The movie Top Gun: Maverick is breaking box office records. Here are some questions that online scholars may ponder to develop their understanding of the film. Mathematics. How do the box office receipts compare to other movies? What does it mean to adjust the receipts for inflation? Physics. Which flying maneuvers generate forces on the… Continue reading Scholars Ponder Top Gun
Category: Mathematics
Continuous? Step-wise? What’s up with that?
You may have seen a picture of movie film. A movie film consists of a large sequence of still images, which are presented so rapidly that the viewer perceives it as motion. This is true whether the pictures are photographic images of something with physical existence, or whether they are drawn or composed artwork. (Collecting… Continue reading Continuous? Step-wise? What’s up with that?
Mr. Spock, Pseudo-scientist
I’m one of those aging folks who still remember the original run of Star Trek (no colon, no The Original Series or any other kind of elaboration — just Star Trek). It was a groundbreaking show, and whether you like it or not (there are plenty of reasons to do both), it held out a… Continue reading Mr. Spock, Pseudo-scientist
The Sherlock Holmes Law
I rather like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I should also admit that I’m not a hard-core devotee of mysteries in general. If I were, I probably would find the frequent plot holes in the Holmes corpus more annoying than I do. I enjoy them mostly for the period atmosphere, the prickly character of… Continue reading The Sherlock Holmes Law
Reflections on Trisecting the Angle
I’m not a mathematician by training, but the language and (for want of a better term) the sport of geometry has always had a special appeal for me. I wasn’t a whiz at algebra in high school, but I aced geometry. As a homeschooling parent, I had a wonderful time teaching geometry to our three… Continue reading Reflections on Trisecting the Angle
STEMs and Roots
Everywhere we see extravagant public handwringing about education. Something is not working. The economy seems to be the symptom that garners the most attention, and there are people across the political spectrum who want to fix it directly; but most seem to agree that education is at least an important piece of the solution. We… Continue reading STEMs and Roots
Computer Programming as a Liberal Art
One of the college majors most widely pursued these days is computer science. This is largely because it’s generally seen as a ticket into a difficult and parsimonious job market. Specific computer skills are demonstrably marketable: one need merely review the help wanted section of almost any newspaper to see just how particular those demands… Continue reading Computer Programming as a Liberal Art
Learning and teaching…and learning
When we first started homeschooling our kids, Christe and I generally divided our tasks according to our general areas of relative expertise — she took the more scientific and mathematical subjects, while I dealt with the more humanities-oriented ones, especially those having to do with language. But it didn’t always fall out that way, and… Continue reading Learning and teaching…and learning
Making Sense and Finding Meaning
My intermediate and advanced Greek and Latin classes are largely translation-based. There’s a lot of discussion among Latin teachers about whether that’s a good approach, but much of the dispute is, I think, mired in terminological ambiguity, and at least some of the objections to translation classes don’t entirely apply to what we’re doing. What… Continue reading Making Sense and Finding Meaning