Category: Education

Great Scot

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” – Issac Newton

While in elementary school, I learned of the giants in science.  There was Newton himself, along with Galileo, Copernicus, and even Aristotle whose ideas were overturned by the great Renaissance scholars.  Yet one name overlooked was James Clerk Maxwell.  This is an oddity, as we frequently experimented in class with the concepts of electricity and magnetism.  Maxwell’s work, expressed in four equations, provides all the theoretical underpinning for the properties of electromagnetic waves.  Much of the technological transformation of everyday life in the 20th century is influenced one way or another by Maxwell’s breakthroughs.

maxwell1869
James Clerk Maxwell and his wife Katherine, and one cool looking sheepdog. 1869. Credit: Wiki Commons.

When Maxwell published his A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field a few months before the end of the American Civil War, his theory did not take the form of the four equations so familiar to physics students.  Maxwell presented his ideas in twenty equations.  The simplification occurred a couple decades later as Oliver Heaviside made significant advancements in vector calculus.  This allowed Heaviside to simplify, to the good fortune of future physicists, Maxwell’s results.

Maxwell’s work highlighted the key difference between electric and magnetic fields.  Electric fields can flow away or towards a point source.  An electric field will flow away from a positive charge but flow towards a negative charge.  Consequently, if you surround an electric charge with a closed surface, the electric flux (number of field lines) leaving that surface will be proportional to the charge.

Charge
Credit: Wiki Commons

Friction can cause a migration of negatively charged electrons from one material to another creating static electricity.  This is what happens to cloths in a dryer as the material with an excess of negative charges will cling to the material with an excess of positive charges as opposite charges attract.  Cling free sheets release a lubricant to decrease friction in the dryer so there is no buildup of static electricity.  Another household item, the refrigerator magnet, generates a different type of field also explained by Maxwell.

A magnetic field is fundamentally different in that it requires two poles.  While a positive or negative electric charge can exist in isolation, a magnetic north pole is always accompanied by a southern magnetic pole and vise versa.  Unlike an electric field where field lines flow away or towards a single charge, a magnetic field acts as a continuous loop.   As a result, if you put a magnetic pole inside a closed surface, whatever magnetic flux emerges from the surface eventually reenters the surface.  Thus, the magnetic flux of a closed surface is zero.
Credit: Wiki Commons

An example of this is the Earth, which acts like a giant bar magnet.  However, the Earth’s magnetic field is continually buffeted by the solar wind which deforms its shape.  On the day side facing the Sun, the magnetic field is compressed.  On the night side facing away from the Sun, the magnetic field is blown away by the solar wind into a tail much like a comet.  As the solar wind is constantly changing velocity and direction, the Earth’s magnetic field is dynamic in nature as can be seen below.

Credit: NASA Goddard/SWRC/CCMC/SWMF

Maxwell was able to demonstrate through his equations how a changing magnetic field will produce electric fields.  In the case of the Earth, a perturbation of the magnetic field by a strong solar event can induce electric fields in the atmosphere.  In 1859, just six years before Maxwell published his work on electromagnetic fields, the strongest magnetic event in recorded history occurred. On September 1st, from his solar observatory 25 miles south of London, Richard Carrington observed a major solar flare.  The following night, the disruption in the Earth’s magnetic field produced aurora as far south as Cuba and induced electrical currents to the extent that telegraph operators were able to send messages even when the batteries were disconnected.  The original New York Times report on the magnetic storm can be read here.

A more recent event transpired in 1989 when a magnetic storm caused a twelve hour blackout in the province of Quebec and aurora displays as far south as Florida.  The disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field induced an overload in the electrical grid creating the blackout.  As society becomes more and more dependent on electrical devices such as cell phones, space weather forecaster takes on a greater significance.  A repeat of the 1859 event would cause significant disruption in the electrical grid and is why a premium is placed on producing better space weather prediction models.

While a changing magnetic field will produce an electric field, a changing electric field also produces a magnetic field.  When combined, changing electric and magnetic fields form something of a symbiotic relationship which produces an electromagnetic wave.  An example of such is below.

E = electric field, B = magnetic field. Credit: Wiki Commons

The term electromagnetic (EM) wave may sound foreboding, but we experience these waves in our daily lives in the form of radio, microwave, light, ultraviolet, and x-rays.  What differentiates between one type of wave and another is the wavelength.  Long wavelength radiation, such as radio, are low in energy while short wavelength radiation, such as x-rays, are high in energy.

Credit: NASA

During Maxwell’s life, light (visible, infrared, and ultraviolet) was the only EM radiation known to exist.  The hallmark of a valid theory is to make successful predictions and in Maxwell’s case, his theory predicted other forms of electromagnetic radiation that would have the same properties as light.  That it could be diffracted, reflected, polarized, and would have the same velocity.  Heinrich Hertz discovered radio and microwaves in 1888, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays in 1895, and Paul Villard discovered gamma rays in 1900.  Astronomers, no longer restricted to observing the universe in the optical range of the EM spectrum, now use an armada of radio, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray telescopes to obtain a much deeper understanding of the heavens.  The video below demonstrates how the Crab Nebula appears in various parts of the EM spectrum.

Another prediction from Maxwell’s work would spark a revolution in physics in the 20th century.  His equations calculated the speed of light (or any other EM wave) to be a constant at 3.00 × 108 m/s (186,282 miles per second).  The key here is the word constant, which means the speed of light is the same regardless of your velocity towards or away from it.  To use an analogy, if you are driving on a highway at a speed of 60 mph, and the car in the next lane is traveling at 65 mph, you will be passed by that vehicle at a rate of 5 mph.  Now, lets pretend you are traveling in a car exactly 5 mph less than the speed of light.  If a light beam was next to you, your life experience would make you think the light, just like the car, would pass you at a rate of 5 mph.  However, your intuition would be wrong, the light beam would pass you at the speed of light just the same as if you were standing still. 

What gives?

This was a mystery that baffled physicists for half a century and one reason it took a few decades for Maxwell’s work to be fully accepted.  Maxwell predicted EM radiation could travel in a vacuum at the speed of light.  The prevailing wisdom at the time was EM radiation would need a medium, such as air provides for a sound wave, and it would travel at different velocities relative to its direction in the medium then referred to as ether.  In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed an experiment that would measure the speed of light throughout the year as the Earth orbited the Sun.  The concept was to make measurements while the Earth was moving in various directions.  The speed of light was expected to be faster as the Earth moved in a direction opposite the ether was moving in.  The experiment detected no change in the velocity of light and thus, no medium for light to travel in.

This mystery was solved by Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity in 1905.  Einstein’s theory eschews common intuition and treats the speed of light as a constant and time, along with mass and length, as a variable.  So what happens on the highway in Einstein’s world?  As you near the speed of light, your clock slows down relative to a bystander next to the highway.  So, instead of measuring different velocities for the light beam (the bystander measuring the normal speed of light where you measure it at 5 mph), the light beam travels at the same velocity relative to each person.  If you are in the car, your clock will run slower and you will age at a slower rate than the bystander.  Confusing?  Join the club.  We do not experience relativistic effects in our daily lives so our intuition fails us mightily here.  And that was the nature of Einstein’s genius to break through that barrier.

Einstein would pay tribute to James Clerk Maxwell by stating his work was, “the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton”.  Einstein would further enhance Maxwell’s reputation by describing his contributions towards lying the foundations of special relativity in his highly accessible 1940 Science article Considerations Concerning the Fundaments of Theoretical Physics.

While figuring out the theory of electromagnetism, Maxwell found the time to make two other key contributions to science.  James Clerk Maxwell was the first person to develop a method of taking a color photograph.  Maxwell produced a theory that a color photograph could be developed by taking an image with blue, green, and red filters and combining the three to create a single color image.  Maxwell demonstrated this technique in a 1861 lecture at the Royal Institution and the result was this.

Credit: James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Sutton

The RGB color scheme was used to develop color television and is still used to produce color space images including the Cassini mission which explored Saturn, its moons, and rings from 2004 to 2017.

During the mid 1800’s, astronomers generally thought that Saturn’s rings were either a solid or a fluid (gaseous).  In 1859, Maxwell postulated that the rings were composed of many small, orbiting bodies.  Maxwell determined that the forces imposed on a solid ring system around Saturn would be so great as to break apart the rings.  Also, Maxwell argued that a ring system of many small, orbiting bodies could give the optical illusion of acting as a fluid.  If the rings were one solid piece, the entire ring system would revolve around Saturn at the same rate much like a vinyl record does.  A system of small, orbiting bodies would obey Kepler’s laws.  This means the inner bodies would orbit Saturn at a faster rate than those located in the outer rings. Maxwell’s theory was proven correct in 1895 when James Keeler’s spectroscopic study of the rings indicated they obeyed Kepler’s Law and thus, were composed of billions of small bodies.

True color image of Saturn and rings displaying spokes and clumping features in rings. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.

When the Cassini mission took a color image of Saturn’s rings, it validated Maxwell’s theory of the rings, used Maxwell’s technique to produce a color image, and sent the image back to Earth via radio transmissions whose properties are explained by Maxwell’s equations.   Maxwell’s ability to unify the forces of electricity and magnetism inspired future physicists to endeavor to unify the other forces of nature, otherwise known as the theory of everything.

Applications of Maxwell’s work is not restricted to physics and astronomy.  Any technology using electricity or magnetism are underpinned by Maxwell’s four equations.  While Einstein stood on Maxwell’s giant shoulders to produce the theory of special relativity, we stand on Maxwell’s giant shoulders everyday when we turn on a light, a television, or a computer.  No doubt, James Clerk Maxwell’s legacy is among the greatest in science.

*Image on top of post is the spiral galaxy M101 formed from a composite of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (light), Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared), and Chandra X-ray observatories.  All these electromagnetic waves follow the properties of Maxwell’s equations.  The red is infrared and maps galactic dust.  The yellow is light and consists of stars, and blue are x-rays and represent regions of high temperatures such as supernova remnants and black hole accretion disks.  This composite provides a complete map of the galaxy.  Credit:  NASA, ESA, CXC, SSC, and STSci.

