/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6477021
Received offers from Dartmouth, Lehigh, Iowa, and Auburn.

I've narrowed my decision down to Iowa and Auburn, both have excellent plasma programs.

Dartmouth made a very generous offer but I had to decline, their department does space plasma (specifically aurora) extremely well (they've got a really cool cluster satellite project their developing), but they really don't do anything else. No wave phenomena, no dusty plasmas, no fusion, etc.

>>6419664
Try not to dive straight into academic journals. You've got to ease your way in.

Start with things like National Geographic, Ars Technica, or NASA's published articles if you want to get a good taste of some of the discoveries being made and research being done.

Supplement this material with textbooks. Start off with some easy high school or undergraduate texts on engineering or chemistry or whatever other subjects interest you and move up from there. Use resources like KhanAcademy to brush up on your math and start tackling subjects like vector operations, calculus, statistics, etc.

When you're ready, science and engineering programs will be waiting for you.


I wish you the best of luck OP.

>>6403450
No, legitimate interest. The episode after sounds interesting as well.

>When Knowledge Conquered Fear
>Neil deGrasse Tyson sets off on the Ship of the Imagination to chase a single comet through its million-year plunge toward the sun.
>Later, Tyson visits the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton and retraces the unlikely friendship between Newton and brilliant polymath Edmond Halley.
>It was Halley's patience and generosity which allowed Newton to conquer his fear of isolation and find the courage to publish his masterwork, "Principia Mathematica", which launched a science revolution.

>>6334495
>>6334537
Catholicism has a long history of supporting science because the Church generally regarded the pursuit of exploring and discovering and understanding more about God's Creation as an extremely noble pursuit.

In many of the instances in history of the Church persecuting researchers, the reasons were often political or personal in nature, not religious. Case in point - the Church didn't really have that much of a problem with Galileo's theories on the nature of the solar system... they had a problem with his open mockery of the Pope in the form of the character of 'Simplicio' in <span class="math">'Dialogue~on~the~Two~Great~World~Systems'[/spoiler]

There is very little which prohibits both the acceptance of scientific knowledge and spiritual belief, provided one is not too heavily invested in fundamentalism, literalism, and dogmatism associated with their beliefs.

>>5873679
Most of HAARP's research deals with the study of the Earth's magnetic field, ionospheric plasma, atmospheric effects on radio communications, as well as a little radio astronomy if memory serves.

If you aren't able to find any good information on it anywhere, you must not be looking very hard. The facility has a website which regularly publishes research, information on ongoing experiments, even data from some of the instruments.

Next to none of the research at the facility is classified.

>>5704061
We don't know yet.

We can infer the existence of dark matter from observations of the rotation of galaxies, galaxy collisions/interactions, and behavior of galaxy clusters - none of which match the behavior we would expect to see if gravitation in these systems were due to the visible matter we can see. There are two ways to explain this discrepancy - either we don't have a very good understanding of gravity and gravitation inexplicably behaves very very differently on a variety of distance scales (unlikely) or there's a lot of mass unaccounted for.

"Dark Matter" is a placeholder title is what we call whatever accounts for this missing mass. There are some theories regarding its nature - the predominant one being Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which don't interact strongly except through gravitation.


"Dark Energy", like Dark Matter is just a placeholder for whatever unaccounted for energy appears to be driving the accelerating expansion of our Universe, and was likely also responsible for triggering the Inflation in our very early Universe. Most models suggest that Dark Energy is linked to some kind of fundamental 'Cosmological Constant'. As my astrophysics professor put it to us, the Cosmological Constant model can be interpreted as the energy cost that comes from the existence and metric expansion of space.


The truth is we really don't know a whole lot about either Dark Matter or Dark Energy. These are still relatively young, very active areas of research.

>>5679646
Dark Matter explains inconsistencies with our observations at many different scales (like problems with the rotation curves of spiral galaxies and observations of galactic interactions) without having to drastically alter our working model of gravity.

