Very well said. And I have to be totally honest, when I saw your statement about anyone not believing in a god being 'foolish' an hour ago, I never in a million years thought that only after an hour of discussion, you'd be making a statement this thoughtful and insightful. . But perhaps I should have expected it, because I've spoken with you enough to know what an intelligent guy you are.

I look at it this way. Sure, its tempting at first to believe in a supernatural power that operates outside our laws of physics. It can give one a sense of awe and stability and comfort, I understand that. But truly, when you start discovering some of the amazing things we actually do know about our universe, and how things like solar systems form and become planets with all the elements of periodic table necessary for life to naturally evolve, and thousands of other things like that, it blows any religion or creation idea out of the water. There are things in this universe so awe inspiring and amazing, things we can actually observe, that it will give you emotional pause.

 

You guys should experience what it's like teaching kids science. They are MESMERIZED and all of a sudden I'm "the best teacher ever!!!!"

I also sometimes use it to explain things that are scary to them, like thunderstorms for example. Then they go around making their own static electricity. So cute. Then after about 5 minutes it gets a little annoying :|

 

Good job! Part of the problem is the way we teach science a lot of the time. At every level. Elementary school right through college. Its often not taught in an interesting entertaining way. Its a chore. Its seen as boring. I think this contributes to people turning to myths. Things like biology and chemistry and physics, if properly taught, the students should be leaving the room everyday feeling in a daze almost with how amazing reality really is. Astronomy and astrophysics are some of the most shocking branches of science there is. They are the story of how a cloud of mostly hydrogen gas went on to become You, and Me, and chicken nuggets, and computers and gold and plutonium and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and fire ants, and Dom DeLuise, and all these stories are ridiculously amazing. Yet I've listened to college instructors present it in such dull and boring fashion that its like listening to fingernails on a chalk board.

I'm a volunteer board member of a place called the Martz Observatory, a public Observatory way out in the middle of farmland here in NY, we have the second largest public telescope in the state, I give tours there to the public once every couple of months, tell them how the telescope works, and show them photographs of things in the universe that we've taken ourselves, and every few months I used to schedule a Ph.D astronomer or planetary geologist or something to come give a talk, and no matter who I found, they were always grimacingly boring, talking way above the level of the public in monotone voices... So me and another guy just started giving those types of lectures ourselves, a few times a year. People love it, and they laugh the entire time. Constantly people will crowd the room and want to stay late into the night asking questions and seeing things through the telescope, sometimes we are still there at 2 a.m. for a lecture that ended at 9 p,m. A good teacher isnt' always the one who knows the most about the topic, I think its the one who can communicate it. So kudos.

 

Haha, docents can make or break our field trips. There's a docent at the Texas State Cemetery that is also an historian, but his story telling talents are what really grab the students attention. He'll say "Oh, and this story is really gory... but you guys probably shouldn't hear it.." and the kids are like "NO TELL US!!!!!" and he proceeds to tell them these gruesome, but accurate stories of historical Texans and the battles they were in.

We're planning on taking a field trip to the University of Texas this year that is run by the college of natural sciences. They get to explore the campus and see some of that college's gadgetry and exhibits, but then we get to go in the gardens right below our famous clock tower and the kids get to conduct experiments of all sorts. I'm so excited about getting them pumped for science and the university (hook em!)

If you ever find amazing things online you should send them my way. My district doesn't have tons of money for our science budget but they do an ok job. In the mean time I supplement by showing them interactive things that I find online. For example: The Scale of the Universe.

I had a student last year that was obsessed with science. He was such a sweetheart, kind person, really smart, great sense of humor. I can't wait to see what he becomes.

 

That was a pretty neat interactive tool. I was surprised they went all the way to the planck length, most of those types of things usually stop around the quark area lol. They showed superstrings as being smaller than the Planck length which almost certainly won't turn out to be correct, but other than that it was very detailed. And just as an interesting aside to tell the kids, all those types of quarks they showed, like the 'strange' and 'charmed' and 'top' and 'bottom' quark don't actually exist in real life in matter. All matter is made up of 'up' and 'down' quarks and electrons. You basically boil down to those 3 things. . There's other 'force' particles in the mix, but those are the 'matter' particles. The strange/charmed/top/bottom quarks existed only in the first fraction of a second after the big bang, and they also exist when humans create them very briefly at the large hadron collider [but they only last for fractions of a second before decaying into the common particles]. They also may exist for like .000000000001 second sometimes during cosmic ray collisions. But the quarks that exist in our real world are 'up' and 'down'.

Things get really interesting when you get down to 'zeptospace' level on that tool [10^-24 meters] That's the level that the large hadron collider is looking at, and its where we start to worry more about quantum mechanics and the possibilities of things like other dimensions.

 

So yeah.... I teach 8 year olds...

 

ahhhhhhh....I guess I always pictured it being jr. high school kids or higher.

 

Oh good lord! I could never teach middle school. Too many hormones and not enough maturity. High school maybe. But they can be pricks. My 3rd graders aren't pricks

 

Holy shit, this thing is awesome!

 

See! That's exactly how my students feel. Right now I have them in groups making iMovies where they show how to solve a multiplication problem 4 different ways. This is the first year they take the standardized state test, and it's REALLY rigorous, but I try to keep classroom lessons fun so they don't feel bogged down with all the test prep.

 

? wtf?