Learning by William

Physics has always existed as the horrible and confusing class that high school teenagers have to fight to survive through. It has existed as a unanimously difficult class with much room for confusion. Through my own experiences, I have observed that teenagers generally hate physics; they take the class for the credit it provides, but they often gain nothing from the class. Many go on to fail their physics classes, whether it is an AP class or a normal class. In this episode, we will look into the main interpretation comprising quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen Interpretation, and we will look into how all of it works. Brace yourselves as we attempt to understand one of the only indeterminist (not having cause) scientific concepts in existence, a concept that fundamentally rejects our natural understanding of patterns.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, please email me using the address provided: [email protected]

Reference:

Copenhagen Interpretation - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/

Copenhagen Interpretation - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation

Bohr's Correspondence Principle - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_principle

Indeterminism in Quantum Mechanics - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

Old Quantum Theory - University of California - Riverside

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/spin/node3.html

Principle of Complementarity - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarity_(physics)

Wave Function Collapse - StackExchange

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/35328/why-does-observation-collapse-the-wave-function

Superposition - WhatIs.com

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/superposition

Various Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics

Universal Darwinism - Cambridge University Press

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/nature-of-life/universal-darwinism/0939B49903C60A59B57DC5C007415ECF

The 20th century was plagued with conflict, disease, and terror, but at the same time, the 20th century flourished with growth. Whether it was the vast increase in population, the development of vaccines and antibiotics, the overthrowal of fascism and communism, or the acceleration to space, the 20th century experienced a level of growth unheard of in previous centuries. Almost all of this growth can be attributed to the sciences, as new discoveries and advancements in the scientific and technological worlds allowed for the growth the 20th century was known by to have flourished. As we continue on in the 21st century, another century in which growth shall dominate our experiences, we mustn’t forget the scientists who fought the conflict, disease, terror, and most of all, authoritarianism in their pursuit of knowledge and discovery. We mustn’t forget the scientists who stood by their science even when Joseph Stalin threatened their execution, even continuing on in the pursuit of scientific advancement until Stalin purposefully and slowly starved them to death, who pushed hard against the very nuclear weapons he designed while two tyrannical governments fought against one another for the most warheads. In this episode, we will discuss two scientists, Nikolai Vavilov, J Robert Oppenheimer two of the many scientists who fought against war and authoritarianism while pursuing knowledge from which all humans could benefit.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, please email me using the address provided: [email protected]

Yes, ununbiquium does not exist. I made the element up as a satirical node towards the heaviest elements known as of yet- Ununilium, Unununium, Ununbium, Ununtrium, Ununquadium, Ununpentium, Ununhexium, and Ununseptium.

The main elements that comprise the human body are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. These 6 elements form a word that you may have heard in your biology class, CHNOPS. CHNOPS stands for those six elements that comprise the vast majority of one’s mass. The most important, even though all these elements are essential specifically to human life, are four specific elements: these elements are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Hydrogen has an atomic number of 1, carbon an atomic number of 6, nitrogen an atomic number of 7, and oxygen an atomic number of 8. Without even a single one of these elements, we would not exist, at least not in the form we exist in as of now. These elements are essential to our existence itself. Now we all know that all stars originally fuse hydrogen into helium, leaving two abundant, obviously existing elements in the universe. The question is, though, what about nitrogen? What about oxygen and carbon? How is it possible, while all the stars are fusing hydrogen into helium, that we have carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur? In this episode, we shall delve into the beautiful science that is supernovae, the most powerful explosions in the universe (yes, including the Big Bang, because the Big Bang was an expansion, not an explosion, contrary to contemporary and popular thought).

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, please email me using the address provided: [email protected]

References

How Stars Become Red Giants

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/astronomy/chapter/evolution-from-the-main-sequence-to-red-giants/

Is Iron Fusion Possible?

