Great Graphic Of "True" Global Warming; Idle Rambling On Physics

RedBull provides the graphic.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

In my junior year in high school, I was introduced to two things that stuck with me throughout life:

• how to make chemistry "fun" for students
• the periodic table

Mr Ceglowski was my chemistry instructor, one of many wonderful teachers I had in Williston, starting with my second grade teacher, whom I remember well. I do not remember my first grade teacher. We attended first grade in the Williston High School, but starting in second grade we moved over to Wilkinson Elementary. I could run home from Wilkinson in about ten minutes, under the 15-minute requirement for "nuclear attack" exercises. Nowadays, children learn to get under their desks when the tornado sirens go off; in the 1950's we ran home to our "fallout shelters" in anticipation of a nuclear attack from the USSR.

But I digress.

I was talking about "fun" in chemistry class. Mr Ceglowski would bring up a huge, CRT television during the World Series. I say "up" because his chemistry room was on the second floor on the north side of the building, windows overlooking the football field. That must have 1967. I don't recall the teams.

According to wiki, The 1967 World Series matched the St. Louis Cardinals against the Boston Red Sox in a rematch of the 1946 World Series, with the Cardinals winning in seven games for their second championship in four years and their eighth overall. The Series was played from October 4 to October 12 in Fenway Park and Busch Memorial Stadium. [There is some serendipity, coincidence, or irony noting that two of the three loves of my life called Boston and St Louis home; one of the three was a huge St Louis fan.]

The second thing I took away from Mr Ceglowski was knowledge of the periodic table and "shells." He obviously took a lot of continuing education courses in chemistry and physics to stay abreast of advances.

Ever since I've been trying to keep up with physics in a very general sort of way. It is very, very difficult but lots of fun.

How far have we come? Two weeks ago I introduced our ten-year-old granddaughter to the "Standard Model" -- the "periodic table" for quarks, leptons, and bosons. I don't know when the current model was standardized, but it's taken a lot of years to put it together, and now it seems so "simple."

I've never understood the "chronology" of the development of quantum. I read physics books specifically to see if I can put the story together. As of one month ago, the best I had come across was Louisa Gilder's The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn.

But I think I found one better: Ray Monk's biography of Robert Oppenheimer, c. 2012. It appears the chapter on "Cambridge" will put the history of the development of quantum together very nicely.

Robert Oppenheimer arrived at Cambridge in 1925 just as quantum was "exploding." It reminds me a lot of James Watson arriving at the same university some years later just as scientists were figuring out DNA. Both Oppenheimer and Watson, at very young ages, happened to be in the right place at the right time.