The big hurdle for Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) theories is that they typically require gravity to work very differently at different scales. The 'corrections' for gravity at the local scale is different from the ones for the galactic, intergalactic, or very large scales, and in most of the MOND models I've seen there doesn't seem to be any obvious relation between the corrections and the scales.

When you're looking for a scientific theory to explain observations, you typically look for the theory that's the least complex - the one that requires the fewest assumptions, the fewest additional parameters, and the one that works better for more general situations.

>>5665758
We don't know yet.

Contrary to how it's popularly described - the Big Bang Theory is NOT a model describing the creation of the Universe. Rather, it describes how the Universe evolved from being very small, very dense, and very hot to how it is today - "The History of the Universe" so to speak.

Which is not to say we don't know anything about what the early Universe was like... while we can't model the very moment the Universe came into being we can get very very very VERY close. We can experimentally replicate conditions similar to what the Universe might have been like as far as something like 10^-30 seconds after the Universe was created and our theoretical models are relatively good up through something like 10^-40 seconds. But the closer and closer to the creation of the Universe and the temperatures and energy densities keep skyrocketing, the more difficult it becomes to develop a model that can describe what's going on.

Particle colliders can replicate conditions similar to the very early Universe, but they're not powerful enough to replicate the conditions of the very early Universe, and there also isn't really a good cosmological model for the creation of the Universe yet either (at least not one that simply complicates matters further - ex M-theory suggests our universe was the result of a collision between mutli-dimensional branes... okay but where do the branes come from?)

>>5648865
>I don't get if the world actually works in probability or if everything is happening similar to classical physics
Both statements are accurate.

Every system obeys quantum mechanics... but in the limit where you start dealing with many many many-particle systems - the laws of quantum mechanics become more or less indistinguishable from the laws of classical mechanics.

The biggest thing to watch out for on the computerized general GRE is the changes to the math section since the old paper version.

It works on a sort of tier system now - depending on how you do on the first few questions you get put into one "tier" or another and the questions you get asked are at a different difficulty level. Basically if you get the first few questions wrong you get put into the lower tier and even if you get all the questions after that right your score will be lower than if you'd gotten all the questions right in a higher tier.


As far as all the other stuff - General GRE is important for getting into grad school, but not nearly as important as the Subject GRE, Letters of Rec and Purpose, general transcripts, research experience, etc. And of those I'd say your letters and research experience are going to be the most important.

Best advice I can give you as far as applying - apply to no less than 8-10 schools, 1 or 2 long shots (places you may not be likely to get in but might as well try... your CalTechs, MITs, Oxfords, etc), 5 or 6 good schools (your big state universities), and 1 or 2 "safe" choices (smaller universities with good programs). This way you're guaranteed to get in at least SOMEWHERE. It may not be your first choice, but while it's really cool if you get into a big school with lots of high-end facilities and lots of prestigious faculty, you're ultimately learning the same science you'd learn anywhere else and the truth is - most of the people you encounter through your career, whether you plan to focus more on teaching or research, aren't really going to care where you got your MS or PhD.

It seems to me the inherent flaw with the concept of the 'technocracy' is that it presumes that persons qualified in particular fields are automatically suited for work in other, often completely unrelated fields.

Nothing about an aerospace engineer's field qualifies them to write budgets other than some ultra-generic descriptor like, "they're good at optimizing things". Nothing about a physicist's research qualifies them to draft laws on social issues other than some vague remark like, "they know how to solve problems".

This isn't to say that there aren't people in STEM fields who wouldn't make good elected representatives, but technocracy advocates seem to have it in their heads that they can just replace every politician and bureaucrat in the country with scientists, engineers, and mathematicians and it'll somehow magically fix all the problems in their country.
(Oddly enough, if you look at countries that advocates often praise as prime examples of how a 'technocracy' would work [usually China], the people running various aspects of the government are typically career bureaucrats who just happen to have a B.S.)