Science and Religion

Teaching astronomy, one will inevitably encounter issues such as the Big Bang that may run contrary to your student’s religious beliefs. How to deal with such a situation? Two things I attempt to do in my class is to distinguish between religious studies and science as well as provide proper historical context of the conflict between the two areas.

In every astronomy class I have taught, I have been asked about my religious views. I offer a brief explanation with the disclaimer those are mine and mine views alone. You want to avoid the bad vibe in a classroom when a teacher uses a course to push a personal agenda. My own experience as a student is I want to be evaluated on my knowledge of the subject matter, not how well I imitate the teacher’s personal viewpoints.

An exercise I like to try is to drop a book to the floor and have the students measure its acceleration. All the measurements should be 9.8 m/s2. Then ask the class if the measurements were impacted at all by their religious beliefs. The hallmark of science is observations that can be independently verified by others. This differs from other disciplines that can be subject to what is known in academic circles as reader response theory. This theory holds that a reader’s life experience and values will offer different interpretations of the same work.

An (rather simple) example of reader response theory that can be presented to the class could be a movie. For older students, Titanic might serve as a good example. Some students will remember a disaster movie, others a romance (the pros and cons of the movie are not important for the point to be made). For younger students, a movie like Interstellar might fill the bill. The important point is to understand how the same piece of work will offer differing perspectives to different individuals.

In the case of the Bible, the pre-Civil War era provides a stark example of contradictory interpretations of the same work. For example, the Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union states the following:

“That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations.”

That was not an aberration. The Confederacy often invoked religion to justify slavery. At the same time, Abolitionists often used the same Bible to advance the cause to eliminate slavery. The hymn Amazing Grace was written by a former slave trader turned abolitionist. While this is an extreme example of opposing interpretations of the Bible, it drives the point home. The class can be asked at this point, can the scientific measurement made of the falling book offer such differing interpretations?

At this moment, the class should be ready to examine the historical conflict between science and religion. Most famously, there is the case of the Catholic Church against Galileo. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the church for, among other things, predicting planets orbited stars outside the Solar System. Today, controversies surrounding evolution and the Big Bang theory highlight the clash between science and religion.

Conflict is the centerpiece of drama, and because of that, we tend to focus on conflict when examining the relationship between the two topics. But is that the whole picture? It is difficult to imagine now, but the Big Bang theory was originally criticized as having religious overtones as it presented a timeline of the universe with a discrete starting point. Why is that? The first person to conceptualize the Big Bang was Georges Lemaitre, a highly talented mathematician…and a Catholic priest.

Lemaitre deduced the universe had a discrete starting point not from the Book of Genesis, but by examining Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Models of static universes using general relativity are unstable. That is, they cannot stay static and begin to expand or contract. Lemaitre proposed the universe began as a compact “primordial egg” and expanded throughout its lifetime. Most astronomers rejected this concept at first, including Einstein who told Lemaitre, “Your grasp of physics is abominable.” Conventional wisdom among scientists at the time was the universe had no beginning or end.

The turning point in this debate was the work of Edwin Hubble at Mt. Wilson. A survey of galactic red shifts indicated that galaxies were receding from each other. The universe was expanding! The priest and his scientific work were vindicated*. The measurements conducted by Hubble, like the measurements of the falling book, provide the same result regardless of who is measuring and what their religious background is. That included Einstein who seeing Hubble’s work, after a lecture by Lemaitre in 1931, stood up and said, “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.”

The lesson here that to appreciate and perform high-level scientific work does not matter what your religious views are or are not. What is important is to understand, as Lemaitre did a century ago, the key differences between the two and not to conflate one with the other.

*Lemaitre’s original primordial egg model of the universe has since been replaced by inflationary models of the Big Bang starting with a singularity. However, the expansion of the universe with a discrete starting point of creation still stands

Often, when I introduce Lemaitre to students, there is an assumption as a priest he relied on the Bible in some manner to conceptualize the Big Bang. No way, a cursory glance at his work will indicate it is all science.

Another interesting juxtaposition of science and religion is the famous Apollo 8 Christmas Eve telecast below:

Image on top of post is George Lemaitre teaching at the Catholic University of Louvain.  Photo:  ARCHIVES GEORGES LEMAÎTRE/CATHOLIC UNIV. LOUVAIN/TECLIM

Teaching Science in a Demon Haunted World

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” – Carl Sagan from his 1995 book The Demon Haunted World.

This prescient quote links together two of the largest challenges in teaching science today. How to build a strong conceptual background before making the leap into the abstract, and how to maintain that know-how long term. The argument Sagan made, and which I agree, the transition from industrial to service economy has made both tasks significantly more difficult.

My goal is not to romanticize the old industrial economy. Most of those jobs were physically demanding and often resulted in long term health issues, injury, and at times, fatalities. However, the preparation and performance of those jobs provided a better sense of the physical world for those who dropped out of high school to work than many college graduates have today. I grew up in that world, but have lived my working life in post-industrial America.

Jean Piaget’s theory postulates that a student develops abstract thinking skills around the ages of 14-16. The work of Robert Karplus discovered for physics, the ability to solve abstract problems is often delayed into adulthood. To solve abstract physics problems, one must obtain a good conceptual understanding first so vectors do not appear like random arrows. When I was in grade school, we were trained to work in the old industrial economy. This meant grounding in metal shop, electrical systems, and industrial processes such as steel making.

What this meant was by early high school, I was knowledgeable in the laws of force, material science, and chemical processes used in industry. That put one on firm footing to take on abstract chemistry and physics courses in the final two years of high school.

Republic Steel in Buffalo – limestone is used to purify iron ore then made into steel. Heat increases the reaction rate – a basic law of chemistry. Photo: Steel Plant Museum of Western New York.

However, even if one did not take those courses, they often entered jobs requiring a solid grounding in the physical sciences. My father dropped out after two years of high school to work. A career in fabricating and repairing industrial air compressors required knowledge in fluid dynamics, electrical systems, motors, and force. And this leads to the second problem confronting science educators, how is it possible to retain this knowledge if the current economy does not require it to work?

My father, Donald Pijanowski, and the gearbox for Joy Manufacturing Compressor # 7019 dated June 6, 1975. Wonder if this thing is still operating somewhere. Photo: Pijanowski Family Archive.

There are a lot of self styled education gurus who claim to have the solution for this, but the reality is adults retain knowledge they have to actively use. It really does not matter what type of educational process was taught beforehand. For starters, students respond differently to various educational methods. I prefer the Richard Feynman technique of utilizing various methods within a course to cast as wide a net as possible around the class. That said, retention depends on a use it or lose it principle.

Today’s workplace, more often than not, involves the use of computers rather than pulleys. There certainly is physics at play here but remains mostly hidden behind the keyboard. An analogy I think is most people understand the physics of a hot air balloon, but not a modern jet airplane. The electronics and quantum physics behind the computing revolution remains a mystery to most of its users. And when the science becomes a mystery, as Sagan noted, people rely on other methods to interpret the world around them.

My father (1974) utilizing the laws of force and pulleys which are still a staple of physics courses. Photo: Pijanowski Family Archive.

I spent a good chunk of my career in financial services. In processing foreign exchange trades or mortgage closings, none of those duties required an understanding of the physical world around me unlike work in manufacturing. I continued my education during those years in physics and space science, but had I not, my education would have faded away and been replaced with God only knows. Education is only the first step in the process of understanding nature. I’ve know people who went to schools I would have given a limb to attend take a deep dive into the world of conspiracy theories afterwards.

It’s anecdotal, but I’ve found people beyond their formal education tend to adopt views to position them well in their social circle. This is tied to one’s ability to acquire jobs and wealth especially in economically depressed regions such as Upstate New York. And it’s a luxury working in the service sector provides as there is no price to pay for this behavior. However, in manufacturing, ignoring the laws of nature can literally cost your life. The recent development of anti-vaxxers dying from Covid may change this equation but we’ll have to wait and see. This will most likely impact the thinking of the younger generation than my own.

So, what’s the solution?

There are no silver bullets. It requires a variety of efforts and a trial and error approach. On the education front, emphasis towards conceptual chemistry and physics can help. Too many students take their first crack at these subjects in advanced courses requiring abstract thinking skills not yet developed. A conceptual approach makes sciences more accessible. We should not throw students out the science airlock if they have difficulty with abstract topics such as vectors first time at bat. This only breeds distrust of science and those who work/teach in the field.

What about after a person leaves school?

As previously noted, adults tend to retain knowledge to earn a paycheck. In the service economy, often this does not include science. This leaves people vulnerable to cranks and charlatans Carl Sagan mentions in his quote. Science based outcomes have to be made more socially popular. That’s an infamita for those of us trained in the scientific method. I have no desire to be cool or popular for the masses as science is about facts verified with experiment and data. One’s popularity should have no bearing on a scientific result. Yet, the reality is charlatans now possess an impressive infrastructure to transmit bad faith ideas in social media and those of us in science need to combat that.

1959 Tewksbury accident in Buffalo. Factors at play here are buoyancy, momentum, and grain elevators were prone to explosions as the small particles of dust combined gave greater surface area to react. No fatalities in this event but deaths were a fairly common occurance in manufacturing during this era. Credit: Buffalo History Museum.

A thing to avoid is nostalgia for the industrial economy. As the old saying goes, nostalgia is a liar. Endeavoring to bring back the economy of the 1950’s is akin to putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. It’s not happening and we need to look forward, and not idealize the past.

Myself, having an interest in astronomy was not a popular thing in the old working class culture. Often it earned you a side-eye, and at times, a slew of obscenities from those frustrated with their lot in life (my father was not one of them). Aspiring to college was not the way to earn social points. Yet, for all that, those blue collar guys required an understanding of nature to survive, and ironically, had more in common with Carl Sagan than many would have cared to admit.

