My Journey Through Physics - Part 12

We had a quiz last Tuesday. I did well, except I made some very silly mistakes. I got 69/75. 3 of the points I got off were a real 3 points I should have gotten off, and the other 3 were made up of silly mistakes. I actually love my silly mistakes, they make me smile. r^2! I forgot to square the r.

In lecture on the 26th we talked about Lenz's Law, transformers, and alternating current. We went over 3 different version of Lenz's Law because the professor said the first time he taught Lenz's Law he really didn't have a good idea of what it was exactly. The "best version" he gave us was "Any magnetically induced current opposes the magnetic effect that induced it." The actual law says "Given a magnetically induced voltage, the corresponding induced current is such that is opposes the change in magnetic flux that induced it." The "best version" makes it more clear, but I understood what the law said originally. It made sense to me.

On the 28th we had the lab event. The lab event involved testing the Thin Lens Equation. We also had to draw ray diagrams. The lab was really fun, but it was hard to work with my group. They were having a really hard time with the ray diagrams. One time, while I was sort of frustrated with my group, I went out to have a cigarette. I smoke it really fast, and walk back inside. A guy in the alcove right by the door says to me "I've never seen someone smoke a cigarette that fast. That was awesome." I laughed and thanked him. It was later suggested to me that I should have told him it was a non-filtered cigarette. I should have.

I had to leave to catch the bus after the lab event, but it was before my group was done. We were supposed to get our quiz back as soon as we turn in the lab event, but the professor gave me mine early because I had to catch the bus. He handed it to me in a folder so no one would see that I got it back early.

In lecture yesterday, we talked about Maxwell's Equations and electromagnetic waves. We discussed the structure of electromagnetic waves, the electromagnetic spectrum, and phenomena of light. With the phenomena of light we talked about reflection, refraction (including Snell's Law), defraction, dispersion, total internal reflection, Doppler Effect, Wien's Law, atomic spectra, and polarization. He did some very neat demonstrations. I really like the stuff on electromagnetism. I find it very interesting.

We're going to be getting into modern physics next. Relativity, quantum mechanics, and atomic and nuclear physics. I'm really excited for that.

I've gotten really into The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I just finished the second book. The only thing that bothers me about it is that Stephen King seems to think that schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder are the same thing. They are both very different beasts. Other than that, the books are really good. I'm borrowing the 3rd book from Ryan.

I had a crazy social weekend last weekend. Saturday night I hung out with my friend Max, and then Monday morning I hung out with Ryan and went disc golfing. Then, Monday night, I hung out with my friend Evan and a few other people because it was his birthday. Now, that might not seem too ridiculous to some people who see friends all the time, but normally I don't get time to hang out with people. My homework this weekend was really easy so I had the time. Even though I was disappointed in the homework, it was nice to have some time to see friends.

When I went disc golfing on Monday I did pretty well. We went to Kensington and I got 22 over par. It's a hard course, so 22 isn't bad. I was told by Ryan that I did really well for my 5th time out. I trust his opinion since he disc golfs all the time and has been for a while.

I'm going to go get some homework done now. I can do all the way up to chapter 24 in the homework in Physics II, so I'm going to go get that done.