Condensed from Beyond the Observatory by Harlow Shapley,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1967
| Argon is an inert gas - it combines with nothing. |
| It makes up about 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere. |
| 1% of the Earth's atmosphere means 60 trillion tons of argon. |
| There are about 3x1019 argon atoms in each breath we take. (That's 30,000,000,000,000,000,000) |
| From your next breath exhaled - the argon quickly spreads: |
| By nightfall it is all over the neighborhood, |
| In a week it is all over the country, |
| In a year it is spread evenly all over the earth, and |
| Inhalation one year from now gets at least 15 of them back. |
| We are rebreathing argon atoms of our and other's breaths. |
| These argon atoms associate us with the past and future. |
| The first gasp of every baby born one year ago had argon since breathed by you. |
| Likewise, the last gasp of all the dying. |
| Your next breath will contain more than 400,000 argon atoms breathed by Gandhi. |
| Your next breath will contain argon atoms from: |
| Conversations at The Last Supper, |
| Arguments of diplomats at Yalta, |
| Recitations of Homer and Shakespeare, and |
| Battle cries at Waterloo. |
| Likewise, the future generations will share yours. |
| We are intimately associated with the past and the future. |
| Does this not give us some responsibility for this air we breath? |
| Do we have the right to corrupt it? |
| The moral of this story could be: |
| Respect your breath! Keep it decent! |
"Now and then people ask me why physicists can't be more serious....Some will ask how physicists can be so playful about a world in which there is so much evil and misery; the questioners are frequently biological and medical types, who have to face it day in and day out....Of course the world is blemished. The beauty is gravely marred, the symmetry is broken. But underneath it, what a Jew or a Christian would call the original pattern may still be discerned. One of the joys of being a physicist is that one can turn one's head from the evil to contemplate a pattern that seems at first terribly abstract, but in the end may be more real than predation or cancer or nuclear war. I am thankful for all the good medical doctors and researchers in the world, but on the whole, I prefer to be a physicist."
Written by Detrick E. Thomsen who died July 30, 1988 at the age of 52 while undergoing treatment for cancer.
"If you wish to plan for one year plant rice.
If you wish to plan for 10 years, plant a tree.
If you wish to plan for 100 years, educate your children."
"..all the world is a sort of game, whose behavior follows certain rules, some known, some unknown. Given the known rules, find the behavior; given the behavior, find the rules. Find places or circumstances where the rules don't work, and invent new rules that do." This is science.
Richard P. Feynman, Teacher, by David L. Goodstein
When a student asks, "When will I ever use this stuff?", I have usually searched for a specific discipline in which the particular subject I am teaching will have direct need. Lately I have thought more on the subject and have been reminded of my father telling me to get all the education possible because, "No one can take knowledge away from you; it is yours forever". I have come to believe that what you are and what you are capable of being is at a very basic level really the sum of everything you know and everything you have been. Everything you know influences what you will be and do in the future in ways we can never know. Everything you could have known and do not, therefore, makes you something less than you could have been. While this a tragedy for the person; it is an even greater tragedy for the society.
Richard L. Picard, Teacher, 1996
Good judgement comes with experience.
Experience comes with bad judgement.
Author Unknown
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy (imagination) has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing absolute knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)
"First I shall test by experiment before I proceed farther, because my intention is to consult experience first and then with reasoning show why such experience is bound to operate in such a way. And this is the true rule by which those who analyse the effects of nature must proceed: and although nature begins with the cause and ends with the experience, we must follow the opposite course, namely, begin with the experience, and by means of it investigate the cause."
-Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
"That man is extremely foolish who always is in want for fear of wanting; and his life flies away while he is still hoping to enjoy the good things which he has acquired with great labour."
-Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
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