* Image on top – proverbial tin foil hat. Credit: Wikipedia.

Social Hierarchy on the Job – Déjà Vu All Over Again

Yes, there are advantages to getting older, among them the ability to spot patterns in human behavior. One of these is a top down establishment of social hierarchy on a job site and its consequences upon individuals and the organization. None of it is good. However, if you’re in it, you have to navigate it until you can extricate yourself. Below are some things to expect based on my experience.

Overt micromanagement is associated with excessive guidance on how to do your job, but it’s much more than that. An authoritative manager will attempt to control the social hierarchy of an organization. By this, I’m not referring to the formal organization chart, but establishing a class structure among employees. This will not only disrupt working relationships and friendships, but seriously impair productivity as well. Personnel decisions are based on maintaining the hierarchy rather than fulfilling the organization mission. This leads to mismatches of jobs to ability, but also ushers in a variety of repercussions that cascade throughout the workplace.

Regrettably, I once worked for a company where a manager categorized employees as weak or strong, riffing off Ayn Rand’s classification scheme. Workplace norms begin to change rapidly once employees are tiered like this. Those in the upper tier begin to take liberties on those in the lower tier. And those in the lower tier feel compelled, quite naturally, to demonstrate they deserve respect, leading to needless, time wasting conflict. This is one half of a fight or flight response, combined with excessive monitoring leads to the other half.

Keeping employees in line, another former employer once utilized coworkers for covert eavesdropping and monitoring. We jokingly referred to these people as Cryptomys Hottentotus. Under this type of regime, workers circle the wagons and retreat heavily into their inner circles with their most trusted friends aka cliques. This might seem trivial, but can be detrimental to productivity.

Productivity spillover was a key concern for the great economist Alfred Marshall, who in 1890 wrote that firms and people cluster in high density regions to take advantage of transmission both information and knowledge. This is why, pre-pandemic, 3 million people a day would pack into the 22 square miles of Manhattan, or high-tech flourishes in the Bay Area soaring costs notwithstanding. While Marshall wrote about cities, it does not take much imagination to apply this concept to a firm as well.

Removing productivity spillovers occurs under micromanagement of social hierarchy.  Take a small department, say 10 people, where knowledge is shared freely among all members via a variety of manners. What happens when a department fragments into airtight cliques of say, four, three, two, and one individuals? One? It happens. Remember the movie Office Space where Stephen Root is moved into the basement? I’ve seen it with my own eyes – if not in the basement then banished to a different floor or area far removed from the department. In this scenario, information is hoarded, there is no productivity spillover effect, and even the most simple of tasks can become arduous.

Eventually, management will recognize the problem and force employees to attend team-building workshops hoping to rectify the situation. It doesn’t, but does has the extra benefit of wasting everyone’s time.

Predicting the coda to this is key to making the right decisions. What was the endgame to the two case-studies I am using here?

The first was a bank I worked for in the mid-90’s. The manager hired to handle a large expansion of operations projected confidence in an over the top manner, but in reality was very insecure. The new group leaders were hired based on youth and physical attractiveness. Remember Donald Trump and his hire people who look the part routine? It’s pretty common in business. I’m all for giving young people a chance. Hey, I was young back then! But not based on appearence, and certainly not without the benefit of more experienced people around for guidance. They attended a 90-day training program and were wholly unprepared for the job when they came back. In the end, they were glorified time sheet collectors.

And what happened to us?

As chaos descended someone had to take the blame and guess who that was. Hyper-monitoring ensued to “find the problem”. This included a consultant who stood by me with a stopwatch all day long. I was also instructed not to walk in front of the manager’s office but to walk all the way across the floor and work my way back to my area. That was a time saver. I ignored that one and probably not a coincidence I was let go the following month.

As it turned out, I was the lucky one.

I found a job with better pay shortly afterwards. Those who stayed behind stagnated in an environment of dysfunction and havoc. About three years later, people from corporate HQ flew in and solved the problem by removing the entire management team. The bank is still around, but the operations center where I worked is a shadow its former self and from what I’ve heard, to this day, has not really recovered from that experience.

The 2nd case study was a legal firm I worked for in the aughts. The department I was in was highly productive and often ranked 1st or 2nd in the nation by our largest client. There was a great sense of cohesion and we often socialized outside of work. Our manager was let go and replaced by a friend of the operations VP who promptly instilled a program of heavy monitoring. I was instructed not to speak to anyone during the day and my bathroom usage was recorded.

Needless to say, these rules did not apply to the tier favored by management.

As the department cleaved into higher and lower castes, conflict ensued, various cliques sought to undermine each other, behavior by higher ranked employees slipped badly. In their own small way, they pitched in to what came to be the financial crash of 2008. Thankfully, I walked out a few years earlier.

Management tried to rectify this by having “movie day” where we would watch a movie together as a department. They asked for suggestions and someone offered Caligula. I won’t lie, that was funny. However, that marked the end of movie day.

Eventually the whole department was eliminated. The situation had become such a cancer it was like removing a tumor.

Ok, so what do you do if you find yourself in this situation?

This type of management style tends to flourish in economically stagnant regions such as Upstate New York. In that case, finding another job might be problematic. Still, it should be your highest priority. Changing jobs can have high transaction costs (loss of friends, moving expenses, etc), but the situation will hit rock bottom before anything changes. And don’t count on the work culture reverting back to what it was beforehand.

It’s not happening. Once that egg is dropped on the floor it’s not being put back in the shell.

Always remember, first ones out are the luckiest. The cost is front-ended compared to career stagnation in a dysfunctional situation.

If you’re stuck, understand if the work culture is fragmented by a social hierarchy, you’re going to be disappointed by some in the upper tier. An unfortunate fact of human nature that behavior slips in this situation…and you’ll be on the business end of it. Some won’t go that far, but they look the other way rather than risk their paycheck.

You’ll be lied to and others will lie to ingratiate themselves with management. Sorry, it comes with the territory.

Sexual transgressions committed by those in the higher rung against those of lowest status are a mathematical certainty in these situations. Women especially, have to be on guard here. For sheer volume, most of the other transgressions will be of death by a thousand small cuts variety. This usually involves the suspension of workplace rules and guidelines for those in the upper rung. By themselves, not much, but it adds up eventually to create an acrimonious culture.

You can, in the short term, try to keep the dysfunction out of your cube, but eventually the dam breaks and you’ll be affected by it one way or another.

When the workplace fragments into cliques, you’ll need to keep your ear to the ground to access information that used to come by readily. An oddity here, if you are considered to be on the lowest rung, some on a higher rung will talk freely around you as if you are invisible. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn this way. It’s insulting, but you may as well use it for your benefit.

Otherwise, you’ll need to rely heavily picking up on body language cues. This can include the side eye look, lowering of voices when in your presence, and looking at watches when you arrive to work even on time. This allows you to sort out where everyone stands here.

If you do not exit quickly, there will be an exodus of talent and with it the job knowledge that managers let walk out the door. This will make your job more difficult and demands will be placed on you to make up the slack – It was once exhorted to me that “Stress is Good!”. It’s not. As the hall of fame football coach Bill Walsh noted, if you run on adrenaline all the time, you’ll have nothing in reserve when a true emergency comes along. Don’t fall for it.

The replacements who come in will often be young and inexperienced. Social proof is a concept where those inexperienced in certain situations will emulate others around them. This is key to normalize behavior that was previously thought to be deviant or abhorrent. In reality, some inexperienced people can be molded this way, some cannot. And I’ve seen older, more experienced workers throw away a lifetime of experience down the drain in this process.

The normalization of deviant behavior is key to disaster theory. I personally saw it in the run up to the 2008 financial crash. Like the proverbial snowball rolling downhill, it gains too much momentum in an organization for any one person to stop. It only stops when disaster occurs and recovery (reestablishing norms) begin. Do you want to go through this process? Let me put it this way, would you rather experience a tornado first hand or avoid it all together?

Does anything good come out of an experience like this? Only one that I can think of.

As the workplace fragments into dysfunction and hierarchy, there will be those few people who don’t change or look the other way. They won’t exploit the grapevine that is leveraged against you. In some cases, they’ll be people you barely knew before, but they recognize the bind you are in and reach out to you.

Once you leave, the foulness of the situation will recede from memory and those are the people you’ll remember once you’ve been long gone. This is truly one thing you can take away from these situations and value for a lifetime.

Circle C Ranch, 1974

Circle C Ranch has received much publicity the past few months resulting from an abuse scandal. I was eleven when I spent a week at the camp in 1974. I did not witness anything as horrendous outlined in the reports as the abuse began a couple decades afterwards. However, I did witness a culture at the camp making it vulnerable to such an event. My stay there was the first step, of many, causing me to keep religion at arms length.

Most summer camps in Western New York are located near Lake Erie to enjoy the cool summer breezes as well as the water. Instead, Circle C is located in a rural area an hour drive from Buffalo. The camp is seated on a dead end road and is physically isolated from the surrounding community. The sign pointing to the camp, unlike the prominent sign today, was so small we missed it at first pass. In 1974, before the internet, the brochure on the camp emphasized horseback riding as the main activity. The camp is based on a frontier western town, not unlike Dodge City on the show Gunsmoke, which was very popular at the time.

My first day was filled with the usual summer camp activities such as swimming, arts and crafts, and horseback riding along the trails that wound their way among the woods encircling the camp. We ate dinner, and after the Sun had set behind the hills, we gathered around a fire and here the true purpose of the camp came to light.

The same brochure promoting horseback riding also disclosed the Christian nature of the camp. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I went to Catholic* school up to 5th grade and the church also has summer camps. Like the usual routine at a Catholic school, the morning starts out with mass and then you get on with the rest of the day.

Circle C had something different in mind.

