Josh Wilson finds a new (to me, at least) metaphor that puts the geological time in perspective, and Carel discovers some cool models that place the astronomical size and space in perspective. Humbling and edifying. Good ideas for science teachers.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
I've been working on some text for a series of papers lately. I'm writing the core of a book proposal and working through the ideas around the knowledge web and the knowledge economy, and thought I'd post some interim thoughts here.
Knowledge is a funny thing. Philosophers have spent eons debating…
Upchucky award runner-up and Disco. 'Tute staffer Casey Luskin is upset. Last fall, we were on a panel together, and I mocked his defense of the neo-creationist "orchard model" described in Explore Evolution as claiming that life "poofed" into existence. In the course of one of Casey's regularly…
The world – or at least a large swathe of Israel – was their classroom. An unusual international conference for science teaching experts started out at the Clore Garden of Science, on the Weizmann Institute campus. From there the “nomadic” conference made its way down to Eilat at the southern tip…
In his post-inauguration speech, President Obama spoke of restoring science to it's "rightful place". Seed's new 'Rightful Place' project asks the obvious follow-up: what is the rightful place of science? The fact that Seed's initiative talks of 'reviving science in America' almost takes as a…
Wilson's comparison still leaves me a little fuzzy as to the tremendous size of the numbers we are talking about. The best description of large numbers that I've seen relates them to seconds. We get things to a human scale - almost.
For example, One million seconds (1,000,000; 1 x 10^6) is 11 days. One billion seconds (1,000,000,000; 1 x 10^9) is 32 years. One trillion seconds (1,000,000,000,000; 1 x 10^12) is 32,000 years.
Thus 4.5 billion years represented by seconds is a bit more than a(maximum)human lifetime. The other lesson here is the the first trillionaire is going to have an awful lot of money.
FMW