At it again...

School has started back up and that can mean only one thing: despairing over homework.  Of course this is only natural so there is nothing new to report.  I've only three courses on my plate for my second and last semester abroad here in Giessen, Germany.  Let's see:

Methods of Atomic Physics - a romp through practical applications of knowledge of atomic physics.  Things like tumor detectors and busters, energy from nuclear fusion and fission, types of radiation detection and so on.  Taught by an instructor from last semester and the class size is small.  Four of us non-primary-German speakers in the room means a vote by the German students have this class being taught in English.  Interesting.

Experimental Physics 6 - Atomic, particle and astrophysics.  That's all I know at the moment since this was a late addition to my schedule and I haven't been to a lecture yet.  The first homework assignment though is about particle accelerators so...yeah.

Quantum Mechanics - that which I have feared the most.  The very nearly non-intuitive subject that haunts my dreams.  I will be trying desperately to approach this class purely from a mathematical standpoint.  I also must pass this class since I do not want to take it again in the States.  Taught by the exchange coordinator who also taught our Nuclear Astrophysics course last semester.  He, let alone the subject matter, are nearly impossible to understand.  I do wish I had taken more German before coming here, but alas I did not know I'd be coming until 5 months before I left.  

That's all I'm taking.  On a lighter note I got a frisbee today so that I can relax outside in my own way.  Jeff has already promised to play with me.  I imagine calling him up on the ol' Skype and saying, "I need a break from homework.  Let's play."  In other news, the beer gardens are open again and spring is in full swing.  Cheers!

Finally it begins again

So I never mentioned on here that I was going to be visiting Amsterdam last week.  The whole trip came up quite suddenly in fact.  It was Rachel's birthday and she is Dutch.  Two and two together mean we went to Holland for her b-day and it was awesome.  She loved it and I loved it and I will write about soon.  Lots of good things to tell about that place.  

Meanwhile, school has finally started again this week.  It's about time is all I can say on that.  Two whole months off is not fun if you don't have money or things to do.  I can't tell you how often I've missed my 'library' from home.  My good friend Trevor sent me a box with, I think, 7 books in it and I've mowed through nearly all of them.  But that is beside the point now.  Now we have school and homework again so hopefully I won't be as lazy as I have been.  Also with the weather turning nice again, there will be more time for reading outside, and that is fun with any kind of book.

More on Amsterdam soon.  Promise.

Day V - Missed It

Yep, that's right.  Day 5 was actually yesterday and I missed it.  But, my excuse is simply that I was on my computer for all of 5 minutes yesterday.  I had my test yesterday and, frankly, it didn't go so well.  Besides having difficulty translating the questions to a point that I understood the problem, the gentlemen who were proctoring the exam did not provide a lot of help.  One went so far as to say he wasn't allowed to answer questions.  I didn't want to ask a question about the problem, I wanted to ask what the problem was.  After that, there was only time to eat a quick lunch before my next class started and it wiped me out so much so that during the hour and 45 minute break, I took a nap.  Then with the end of class finally around 6, I went and hung out with Jeff, one of the other students from the States who also took the test, and we ordered pizza and watched Seinfeld.  Then I went to bed.  All in all, an exhausting day that didn't start out too well and ended with simple fellowship due to extreme weariness.  So, I try to make up for missing yesterday by writing about yesterday.  I hope that'll still count since I will write something different for Day 6. 

I started reading a new book.  It is Solitudes by John Crowley, the first book in a tetralogy.  I'm looking forward to it and will keep you posted.

Day III - Finals

It's finals time...finally.  After a grueling 4 months, we've come at last to the moment of truth.  And what a moment it is here in Germany.  Typically, there are no tests at all during the semester.  The only thing providing any measure of accomplishment in class are homeworks and frankly I've not had the best ones while here.  Usually there are 3 maybe even 4 tests during the quarter at home and they scale in such a way that bombing one doesn't mean a complete failure.  Sometimes one is even dropped.  Here there is no chance of that.  You bomb this, you bomb for good.  It's so much pressure!  There have been 12 in class practice problem sheets and 12 homework assignments for one class and no indication by the teacher what might be the 'big problem' on the test.  You know, the one that should take 20 minutes and call upon a great deal of what you've learned?  No idea what I should really focus on and there isn't enough time to really review everything in the fullest.  There are so many equations, so many formulas, so many relations, tricks, and concepts that need to be known just to do the homework.  I take an hour just looking in textbooks and online for the tools I need to do a problem.  I'm not even sure what the equation sheet that will be provided for the test will look like.  How will I be able to take a test?  