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast122/lectures/lec18.html

How a Supernova Occurs

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/supernova/en/

Supernova Nucleosynthesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis

p-, r-, and s- Processes in Supernova Nucleosynthesis

https://www.pnas.org/content/110/43/17241

r-Process in Supernova Nucleosynthesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process

s-Process in Supernova Nucleosynthesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process

p-Process in Supernova Nucleosynthesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-process

In the 10,000-12,000 years since humans invented agriculture and settled down, autocracy, theocracy, aristocracy, and fascism have dominated civilizations. From the Greeks to the Romans to the French to the English to the Germans, a line of religious, spiritual, lineal, and political dictatorship occurred for the millennia. Only recently have we begun forcing out of the grips of control in order to achieve global democracy. In the thousands of years we have lived in civilizations, we have only begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel- the light of democracy is finally starting to shine upon us. In the many years of European, Asian, and Middle Eastern dictatorial rule, the greatest rebellions were inspired by the scientists; they were the ones who promoted new ideas and used their new understandings to take down dictators and forever alter religions. The scientists were the ones who risked their own execution while in the human pursuit of truth, who rebelled against the Catholic Church to promote heliocentrism, the correct science of the solar system, and who figured out processes that directly contradicted contemporary theistic belief yet still promoted them as fact. In this episode, we will cover 3 notable scientists whose advancements of science forced them into rebellion against the European Aristocracies and, most notably, the Catholic Church of Europe.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, please email me using the address provided: [email protected]

References:

Galileo Galilei - A Biography by Britannica

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Galileo-Galilei

Galileo Galilei - General Information

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

Encyclopedia - Cecco d’Ascoli

https://theodora.com/encyclopedia/c/cecco_dascoli.html

Very General Information on Cecco d’Ascoli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecco_d%27Ascoli

Acerba - Cecco d’Ascoli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acerba_(book)

Science and the Catholic Church - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_the_Catholic_Church

Conflict Thesis Between Science and Religion - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis

Giordano Bruno

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Galileo’s Ship

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_ship

Galileo Galilei - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/

For the last year we have dealt with an oppressive pandemic that has forever altered our way of life. Typical work settings have evolved from offices to living rooms, typical five day school settings have become zoom calls, typical travel to other countries for vacations or jobs has become non-existent, and nearly 2 million people who have brothers, sisters, parents, children; who experienced love and hate, anger and excitement, fear and confidence, discomfort and pleasure, hunger and thirst, dreams and goals, have died from a deadly virus that continues to militate against us. In our struggle and obscurity, we have pursued a vaccine that we believe will save us from the oppression- the death, destruction, economic turmoil, and mental health collapse resulting from this virus could cede with one shot. Unfortunately, when it comes to creating vaccines, evolution does not help us. With rapidly reproducing viruses, mutations can be common, some of which are pointless, others of which are detrimental to the virus itself, and others of which make the viruses more infectious. As unfortunate as it is, a similar thing has happened to the virus we are currently living through, COVID-19. A new strain, officially known as VUI, which stands for “variant under investigation,” dash 202012/01, which stands for the first variant of COVID-19 under investigation in December of 2020, is ravaging Europe.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, please email me using the address provided: [email protected]

References:

Information on the New Strain of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VUI_%E2%80%93_202012/01

SARS-CoV-2 Variant - World Health Organization

https://www.who.int/csr/don/21-december-2020-sars-cov2-variant-united-kingdom/en/

How do Viruses Mutate? Yale School of Medicine

https://medicine.yale.edu/coved/modules/virus/evolution/

How SARS-CoV-2 Infects Cells

https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-are-Spike-Proteins.aspx

Viruses and Evolution by Natural Selection

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/viruses-and-evolution

RNA Viruses

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/rna-viruses

A Second New COVID-19 Strain! - Fox 2 Detroit

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/uk-health-officials-announce-2nd-new-covid-19-strain

New COVID-19 Strain Arriving From South Africa - Aljazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/23/uk-to-widen-covid-lockdowns-as-new-strain-from-south-africa-found

