An Academic Dilemma

April 6, 2014 – An Academic Dilemma: Physics or Dance?

Somehow, I managed to get through twenty-plus years of education without ever taking physics.  While I suffered through high school biology (the dreaded frog dissection) and chemistry (sheer torture), physics, thankfully, wasn’t a graduation requirement.   I remained steadfastly in the humanities/social sciences camp throughout my undergraduate and graduate career.  The science requirement at University of Wisconsin was a minor inconvenience that I satisfied by taking a series of televised zoology lectures and writing a paper about the breeding behavior of penguins.  Another choice would have been a class called Physics for Poets.

In the past few decades, I’ve hardly given much thought to the subject of physics.  And as far as I can tell, my lack of knowledge hasn’t negatively impacted my life.  However, now that Marshall, who used to work for SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) is living nearby, Elliott and I have listened to his occasional attempts to explain the basics of particle physics.  It seems interesting, but so abstract that my eyes usually glaze over after the first 30 minutes of his mini-lectures.  

You can't actually see particles.  I really don't understand this but it's pretty.

The H in the center is the Higgs particle that physicists were looking for.

Just when I’d given up hope of ever appreciating all the excitement about the discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle, a movie came to the rescue.  Particle Fever, a feature-length documentary, opened at our local cinema.  With a quirky cast of characters (both theoretical and experimental physicists), a picturesque alpine setting (CERN’s location), mindboggling machinery and dazzling, colorful graphics, the film helped me make some sense of modern physics.  I don’t claim a full understanding of the subject, of course, but my interest has been piqued.  In fact, I’m now considering enrolling in an introductory physics class at George Mason.  This creates a dilemma, however.  I’ve already registered for Dance Appreciation.  I don’t want to take two courses in the summer.  So the question is – should I take physics or dance? 

I thought the dance appreciation course might be a nice break from the reading-intensive history class I’m currently taking.  The Israeli-Arab Conflict in the Middle East has required a lot of fairly dense reading.  I don’t regret taking the class, however.  Coupled with extra reading (fiction and non-fiction), plays and films, it has given me a much deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances of the Middle East conflict.  I can’t say that it has left me feeling any sense of optimism about the resolution of the conflict, though.

Elliott would love to attend classes at GMU with me, but it would be too demanding physically for him.  He wouldn’t be comfortable sitting in a hard plastic chair for a class that lasts over two and a half hours.  But he has been enjoying our latest Great Courses lecture series, Religion in the Axial Age, which we will probably wrap up later today.  Over the course of twenty-four lectures, we’ve learned about Zoroaster, the Hindu Vedas, the Buddha and Buddhism, Jainism, Confucius, and Daoism, all of which developed and flourished during the period from 800 to 200 BCE. 

I’m not sure which lecture series we’ll watch next.  There are so many tempting choices in the catalog:  history, religion, philosophy – or maybe introductory physics?  Whatever we decide, I’m sure Elliott and I will continue to enjoy sharing the experience of expanding our minds.  His passion for learning is one of the things I love most about him.