I knew that school here would be more difficult.  It seems that since moving away from California 4 years ago I've been progressively increasing the difficulty of my schooling.  First changing majors, going to a community college, getting accepted to the University of Washington for astronomy, doubling my major to include physics and now studying abroad during a critical time of my physics education: EM and quantum.  I know taking quantum mechanics will be difficult, but now I'm revamping my position to saying it will be near impossible.  I do not look forward to taking it this coming semester.  What will the test for that class be like?

Einstein Field Equations

Here in Germany I knew I would be probably yearning for some English, especially in my schooling.  As such, I signed up for a Nuclear Astrophysics class as some of you dear readers already know.  Also, this is a graduate level class.  I knew, or at least had heard, of the Einstein field equations and how they were supposed to equal 42 or some such thing...alright that last part is a lie.  I had heard of them before though.  So it turns out that this class seems to me to be more Cosmology than Nuclear Astrophys, especially since one of the first things mentioned in lecture was how we would develop the tools to solve the field equations in the first few weeks.  Here we are almost 2 months in and we recently got there.

I was amazed.  Why?  Because I was able to follow the steps.  These are 10-coupled equations.  You start with defining the metric which I think describes how the space-time you have should work.  On second thought I'm pretty sure that's wrong, but please roll with it for the purposes of this blog.  Anyway, you have to have this metric so that you can find the Christoffel symbols.  With the Christoffel symbols and the metric, you calculate the Riemann-Christoffel tensor and from that tensor, you use the metric to contract it to the second-rank Ricci tensor.  From the Ricci tensor, contracting with the metric again gets you the Ricci scalar.  And with all these pieces you solve the equations.  I was wowed.  I'm still not sure exactly what these equations tell us, but I'm pretty sure they describe the universe.  Holy cow.  

On a related note, I discovered today that I am definitely a theorist, not an experimentalist.  Sure, I like to think I have a little engineering in my blood, but that's just from watching too much MacGyver as a kid.  I definitely prefer math and the cosmos to experiments with circuits or particle accelerators and what not.  I'm happy sitting at a computer analyzing light from start thousands of light-years away or manually calculating Fourier transforms.  Is that wrong?  

No.  Cheers!

Three Months In

It has been over three months since I moved to Germany to study physics for a year.  You may ask, "Hey Brian, how's it going?"  To which I would naturally respond with "great!" or "it's different, but alright."  But of course, on the inside there is something else that is going on that isn't quite on the level of 'great.'  Inside I'm a spinning turbine of unknown energies and power.  

What does that even mean!?

Got me, this is more of a free-verse-poem-prose-write thing than a normal post.  -rant, I forgot -rant as well.  So what's got me all riled and contorted into some weird brain fart thing?  Well...

I once knew a man in Reno,

who was very tired of Dino

and went from bored to crazy

with a great big oops-a-daisy

cause he didn't know what he said!

So I lied about the free and -verse and -poem part.  Anyway, it's the fact that my classes are in German.  Yes, I hear you laughing from here when you say, "but Brian, you knew what you were signing up for, didn't you?"  Of course I did!  That's not the point.  The point is in the crappy verse I just wrote.  Imagine spending two hours on a hard wooden seat while somebody who you know is intelligent and has something important to tell you jabbers on in a language of which you can follow about 50 percent at best.  This is what happens every class period.

I take notes and notes from boards or powerpoints have always made sense nearly immediately, be it straight math or straight physics.  The real beauty of my notes is from notes I make to the notes themselves, and that comes from the extra things the professor says while he isn't writing on the board.  My notes are crap! because of how little extra stuff I'm able to write down.  I'm borderline twiddling my thumbs sometimes when there is no writing happening on the board.  Thank goodness these professors don't have any odd mannerisms or I'd be caught staring to the point of mesmerization.  