As I sat looking into the campfire, a counselor asked me to name the specific moment I had accepted Christ into my life. A bit stumped at why I was being asked this, I explained I had gone to my parents church since I could remember and could not name a specific starting point. The counselor replied that the devil was inside of me, preventing me from expressing my acceptance of Christ. Quite a judgement from someone who had known me less than 24 hours. With the exception of two of the other campers, the rest around the campfire concurred.

The kids, no doubt, understood the expectations of the camp and were mimicking the adults. The average eleven year old mind does not have the ability to understand when an epistemic bubble is being constructed around them. They were also exhibiting signs of foreclosed self identities. That’s not unusual for children of this age, but it takes a broad life experience to grow out of and the camp leadership were guiding the children away from that.

An example is when one of the campers attempted to impress upon me that my height was a sign of the devil growing inside me. In hindsight, I doubt the kid concocted this himself. Most likely, he heard some variation of the theme from one of the adults in camp and decided this was how to ingratiate himself within the only community he probably knew.

While we were asked by the camp to turn ourselves over to Christ, it was apparent we were being asked to turn ourselves over to the adults at the camp. I was at an advantage as this was my first and only stay at the camp whereas many of the other campers spent time there every summer. Being tall for my age meant adults often talked to me differently. Their biases and flaws got laid bare pretty quickly. I learned at a young age to take adults with a grain of salt.

The physical isolation of the camp played a key role in its mission, but there was also an intellectual isolation. No books, newspapers, radios, or television. Nothing supporting an alternative view was at hand. There was no email or cell phones during this era so no contact with family or anyone outside the camp occurred during the stay. For me, this was a very disorientating situation.

This top-down enforcement of thinking is guaranteed to stunt intellectual growth. As one reads the bible, each individual will incorporate their own life experience into their interpretation of that passage.  And you’re going to require a well rounded education to interpret any source of information properly, meaning humanities, science, social sciences, and the proverbial hard knocks. Not allowing that encourages a foreclosed self-identity where the individual adopts the viewpoints of an authority figure. There may be an absolute truth in the universe, but you’re not going to find it in any single person.

What happens when foreclosed self-identity extends into adulthood?

In my experience, these were the people who frantically tried to discourage me from going to college, who thought I should take on dead on jobs, who play the numbers game online to drown out opposing voices, much like at those campfires so many years ago, and this year, called those who took the Covid vaccine “sheeple”. If I had followed the life path they wanted to impose, I have serious doubts I would be alive today. Perhaps that’s the point, when you are no longer useful, you are disposable.

As the week went on we fell into the routine of camp activity during the day and proselytization at night. The only free time was a half hour after dinner. Under the growing shadow of the lone tree near the center of the camp, me and two other campers would discuss how we would handle the night proceedings. On our state of isolation, the joke was World War III could start and we’d never know until the week was over.

One of my tree-mates decided to simply tell the counselors what they wanted to hear, thinking they would leave you alone for the remainder of the evening. For an eleven year old, that could be the most effective way of dealing with the situation. I kept quiet as much as I could or shrugged my shoulders when asked a question about my faith. Of course, that led to more lecturing on how the devil inside was holding me back, but whatever. I had the luxury of knowing when the week concluded I was done with the camp.

Saturday was the final day and we were to participate in a horse race at a camp rodeo. That seemed to be a good way to finish the week as the horses were the best company in the camp besides my two fellow resistors. As I was packing, a counselor cornered me for one last pitch for the cause to be put on some sort of mailing list, not unlike the final sales pitch at the car dealership for rust proofing extras. Sighing, I put down my belongings for another go round of shoulder shrugging and repeating no until he left to get ready for the closing festivities.

The rodeo went off without a hitch and I headed back home. We had lunch at a restaurant not too far from the camp and the memory of that is quite strong even after 47 years, the vinegar on the table and the taste of the fries especially. After the hour ride home, I consumed magazines and newspapers to see what had happened in the world that week. I headed off to the corner store to check out the book section to see if anything new arrived. On the way there, I had to pass a neighborhood store called The Cracked Pot where Nazi paraphernalia was displayed in the front window, leaving me to ponder how on Earth I was accused of consorting with the Devil the prior week. I was especially grateful to be back among friends not hanging that one on me.

Difficult to imagine in the internet era, I did not hear anything further about the camp until the late 90’s. The camp was outside of Erie County so it was not in the phone book. They did not advertise at all, and when I asked people if they ever heard of the camp no one ever said yes. It remained a surrealistic childhood memory until one day out of curiosity, I did an internet search and sure enough, the camp had a website. It has stayed in ownership of the same family till this day.

The camp got my attention again this year when the abuse situation was uncovered. The details can be read in the news reports. Many of the women who have made the allegations have been subjected to violent threats. Nobody wants to believe someone close to them can do such things, but I think the true source of the anger is the women decided to challenge the authority of the camp. In the culture of the camp, it’s just not something that is done, especially from the camper side.

I have to leave to legal experts how this will unfold for the camp. It is untenable in its current state. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve realize I found my experience there disagreeable. Still, I can respect the sweat equity put in the place, providing for the horses and from what I understand, the volunteer labor that built the camp facilities. However, it is time for the camp leadership to stand down, and their followers to stop making empty death threats. It is long past time to reconfigure the camp experience more towards the benefit of the campers and less towards the self-aggrandizement of the camp leaders. 

Otherwise, one way or another, the camp will need to be shut down.

If Circle C was ever “God’s Camp”, it was campers such as these women who have spoken out that made it so. The adults at the camp would have realized that if only they took the time and had the modesty to listen to them.

*The Catholic church obviously has its own abuse issues – the isolation of abuse victims in this instance tended to occur on an individual basis, while the church itself was embedded and protected in the community power structure rather than hidden from it. 

The Genesis of Relativity

“The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” – Albert Einstein

A comprehensive overview of the theory of relativity and its applications in astronomy would require a course in itself. The purpose of this post will be to give a brief overview of the subject and in particular, the history of its development as a theory. What I would like to stress that despite its fearsome reputation as being difficult to understand, the major concepts of the theory can be understood by the public. In its most advance form, the mathematics of relativity can provide a challenge to any student of physics. However, this is true of any area of physics. You will not find many physics students tell you that a graduate level electricity & magnetism course is a breeze. However, the subject of electricity & magnetism can be presented in a manner that the public can understand. The difficulties of relativity lie in that it deals with phenomena we do not ordinarily observe in our lives. Relativity provides accurate predictions in two areas where Newton’s Laws do not. These are when matter has velocity near the speed of light and/or is located near a large gravity well (such as a star or a black hole). However, I do want to stress that outside of these two situations, Newton’s Laws and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity give essentially the same results.

Beginnings

In the latter part of the 1800’s, physics was thought by many to be a dead science. Newton’s Laws were considered the final say in predicting the behavior of matter in motion. James Clerk Maxwell, using four equations, successfully provided a comprehensive explanation of the properties of electricity and magnetism. The major problems in physics and astronomy seemed to be solved. However, as the century came to a close, cracks were appearing in this assumption. One was the failure of Newton’s Laws to accurately predict the orbit of Mercury around the Sun. The perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) advanced 574″ (about 1/6 of a degree) per century, which is 43″ more than the 531″ advance predicted by Newton’s Laws. This advance is caused by the presence of the other planets in the solar system. For a time, scientists thought the extra advance in Mercury’s orbit was due to the presence of an undiscovered planet. As none was found, a new explanation was required. An image of the advance is depicted below. It is exaggerated to demonstrate the effect.

Credit: Rainer Zenz/Wiki Commons

Einstein’s Papers

In 1905, Albert Einstein, who was working as a technical expert in a Swiss patent office, published four landmark papers (in addition to his doctoral dissertation) revolutionizing physics.  This year is often called “annus mirabilis” or miracle year. The topics of these four papers are the following:

1. The photoelectric effect demonstrating light behaves as a stream of particles as well as waves. It was known at the time that a beam of light would knock electrons off a metal surface. This is similar to a baseball thrown on a beach. The impact of the ball will knock sand in the air. The accepted theory at the time was light consisted as a series of waves and this could not explain the photoelectric effect. Einstein showed that light behaves as a stream of discrete particles as well. Thus, light has a duality in that it behaves as a stream of particles as well as waves. This discovery is the foundation of quantum physics.

2. The second paper concerned the nature of Brownian motion explaining that heat is created by the motion of atoms and molecules. It was this paper that put the rest the ongoing debate if atoms existed as the constituent particles of matter.

3. The Special Theory of Relativity. This paper was concerned with the motion of objects in non-accelerating frames of reference.  This means gravity is not a factor in the Special Theory as opposed to the later developed General Theory of Relativity.

4. The mass-energy equivalence principle. This paper gave us that famous equation E = mc2.

The last two papers will be discussed below.

Albert Einstein circa 1905, Credit: Einstein Archives/Wiki Commons

 

The Special Theory of Relativity

As mentioned earlier, James Clerk Maxwell, in the mid-1800’s, formulated four basic equations outlining the properties of electricity and magnetism. One outcome of these equations is electromagnetic radiation travels at a rate of 3.0 x 108 m/s (186,282 miles per second). This rate of speed is constant regardless of the observer’s velocity relative to the radiation. What exactly does this mean? Think of yourself on a highway and your speed is 55 mph. The car in the lane next to you is moving at 60 mph. That car will pass you at a rate of 5 mph, as their velocity is that much faster than your velocity. Now, let’s ramp up the speed of your car to 186,277 miles per second. This is exactly five miles per second slower than the speed of light. Remember, light is just a form of electromagnetic radiation. Imagine a beam of light traveling in the lane next to your car. At what rate of speed would it pass you? All your life’s experience would lead you to answer five miles per second. But that would be the incorrect answer! The light beam would pass you at a rate of 186,282 miles per second as if you were standing still. This is true regardless of your velocity relative to the beam of light. The genius of Einstein was to realize that contrary to what we perceive, the speed of light is constant for all observers and time is variable as a function of your velocity. The Special Theory of Relativity leads to the following conclusions:

1. As an object (or person) approaches the speed of light, their clock slows down compared to a stationary observer. If you were to take a round-trip voyage 100 light years away and travel at 99.995 percent of the speed of light, you would only age two years but arrive back on Earth 200 years later. In popular entertainment, the original 1968 movie Planet of the Apes gives a reasonably accurate portrayal of this effect.

