Class Related Material
This page is dedicated to that most
unescapable part of a college education, the classes.
Teaching:
I am not currently teaching any
classes.
The rest of this page is something of a time
capsule and includes papers and projects from my college education, mostly from
the University of Maryland but a little bit
from grad school at Berkeley as
well. While most of my work at this point is associated with building up
my research profolio, it is interesting to sometimes go
back and see where it all got started. Of course, papers written as an
all-nighter in undergrad might be a little less polished than the work I do
today.
I've also kept around a few curiousity items
from my UMD days. These include information on the clubs I was involved in
at Marlyland, a look at the schedule I was keeping my last semester, and a copy of
my UMD transcript. Academics
at Berkeley have been
a bit less interesting and more physics concentrated. Now-a-days, one can more or less assume that research fills in all of the spare
moments.
Phys 228C : Cosmology and Extra-Galactic Astronomy
The Search for Cold Dark Matter
It isn't often that my graduate classes at Berkeley lead to
material that will fit online, but the cosmology project certainly fits the
bill. As a matter of fact, we were required to create an online
presentation. So, here it is.
Korean Art Project
Originally this was a powerpoint
presentation which has since been ported to HTML. This project was a
major part of the grade for Honr 279R: Art Making in the Global Village. Admittedly, there was also
a spoken component where I described the various art objects and
filled in many of the details, however you are just going to have
to be satisfied with looking at the pretty pictures.
(Most of the artwork presented is ancient in nature,
and I believe that all images used here are allowed under
the Fair Use for educational purposes portion of applicable
copyright law)
The Spiritual Heritage of the Human Race
The papers available here consist of a
series of short briefs written for this class on a variety of issues. I
avidly enjoyed Dr.
Bushrui's Honr 238U class and wish I had more to post in relation to it.
Unfortunately little was done in an easily available electronic format.
You can however see some photos of the class at our end of semester formal
dinner.
Photos from Class
Physics 375
: Experimental Physics III - Waves and Optics
Some people believe that it is not science
unless you rigidly follow a proscribed method of doing laboratory experiments
and then write trite and uninformative reports about them. Hence, I
spent a semester learning no new scientific truths
and very few useful techniques. However, because the reports required a large amount
of graphics and tables, I found Netscape Composer to be a convenient
and simple tool for writing them. You should be warned though
that the files presented are in an intermediate draft since I used Word to
polish the
final copies.
Math 437 : Differential Geometry II
Midterm
Report
This was an unusual class. Besides
showing up, the midterm report ended up being the only grade. Essentially this
is a take-home midterm with a month to work on it. My final product was 21 pages
of tightly worded and typed mathematics. The expectation was that there would be a similar final
exam, but by the time finals were rolling around a number of people still hadn't turned in the midterm,
so the professor just waved it, and we had a single grade on which to judge the success of a
semester (homework was assigned but not collected). Honestly though, I think challenging reports like this
are a good part of a serious scientific education.
Math 630 : Lebesgue Analysis
This was my first graduate course, taken in my next to last semester of undergad.
At this point, I still hadn't decided between graduate school in physics or mathematics. While, I enjoyed this class, I
ultimately realized how disconnected the world of mathematics is from the world of everyday experience, and
that is why I chose grad school in physics.
In case you
are wondering why anyone would type mathematics homework, this was at a period in my life when I was realizing both that
I am pretty good typist and that no one could read my handwriting, so I experimented with typing everyday homework
in a couple of subjects. Actually, I found that I liked doing that quite a bit. Sitting in front
of a computer is an easy way to organize one's thoughts and make corrections when something isn't right. The ability
to easily revise almost certainly led to more careful and precise proofs as well. However, even with
my typing skills it probably did take me a little more time to do homework this way. The real
drawback though is that there is no easy way to type an assignment while working on it with other people.
Those two reasons are why I largely discontinued this practice when I entered graduate school.
Phys 405 : Advanced Experiments Lab
This was another very
time consuming and trying lab, however since most of our work was to be handwritten
I don't have a very large volume of the material to post. My biggest
objection to this class was that there wasn't nearly enough time to both
become familiar with the equipment and the science while also writing up all
the details and documentation that they expected. Personally, I tended to
blow off the unproductive documentation requirements in favor of more time with the laboratory equipment,
something which did not endear me to the professor.
Phil 380 : Philosophy of Psychology / Mind
This class required that we turn
in two versions of the same paper. The first came at midsemester and
the later rewrite, based on the instructor's comments, was due at
finals. These are fundementally different papers. The original is
essentially an attempt to fit the paper I wanted to write into the mold that was required
and as such isn't very good; however, there are some ideas of
note which unfortunately were later cut. The finished version is more polished
and coherent but perhaps less interesting. I was fundementally
disappointed in this course. The professor seemed to assume that students were
not capable of putting together a coherent original thought, which is a very
bad sign in a philosophy course.
Math 475 : Combinatorics
This
was the very last mathematics course I took in my undergraduate education, and probably one that was
too easy for me at that point. However, I did have a lot of fun and it probably did add in a
useful way to my understanding of some aspects of probability and statistics. Note that some
of these homeworks are incomplete because diagrams or other items were constructed seperately.
Doctrine and Debate in World Religions
Theological Response to the Crisis of Divorce in
America
I freely admit that this paper is of relatively poor quality,
but unfortunately it was prepared in a very brief amount of time, and since it
only counted 10% of the grade I wasn't about to sweat it out.
