school problems...

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, Gaarst said:

@Bill Phil @worir4

I agree, a difference should be made between not knowing and knowing wrong. But reading this thread (and the previous ones) left me with the impression that some don't bother making this difference and make the whole thing sound extremely condescending towards others, with no distinction whatsoever.

yea... I really hate when people don't know, but pretend/think that they do.

In the bio lab I'm in, we have some CO2 tanks hooked up to incubators for cells, to keep the cells in a 5% CO2 environment. The mechanic/maintenence people are pretty slow and lazy, so I end up being the one that people in the lab come to when the system has a problem. Anyway, a tank was nearly empty, and the low pressure alarm was sporadically going off. The system has two pressure gauges, one is almost always just above 1 bar, the other should read closer to 100 bar with a full tank. A post doc and a technician were in there, the post doc thought it might be because the tank was nearly empty (there are two tanks, and its a simple switch to flip to switch to the other tank), the technician insisted that the tank was fine, and there was a problem with the incubator. I *think* she looked at the 2nd gauge which basically always reads ~1 bar. Luckily the post doc wasn't convinced, and got me (somehow the "expert" on the system). In a few seconds I had seen the gauge was reading empty, figured out the problem, and switched to the other tank. Then I closed the valves, detached the tank (noticing how much lighter it now was), and hooked up another we had. Problem solved... no more alarms

This technician was ready to conclude that the incubator needed to be repaired, and we'd have to move all of our cells to another incubator for who knows how long while maintenence got around to fixing the incubator... insisting the post doc was wrong.

So here we had a post doc that was right, but uncertain, and a technician that was wrong, but certain.

I added this little incident to a list of things that have happened that make many of us in the lab not like the technician... If you don't know what you are talking about, be quiet, or at least admit that you are uncertain.

 

I guess its sort of school, since I'm still technically a (PhD) "student" for a couple more months.

[Camacha]

26 minutes ago, fredinno said:

It would also be one without any dissenting, new or innovative ideas; ie. a stagnating one.

I do not see how you reach that conclusion. Are people not voicing their opinions? Are people not engaging in open debate? Mind you, I am not talking about the actual opinions themselves, I am talking about how they are fought out. People actually telling the other party their concerns in a reasonable fashion and both parties willingly engaging in debate is what you want. That seems to go wrong all too often, even in political discussions that concern the fate of an entire nation.

 

17 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

I guess its sort of school, since I'm still technically a (PhD) "student" for a couple more months.

I hate to tell you, but you will find these kinds of people everywhere and anywhere. In other labs too. Not everyone is equally competent and not everyone wants to be.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Camacha

[mikegarrison]

20 minutes ago, fredinno said:

It would also be one without any dissenting, new or innovative ideas; ie. a stagnating one.

Not really. If either side had just gotten their way due to force or authority, that could be a problem. If they work out their differences, where is the "stagnation"?

In this case the student may or may not have actually had a good point, but she didn't seem to accept that the older person may also have had a good point. Of course, we are told that this is after a half an hour of discussion when the video clip is recorded, and frustrations can boil over. I can't even tell what the argument is about or who is on what side, just that there seem to be two sides to something. The notes for the video say that it is a dispute about an email regarding Halloween costumes.

The tough issues don't usually have to do with one person being right and another being wrong. They usually have to do with both parties being right in some way, and yet still being in conflict.

[Camacha]

26 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

In this case the student may or may not have actually had a good point, but she didn't seem to accept that the older person may also have had a good point. Of course, we are told that this is after a half an hour of discussion when the video clip is recorded, and frustrations can boil over. I can't even tell what the argument is about or who is on what side, just that there seem to be two sides to something. The notes for the video say that it is a dispute about an email regarding Halloween costumes.

What stood out to me is how calm the administrator was. Even after a lengthy discussion and with an overheated student, he manages to keep a calm and constructive attitude. Even in positions where you would expect people to know what they are doing, I have seen worse, much worse. As for the student - it is something you learn by getting it wrong too many times.

[fredinno]

39 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Not really. If either side had just gotten their way due to force or authority, that could be a problem. If they work out their differences, where is the "stagnation"?

In this case the student may or may not have actually had a good point, but she didn't seem to accept that the older person may also have had a good point. Of course, we are told that this is after a half an hour of discussion when the video clip is recorded, and frustrations can boil over. I can't even tell what the argument is about or who is on what side, just that there seem to be two sides to something. The notes for the video say that it is a dispute about an email regarding Halloween costumes.

The tough issues don't usually have to do with one person being right and another being wrong. They usually have to do with both parties being right in some way, and yet still being in conflict.