2. Mass of an object increases as it approaches the speed of light. In fact, the mass of an object approaches infinity as it approaches the speed of light. This is why the speed of light is the maximum speed obtainable in our universe. As its mass approaches infinity, the force required to accelerate it approaches infinity.

3. The length of an object appears to decrease to a stationary observer as it approaches the speed of light.

4. E = mc2. This is the equation that gives us the understanding of nuclear fusion that occurs in the Sun. As hydrogen fuses to form helium, the mass of the helium atoms is less than the mass of the original hydrogen atoms. The difference is converted to energy. The Sun converts 4.3 million tons of mass into energy each second. A fraction of which reaches the Earth providing the energy to sustain life.

General Theory of Relativity

After publishing his Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein spent the next ten years working out the General Theory of Relativity. It is general in that it applies to all reference frames, accelerating and non-accelerating. This theory was published in 1916 and provided a dramatically different way of looking at gravity. Unlike Newton, who postulated gravity was a force between two bodies, Einstein postulated that gravity represents a curvature in space-time itself. Lets look at an analogy. Think of a trampoline with nothing on it. This represents a universe with no mass in it. If you rolled a golf ball across it, the ball would move in a straight line. Now place a baseball (which could represent a planet) on the trampoline. The ball would depress the trampoline slightly. Now roll the golf ball again. As it approached the baseball, the depression in the trampoline would cause the golf ball to move in a curved motion. Now place a bowling ball (this could represent a star) on the trampoline. The depression becomes more pronounced and the path of the golf ball as it moves towards the bowling ball becomes more curved. In fact, if the golf ball got too close to the bowling ball, its path would curve into the bowling ball much like a meteor would fall to the Earth’s surface if captured by Earth’s gravity well.  The video below describes the difference between Newton & Einstein’s theories on gravity.

Experimental Proof

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity predicted the advance of Mercury’s perihelion accurately. Remember, the predictions of relativity and Newton’s Laws diverge in two circumstances. When an object travels near the speed of light and when it is located near a large gravity well. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. This closeness is enough for predictions of its motion using the theory of relativity to vary slightly than Newton’s Laws. While this created a buzz in the physics community, relativity did not gain general acceptance until it passed an experimental test in 1919. Relativity predicts that light would be deflected by the Sun’s gravity.  A beam of light would follow the path of space-time. If space-time is curved, then the path of light is curved as well.  On May 29, 1919, British astronomer Arthur Eddington led an expedition to measure a star’s position near the Sun during a solar eclipse. Einstein’s theory predicted a deflection of 1.75 seconds of arc as opposed to Newton’s Law predicting the deflection at 0.875 seconds of arc. The measurements came in at 1.98 and 1.61 seconds of arc. These measurements are within the range of 30 seconds of arc error allowed for observational uncertainties and proved light was deflected by the Sun’s gravity well. Both the London Times and the New York Times reported the story and Einstein quickly became, by far, the most famous scientist of the era.

Negative photo of 1919 eclipse, Credit: Royal Society of London/Dyson, Eddington, Davidson

The Sun’s gravity well deflects starlight. Credit: ESA

The Cosmological Constant

The General Theory of Relativity yields a field equation which takes the following form: (Ruv)-1/2 (guv) R = (8)(π)Tuv – Λ(guv)

The subscripts in the equation are indications of what are called stress tensors. This enables mathematicians to express a complex set of equations in a compact form. You can think of this as a mathematical version of a zip file. This equation explains how matter and energy ( Tuv) curves space-time [(Ruv)-1/2 (guv)]. Now, I won’t go into the gory details of this equation. In fact, Einstein himself needed help with the complexities of the mathematics when he derived it. What is important about this equation is it predicts the universe must be either contracting or expanding as matter will deform space-time.

Einstein was not satisfied with this result. At the time, the universe was considered to be a permanent unchanging entity. What Einstein did to correct this was to add the constant Λ in the right side of the equation. This constant changes the equation providing a stable universe offsetting the effects of gravity on space-time. During the 1920’s, Georges Lemaitre argued the cosmological constant was not required and the universe could expand after originating from a primeval atom. Lemaitre used relativity to formulate what would later be called the Big Bang theory.  Edwin Hubble (whom the Hubble Space Telescope was named after) discovered that all the galaxies in the universe were receding from each other. The universe was expanding! Relativity, in its original form, had predicted this result. Einstein would later admit his addition of the cosmological constant was an error.

New knowledge contradictory to our preconceived ideas can form a disequilibrium in our minds that can take time to sort out . Even Albert Einstein, who did as much as anybody to revolutionize physics, suffered once from an inability to overcome a preconceived idea. In this case, he believed the universe was static. It is something we all must guard against. In science, we must let the evidence point us to a conclusion and not allow a preconceived conclusion allow us to define the evidence. It should be noted that once the evidence of the Big Bang arrived, Einstein came around as a supporter of the theory rather than sticking with an outdated idea of the universe. As I speak of preconceived ideas, most would assume when Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921, it would have been for relativity. However, he won the Nobel Prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.

If you want to read more about Einstein and Relativity

The following sources I highly recommend for anybody who desires a greater understanding of the theory of relativity.

Issacson, W., (2007) Einstein. New York, Simon and Schuster.

A very readable biography of Einstein includes non-mathematical overviews of Einstein’s work.  I found this book very enlightening describing the educational and life experiences that enabled Einstein to make breakthroughs where others failed.

Guttfreund, H. & Renn, J., (2015).  The Road to Relativity.  Princeton, Princeton University Press.

This book contains Einstein’s original manuscript for the theory of general relativity with a page by page interpretation for the public.  It also has an excellent historical background on how Einstein developed the theory.

Einstein, A., Relativity:  The General and Special Theory.

Want to learn about relativity directly from the source?  This is Albert Einstein’s attempt to describe the theory to the public.  The book can be purchased in the usual online outlets but is also in the public domain and can be read online for free, for example, here.

Lambourne, R., (2010). Relativity, Gravitation, and Cosmology. Cambridge University Press.

If you are seeking a textbook to get started on relativity, this is the best treatment I have seen. It will walk you through the algebra of special relativity to the tensors of general relativity. The text has many problems to work through to obtain a solid understanding of the subject. Lambourne has in the past taught a short course in relativity at Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education open to the public. Sounds like a good way to spend a week in the summer.

*Image atop post is the gravitational lensing of a galaxy by another galaxy in front. Typically, such lensing can result in two or more images of an object but if the alignment is just right, it will form a ring structure. Gravitational lensing was predicted by Einstein in 1915. Credit: ESA/NASA/Hubble

Education for the Common Man (and Woman)

Classical music was considered passe during the 1970’s. As a result, I never really learned about Aaron Copland in school. I heard his music in bits and pieces without context. Simple Gifts from Appalachian Spring opened for CBS News special reports and Hoe-Down from Rodeo was used for beef commercials. These rural themes are remarkable compositions as Copland was raised in Brooklyn and educated in Paris. Copland’s most famous composition was Fanfare for the Common Man. This composition took an odd twist in the 1970’s as ELP performed a version often used as a sports theme while the original was played as a prelude to Rolling Stones concerts. As the title suggests, Copland intended the piece for something quite different than to extol celebrity.

Copland derived the title from then VP Henry Wallace’s Century of the Common Man speech in 1942. Wallace thought of World War II as a global version of the American Civil War. That is, a global struggle to eliminate slavery under fascism and free the common man. Interwoven into that was the common man draftee armed services fighting the war both in Europe and the Pacific. Wallace identified literacy as a key foe of totalitarianism and that the population must be well fed and housed to be well-educated.

Henry Wallace next to FDR. Credit: FDR Library

The term common man can be a source of derision. In 1945, Wilhelm Reich wrote the 130 page essay, Listen, Little Man, pillorying the common man for allowing to be grifted in support of fascism. A few decades later, under less dire circumstances, hockey coach Herb Brooks would tell his players that “common men go nowhere.” I suppose this is arguing semantics, but I think everyone is a common man in some aspect of their lives. To continue the hockey analogy, Bobby Orr once commented that his greatness on the ice was contained in a bubble, it did not transfer to life outside the rink.

Even if a career path is found that vaults one to greatness, outside that world, you’re going to be a common man with all the potential pratfalls. It’s why Ben Carson can be a distinguished neurosurgeon and believe the biblical Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. It is also why Carson is woefully unqualified to lead HUD. Much worse, it’s why Hans Asperger and Werner Von Braun, two accomplished scientists, collaborated with the Nazi regime to accelerate their careers. As educators, we have to think of student success in broader terms than just career advancement.

There is the proverbial three-legged stool. That is, providing an education not only in subject content and physical education, but ethical training as well. This may have provided a braking mechanism in say, the mortgage bubble. When I worked in the mortgage industry during this era, I saw some managers, when confronted with the high risk of mortgages beginning around 2003 retort, “Bleep you, we’re making money.” – without the courtesy of the bleep. However, I suspect something more than ethics is required.

In academia, we’re used to fact-based debates. Typically, the argument with the best model to explain the facts wins. Beyond academia, that’s really not how things work. More often than not, arguments are based on social positioning. People tend to align with positions that maintain their status within their social group. It’s not a trivial concern. The ability to earn a living is usually dependent upon one’s social network. This is especially true in regions that are economically stagnant. It can be a powerful motivator for ill-advised actions.

Infrastructure, physical and social, not only move goods, but can transmit ideas. Good and bad, unfortunately. Studies have shown that civic associations were a key component in spreading Nazism. Embracing Nazi politics was a means of maintaining social status within various sub-cultures. Given that Germany was in the throes of the Great Depression, social status meant being employable. Add to that pogroms had been ongoing in Eastern Europe for a century normalizing violence against the Jewish population. While Hitler amplified that greatly, that ongoing ethical/moral lapse had already left the door ajar for Nazism.

