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Could you, please, humor us and explain the seasons in terms of orbital mechanics? You've got me scratching my head on this one and I've studied orbital mechanics.
This is what I actually said:
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As a result of science fiction books I was reading about orbital mechanics.
Now if you are reading a bunch of encyclopedia articles about planetary orbits and transfer orbits don't you think you will find mention of the Earth's axial tilt and the gyroscopic effect of the planet and how this results in the seasons? I did not say the seasons were the result of orbital mechanics but they could be seen that way in a very general sense.
Now is this about playing ego games of "I am smarter than you" and "I can prove you wrong about something" or do you actually have a point.
My point was that Harvard graduates could not explain the seasons and that video was from around 1990. So what does that seem to say about a hell of a lot of educators considering how many people they asked and how many teachers each of them should have had in 16 years of education. And I certainly did not make the video.
This is what I actually said:
Now if you are reading a bunch of encyclopedia articles about planetary orbits and transfer orbits don't you think you will find mention of the Earth's axial tilt and the gyroscopic effect of the planet and how this results in the seasons? I did not say the seasons were the result of orbital mechanics but they could be seen that way in a very general sense.
Now is this about playing ego games of "I am smarter than you" and "I can prove you wrong about something" or do you actually have a point.
My point was that Harvard graduates could not explain the seasons and that video was from around 1990. So what does that seem to say about a hell of a lot of educators considering how many people they asked and how many teachers each of them should have had in 16 years of education. And I certainly did not make the video.
psik
I don't think it necessarily says anything about educators. An educator is just part of the process in the grand scheme of education in whole.
The issue with this video in particular isn't really about whether children should blindly obey or disobey authority. I think we can all agree that there might be times when a high school student might be 'right' and the adult might be 'wrong'. It's okay for students to challenge authority, but part of doing that means learning how to do that constructively. Even so, that an 18-year-old didn't channel his emotions in the best manner isn't surprising, and it's forgivable.
As I've said, what is much less forgivable in my view is the reaction of the school. Their reaction is unbelievable. In most cases I know of, the administration establishes the curriculum, and they are highly involved in training the instructor how to implement that curriculum. By placing a teacher on leave because of this one video just sends the wrong message. It just tells everyone that the student's side of the story gets heard first and the teacher gets sent home until they can determine whether the student or the student's parents arguments are valid.
If they don't have qualified teachers, honestly, it's because they don't deserve to have them. Most people who have intelligence, ambition, and a desire to 'touch hearts' are simply too self-respecting to tolerate working in that kind of environment. The kind of results-oriented, self-motivated, individuals who like molding minds and working around challenges need to know that they're going to have all of the resources at their disposal, and all of the support from administration to do their jobs. Absent of that, they look for other schools or eventually get burnt out and change careers. I hate to break it to you guys, but you're not going to get too many Edward James Olmos' willing to put work above their families if they work in an environment where it's all for nothing. There has to be a reward - if it's not monetary than it has to be some other type of value.
Don't assume that it's always better in private schools either. Some private schools are well-run and are great communities of learning; others are even worse working environment for teachers than your typical public school, what with activist parents on school boards threatening to run the teacher off if their daughter receives a B+ that threatens her admission to Dartmouth.
Last edited by chickenfriedbananas; 05-16-2013 at 06:54 PM..
I don't think it necessarily says anything about educators. An educator is just part of the process in the grand scheme of education in whole.
I think that Harvard video says a lot of things, including about the curiosity of those graduates.
Harvard is in Boston. Didn't they see snow fall in Boston during the winter? What does it say about their curiosity about the world and reality that they cannot explain why it got cold in Boston during a certain part of the year?
But looking back on my so called education, the seasons were never explained to me in school. It is just that once I read it and looked at the pictures and understood it I was impressed but not concerned about it any more. I suppose I stupidly assumed that most adults already knew. But the real case is that most teachers stick to teaching their curriculum and they do not cover the basic comprehension of the workings of reality if it is not in the curriculum. So who are the idiots who design the curriculum. Is it intended to maintain controlled ignorance?
I talked to a high school girl who told me she knew what an electron was and then proceeded to say that it was in the nucleus of the atom. OKAY!
So I do not understand the mental map of the universe that our so called educational system is trying to create and I admit that starting to read science fiction in 4th grade caused me to acquire a different mental map than most people. This is largely because I used the books as pointers to what non-fiction to research. Hard SF writers from the 50s and 60s did not have "normal" mental maps. Ray Bradbury and Andre Norton were not very informative, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov were.
So the bottom line is that most educators were not very informative either. That is what the Harvard video demonstrates. Maybe the grand scheme is fundamentally dumb. But expensive and time consuming.