The issue was that one side was angrily silencing the other, while the other side was calm and trying to voice their opinion. Of course I would support working out differences, but it looks much more like trying to get their way via force rather than via negotiation- which causes stagnation due to lack of freedom of ideas.

Watch the video again. The students are trying to get the teacher to step down and pressuring him to do so. It's pretty close to force, much more than negotiation. One of the students even says that [the university] is not about reacting an intellectual space.

And admittedly, it's hard to tell what is going on in that thing.

[viktor19]

This thread had me thinking, so I'll give my 2 cents now (did you know that each costs 1.67 cents to make?!).

First off: I go to the 2nd grade of high school (10th grade for other). The only thing school has to offer to me is the Astronomy class, but it's not currently available to me because it's optional and not available to my grade (they offered us creative writing, informatics and advanced geography - this changes from year to year), also it is taught by an old Geography teacher that doesn't give a damn about it. 

Space is not a really popular topic among my schoolmates. I only overheard them talking about it when Philae landed, and when SpaceX got that first stage back. During the recess once, I briefly explained them the basics of space launch market. Another time, I was shocked that my classmate didn't know ISS exists, particularly because he's very smart and somewhat interested in science. Back in the first grade, the teacher devoted about 10 minutes to the calculations of orbital velocity, and he badly explained gravity assist. When he asked what is the radius of Earth, I was the only one to answer, and everyone looked at me like I had three heads.

State television devoted 15 seconds of air-time to Pluto flyby back in July, during which they managed to say two wrong facts about. Someone ridiculed them on their Facebook page, and I'm glad they did.

 

[Matuchkin]

Question on comets. How are they classified? Is it the fact that their orbit is so inclined that they get close enough to the Sun to start spewing material? Because, before the event that inclines their orbits takes place, they are just rocks (asteroids).

[peadar1987]

3 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

Question on comets. How are they classified? Is it the fact that their orbit is so inclined that they get close enough to the Sun to start spewing material? Because, before the event that inclines their orbits takes place, they are just rocks (asteroids).

They will have formed in the outer solar system, past the frost line. Their elliptical orbits are probably the result of gravitational interactions with larger bodies.

[Matuchkin]

24 minutes ago, peadar1987 said:

They will have formed in the outer solar system, past the frost line. Their elliptical orbits are probably the result of gravitational interactions with larger bodies.

Oh, really? My teacher states that comets were pulled in by the Sun's gravity. I was wondering how that was even logically possible, since the Sun's gravity was acting on them all the time, and hasn't increased noticeably (I was going to ask about that on another thread). You unintentionally confirmed that.

Anyway, so the reason they're classified as comets is because they formed past the frost line? Okay.

[Camacha]

3 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

Oh, really? My teacher states that comets were pulled in by the Sun's gravity. I was wondering how that was even logically possible, since the Sun's gravity was acting on them all the time, and hasn't increased noticeably (I was going to ask about that on another thread). You unintentionally confirmed that.

Your teacher is not wrong. The are pulled in by the Sun's gravity. Their orbit is just altered by interactions with other bodies. One does not exclude the other. The fact that they orbit the Sun tells us they are pulled in constantly.
 

Quote

 

Anyway, so the reason they're classified as comets is because they formed past the frost line? Okay.

 

Come on buddy, this is the kind of thing you can easily Google yourself.

[Matuchkin]

30 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Come on buddy, this is the kind of thing you can easily Google yourself.

Yeah, I admit...

[pxi]

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

The issue was that one side was angrily silencing the other, while the other side was calm and trying to voice their opinion. Of course I would support working out differences, but it looks much more like trying to get their way via force rather than via negotiation- which causes stagnation due to lack of freedom of ideas.

Bingo.

Educational institutions in general, but universities in particular are meant to be places where challenging ideas are presented to students.  There has been a trend recently towards 'no platforming' any speaker that someone takes issue with.  This is a worrying trend to me, and should be to anyone who values the principle of free speech and exchange of ideas,

Even though I may agree with some of the viewpoints of the students, I cannot in any way condone their way of trying to accomplish their aims.  I am fully in support of protest, but silencing anyone, regardless of how much their viewpoint may offend you sets a dangerous precedent.

[Vanamonde]

If everybody just Googled everything, we'd have nothing to talk about. And isn't asking friend the more interesting method anyway?

[mikegarrison]

11 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

If everybody just Googled everything, we'd have nothing to talk about. And isn't asking friend the more interesting method anyway?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Is+it+better+to+ask+a+friend+something+than+to+ask+Google%3F

[FancyMouse]

10 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Is+it+better+to+ask+a+friend+something+than+to+ask+Google%3F

Now the first result really made me laugh.