I'm not saying the my German hasn't improved because it has indeed.  It's just that it's not at the point where I can learn as well as I know I can.  And I hope that made sense cause this is a rant and there is no time to correct typos or grammar.  So there.  

Cheers. 

p.s. Additionally and aside from missing Mac&Cheese, IPA, Kiss Cafe, small and intimate coffee shops, regular interaction with animals, my friends and my family, I have no complaints about living in Germany at all.  It's beautiful and the food is great.

Let the classes begin!

Guten Morgen everyone!  I trust you had a lovely evening back on the western hemisphere.  Here, it's 9-ish and my first class starts in an hour.  The university here in Gießen employs two primary types of physics classes-theoretical and experimental.  Both are lecture classes but I assume just a different take on the physics.  I signed up for the 3rd semester experimental physics class, which focuses on atomic, nuclear and particle physics.  I've taken some of this before, but I didn't think I would do to well in the 5th semester EP class which was titled core and particle physics (but a different word for particle, go figure).  I am also going to take the electromagnetism course this semester with plans to take the quantum mechanics class next semester.  I haven't actually gotten into the EM class but that kind of thing happens all the time at UW too.  In the meantime, if our calculations are correct, we will be needing a third class and I am hesitantly thinking of trying for a masters level nuclear astrophysics course, which covers the beginnings of the universe through the formation and death of stars.  Relativity, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics are key players.  I'm scared but it's the only astronomy related class.  So in the meantime, I'm going to read a quantum mechanics textbook I brought along.  I'll learn it myself dangit!

Additionally, I sure hope to find the motivation to learn a programming language on my own this semester.  What I really need is a project (like homework) to focus on, otherwise I'm just learning the language and never using it in practice.  When I took a computer science class, they had us doing projects every week and gradually increasing our abilities.  So, it sounds like I need another text book with homework problems in the back. ;)  I'll just keep you posted I guess.  

I have to admit, I'm nervous about taking classes in German.  Yesterday we went to the department's meet-and-greet which turned out to be more like "let's go over the schedules and what's coming up just so you all know."  Naturally it was in German and I understood less than none.  This is probably going to be very bad.  I can only hope the homeworks are straightforward and not word problems. 

Welche Sprache sprichst du?

Okay, finally done with one whole week.  It's astonishing how long it feels it's been when it's only been 8 days or so.  So much has happened that it feels like a month has gone by already.  The summer course goes well.  Quickly, here is the way my week will go for the next 3 weeks.  Everyday there are language tutorials/classes for 1.5 hours followed by a half hour coffee break.  Then another 1.5 hours of tutorials followed by lunch.  On Monday and Wednesday lunch is 1 hour followed by 2 hours of instruction that focuses more on culture and what not (still in German though).  On Tuesday and Thursday lunch is 2 hours followed by 2 hours of a workshop.  I picked the Zeitung, or newspaper, and will be writing a short article on the history of Gießen.  On Fridays classes end at lunch.  Yay!

I've wandered much of Gießen now and must say it is a very interesting city.  The combination of rural and urban is extreme.  I live on the outskirts of town, give or take, and have two giant fields and a forest (nearly) to walk between on my way to a major street with a McDonalds, Burger King, gas station and 3 large stores plus many smaller stores.  There is a large river, the Lahn, flowing through the upper part of the city which I finally went and saw on Thursday I think, maybe it was Wednesday... I just don't know.  

Today I need to figure out where and how to do laundry since I used my last pair of socks on my Frankfurt excursion yesterday.  There, I had my first Starbucks since getting to this country and it was also the largest cup of coffee I'd seen yet.  Folks, just be prepared when you get here for nothing bigger than a tall when you order coffee.  I've been around this town and every place has the same kind of automatic (but freshly ground) coffee machines and the largest cup is a stinking coffee cup size.  I want something bigger!!  Anyhoo.  I'm still working on getting a Picassa thing going so non-Facebookers can see all the pics.  I'll figure it out soon enough.  In the meantime, go here and select the Gießen album or any album name from the places we'll go.  Hope the link works.  Let me know if it doesn't.  Until later....ciao!