But looking back on my so called education, the seasons were never explained to me in school. It is just that once I read it and looked at the pictures and understood it I was impressed but not concerned about it any more. I suppose I stupidly assumed that most adults already knew. But the real case is that most teachers stick to teaching their curriculum and they do not cover the basic comprehension of the workings of reality if it is not in the curriculum. So who are the idiots who design the curriculum. Is it intended to maintain controlled ignorance?
Education, like many things, comes down to priorities. There are only so many days that are available for instruction, and the education policymakers act on behalf of the students and establish what the learner's needs are. The learning objectives established and year-end assessments evaluate whether the students have met those objectives at the end of the school year. Instructors are judged by how well the body of their students achieve those objectives. Instructors are held greatly accountable for the success or failures of their students, fairly or not. Education becomes a matter of what's 'relevant' and 'not relevant' to the curriculum. That doesn't mean teachers cannot occasionally digress from the curriculum, and good teachers often find ways to connect the information in a text or packet to the information about the reality in which students live.
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I talked to a high school girl who told me she knew what an electron was and then proceeded to say that it was in the nucleus of the atom. OKAY!
So I do not understand the mental map of the universe that our so called educational system is trying to create and I admit that starting to read science fiction in 4th grade caused me to acquire a different mental map than most people. This is largely because I used the books as pointers to what non-fiction to research. Hard SF writers from the 50s and 60s did not have "normal" mental maps. Ray Bradbury and Andre Norton were not very informative, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov were.
So the bottom line is that most educators were not very informative either. That is what the Harvard video demonstrates. Maybe the grand scheme is fundamentally dumb. But expensive and time consuming.
I don't know how you reach your conclusions. I think you're making a bit much out of a YouTube clip featuring a few Harvard grads who were probably more interested in inflation and interest rates than aphelion and perihelion.
This is what I actually said:
Now if you are reading a bunch of encyclopedia articles about planetary orbits and transfer orbits don't you think you will find mention of the Earth's axial tilt and the gyroscopic effect of the planet and how this results in the seasons? I did not say the seasons were the result of orbital mechanics but they could be seen that way in a very general sense.
Now is this about playing ego games of "I am smarter than you" and "I can prove you wrong about something" or do you actually have a point.
My point was that Harvard graduates could not explain the seasons and that video was from around 1990. So what does that seem to say about a hell of a lot of educators considering how many people they asked and how many teachers each of them should have had in 16 years of education. And I certainly did not make the video.
psik
No, it has nothing to do with orbital mechanics other than we go around the sun. So what does the gyroscopic effect of the planet have to do with seasons (I assume you're referring to the precept here???)? I'm really curious about your explanation. I've never heard it explained in terms of a gyroscopic effect either. Please enlighten us.
Harvard or not, whether you understand why we have seasons isn't really relevent unless you're in a field that requires the knowledge. There's actually a reason why so many think that seasons are due to an elipitcal orbit around the sun. The solar system is often depicted in early science texts in an orthongonal view which looks like the orbit of our planet is eliptical instead of nearly circular. Kids often just look at the pictures. Since this is not something that comes back later that is expanded upon, unless you actually study orbital mechanics or astronomy, the misconception persists. While I find the explanations kind of funny, I really don't care if m lawyer or doctor thinks that we have summer when the earth is closer to the sun. I care about what kind of lawyer or doctor he is. To be honest, I probably have some misconceptions about law that lawyers would laugh at and medicine a doctor would laugh at and psycholgy that a psychologist would laugh at. Few of us know everything. So what if a Harvard grad can't explain the seasons. While this is a common misconception and we should address it because we know it is one, it's really not an issue that most people don't know why we have seasons.
I'm really curious about how you're tying the seasons to they gyroscopic effect though.
FTR, seasons were explained to me, correctly, in elementary school. I used the same demonstration to explain it to my kids that my teacher used so many years ago. I do, however, remember seeing that orthoganal view of the solar system, later in a text, and and thinking the explantion I had been given years earlier must be wrong because I did not realize I wasn't looking at the solar system in the plane of the paper. Kids tend to think that anything on paper is in a plane (probably because teachers will use a sheet of paper to model a plane). You have to point out that the actual plane would be coming out of the paper at an angle or they can walk away with the wrong idea.
That video you're so up in arms about, btw, was made to show that the way we teach things has to be considered as much as what we teach. It wasn't about proving how dumb Harvard grads are. Most people, grads or not, hold the same misconceptions not because they were not taught but because they don't view the picture correctly because no one explains that it is not a top down view of the solar system.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 05-16-2013 at 08:52 PM..
No, it has nothing to do with orbital mechanics other than we go around the sun. So what does the gyroscopic effect of the planet have to do with seasons (I assume you're referring to the precept here???)? I'm really curious about your explanation. I've never heard it explained in terms of a gyroscopic effect either. Please enlighten us.
Are you kidding me?
