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Middle of Finals Week Update
May. 10th, 2007 02:14 pmOkay, my new resolution is to update this thing once a day at least, even if it's just babbling about random stuff. (If you don't like it, you can skip it). I'll probably have another entry to make tonight.
So, I'm midway through finals week. I turned in my final for Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, which was actually kind of interesting, though I wonder if I did all right -- I couldn't find any chaos in the non-linear systems, though that could have been the point. I also gave a presentation on the Keeler Gap in Saturn's rings, which was awful (Mostly because I didn't make time to practice the darn thing beforehand. Note to self: You are not sufficiently proficient in public speaking that giving a 15 minute presentation cold is a feasable plan, even if you did flip through the slides before hand. You are neither Steve Squyres nor Bill Nye*. Well, yet.**)
* I'm pretty sure the two times Bill Nye guest lectured for Astronomy 102 he had maybe seen the slides one time before, and Dr. Squyres has this tendency to flip to the end of the show when he's running short on time and isn't sure how much he has left.
** Yes, my life's ambition is to be a Cool Science Person like these guys or Carl Sagan or someone. I'm tempted to start a science blog or something where I write essays explaining journal papers (well, the more interesting ones) to non-scientists. Which would be good, since it means I would be reading journal articles and having to show I understand them. After finals maybe.
Tonight my students have their final exam. Tomorrow I will have to grade it -- well, in the morning. The afternoon is filled with two awesome field trips -- my Celestial Mechanics class is going to look at old books in the library and my Planetary Surface Processes class is getting a tour of geological features on campus. (We're also going out to Taughannock Falls on Saturday. The rest of the class also got to go to the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater and environs over Spring Break. I didn't as I was only auditing the course.)
I was kind of disappointed with the last Astro 102 lecture -- Dr. Squyres only told one of the two stories he told last year about extraterrestrial life. They were both great stories, and I'd be half tempted to repeat them here, but it's kinda weird to have second and third-handed stories on the journal.
Wow, that was rambly.
ETA: Just saw the following abstract when browsing for papers: "Periodicities in Rings: Keeler Gap and Saturn's F Ring -or- Give Us Enough Variables and We Can Match Most Data". I LOL'd, but maybe it's a science thing.
So, I'm midway through finals week. I turned in my final for Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, which was actually kind of interesting, though I wonder if I did all right -- I couldn't find any chaos in the non-linear systems, though that could have been the point. I also gave a presentation on the Keeler Gap in Saturn's rings, which was awful (Mostly because I didn't make time to practice the darn thing beforehand. Note to self: You are not sufficiently proficient in public speaking that giving a 15 minute presentation cold is a feasable plan, even if you did flip through the slides before hand. You are neither Steve Squyres nor Bill Nye*. Well, yet.**)
* I'm pretty sure the two times Bill Nye guest lectured for Astronomy 102 he had maybe seen the slides one time before, and Dr. Squyres has this tendency to flip to the end of the show when he's running short on time and isn't sure how much he has left.
** Yes, my life's ambition is to be a Cool Science Person like these guys or Carl Sagan or someone. I'm tempted to start a science blog or something where I write essays explaining journal papers (well, the more interesting ones) to non-scientists. Which would be good, since it means I would be reading journal articles and having to show I understand them. After finals maybe.
Tonight my students have their final exam. Tomorrow I will have to grade it -- well, in the morning. The afternoon is filled with two awesome field trips -- my Celestial Mechanics class is going to look at old books in the library and my Planetary Surface Processes class is getting a tour of geological features on campus. (We're also going out to Taughannock Falls on Saturday. The rest of the class also got to go to the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater and environs over Spring Break. I didn't as I was only auditing the course.)
I was kind of disappointed with the last Astro 102 lecture -- Dr. Squyres only told one of the two stories he told last year about extraterrestrial life. They were both great stories, and I'd be half tempted to repeat them here, but it's kinda weird to have second and third-handed stories on the journal.
Wow, that was rambly.
ETA: Just saw the following abstract when browsing for papers: "Periodicities in Rings: Keeler Gap and Saturn's F Ring -or- Give Us Enough Variables and We Can Match Most Data". I LOL'd, but maybe it's a science thing.