It reminds me a bit of that common trope in science fiction shows where the token "scientist" character on the team is not just an expert in some single, focused field but is a master of every branch of science, engineering, mathematics, programming, etc who can conjure up completely unconnected skill sets to solve whatever the problem of the week happens to be.
>Damn! We've only got 30 minutes to reverse engineer this alien weapon before the invasion fleet uses it to wipe out all life on Earth!
>Quick! Somebody go grab Bill - he's got a PhD in Molecular Biology!

The inherent flaw with the concept of the 'technocracy' is that it presumes that persons qualified in particular fields are automatically suited for work in other, often completely unrelated fields.

Nothing about an aerospace engineer's field qualifies them to write budgets other than some ultra-generic descriptor like, "they're good at optimizing things". Nothing about a physicist's research qualifies them to draft laws on social issues other than some vague remark like, "they know how to solve problems".

This isn't to say that there aren't people in STEM fields wouldn't make good elected representatives, but technocracy advocates seem to have it in their heads that they can just replace every politician and bureaucrat in the country with scientists, engineers, and mathematicians and it'll somehow magically fix all the problems in their country.
(Oddly enough, if you look at countries that advocates often praise as prime examples of how a 'technocracy' would work [usually China], the people running various aspects of the government are typically career bureaucrats who just happen to have a B.S.)


It reminds me a bit of that common trope in science fiction shows where the token "scientist" character on the team is not just an expert in some single, focused field but is a master of every branch of science, engineering, mathematics, programming, etc who can conjure up completely unconnected skill sets to solve whatever the problem of the week happens to be.
>Damn! We've only got 30 minutes to reverse engineer this alien weapon before the invasion fleet uses it to wipe out all life on Earth!
>Quick! Somebody go grab Bill - he's got a PhD in Molecular Biology!

"Monsters from the Id"
Explores the explosion of science fiction film in the 50's and 60's, looks at the influence the genre had on the country in the backdrop of the early Atomic Age and the Space Race, and how it inspired thousands of young men and women to pursue careers in science and engineering. It also touches on the modern problems the country is dealing with as the number of people going into STEM fields continues to drop.

If you can find a copy of it somewhere, it's a great doc.
>Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SXRXICKFHA

As a Civil Engineering student, is it worth my time doing the w/Architecture? What are the benefits of study Architecture along with it?

>>4995493
It's a big deal for our university. The RBSP is, in a way, a matter of carrying on the legacy of Dr. Van Allen's research of the radiation belts.

I'll be hear if anyone wants to talk about the mission, about the subject matter, about the space program in general, or whatever.

Took a break from research this last year to help my department develop new lab curriculum for our astronomy courses.

Our big focus the last year has been replacing the old recipe-style textbook labs with an updated curriculum focused on active learning. Rather than take students through a step by step procedure the labs are focused on presenting the students with some puzzle or question and then provide them with the tools and skills to figure out a solution on their own. A big part of these labs is also the use of a robotic telescope the university operates to allow students to take their own observations for the labs and for independent research projects they do at the end of the semester.

The last year has been a bit rough but we've taken the experience from the last two semesters and really polished the new curriculum to a shine over the Summer. I'm really excited to see how things go this Fall. Our undergraduate astronomy labs have always been really popular (between the course for majors and the three non-major courses we get about 500 students a semester, and about two-thirds of them take the lab sections) but I think this will really push us to a whole new level.


It's been a great experience and I'll keep up with it as it continues to develop, but at the same time I'm looking forward to going back into actual research (assuming the semester doesn't overwhelm me). I haven't so much as touched a research project since presenting at the AAS last January. Time to go digging through faculty research again and see what catches my eye.

TAs typically run the discussion or lab sections for lecture classes. While you will be answering questions and giving quizzes, etc, your main job will be going over material covered in previous lectures and working through exercises to demonstrate problem-solving methods. Basically, you're there to make sure the students are understanding the material.

Keep up to date with what the lecturer is currently covering (that's what most of the discussion will focus on) and come up with a list of good example problems from each section. Though, try to avoid selecting too many problems from the actual assignments or students will just use you as a solutions manual.

