple again. My father went up to talk to them. I was still really into physics at that age. Turns out, the man in the couple was a particle physicist. I thought that way beyond awesome, and it was weird that we had run into them again. It was just an odd coincidence, and I sort of took it as a sign that I should really consider pursuing physics.

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July. I wasn't really in the mood. I know it's meant to celebrate our independence, and that's good and all, but I can't really celebrate patriotically. I feel like celebrating a country that's failing miserably just really isn't in me. But I liked blowing up fireworks, even though I managed to burn myself pretty well.

Now I'm going to watch my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone - "Time Enough at Last".