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Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

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Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#91

Post by sio8ohPi »

npongratz wrote: post #50
jerf wrote: post #27

One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…

> From grade school on, you are graded on whether or not the grading authority likes the results you got. I took an exam in a high school science class where I answered a question with the textbook's definition exactly as presented in the textbook, complete with the page number the definition was found on. I knew a bit about the topic, so I then cited outside scientific sources that explained why the definition was i…

Having been on the other side of the table... there's a tactic students will sometimes use, where they don't understand the question but will simply attempt to regurgitate everything written on their notecard that is related in hopes that they'll accidentally say the right words. Sounds like you did understand it, but the volume perhaps made it look like you were just dumping. It is indeed annoying to grade.

Grading is boring, tedious, and quickly wears down one's enthusiasm. The words of M Bison come to mind: "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday."

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#92

Post by hermannj314 »

ALLTaken wrote: post #18

hahaa, I love it! That's right there is engineering and true work and dedication. Can hear the frustration and it's 100% warranted. I wish universities were better equipped for what you pay. Where is all that money going anyways? Leaking like free electrons?

The 2023 education and general fund budget for Penn State allocated 5.7% to equipment and maintenance and repairs of approx $2.5 billion in use. I assume that would include thing other than just lab equipment.

Overwhelmingly, most education fund use goes to salary, benefits and student aid (~$2 billion, 81%).

Interestingly the amount of money raised by tuition and fees almost exactly matches the amount spent on salaries, benefits and student aid. So one way of viewing it is that things like lab equipment are basically funded by grants, gifts, and state appropriations.

I assume this would be similar at Wisconsin in the late 90s, I doubt universities have changed much.

Maybe research budgets offer more flexibility and better equipment but I doubt the undergrads get to touch that stuff.

Source: budgetandfinance.psu.edu

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#93

Post by tomrod »

cratermoon wrote: post #84
rapatel0 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good watch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_%22Superman%22

If you like watching right-wing educational propaganda, sure.

It wasn't received as right-wing propaganda at the time. Endorsed by Bill Gates and others less-informed to education research with leanings towards the left.

But it is definitely anti-education and proposes solutions that aren't justified, like the right-wing-aligned push for chartered schools (which tend to be religious in nature, hence the wholesale gobbling for it by the rightwing).

Stanford studies in 2009 & 2013 put the fork in superior performance claims -- no better and no worse than public schools on average. So the charter school miracle is really just cherrypicking with a side of encouraging (or, if malicious, enforcing) segregation (since poorer people both tend to be minorities and tend to not have capacity/time to jump through lottery hoops). With careful planning and policy structure, perhaps good charter schools could overcome their entrance bias (RIP college entrance for either economic class or historically disparaged category), but good luck getting anything like that from the political minds that brought you DOGE and the nonsensical trade war.

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#94

Post by Frederation »

cratermoon wrote: post #84
rapatel0 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good watch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_%22Superman%22

If you like watching right-wing educational propaganda, sure.

Eh, both sides of the isle took issue with it.

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#95

Post by prennert »

qwezxcrty wrote: post #25
HiPHInch wrote: post #11

I took some effort to change my research interest from computer vision to DFT calculation in quantum chemistry. Honestly, I'm kind of frustrated now, too many work is close-source in this area. The research paper will tell you everything except how to reproduce this work in minimal effort, it's like they are hiding something. They also using a `Origin` to plot and MS Word to write paper, which is also non-free licens…

I miss OriginPro in my undergrad when we had campus licenses for, before moving to matplotlib for data visualization. matplotlib is simply too disappointing for making publication quality figures. The most recently encountered problem is how to plot with a broken x-axis, which is one of the most basic need in physical science but requires a non-trivial amount of hacking to get with matplotlib. Open source tool or not…

Matplotlib is a bit painful. Often seaborn will work quicker, especially when using Pandas dataframes with proper column names and seaborn compatible layout.

Its annoying that you cannot create a broken axis out-of-the box, but I am sure you can wrap this to make your own convenience function: https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/subplots_axes_and_figu...

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#96

Post by interroboink »

jerf wrote: post #27

One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…

> Right on up to professorships, this is how science really works.

Reminds me of Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science" essay[1]

    One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment
    with falling oil drops and got an answer which we now know not to be
    quite right.  It’s a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value
    for the viscosity of air.  It’s interesting to look at the history
    of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan.  If you
    plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger
    than Millikan’s, and the next one’s a little bit bigger than that,
    and the next one’s a little bit bigger than that, until finally they
    settle down to a number which is higher.
    
    Why didn’t they discover that the new number was higher right away?
    It’s a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because
    it’s apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number
    that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something must be
    wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be
    wrong.  When they got a number closer to Millikan’s value they didn’t
    look so hard.  And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off,
    and did other things like that.  We’ve learned those tricks nowadays,
    and now we don’t have that kind of a disease.
Yeah, not sure I'm 100% agreed on that last statement (:

[1] https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#97

Post by freedomben »

don-code wrote: post #87
jerf wrote: post #27

One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…

This is, more or less, exactly what happened when I took Electronics I in college. The course was structured in such a way that you could not move on to the next lab assignment until you completed the one before it. You could complete the lab assignments at your own pace. If you failed the lab, you failed the class, regardless of your grade. The second or third lab had us characterize the response of a transistor in…

That is enraging. I've seen similar things happen too and it blows my mind how ridiculous some of these teachers can be. I don't know if it's dehumanization of their students in their minds or an utter unwillingness to devote 30 seconds of directed attention to understanding the situation and making a reasonable judgment, but whatever the cause it is prolific. The only thing worse is when one of them will add something like, "life isn't fair, get over it" when it's fully in their power to make a reasonable determination.

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#98

Post by MarkusQ »

cratermoon wrote: post #84
rapatel0 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good watch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_%22Superman%22

If you like watching right-wing educational propaganda, sure.

So wait, so you've decided a film by the director of An Inconvenient Truth, that was praised by everybody from Bill Gates to Oprah, has won awards and gotten a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes is "right wing propaganda"?

You may want to recalibrate you sense of where the center is.

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#99

Post by orlp »

don-code wrote: post #87
jerf wrote: post #27

One of my Core Memories when it comes to science, science education, and education in general was in my high school physics class, where we had to do an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration of Earth. This was done via the following mechanism: Roll a ball off of a standard classroom table. Use a 1990s wristwatch's stopwatch mechanism to start the clock when the ball rolls of the table. Stop the stopw…

This is, more or less, exactly what happened when I took Electronics I in college. The course was structured in such a way that you could not move on to the next lab assignment until you completed the one before it. You could complete the lab assignments at your own pace. If you failed the lab, you failed the class, regardless of your grade. The second or third lab had us characterize the response of a transistor in…

What I don't understand is why it took you 8 weeks to distinguish a timer from a transistor. That doesn't make your professor's reaction alright, I just find it puzzling.

Re: Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

#100

Post by [deleted] »

BeetleB wrote: post #85

Oh, BTW, the whole "Friction is directly proportional to the normal force": My Ass! I could never reproduce it well in the lab, because it's really not true. Take a heavy cube the shape of a book. Orient it so that the spine is on the floor. It's a lot more friction to move it in one direction than in the transverse direction. Yet the normal force is the same. Any kid knows this, and I feel dumb it never occurred to…

[deleted]
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