Poor TA's will brush off discussion sections as a low priority, an afterthought to worry about later or throw together at the last minute. Make no mistake - for a few hours a week you're effectively these students' Calc teacher. If you're not willing to treat this seriously and make a genuine effort, you shouldn't be working as a TA.

Good luck OP

>>4951797
>Yes. The public is about as well educated about space as it can get. It's literally saturated with the POTENTIAL for education. That it 99% fails to reach that potential, reveals it's reached a maximum state.
One of the professors at my department hosted a public observing event for the Venus transit a couple months ago. 300 people turned out for it. We decided to continue holding similar events.

We've had three more public observing sessions since then, some during the day, some during the evening, each preceded by a short lecture on a relevant subject (discussing solar cycles before a solar observing session, discussing the MSL mission before going up to look at Mars, etc). The first brought in about 50 people and the most recent was almost double that. Some are students from other departments, some are local families, and only a very few are from the crowd of usual enthusiasts and amateur astronomers.

If you put in the time and hard work, if you make an effort to make public outreach genuinely educational and entertaining - people will respond to it. They'll become more interested, more informed, and more involved and be better for it.

This documentary is no different.

>>4951797
>Yes. The public is about as well educated about space as it can get. It's literally saturated with the POTENTIAL for education. That it 99% fails to reach that potential, reveals it's reached a maximum state.
One of the professors at my department hosted a public observing event for the Venus transit a couple months ago. 300 people turned out for it. I encouraged him to start holding similar events.

We've had three more public observing sessions since then, some during the day, some during the evening, each preceded by a short lecture on a relevant subject (discussing solar cycles before a solar observing session, discussing the MSL mission before going up to look at Mars, etc). The first brought in about 50 people and the most recent was almost double that. Some are students from other departments, some are local families, and only a very few are from the crowd of usual enthusiasts and amateur astronomers.

If you put in the time and hard work, if you make an effort to make public outreach genuinely educational and entertaining - people will respond to it. They'll become more interested, more informed, and more involved and be better for it.

This documentary is no different.

>dice
>probability

>>4923904

But first you would have to create a creampie

I have a copy of Taylor I could upload if anyone wants it.

I might also have a few Calc and DifEq books on one of my flash drives, I'll take a look.

Coronal Mass Ejections happen all the time (though they are more frequent when we approach solar maximum). Most don't have a noticeable affect at all, some of the worse ones may cause minor blackouts or communications issues.

If you're worried about something like the Carrington Event in 1859 happening though... relax, this isn't remotely on that scale. It'll give us a pretty light show in the northern states, and in the worst case you might have to go without cell phone and gps for a couple hours, but this isn't going to destroy human civilization.


If something that big was coming towards us, trust me - every news network, every radio station, and half the internet would be lit up talking about it.

It takes only takes a few days for the matter from a CME to reach Earth, sometimes as little as 12-24 hours. IF a CME big enough and powerful enough to cause major damage was headed towards us, the governments of the world would need to get the word out fast and coordinate global efforts to shut down and shield critical systems.


So relax, enjoy the light shows, and if you're still really freaked out stock up on aluminum foil.

If you're going into secondary education (high school) you're going to want to look at some kind of certification program. You have several options there:


If you're already in college, you could look at doing an MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching) program for grad school instead of an MS program. A lot of colleges will let you teach with an MAT as well so that opens up more job opportunities.

If you haven't started college yet you could look into a Chemistry program that has a combined BA/BS and MAT option. Alternatively some colleges that offer these kinds of programs will let you switch over provided your GPA is good and you've completed enough of the Bacherlor's coursework.

Alternatively, many states offer certification programs for graduates with only Bachelor degrees. Here in Iowa for example you can earn provisional licensure in about a year or so and work your way up to a standard license over the course of a few years.


If you definitely want to go into education, more power to you - there's a serious shortage of secondary science and math educators in this country right now. If you're not completely sure, I'd recommend going for a BS first and going for an MAT later if you decide that's what you want.


Hope this helps you out.