5 out of the 7 extraterrestrial planets in our solar system were discovered by the same man; his name was Galileo Galilei. In 1609, after hearing about Hans Lippershey’s Dutch Perspective Glasses, Galileo designed his own telescope.. In only a few days, without ever having seen one. This telescope was orders of magnitude better than Lippershey’s patented telescope, and allowed him to explore the cosmos in a way unheard of before. He discovered Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, all with that same telescope he had recently built. As time progressed forwards, the telescopes we used progressed as well. We went from the small 30x magnification telescope of the Galilean age to the massive, 30 meter aperture observatories that could magnify objects orders of magnitude more than Galileo’s. The telescope is, without a doubt, the most important scientific invention that has ever existed; with it, Galileo discovered four planets and Jupiter’s moons, William Herschel discovered Uranus and formulated the Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, Charles Messier detailed 110 large deep sky objects in a catalogue known as the Messier Catalogue, Edwin Hubble discovered the Hubble Constant (~70 km/s per megaparsec), Gerard Kuiper discovered the CO2 content on Mars and the icy rings of Saturn, and how Carl Sagan learned the riches of the cosmos and sought to communicate it to all corners of the earth. While telescopes are the greatest piece of technology humans have ever created, it is not practical for everything. There are some events that are so incredible and obvious that we can see them with our naked eyes, with nothing but our eyes and a passion for the night sky. December 21st is one of those times, as Jupiter and Saturn will come within .1 degrees of each other in the night sky in what is known as the Great Conjunction, forming a superstar that has not been visible to humans since 1226.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, please email me using the address provided: [email protected]

References:

Inventors and Developers of the Telescope

https://www.space.com/21950-who-invented-the-telescope.html

Galileo Galilei- Information

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_conjunction

Conjunctions in Astronomy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_(astronomy)

Ecliptic Coordinate System - Celestial Sphere in Astronomy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic_coordinate_system

The Star of Bethlehem and its Theoretical Relation to the Great Conjunction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_Bethlehem

EDIT: A correction has been made to the number of planets Galileo discovered. In thee description and in the podcast, it was said that Galileo discovered four planets- Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, but Galileo actually discovered five- includes Mercury.

The human population has increased dramatically in the last two centuries. Since the Industrial Revolution, 200 years ago, our population has increased from around one billion to nearly eight billion. There are many reasons as to why our population is growing at such a rapid rate; this growth can be attributed to improved healthcare, industrialization, among many other factors. For humans, our growth can be measured by a theorized model of population growth known as the demographic transition model. This theory works very well for human populations, but what about the natural populations you clicked on this video to learn about? When it comes to biological population patterns, we need a whole new set of science, and a whole new set of biological terminology, to explain it. Let’s learn about population patterns in the natural world.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, please email me using the address provided: [email protected]

World Population Growth Throughout Human History

https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

The Demographic Transition Model (VERY USEFUL IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY TAKING AP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY OR AP ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE)

https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/demographic-transition-model/

Mathematical Function of (f(x)) Logistic Growth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

Logistic Growth in Biology

https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Book%3A_General_Biology_(Boundless)/45%3A_Population_and_Community_Ecology/45.2%3A_Environmental_Limits_to_Population_Growth/45.2B%3A_Logistic_Population_Growth

Carrying Capacities

https://www.cmu.edu/steinbrenner/programs/fellows/index.html

Overshoot in Biology

http://peakoilbarrel.com/carrying-capacity-overshoot-and-species-extinction

Die-Off in Biology

https://www.yourdictionary.com/die-off

Dynamics of Predation and Population Patterns

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/dynamics-of-predation-13229468

R- and K-Selection

https://ib.bioninja.com.au/options/option-c-ecology-and-conser/c5-population-ecology/r--k-strategies.html

The great astronomer Carl Sagan once spoke for wanderers across all borders, ethnicities, races, and religions, when he said. “We were wanderers from the beginning. We were bounded only by the earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The frontier was everywhere.” Humanity’s addiction with exploration and wonder is intrinsically tied to our nature. Our dauntless exploration is a testament to our nature; to survive, we must explore new worlds. When the drought was prolonged, or when the food was scarce, we moved on. We wandered throughout our terrestrial planet, searching for survival. We were hunters and foragers, explorers of the unknowns. We were voyagers, adventurers in the mountains and on the oceans. As we grew more advanced, we began voyaging the seas. We wandered across the Atlantic Ocean, we explored the Western Pacific, we circumnavigated Africa, and we ventured throughout the Americas. Many of our great explorers, like Ferdinand Magellan, Zheng He, Marco Polo, Henry the Navigator and John Cabot explored worlds we once did not know existed. We continued on in our advancement, and eventually reached space. We indulged in a new chapter of human existence; we were now a part of the cosmos, rather than a part of the planet. Now that we are advanced enough to look at and explore the heavens, we wonder if we are really alone. The universe is exponentially larger than we had previously known, and exponentially more divine and incredible. Even through all our intense exploration and search, we have yet to find any evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial existence. In a universe so vast and massive, it is daunting to imagine the prospect of loneliness within the universe. Arthur C. Clark spoke of humanity’s desperate urge for a cosmic partner when he said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” Our desperate search for extraterrestrial life can be potentially well represented by the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, please email me using the address provided below:

