They Take Their Sports Seriously In Texas -- May 29, 2019

Updates

June 4, 2019: this update --

 

Original Post

 
Graduate of the ISD that our granddaughters attended when the family first moved to Texas:

He is mentioned at this wiki site:  he is the son of a Bobby Witt, a former MLB pitcher. At the wiki site:

As of April 2015, Witt lives in Colleyville, Texas, with his wife and four children and is now a player agent. His son, Bobby Witt Jr., is the top ranked prospect by Perfect Game in the Class of 2019[and is committed to play college baseball at the University of Oklahoma. 

OU signee Bobby Witt Jr. was named the 2019 Gatorade National High School Baseball Player of the Year, the Gatorade Player of the Year program announced Wednesday. Witt committed to play baseball at Oklahoma in June 2017, but is a projected top-5 pick in the MLB Draft on Monday, June 3, 2019.

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Notes to the Granddaughters

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The Physics Page

I absolutely do not understand physics. I didn't understand it in high school and fortunately did not have to "take it" in college. The closest I came was biochemistry and "P. Chem" -- physical chemistry. Although, now that I write that, "P. Chem" is probably more "physics" than "chemistry." Whatever.

I have to keep reading books on quantum physics or else I completely forget the story. I think one of the most interesting things is to read the history of quantum to see when physicists first realized they had a tiger by the tail, and exactly who the physicist was that coined the term, and which physicist is really the "father of quantum."

So, here I go again: The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments, Jim Baggott, c. 2011.

I've only read the first two chapters but it's a really, really good book. I don't care for the "physical feel" of the book. I don't like the font and I don't  like the binding. It's an Oxford University Press imprint. But the content is really, really good.

The historical vignettes of the physicists are very, very interesting. Much of the story I already know, but Baggott has a way of really telling a good story.

If I had room on my shelves for more books, I would add this to my top shelf. As it is, the only copy I will read will be from the library.

It is amazing to read (again) that at the turn of the century, only 40-some years before the Manhattan project, physicists felt that the atom was "not divisible," that the atom was not composed of more fundamental particles. In fact, it was not until about 1910 that:

... atoms had evolved from hypothetical entities, dismissed by some physicists as the result of wildly speculative metaphysics, into the objects of detailed laboratory studies.

When he published his five papers in 1905, Einstein was not yet convinced that atoms existed.