Musings that may interest you.
Centuries ago, scientists were known as natural philosophers. I’ll continue this tradition with broad-based explorations.
We’ll examine whether “distance is constant”. At first, this may seem obvious “a meter is a meter” (or an inch is an inch). What are the implications if a meter within the nucleus of a particle is different than a meter within a black hole?
Preparing for a new coalition
I love learning online. Here are some suggestions.
- Carnegie Mellon University – no talking heads, but very thoughtful courses. The course pages contain inline tests that help you determine your mastery of a subject. An optional audio tract would be nice (or multiple tracks in different languages.)
- Lynda.com – these are not university courses. Instead they are great sources for learning a particular topic, especially computer software. Tutorials range from 1 to 20 hours. Lynda.com provides exercise files that reinforce your learning experience. (Disclosure: I created a course for Lynda.com.)
- MIT – has a great “encyclopedic” offering of undergraduate and graduate level courses. Almost all courses at MIT are contained in its “open course ware”. This was the original source for massive open online courses (MOOCs). You can start a course any time that you want.
- Stanford – has great online offering. They devote a large amount of time and money to these courses. Exercise Physiology during the Winter 2013 quarter was a great example.
Sudoku and Magic Squares
PLUS magazine is the online mathematics journal at Cambridge University. Maths of Magic Squares describes how you can create large and/or multi-dimensional magic squares. Future articles describe how to create Sudoku puzzles and applications in quantum computing and proteomics.