Rediscovery

With only 8 days until the great grand adventure, my panic attacks have begun to come more frequently and even while I sleep.  The intensive language class is ending this week and since it has slowed down considerably (i.e. all homework is now completed, 3 days ahead of schedule), I have discovered something amazing.  Well its actually a rediscovery.  

I like science.  I mean REALLY like science.

It's like a festering scab wound thing that you just have to itch and it makes it worse but it feels so good and you just have to itch it one more time because of some weird feeling it gives that makes it feel better than when it is festering, scabbing... i think you get the idea.  I just read the two latest issues of Discover and Astronomy magazine and I'm borrowing the May issue of Science (very fancy) from the Physics department.  And I'm reading almost every article.  Geography, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Physics, and yes Astronomy.  I can't get enough.  Just one quarter without taking any kind of science class and I find that I can barely contain myself.  I want to be doing two research projects and learning how to present my work with new computer programs.  I can't wait for these plane rides so I can just sit and read magazines.  If only I could get my hands on the Astrophysical Journal I'd be set.  Alas, that costs quite a bit.  

Anyway, this just makes me feel better about the choice I made in picking the Sciences. Even though it is really hard at times, I enjoy it and just need to find that special niche where everything clicks for me.  I know that I'm not going to be a super genius, but I still love reading up on everything.  Jack of all trades, master of some - that's what I'm aiming for.  Prost!

Wold Update

Oh mercy! It's been over two months! Why did nobody say anything?! I just got done with my first legitimate all-nighter at school. I stayed up the whole night sitting at a table surrounded by friends and munchies and homework. I napped from 10-12:15 today after getting up at 6 yesterday. I begin with that so I can explain why I even have the time to blog right now. I still had homework that is due tomorrow that I just got done doing...at least for tonight. And since I still have a little bit of life left in me before I crash for (what I hope will be) restful sleep, I decided to come here and share as much of what I think is important that's happened in the past 2 months.

Where to begin? I've been accepted into a exchange program through the University of Washington to go and study physics (and other things) for 11 months in Giessen, Germany at the Justus-Leibig Universitat-Giessen. Wow, huh? A very good friend of mine is going along and we're going to pretty much have the most rockin' good time I think either of us may have ever had. I know I speak for myself at least. She's traveled off this continent before and is much more outgoing so she may not have as much of a shock as I do. I'm looking forward to sampling all the different foods...and beers. We're making plans for traveling around all of Europe, both together and on solo adventures. Now I can handle myself pretty well in a city like San Francisco or Seattle if I just get dumped in the middle of it somewhere. I could probably handle New York if I really concentrated. But a city in another country is I think going to be a lot different. Quite the learning curve.

This of course leads into a discussion of school. Summer courses will consist of one intensive German language class. It's the entire first year of German packed into 7 or 8 weeks. Needless to say, that'll be the only class I'm taking. Right now I'm taking 4 classes;

1. Astronomy 323 - Galaxies, Cosmology
2. Astronomy 480 - Observing
3. Physics 226 - Particles and Symmetries
4. Physics 321 - Electromagnetism 1

These classes are destroying my existence. Luckily there have been developments socially that balance the force of school (physics reference there if you caught it). Going out at least once a week for beers, doing homework away from the school with friends, and reading books not for school are just some of the ways I maintain sanity at the moment.

I've recently discovered the awesomeness of Pandora.com. If you put 2 or 3 artists in a playlist, you're going to get a pretty decent spread of similar music and I find it remarkable for finding all these songs I used to listen to on the radio when I was a kid. It's amazing. I put in Journey and Queen as my artists and I'm getting all sorts of other songs I recognize and new ones that I really enjoy. Same goes for my Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Brian Setzer Orchestra combo. Anyway, that was kind of random.

And with that sentence, I must say farewell again. I apologize but I am now crashing. I promise to blog more even though more and more events get added to my schedule book (which happens to be a moleskin(R)).

