While studying for my three exams this coming week, I found myself effectively writing an essay outline as my Stars study guide. I realized that in trying to better synthesize the information needed for this exam, I need to stop writing equations and start writing sentences.
With every descriptive sentence I wrote about how a certain aspect of stars work, I found other concepts were needed to truly understand what was being said and so wrote more sentences and read into more topics. I've found I have a knack for imagining and breaking down concepts into tangible, more understandable images. I know it's helped me understand these things and I think I can make the information accessible to just about anyone with the right imagining.
Possibly my favorite book of all time (and certainly of my childhood) is a book by David MacAulay called The Way Things Work. It breaks down everything from the printing press to sound waves to pipe organs and nuclear fission with illustrations of mammoths and people working massive models of various "things" and makes everything understandable to 7-10 year olds while still being true to the science! It's an amazing book, one everyone should own.
In the spirit of that book, I want to start writing weekly or so summaries of the knowledge I've acquired in a few of my courses. I want to be able to break every concept I learn down into terms that my parents, siblings, friends can understand because this stuff really isn't that complicated! In doing so I think I can better my own understandings and can benefit from answering the questions I'll very strongly encourage to be asked.
Hopefully this will result in a quality repository of my amassed knowledge and will lead to good discussions and good questions, adding clarity and a socially fun approach to school. This will take the place of my now-absent and all-too-important dinner table questioning, "What did you learn in school today?"
SO, I will start with a brief (yeah right) summary of most of what I know from the first 5 weeks and hopefully keep up with this as often as enough new information allows for a good post.
Please, please, please ask questions and request clarity where you're missing something or I've glazed over something. Don't be bashful; I don't know what you know. The more you ask, the better and more fun this experiment can be.
B