[KerbMav]

On 3.2.2016 at 5:35 AM, WestAir said:

I thought there were more rocks past Pluto than in the main belt?

 

Edit: I'm hoping I'm right - otherwise I might as well be one of those kids in your class.

You are asking to verify what you suppose to be right, and you seem to be willing to accept new information to be correct even if it is contrary to your previous perceived truth. You are doing way better then them.

On 3.2.2016 at 6:29 AM, DolphinDude3 said:

... I am just completely horrified by how warlike and careless for the lives of others our species is.

"I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought"

On 6.2.2016 at 1:00 AM, Vanamonde said:

If everybody just Googled everything, we'd have nothing to talk about. And isn't asking friend the more interesting method anyway?

Using google is dangerous - especially if carelessly clicking on the next best result - when entering the search terms the trouble already starts.

[Kertech]

My school uses KSP to teach the third years orbital mechanics as an end of year treat. but then we are the geekiest school in Cmabridge UK (a geeky place indeed)

19 minutes ago, KerbMav said:

Using google is dangerous - especially if carelessly clicking on the next best result - when entering the search terms the trouble already starts.

I'm a doctor, Google is more than dangerous, it's incredibly irritating when your rotation puts you onto A&E...

[Rdivine]

Circling back to the topic, it's sad how the majority of the population have little to no knowledge regarding space. Whenever i'm having a conversation about space with them, i really want to facepalm myself so hard...

 

My friend even thought that objects in orbit are just floating there not moving at all.

[peadar1987]

6 minutes ago, Rdivine said:

Circling back to the topic, it's sad how the majority of the population have little to no knowledge regarding space. Whenever i'm having a conversation about space with them, i really want to facepalm myself so hard...

 

My friend even thought that objects in orbit are just floating there not moving at all.

Oh god, like those Flat Earth videos. I saw one that said that gravity obviously wasn't real, because it supposedly makes things fall to earth and also make planets fly round the sun, which the maker thought was a ridiculous concept.

It wasn't so much the video that bothered me, there are always going to be a few loons, but the sheer numbers of people who agreed with it militantly in the comments.

[Camacha]

9 minutes ago, Rdivine said:

My friend even thought that objects in orbit are just floating there not moving at all.

I feel this is a bit of KSP player hubris. It is pretty unsurprising people think this, because the mechanics of how it actually works are somewhat hard to visualize from a description alone. Looking at them from the surface of a planet, the mechanics of orbits are pretty unintuitive. KSP really explains this well in a simple and visual manner, but you can hardly blame people that only heard about orbits that they do not really grasp the full picture and mechanism.

Besides, all the images we see from space (which is mainly the ISS) involve things just floating around. That people are concluding that is how things are up there is pretty unsurprising.

Edited February 12, 2016 by Camacha

[wumpus]

3 hours ago, Camacha said:

I feel this is a bit of KSP player hubris. It is pretty unsurprising people think this, because the mechanics of how it actually works are somewhat hard to visualize from a description alone. Looking at them from the surface of a planet, the mechanics of orbits are pretty unintuitive. KSP really explains this well in a simple and visual manner, but you can hardly blame people that only heard about orbits that they do not really grasp the full picture and mechanism.

Besides, all the images we see from space (which is mainly the ISS) involve things just floating around. That people are concluding that is how things are up there is pretty unsurprising.

How many times do you hear the term "weightless" with respect to orbiting bodies?  And how many people know just  how "close" the ISS is (you might know gravity decays at an inverse square, and think it just decayed until you are blatantly shown how close LEO is to Earth).

Sure, most KSP players likely already knew the difference between hitting space (yay!) and staying in orbit.  But did you learn a lot more (like Randal Monroe)?  I honestly thought that "escape velocity" meant "an infinite distance from Earth" (and to be honest, Scott Manley said a similar thing in a early KSP video.  Of course that was before "the Sun"/Kerbol was included so may have been right on a technicality).  First time out of Kerbin SOI, "oh look.  Looks like my 'infinite distance' maxes out at 2AU".

[Kerbart]

On 2/4/2016 at 7:32 PM, mikegarrison said:

When you go to university, things will be different. (Or if they aren't, they you went to the wrong university!)

I'd say can be different. My roommate, who was attending the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (which I would not call a third tier university) experienced that the advice I gave him on a subject was 180° from what his professor was teaching. He tended to stick to my advice (as I was trained by people who made an actually living on the particular subject) but he had to grind his teeth to complete his project in her way to get a good grade on it. I considered it a life-lesson for him.