Saturday, March 14,
2015 is “pi day” – the only day this century that includes the first five
digits of pi or 3.1415… This year,
several groups are suggesting that this might be a good day for celebrating math
and science in general – and raising our voices in favor of evidence-based,
well-reasoned decisions in our public life.
It’s a time we can share with others our conviction that evolution is
well-established fact, that climate change is being accelerated by human
activities, and that NASA did indeed land people on the Moon – all ideas being
denied on the web, in the media, and in our political discourse.
March 14th
is also Albert Einstein’s birthday (he was born in 1879 on that day.) This year, we celebrate the 100th
anniversary of Einstein’s first paper on the General Theory of Relativity, the
brilliant insight that connects gravity, light, space and time. This anniversary is part of a larger physics
commemoration – celebrating 2015 as the International Year of Light. At Foothill College, I will be offering my
evening Physics 12 class (Physics for Poets), all about Einstein’s life and work,
explained without math. It ends with recent
contributions to our understanding of the universe by Stephen Hawking (whom I
was pleased to see getting the Academy Award for best actor :-))
We can also celebrate the
big development in the solar system: The Dawn Spacecraft just went into orbit
around the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, Ceres, which, by virtue of
its size and round-ness, also qualifies as the first dwarf planet to have been
discovered (in 1801). Dawn is the first
spacecraft ever to orbit two worlds on the same mission, thanks to its advanced
ion-propulsion technology. (It orbited
the second largest asteroid Vesta, from 2011 to 2012 and then made its way
across 900 million miles of space to Ceres.)
We are expecting remarkable close-up images of and data from Ceres as
the year goes on and Dawn achieves closer and closer orbit. Stay tuned.
For the latest on the Dawn mission, see the blog by Mission Director Marc Rayman: http://dawnblog.jpl.nasa.gov/
For a syllabus of my Physics 12 (Einstein) class, see: www.foothill.edu/physics/Physics.12.Web.pdf
For a guide to resources for answering conspiracy-theory "true believers", go to: http://www.astrosociety.org/education/astronomy-resource-guides/astronomical-pseudo-science-a-skeptics-resource-list/
Painting of the Dawn Spacecraft Near Ceres (NASA)
