Sha-Kon-O-Hey

I was admiring the eponymous 'smoke' of the Smoky Mountains on a recent trip:

Naively, I was trying to figure out why the clouds being caught on the mountains here were so different.   However, I was confusing cause and effect.  These are not clouds of vapor coming down form the sky but rather clouds of vapor being released into the sky!

Later, while hiking, we noticed that the ground beneath certain pine trees was wet and that their leaves were all wet (while the surrounding trees and ground were not so).

Those pine tree (trees in general I suppose) are exhaling.  Along with good old invisible oxygen, they are exuding those tree scents and all kinds of organic compounds (VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds)).

So, what we are seeing is not some kind of weather phenomenon, but rather the forest exhaling.  The 'smoke' is literally the breath of the world made manifest before our eyes! Thank you trees for using the sunlight to break those carbons off your inhaled carbon dioxide and throwing all that oxygen back into the atmosphere for us animals to inhale in turn.

Mistaking the effect for the cause again, KR - c'mon, you should know better!

P.S. the 'blue' of these blue ridge mountains is also due to light scattering from small, released molecules just like the atmosphere itself scatters light off of its own nitrogen to be blue. (The 'Smokies' are a subset of the Blue Ridge Mountains)

P.P.S. Shaconage (pronounced Sha-Kon-O-Hey)is the OG Cherokee name for the mountains. Way cooler name imo.

Moment of Bliss

 I love the serendipitous moments.  Especially the small ones.

Near our campsite that we had chosen sight unseen in a park we had never visited, I noticed a little path crossing a creek:

The bridge was a half-log with a wooden rail nailed on.  "What a nice place for a morning coffee" I thought to myself.

So, the next morning, I did:

Resonance, Caves, and Music

Exploring the Luray Caverns in Virginia when we came across this gem:

A 'stalacpipe' organ.

A Mr. Sprinkle spent 3 years in the 1950s picking out stalactites that had the requisite resonance frequency (Well, apparently he had to shave some of them down to get the pitch just right). He then attached a solenoid to strike them when signaled by the key on the 'organ' and a microphone to pick up the resulting sound to amplify on a speaker.

Now, when we hit the unit on standing waves and resonance in physics, I'll have another example to give my students!

A Different Kind of Poet

I was reading the fascinating story of one of this year's winner of the Fields Medal in Mathematics, June Huh, when I was struck by this reflective quote from him on his younger, lost self:

"I wanted to be someone who writes great poetry.  I didn't want to write great poetry."

I just had to stop reading and ponder that one.  That's a great one, right?  

He said this while reflecting on the fact that he dropped out of high school to concentrate on poetry full time. (there's a lesson in the meandering path life can take right there!)

Through my years of teaching, I have always felt that I had little to offer the brightest of my students.  It felt like I was almost an impediment to their learning.  Not necessarily me as a person, but me as an instrument of the learning box with specific expectations called school.  I, on the other hand, always liked schools and their clear expectations.  Now I realize that part of the reason for my liking school is that I didn't have to make choices or figure stuff out of my own.  I enjoyed school not because I was smart or hard working but because I was intellectually lazy.  The article explain that for June, "School was excruciating... He loved to learn but couldn’t focus or absorb anything in a classroom setting."

I know a lot of really really smart people who think that school as we know it doesn't work and we need to restructure and rebuild the entire enterprise of public education. I think that they are being naive in their giftedness.  Most of us need that structure and those fake, external motivators.  But I am quick to admit that one size does not fit all!  I actually think public school do an excellent job considering the wide swath of students they need to serve and add some kind of value to.  It really is amazing that a single institution can serve such a large proportion of students who just happened to live in the same zip code when you think about it.

Well, Professor Huh, I am glad you found your true calling rather than the one you thought you wanted to be.  A poet of mathematics is a mighty fine thing!

P.S. I also found it fascinating that he can only work for about 3 hours a day before he gets exhausted.  I have worked a 16 hour shift of manual labor in a winery and felt okay the following morning but I could only study for exams with great concentration for about 2 or 3 hours at a stretch.  I recall that once, as a freshman at Purdue, I had 5 final exams with a single 48 period at the end of one semester.  I remember eating on those days as if I was been running marathons.  It always makes me wonder how little I am actually using my brain on other days...