Is there any way education could prevent such social rot from spreading? I won’t pretend to have a definitive answer for that, but below are a few ideas as food for thought.

A rigorous study of ethics should be completed before high school graduation. This alone is not sufficient. Students should be trained to stand against the crowd. Intellectual achievement alone does not provide this skill. During World War I, Bertrand Russell demonstrated this trait by holding firm against nationalism that prompted the catastrophic events from 1914-18:

“I knew it was my business to protest, however futile that protest might be.  I felt that for the honour of human nature those who were not swept off their feet should show that they stood firm.”

Henry Moseley, who had organized the periodic table by atomic number, did not. He would die at Gallipoli in 1915, cutting short a brilliant scientific career. Moseley’s disdain for foreigners imbued him with a nationalistic enthusiasm for a useless war.

We also have to emphasize to know what we don’t know. I never went to trade school so I do not dispense advice on how to fix plumbing. That’s innocent enough, but as already mentioned, many a fine mind has ventured outside their lanes. This is how John Maynard Keynes, who gave us an understanding of the Great Depression and how to end it, also made the dreadful decision to embrace eugenics. We have to impress upon our students it is the argument, not the person, that wins academic debates. I’ve seen to many people root for their side like sports fans and not analyzing the arguments itself. That approach can take you down the wrong path like whales following the leader to beach themselves.

Learning subject content is a key component of education, but that alone does not make a well-rounded student. An ability to discern between good and poor reasoning has to be developed. In addition, diversity of experience and community is a crucial factor of education.

It’s easy to look back at the era when Henry Wallace made his Century of the Common Man speech and think of the negatives. Top of this list would be Jim Crow segregation, but there were positive aspects to draw upon. Buffalo, where I grew up, had steel mills but also the Philharmonic with the groundbreaking Lukas Foss. Next to pro sports was the Albright-Knox and it’s famous 1965 Festival of the Arts. Another example is Columbus, IN. During the 1940’s, the CEO of Cummins, Inc, a diesel engine manufacturer, commissioned architects such as I.M. Pei, Eero Saarinen, and Cesar Pelli, making this town of 45,000 a pioneer in modern architecture. Today, far too often, I see community interests listing too heavily towards sports or guns. We need to be better than that.

I hear a lot of arguments which is more important, trade school vs universities vs community college. It’s a dumb argument. You need all that for a functional society. True, we eventually specialize to make a living, but it’s no reason not to have an appreciation of what other occupations bring to the table. Instilling respect for honest work is important. I have far more respect for the honest work of often disparaged burger flippers than say, private equity managers who have pushed for unneeded dental work on children. Beyond respect for other occupations, we need to build respect for people in other communities.

It’s constructive to take city students out to the country and vise-versa to see how people live and work in those regions. International travel is helpful, but not always available due to lack of resources. But certainly, webcasts between two classes across the globe can be set up. Stereotypes arise most easily when people have never met each other. One reason why some of the powers that be favor segregation.

Education needs to build connections between people, disciplines, and cultures. This infrastructure of knowledge and ideas has to be guided by a sense of ethics. Ideally, the internet can help build these social connections, but it can also break down these connections. Educational institutions need to act as vanguard against that breakdown. If we don’t succeed in that, we are in danger of going from the Century of the Common Man to the Century of the Grifter.

Leonard Bernstein and The Planets

From 1958 to 1972, Leonard Bernstein presented a series of educational programs on the nature of music dubbed Young People’s Concerts. The very last one televised on March 26, 1972 was the very first one that I watched, a presentation of Gustav Holst’s The Planets.  Most of the series is now available on YouTube, and among the programs are What is Orchestration, What is Classical Music, and What is a Melody? While I can appreciate music, the process of creating music always seemed a bit of a mystery to me. Bernstein is excellent in demystifying that process for this no longer quite so young person. It’s not an exaggeration to say Bernstein did for music what Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson did for astronomy.

In 1967, Bernstein hosted a special called Inside Pop – The Rock Revolution.  While he called rock 95% trash, Bernstein said the new music and its message should be listened to and taken seriously.  By 1972, Bernstein seemed a bit cynical on that, at least the embrace of astrology over science that started during that era. Holst’s The Planets was based on astrology and Bernstein went through great pains to distinguish that from science. Any astronomy teacher who receives a paper with the class title Astrology 101 can relate. Nonetheless, we cannot control the beliefs a student has coming into a class, but we can use that to bridge the gap into a scientific understanding of the universe.

Bernstein starts things off with a rousing version of Mars – Bringer of War. Mars was the Roman god of war and the planet was given that designation as a result of its blood-red appearance.  The reddish hue of the Martian surface can be seen with the naked eye when Mars approaches opposition.  This occurs when Mars and the Sun are on opposite sides of Earth and is when Mars is closest. Opposition of Mars happens every 26 months and the next is July 27, 2018. These events also provide the optimal launch window to the red planet. Oxidation of iron in the Martian dust that creates the red color, oxidation being a fancy word for rusting. The same process occurs in parts of Oklahoma which has red soil.

Oxidation creates the red surface of Mars. Credit: NASA.

The most famous association of Mars with war was H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.  We now know that intelligent life does not exist on Mars. As late as the 1950’s, it was still thought that vegetation could survive on Mars. The Mariner missions of the 1960’s disproved that. However, the space age has proven oceans once existed on Mars and the subsurface still has quite a bit of water. It is possible for microbial life to thrive in the Martian subsurface. Perhaps ironic, as it was Earth’s microbes that did in the invading Martians in War of the Worlds. It is food for thought at NASA’s Planetary Protection office charged with preventing cross contamination between Earth and Mars.

Bernstein concludes that Mars – The Bringer of War is an ugly piece of music and that is appropriate as what is uglier than war? Unspoken was the Vietnam War still casting an ugly shadow over America in 1972. Six years later, John Williams would use this piece as an inspiration for his Star Wars score. From politics to pop culture, perhaps an indication of America’s beginning stages of healing during that period.

Next up is Venus – Bringer of Peace. Bernstein notes Venus was actually a god of love, but astrologers use Venus to symbolize peace. Venus is the brightest of all the planets from our vantage point on Earth. Venus is anything but peaceful. The atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide and a runaway greenhouse effect heats the surface enough to melt lead. The atmosphere is so thick that pressure is 90 times greater than Earth’s. NASA has never tried to land on Venus, but the Soviet Venera program made 10 landings between 1970 and 1981. The landers lasted from 23 minutes to two hours before being overwhelmed by the harsh conditions.

A false color UV image that allows differentiation between different aspects of Venus’ atmosphere. Credit: JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic

The brightness of Venus that seems so peaceful to us on Earth is caused by the reflection of light from sulfuric acid clouds.  Some 70% of sunlight that hits Venus is reflected back into space. This compares to 30% for Earth. As Venus occupies an orbit inside Earth’s, it does not appear to stray too far from the Sun, becoming visible just after sunset or just before sunrise.  This is even more so for Mercury.

Bernstein introduces Mercury – The Winged Messenger by noting how Holst employs double keys and rhythms as Mercury is perceived as a double-dealing, tricky sort.  It only takes Mercury 88 days to orbit the Sun and as it oscillates from one side of the Sun to the other, it changes from morning object, hidden by the Sun, to evening object in less than 2 months. Mercury has some other tricks up its sleeve, such as ice in permanently shadowed polar craters. Mercury lacks an atmosphere so heat is not distributed from sunlight to dark areas allowing ice to form in the closest planet to the Sun.

Yellow indicates shadowed areas of polar regions on Mercury where water ice is present. Credit: Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory

Then comes Jupiter – Bringer of Jollity. This is the most famous piece in the suite. While I do not think of Jupiter as jolly, it can be described as boisterous. Jupiter is a source of radio emissions that are detected with ham radios on Earth. Jupiter’s intense magnetic field accelerates charged particles creating the radio emissions. Jupiter’s moon Io is flexed by the giant planet’s gravity, making it the most volcanic body in the Solar System, so much so, its surface resembles a pizza. As Io ejects this material into space, it becomes ionized and is fed into Jupiter’s magnetic field providing a source for radio emissions.

The volcano world of Io. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Due to time constraints, Bernstein elected to skip the pieces on Saturn and Neptune which he described as slow and ponderous. As this program was geared for children, I suspect even then, these pieces would have had trouble keeping the attention of the audience. After Uranus – The Magician, (no jokes made on the pronunciation, this was at the Lincoln Center), Bernstein wrapped things up with an improvised piece called Pluto – The Unpredictable. Holst composed The Planets before Pluto was discovered. And Pluto did turn out to be unpredictable, so much so that it is no longer considered a planet. Rather, it was the first Kuiper Belt object discovered. It was not until the 1990’s that others would be detected. So, no need to fret about missing Pluto in this musical set.

I don’t frown upon someone who has an emotional reaction when gazing at the night sky. We’re not Vulcans. The planets and stars inspire more than just science. It can inspire music and art among other things including, shudder, astrology.  As far as the latter goes, one hopes to transition a student from a belief in superstition to science, but be aware, that usually does not occur overnight.  That aside, Holst’s The Planets still presents a nifty opportunity for an interdisciplinary take on the Solar System as it did for me on that sunny, cold early Spring Sunday afternoon 46 years ago.

*Image atop post – Leonard Bernstein leads the New York Philharmonic in its rendition of  Jupiter – Bringer of Jollity.

Demo Lesson: Simple Circuits, Current, Voltage, and Resistance

As part of an interview process, I was recently asked to provide a demo lesson in physics. The class had just started its unit on electronics, so I decided to teach with an online interactive simple circuit to give a conceptual basis for current, voltage, and resistance.  In my experience, these topics are often presented in abstract form right away with students drawing circuit diagrams and cranking out solutions to equations without getting an intuitive sense what these concepts are.  This is exacerbated by the fact that while we can observe the end result of an electrical system, we cannot see the inner workings of one.