Cheers.

p.s. upcoming events I'm interested in:

1. Third Day Concert May 7th
   
2. Seattle Beer Week May 7th-17th
3. UW Undergraduate Symposium May 15th (I'm presenting. More on that later)
4. Visiting Momma May 22nd-25th
   

Saturday Morning Musings

I'm at a local independent coffee shop right now called Gretchen's Place. Their Americanos aren't bad and I would recommend you come early when there aren't a lot of people. The table I'm typing on right now is single stem style with four base protrusions and it's wobbling, making my screen bobble with every slam of my fingers on the keyboard. Thus why I always prefer three legged or three-legged-protrusion-single-stem tables. And if you can't figure out why that makes a difference, then we have a problem.

I just collected 15 hours worth of data on the hour on 2 separate days for 13 different asteroids. So that comes out to (15*2*13) lines I put onto my computer and organized in a neat orderly fashion so that later today, after orchestra and Battlestar Galactica, I can convert some of the data into other units and do some easy math to find out some cool stuff that I'll use later on to do more cool stuff. But honestly, I fear I may be over my head this semester. But that's another story. Tests may be next week in all three of my primary classes, but today it's all research (since I haven't done any in about 10 days and that's bad of me).

I'm planning on using some of the portions of my tax return to buy a good size whiteboard. A wha? Yes, you read right. I'm going to buy a whiteboard and hang it on the wall in my room over my bed. I want to be able to do practice problems of math and physics without having to look for paper and pencil. I mean, it'll save the environment and I'll feel like a BA while writing there. There is something special about doing homework or practice on a large board. You can step back, hold the pen in your mouth or something, stare at the board and just think. It's great and I recommend it. Trev, that goes for you. Try translating Greek on a chalkboard and tell me it isn't fun.

Well, I finished my Americano and now have to head off to play Horn. It's sectionals today and so you're more exposed. I hope I don't suck. Until next time everyone. Cheers!

Sed-a-give!!

Welcome everyone. I hate writing 9's so this year is already tainted. So it goes.

School is starting on Monday. Have I even purchased my books? No. Have I been keeping up with my studying? No. Am I totally doomed? Quite possibly. But I'm not worrying about it because it will work itself out. I need to take it easy while I still can. This quarter is gonna be hard. I'm taking two upper math classes, an astro computing class, and the second astro 300 level class on galaxies, of which I have no clue what things we'll learn there. Also, I'm continuing my research project on asteroids and will be devoting a minimum of three hours a week to that along with my orchestra commitments on Saturday. It's a good thing I'm getting up at 6 already.

Wow, but did you really want to know all that? Probably not but that's what a blog is for: to tell you all these wonderful things about me. Me me me. I feel so soiled right now with my presumtuous arrogance. I apologize. I will now entertain you with a story so you feel better about the time you've spent reading here.

...........um.........

How about I promise to tell a story next time? I can't think of one right now. I promise it'll be fantastic.

Anticipation

So to make a long story short yet concise yet full-of-all-that-you-would-need-to-know, I am preparing my skill set to partake in analyzing data for a post doc at the UW. What? Well to undergrads like myself they call that research. Cool, huh? I have to say I'm very nervous yet excited. I know that research is an important part of being an undergrad and grad in the sciences so I've been wondering how I was going to get started. Imagine my shock when all I had to do was talk to our (the Astronomy Dept.) friendly program advisor who then took me over to the faculty member with the work to be done! Whew!

What skill set am I preparing you ask? Well, I'm a Windows guy. I like PC's. To use the current cliche, I'm a PC. What I don't know very well are any things that use command lines and stuff that's behind the scenes without a friendly desktop and mouse to help me around. The data I'll be needing are accessible by Linux or programs similar to Linux (which is similar to Unix [you got me on what that is]). This faculty member, whose name is Lynne, got me a link to a crash course in Linux and I'm studying it like a fiend, trying to get good at it so I can start this project.

And the project is, you ask? Well Lynne was taking optical (visible light) data of a patch of asteroids in the Asteroid Belt and at nearly the same time, the Spitzer Space Telescope was taking an infrared (measures the heat of an object) picture of the same batch of asteroids. Now if you have either optical or infrared data on an object like an asteroid, it's difficult (not sure if its impossible) to determine its size. But, by combining both, you can determine the albedo, a measure of the reflectivity of the object and from that you can determine size. What you do with the info after that is ... up to someone else at this point I think.