[email protected]

References:

Information on the Fermi Paradox - Enrico Fermi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Information on the Drake Equation - Dr. Frank Drake

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Information on the Great Filter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

We Are Wanderers - A Profound (And Edited) Speech by Carl Sagan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA5XuOIilYc

In Arecibo, Puerto Rico lies a great radio telescope. For 53 years, the Arecibo observatory had been the largest radio telescope on the planet, and was the largest operational radio telescope in the world for all but 10 months of its existence. Constructed in 1963, the impressively massive 305 meter (1000 foot) radio telescope helped stage significant advances in the astronomical sciences. Arecibo remained the prime telescope of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence) projects, both initially formulated by NASA but later formed into a nonprofit organization. The Arecibo Observatory, without a doubt, is the most famous radio telescope on the planet, having been featured in popular novels like Contact by Carl Sagan (which is my favorite book, by the way) and in popular movies like Contact (again, by Carl Sagan, and again, also my favorite movie) and James Bond, and in popular TV shows like The X-Files. The Arecibo Observatory lives in fame for its astonishing contributions to the advancement of the astronomical sciences, but it appears that all great things come to an end.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, email me using the address provided below:

[email protected]

References:

Information About the Arecibo Radio Telescope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory

News Article Detailing the Planned Demolition of the Arecibo

https://www.space.com/arecibo-observatory-radio-telescope-to-be-destroyed

NYT Article on the Arecibo Observatory - for all my New York Times Lovers

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/science/arecibo-observatory.html

Detailing the Arecibo Message

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

Article on Damage That Occurred Earlier in the Year at Arecibo

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03270-9

When the great Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy gazed at the heavens, he felt the particular curiosity many of us have come to know. He was exceptionally curious as to what caused the stars, the sun, the moon, and the planets to seem to rotate around Earth every night and day. This caused him to formulate the Ptolemaic Model of the Universe, otherwise known as the geocentric model of the universe. The geocentric model comprises our planet, Earth, in the center surrounded by the rotating heavens known as the celestial sphere. Everything, including the distant stars and planets, the sun, the other planets in the solar system, and everything else, revolved around planet Earth. The rotation of the heavenly bodies around Earth were said to be perfect circles in the Ptolemaic Model, but the problem with that was that the observational evidence didn’t align with the hypothesis. Ptolemy began watching how the sun, the moon, and the planets, at least from Earth, didn’t seem to be traveling in perfect circles. Observations made on planets perplexed him; some planets were seen to be reversing their course on some nights, and then resuming their course later on. In revising his model, he described what are known as epicycles and deferents. The epicycle is a small intermediate orbit whose center moves around the circumference of a larger orbit. This, of course, was wrong. With the heliocentric model, we now know that the apparent reverse motion of some of the sun, the moon, and the planets is a result of what is known as retrograde motion. In this episode, we will learn about what retrograde motion is and how it works.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, email me using the address provided below

[email protected]

References

Ptolemaic Model of the Universe

https://socratic.org/questions/how-did-ptolemy-s-model-account-for-retrograde-motion

Ptolemaic Model of the Universe

https://www.britannica.com/science/Ptolemaic-system

Apparent Retrograde Motion + Great Animation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_retrograde_motion

Retrograde Motion

https://people.highline.edu/iglozman/classes/astronotes/retrograde.htm

Retrograde Motion

https://earthsky.org/space/what-is-retrograde-motion