There are two analogies that can be used for an electrical circuit.  One is a water system, the other is a roller coaster.  I’ll go over both here.  For the demo lesson, I used the roller coaster.  The school was in New York City and my thinking was the students would have, for the most part, experience riding a roller coaster.  There is Paterson Falls in New Jersey, but most people I talked to in the region were not aware of those falls. I became aware of it while watching the movie Paterson.  Had the lesson been in Buffalo where I live, I would have used the water system example as Niagara Falls is such a prominent feature in local geography.

Current defines the flow of electricity in a circuit in the direction of positive charge.  It’s actually the flow of loose negatively charged electrons that create a current, but this convention was defined before the nature of the atom was unveiled in the 20th Century.  Electrical charge is conserved, that is, it cannot be created of destroyed.  One unit of charge is a Coulomb (C), and a flow of 1 C/s is referred to as an amp.  During my high school years, students would brag about how many amps their stereos had, which delighted our parents no end.

If a stream has a flow of 10 gallons per second, we could call that its current.  If you are watching a roller coaster and observe 10 cars pass a point in one second, then 10 cars per second is its current.  The same holds true for a circuit, a flow of 10 units of charge in a wire is 10 C/s or 10 amps.  A circuit has to complete a loop for current to flow.  A switch in the on position completes a loop and allows a current to flow through the system.  The off position breaks the loop.  However, it takes more than a switch to create a current, and that’s where voltage comes in.

If an object is on the ground, it has zero potential energy.  If we lift the object above the ground it gains potential energy.  That potential energy is converted to kinetic energy if we release the object.  Go back to the roller coaster analogy.  How much potential energy do the cars have while level on the ground?  Zero. The coaster adds potential energy by lifting the cars up on a hill.  Coney Island’s Cyclone is 85 feet tall whereas modern coasters can be 200-300 feet tall.  The potential energy is converted to kinetic energy as you reach the top and begin to drop.  Batteries do the same by adding potential to a circuit.  This potential is measured in volts.

The Comet from a 1950’s postcard. The first hill at 96 feet provided the potential energy for the ride. As the height decreases in the loop, potential energy decreases – same as voltage decreases in a circuit loop.

In the water analogy, think of a canal that is level.  Current does not flow and in fact, this causes canals to be stagnant and a health hazard.  The canals of Amsterdam are flushed each morning for this reason.  It is also why the Buffalo segment of the Erie Canal was filled in during the 1920’s.  It is this segment that I-190 was built upon.  What happens when you add a height difference?  Think of Niagara Falls.  It adds a current and potential energy which is used to produce hydroelectric power.  Water in the amount of 748,000 gallons per second drops 180 feet into 25 turbines producing 2.6 megawatts of energy.

Robert Moses Hydroelectric Plant. Water is diverted before the Falls and its potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and then converted to electric power. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski

The lines from a power plant can have voltage in the hundreds of thousands.  Transformers drop that to 120 volts before entering a household.  Voltage can also be thought of as pressure.  Think of a pressure washer.  Higher pressure can deliver water farther.  Higher voltage can send a spark longer.  So while voltage and current are proportional to each other, they are not the same thing.  You need voltage to start a current.

The final piece of the puzzle is resistance.  This is akin to friction on the roller coaster.  Without friction, a roller coaster would never stop but would travel in a continuous loop.  Friction between the cars and rails converts kinetic energy into heat and is dissipated into the surrounding air.  Hence, an engine has to push the coaster up the hill again to start another trip around the loop.  Resistance in a circuit does the same.  Energy in the circuit is converted by resistance in the wire and dissipated as heat.  This causes voltage to drop as current travels in the loop.  The battery serves the same purpose as the hill in the coaster. It adds voltage or potential to restart the current around the loop.

Superconductivity represents a state of zero resistance.  This requires a very cold temperature.  During the 1980’s, a ceramic material was discovered that raised the known temperature of superconductivity from 30 K to 92 K.  The media at the time presented this as hope of building practical superconductive systems that would bring about high efficiencies to electric generation.  Since then, progress has been slow on this front, at least in terms of some expectations after that discovery.  You can think of a superconductive circuit as a roller coaster that would not require energy to start each successive loop after the initial potential was added.

The PhET interactive above allows the class to build their own circuits and analyze the relationship between current, voltage, and resistance.  For the sake of the demo lesson, I used the Physics Classroom interactive as it is a bit more easier to get it up and running given the limitations involved of a demo lesson. Over the long haul, the PhET interactive is more robust. Both will allow a student to adjust voltage and current to see how it affects the circuit.

The key points for the class to learn are:

A circuit must be a closed loop from one terminal of the battery to the other for a current to flow.  A switch in the off position breaks the loop while the on position closes the loop. A car ignition key serves the same function.

A potential or voltage must be applied to the circuit to get the current flowing.  Otherwise, it would be like trying to ride a flat roller coaster.

Voltage or potential will drop as the current travels through the loop.  This is analogous to a roller coaster lowering in elevation (and potential energy) as it completes the ride, eventually to be grounded.

In increase in voltage will increase current and an increase in resistance will decrease current. This is the basis for Ohm’s Law or I = V/R.

Of all the concepts here, voltage or potential tends to be the most difficult.  The roller coaster example is just one of several that can be used. I think it best for a teacher to be flexible and use whatever example is most effective for each student. Another example could be that as the battery being like a water pump.  The pump applies pressure in the circuit and thus, starts current.  A slingshot could be used as well.  As a battery forces a positive current towards the positive terminal, the two like charges want to repel each other.  Once the positive charge is released into the wire, it is as if the positive terminal slingshots that charge inducing a current.

The key to the lesson is to enable students to visualize and obtain an intuitive grasp of the concepts of current, voltage and resistance. Once accomplished, the class can move on to real circuits and will have a better understanding what a voltmeter or ammeter is telling them as well as what the variables to Ohm’s law signify.

Sharpstown High, 1978-79

I recently discovered the high school I spent my sophomore year is slated to be demolished early 2018 when a new building is completed.  Sharpstown was an odd amalgam of Texas conservatism and 1970’s permissiveness.  Built in the late 1960’s, the building featured outdoor terraces and a courtyard allowing students to taste the outdoors between classes.  Sharpstown served as a bridge during the 1978-79 school year before my third and final high school.  That, along with Houston’s late 70’s oil boom, gave an ephemeral feel to my year there.

Although I teach at the college level, there are always a handful of students from local high schools in class.  It never hurts to take a look back and recall what it was like during those years.  I spent my freshman year at a small Catholic school of less than 400 students.  The teachers and administrative staff knew all the students.  Sharpstown had close to 2,000 students and only included grades 10-12.  The influx of new residents severely taxed Houston’s infrastructure, and the schools were no exception.  I never had any interaction with the principals, and I got the impression they were flying by the seat of their pants to put all the pieces together.  The burgeoning enrollment necessitated the use of temporary wooden classrooms built on blocks outside the main building,  The shacks as I used to call it.  The surrounding neighborhood was also different in ways I was not accustomed to.

I came from an older, denser, urban neighborhood in Buffalo built before the advent of the automobile.  Within a 10-15 minute walk were many shops, bars, supermarkets, bowling alleys, churches, and schools.  In fact, there were both three Catholic and public grade schools within walking distance.  If I wanted to go downtown, I could hop on a bus less than a five-minute walk away.  I had a great deal of independence that vanished in Houston.  If you didn’t have a car, you were skunked.  And at age 15, I didn’t have a car.  Turns out I would not have a bus ride to school either, for reasons known only to the school staff, a bus was not run out to my neighborhood.  So, like many a middle age guy, I can say I walked one and half miles to school.  Not uphill both ways though.  Seated upon the Gulf Coastal Plain, Houston is flat as flat can be.

That walk was uneventful, and once the temperatures cooled down in late October, not bad at all.  For the most part, the scenery was a nondescript mix of apartment complexes, fast food joints, and strip malls.  Two notable exceptions was the maze of baseball diamonds at Bayland Park used to film one of the Bad News Bears movies, the other was the corner of Bissonnet and Fondren.  The business on that corner, whose nature I’ve long forgotten, stunk to high heaven all day and night.  If nothing else, that smell served as a marker the school day was about to commence.

After homeroom, I was introduced to the Texas concept of gym class every day.  In New York, gym had always been a once a week deal.  In my experience, there is very little instruction in gym class.  If someone is struggling in basketball, why not instruct how to shoot rather than throwing them to the wolves?  A thought experiment that could be used would be to visualize oneself traveling with the basketball on the way to the hoop.  Imagine two scenarios, one shot with a high arc and the other with a lower arc.  Which will see more area inside the rim to enter?  That’s the high arc shot and a technique Robert Parish, then with Golden State and later with the Celtics, used with great effectiveness.  That lesson could be coordinated with a geometry section on conics to provide a link between concrete knowledge and abstract concepts for students.

It was in gym where I had my first run in with the school staff.  Having run cross-country and track the prior year, I approached a coach, described my times and goals along with a desire to try out.  He waved me off, said I wasn’t the type of person he wanted on the team.  An odd statement as it was my first day there.  Being fifteen and hugely annoyed, I unplugged myself from the extracurricular aspects of Sharpstown, to the extent where I have no memory of the sports teams there of any sort.  In my teaching, I make it a point to welcome every student in my class.  I work on the assumption each student has something to contribute to the class.

Something else to consider when dealing with high school students, and it’s a recent discovery, the brain continues to develop until age 25.  Teenagers tend to process their decisions in the part of the brain known as the amygdala as opposed to adults who use the prefrontal cortex.  Decisions made from the amygdala are emotional whereas the prefrontal cortex processes information rationally.  When discussing a controversial topic in class, I endeavor to keep the emotional temperature cool.  Passion is fine, but in class, you want to discuss these things with clear thinking.  We also have to be cognizant of the differences between now and then and how a teenager’s lack of impulse control can lead to consequences we didn’t have to contend with.  During high school, I was part of an aspiring punk rock bank.  Let’s just say I am happy not to have that effort for the world to see on YouTube.