There is my news for the week. That and I've been sick with a cold. I also just finished my math physics homework which was more tedious than anything I've done in about 4 months, which was when I had to move.

Hysteria

It feels like it's been a while since I shared. Yet it's been all of 17 days. I can only conclude that these seventeen days have either been so filled that I haven't properly fathomed the passage of time or they have been extremely slow days. Regardless...

It's Finals [feels like it should be capitalized] week. The nine week summer quarter here at UW is reaching its end. It's been rough, I'm not going to lie. Here's what it's been like in an analogy metaphor whatever form that should ring true with anybody that has ever visited Seattle.

*shimmering cross-fade* My first quarter at the U feels like I was walking along Pike's Market, minding my own business, taking in the sites and the people, smelling the flowers, getting those flavored honey stick things when all of a sudden... [thought I'd make you wait a sec on the edge of your seat] ... a giant fish slaps me in the face, stunning me into near unconsciousness! It had come from them fish throwing folk down in the corner and boy was it a big fish! I numbly get back on my feet when one of the dudes in the orange overalls comes over real fast, helps me don my own orange pant suspender doohicky and proceeds to throw me into the fray of taking orders and throwing fish. Fully recovered from my fish in the head incident, I quickly get the hang of taking orders and throwing fish. But then the lingo starts getting more complicated and the busy time of the day is here and I can't keep up and ... and........ I freak out! There's fish everywhere! Here fish, there fish. Crawdad things are crawling out of the tubs! Mini-fireworks shoot out of the ice packs! People are dancing in the streets and that blind guitar player is going to town! Dogs and cats, living together...Mass Hysteria! *cross-fade back*

That's what it's been like. I can only hope that next quarter will be a smoother ride the whole way through.

Goals

So last Monday, I completed a goal I had set for myself more than two years earlier. In early 2006, I said that I would become a student at the University of Washington. Monday, June 23, I had my first class at 9:40a. How did it feel? Well, I certainly wasn't really thinking that hard about it. I didn't feel any different, but it was pretty cool to say "hey, I finished a goal I set. How about that?" I'd also like to say, I'm very proud of being a Husky. Go Dawgs!

Now, on to lighter matters. Besides the (pretty much included in prior goal) goal of graduating in three, maybe even two years, I have a much greater goal that is going to take some thinking, planning, praying, asking, pondering, and on top of all that, much information gathering. Are you ready for my new goal? Maybe it's not really a goal since that suggests an actual, I don't know, tangible ending. A "something" you can hold on to and present to people saying here it is! (i.e. my student ID) Now this thing I'm about to reveal to you is probably more of an intent to do research to determine if a goal to implement said research should be announced. Here then is my research goal. Are you ready?

I want to live on a boat.

Liveaboarders is one of the terms I've come across so far. I also understand some communities shun them while they're also a close knit group. [Aside] Please don't mistake me. I'm not going to go sell my truck, take a loan and buy a boat tomorrow. This is my research goal. I am going to learn everything I can about liveaboarding and boating. [End Aside] This could take several years and I understand that. It has always been a dream of mine to live on a boat. Not tied down to any one place: if I so choose, I'm up and away (or, more appropriately, Anchors Away!) Well there you go. Thoughts, advice, and slaps to my face are welcome.

T+01:42:37

Well, as of 7:12p last night, 1 hour and 42 minutes after official class time, I successfully graduated from my second community college. It was the final for the one class I was taking this semester. I'd say I completed it in a little over an hour and because I was waiting for my classmate to finish, I spent the rest of the time checking my work. I came up with a delightful way to describe how incredibly awesome this test was on the easy scale. It goes like this:

Brian walked in not exactly knowing what to expect. Finals can always be tricky and especially so if they're comprehensive. But when the moment of truth came and all the studying would be put to the test (pun intended), Brian gazed at the test for a moment and immediately sized it up. Quietly pulling out his six-shooter, he said "Okay Final, time to dance."

It was a beautiful test, with very delightful questions and I screamed through it at speeds unheard of by mortal man. It felt good. I was checked at one spot but came back later and gave it a what for. Several-variable calculus final, you got pwned!