Class sizes were large at Sharpstown, some teachers struggled with it, whereas my 2nd period biology teacher did not.  Ms. Buch ran a tight ship, treated you fairly, and pushed the curriculum to challenge you.  Resources were scarce, we only had one lab per semester rather than the weekly session I had been accustomed to.  Still, it’s hard to imagine a teacher doing a better job under the circumstances.  A’s had to be earned and my main competitor made it a challenge.  I had to match her score to get an A, but it was competition in a productive way, bringing out my best as a student.  In later years, when I heard the stereotype that women do not excel in science, I would remember this class and think it’s such bulls..t.  And it is.

Third period, out in the shacks, was something else all together.

My English teacher was eccentric.  He would pop pills in front of the class.  I don’t know what those pills were except they weren’t Tic Tacs.  Being 1979, we just laughed it off.  During the year we read The Catcher in the Rye.  Sitting in a windowless classroom, my only connection to the outside world being the hum of an air conditioner siphoning out the Texas heat, I just wasn’t feeling it.  Set in the 1950’s, the same decade my father left high school to work in a coal yard, I couldn’t identify with the endless complaints on prep school life by Holden Caulfield.  I thought Caulfield required a couple of weeks working at a Jack-in-the-Box to set him straight.

I was a bit too rough on Caulfield.  While prep schools offer outstanding academic preparation, on the East Coast they are usually the launching pad into the Ivy League, some can be very insular.  Phonies and incompetent people are not endemic to prep school, but can thrive anywhere when the social structure has ossified to a point where they are not held accountable.  I’ve seen it in public schools and the private sector.  The key is to build your own social network where such people cannot impart their incompetence upon you.  Caulfield needed a more diverse life experience, which he attempts to pursue in the novel.

After English, it was back into the main building for French.  I have long forgotten most of the French learned in that class.  I do recall gaining an appreciation for not having to know if words in English have a feminine or masculine case.  What I’ve discovered since, it’s easier to remember a language if you are situated where it is spoken.  Otherwise, if you don’t use it, you lose it.  It’s also where I learned a bit of Texan dialect.  Someone asked me if the bell was fixin’ to ring for lunch and I’m thinking, I didn’t know the bell was broken.

Typically you’re confined to the cafeteria during lunch but Sharpstown was an open campus, meaning you were free to explore the premises or leave the campus.  One might head to the west end of the second floor terrace smoking section for students.  The Mad Men sensibility had infiltrated high school.  One student would spend his lunch hour throwing a frisbee at one end of a stairwell, then casually walk twenty feet to the other side catching it at the end of its trip as it rolled along the semicircled brick wall.  Sometimes I opted to go to a friend’s house across the street.  We’d joke about avoiding Rubber Biscuits in the cafeteria.   It was all good as long as you were back before the end of the lunch period.

High school culture is pretty tribal and the students were organized among musical tastes.  There were still some of the old 70’s standbys. The Who opened the school year with their final Keith Moon album and Led Zeppelin closed out the following summer with their last effort.  Disco, while on its last legs, still had a bit of steam going (Donna Summer spent 10 weeks out of 52 atop the singles charts from September 1978 to August 1979). Although punk and new wave was making serious inroads, it didn’t get much airplay in Texas.  In the pre-internet era, it took quite an effort to hear what The Clash was up to.  However, Bob Marley started to get some airplay along with new talents such as Ricki Lee Jones.  One sizable contingent among the students were the Kikkers, named after the country radio station KIKK.  I plead ignorance as to what was happening in the 1979 country scene, as I said, high school is pretty tribal.

Now that I am on the teaching side, I endeavor to break down tribal barriers in class.  In retrospect, I can recall some teachers amplifying those differences.  That’s a mistake.  You want your students pushing out from their social comfort zones.  One way to do this is to throttle up on the subject content to the point so students have a greater sense of urgency to succeed in the course more so than expressing their social self-identity.  It’s not a coincidence gym class is where high school tribalism reached its peak.  With no instruction and only a requirement to put on your gym shorts to pass, it allows students to slide back on their worst instincts.  While tribalism in high school can be pretty silly, beyond that it can have dire consequences.

In November 1978, over 900 members of the Jim Jones cult committed suicide by drinking the now infamous Kool-Aid.  Actually, it was Flavor Aid, which was to Kool-Aid what Mr. Pibb was to Dr. Pepper.  Besides being quite insane, Jones was quite cheap.  That’s an outlier, thankfully,  However, tribalism can lead to dysfunctional workplaces and politics.  America is a more tribal, less goal oriented society now then in 1979.

My summer job in 1981 was at Ashland Exploration in the Houston Center downtown.  Down the block was James Coney Island where I would eat lunch along with oil execs, geologists, drafters, and administrators.  All of us jammed in school desks the restaurant used to seat its customers.  We’d talk politics and I’ll never forget one chemical engineer, who was conservative by nature but told me, always better to deal with moderates on the other side than extremists on your own side.  He also said you obtain political goals by seeking the golden mean.  Try having that discussion today and your likely to hear the latest from the conspiracy-industrial complex.

While I can’t change that on a national scale, I can at least demonstrate to my students that excessive tribalism, to paraphrase that fictional educator Dean Wormer, is no way to go through life.  Lack of self-reflection on the group affiliations in your life can lead you down a rabbit hole you don’t want to go.

Given my outsider status, I was not plugged into the Sharpstown culture as I had been at my prior high school, but Sharpstown was large enough and the social structure pliable enough to find a groove to navigate on.  The transient nature of the place gave me a set of friends from all regions of the country and internationally, including Cuba.  This was quite different from Buffalo where most families had resided there for several generations.  You don’t learn everything from a book, and having this diversity of experience was an added bonus.

It was a good crew.

Perhaps too good, and too rambunctious, we went though several history teachers before one was found that could manage us.  While I have been teaching, I’ve learned that each class has its own dynamic.  The dynamic in history was quite boisterous.  To be honest, I rather enjoyed it and looked forward to this class each day.  However, this was a difficult class for any teacher to handle and I don’t envy the task they had.  Taking control of a class after the year has started and the student behavior already ingrained is among the more difficult jobs a teacher will have to face.  Kudos to Ms. Newman for getting a handle on that situation.

From there it was back out to the shacks for geometry, except the hum of the air conditioner was often overwhelmed by the claustrophobic pounding of raindrops from the torrential afternoon thunderstorms that often hit Houston.  I don’t remember much about this class, only that the teacher was very unhappy to be there, making me very happy when the bell was fixin’ to ring and I could get out of there.

Then I would make the trek back home.  One student I met had to walk all the way towards Meyerland by the 610 Loop when he stayed with his father, a two-hour walk.  Guess I didn’t have it so bad.

My last memory of Sharpstown was bumming a ride home after the English final in May.  That final was difficult, not in a challenging way but in a ridiculous way.  Half of the exam consisted of obscure passages from novels we read throughout the semester and asked what chapter it came from.  How on Earth would I know that?  Nobody in the class memorized these things verbatim.  I left the shacks for the last time in a pretty foul mood, wondering what the hell that was all about.  I would find out in a few years.

During the summer, the Iranian Revolution caused block long gas lines and the massive Woodway Apartment fire gave pause to those who thought wooden roof shingles in Houston was a good idea. The ambient background noise included Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps, My Sharona by the Knack, Children of the Sun by Billy Thorpe, and Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, Sharpstown started to fade in my rear view mirror.  On deck was a new high school, where the KKK held a cross burning just a few years before.

That’s a story for another time.

By 1981, I had moved back to Buffalo for college when Sharpstown appeared in the local newspaper by surprise.  My English teacher had been arrested for extorting sex with students for passing grades.  That bizarre final made sense, most likely designed to flunk students making them vulnerable to this predatory behavior.  Beyond the original article, I know nothing else of what happened.  Only that it was extensive and had gone on for a period of time.  I don’t know what assistance was provided by the district for the victims, but knowing what other victims of this type of abuse experience, it’s safe to say many are still suffering from the effects to this day.

A few years back, I heard a lecture by a neurologist on the physical effects imparted on the brain by repeated high stress episodes.  The doctor noted that modern brain scans on patients with PTSD are difficult to differentiate from those who experienced a concussive injury.  In other words, a traumatic event can physically injure and/or hinder development of the brain and can cascade into a life long pattern of depression, drug abuse, and sometimes, suicide.  This stresses the need for schools to coordinate professional counseling and medical attention for abuse victims as soon as possible.  That may seem like common sense, but as we saw with the Catholic church and more recently Penn State, these situations are often met with a determined wall of silence.

And this also highlights how inadequate the recent attempts to “teach grit” to students who are under duress are.  An analogy, grit is great to have if diagnosed with cancer, but it’s not a substitute for chemotherapy.  I find the arguments for teaching grit more of an excuse for resource deprivation towards schools in high need districts.  And grit will not be enough for the victims of sexual abuse.  If the district did not provide resources for those students at Sharpstown then, it should do so now.

Grotesque as the events described in that 1981 news piece was, I don’t think it would be fair to let it dominate my memory of Sharpstown.  There were some 2,000 students and they, especially those who rose above the high school culture, along with the teachers who did their best, deserve that prominent spot in my mind.

Sharpstown High has had a turbulent existence since I left.  The aspects of the building which made it the most distinctive of the three high schools I attended, the courtyard, the stairwell/frisbee courts, the shacks, also make it very difficult to monitor what is going on inside.  The new building, a rectangle with a commons in the middle and the classes around the perimeter seems to be designed to address that need.  It’s understandable, especially getting rid of the shacks, but still, I’ll be sorry to see the old building go.

*Image atop post is Sharpstown High, July 1978. Photo: Donald Pijanowski