Quote:
Earth's rotation axis is currently tilted at ~23.5° with respect to the ecliptic axis, the line drawn from the center of the Earth and perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. This tilt is called the obliquity of Earth's axis. As a large rotating mass, Earth acts like a gyroscope as it revolves around the Sun, that is, at every point along its orbit, its axis of rotation points toward the same fixed point in distant space. On the celestial sphere, that point is very near the star Polaris, commonly called the "North Star".
The orientation of the axis with respect to the Sun changes (the cause of the seasons), but the Earth’s axis always points to a fixed point in space. In this way the Earth acts like a gyroscope or spinning top. The North Pole of the Earth’s axis of rotation points to the North Star, Polaris.
The seasons on the Earth arise from the fact that the Earth's spin axis is tilted 23.5° with respect to the plane of its orbit around the Sun (the ecliptic plane). The seasons indicated in the diagram below are from the perspective of the northern hemisphere. This spin axis direction is fixed in space by conservation of angular momentum with the exception of a tiny amount of precession which for this discussion has a negligible effect. Like a huge gyroscope, its axis holds its direction in space so that at the summer solstice the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun and six months later is tilted away from the Sun at the winter solstice.
Just Google - Earth seasons gyroscope - and see what turns up. I can't say I recall seeing an explanation that did not involve mentioning gyroscopic action.
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Harvard or not, whether you understand why we have seasons isn't really relevent unless you're in a field that requires the knowledge.
Yeah, that is what is called education in this country. The only knowledge that matters is what it takes to do your job and that is really the only reason for "education". Normal people are not supposed to be curious enough to want to understand the world around them even though it has affected the evolution of plants and animals for millions of years. Oh, I guess people aren't supposed to know about evolution either unless their job is involved.
But then doesn't it relate to climate change? Why are there ripples on the Keeling Curve? Oh yeah, the dummies produced by our educational system are not supposed to comprehend the climate change debate. Just trust the politicians and corporate CEOs. That AUTHORITY thing again.
psik
Last edited by psikeyhackr; 05-16-2013 at 11:03 PM..
Just Google - Earth seasons gyroscope - and see what turns up. I can't say I recall seeing an explanation that did not involve mentioning gyroscopic action.
Yeah, that is what is called education in this country. The only knowledge that matters is what it takes to do your job and that is really the only reason for "education". Normal people are not supposed to be curious enough to want to understand the world around them even though it has affected the evolution of plants and animals for millions of years. Oh, I guess people aren't supposed to know about evolution either unless their job is involved.
But then doesn't it relate to climate change? Why are there ripples on the Keeling Curve? Oh yeah, the dummies produced by our educational system are not supposed to comprehend the climate change debate. Just trust the politicians and corporate CEOs. That AUTHORITY thing again.
psik
No, I'm not kidding you. From one year to the next, our precept has little impact on the seasons. If you're talking about something other than the precept, please explain. It's your claim so you google it. I'm not defending your argument for you. That's your place. And please EXPLAIN it. Don't just post links and leave it up to us to determine if they're really relevent. A true explanation of why we have seasons takes about a paragraph. No gyroscopes needed. While the precept does result in the tilt of our planet changing over hundreds/thousands of years (sorry, don't remember the lenght of time but it's longer than our lifetimes by far), it's not the reason we have seasons. That is related to the fact we tilt, period. We'd have seasons even if we did not have a precept as long as the plantet is tilted with respect to it's orbit around the sun. Seasons have to do with the denisity of sunlight hitting the face of the planet. When the northern hemisphere is on the side of the sun that has the north pole pointing away from the sun (note the pole doesn't change, just our position around the sun), the sun's energy strikes the planet directly when it's tilted away (this has nothing to do with the wobble of a precept or a gyroscope btw just the fact we're tilted on our axis and we travel around the sun - this BTW is a common misconception so don't feel bad) the suns rays/energy strike at an angle and are more spread out. When the sun's rays strike directly, it's warm. When they're angled, as they are in the winter (note the sun is lower at it's zenith in the winter), they are less intense and it gets colder. However, the change in the angle of our planet as it travels around the sun is simply dependent on our position in our orbit. It has nothing to do with gyroscopes. Just the fact we are tilted on our axis and go around the sun. I'm inserting a link to a picture. Note that the angle of the earth does not change as it travels around the sun but how the sun strikes the earth does. http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/que...php?number=687 Please go to the link and look at the picture. Note our angle does not change (precept), how we face the sun does but it is a function of our position as we travel around the sun and has nothing to do with gyroscopes. If our seasons were due to the precept (the actual wobble of the earth on its axis) you would expect the earth to be at a lesser angle during spring and fall but it is not. The precept causes a drift of the seasons from more severe to more temperate over long periods of time but does not cause the seasons themselves. We'd need to wobble a lot faster than that to do that, and that wobble would have to be timed with our trip around the sun.
The gyroscopic precept is something that occurs over a very long period of time not one year (we wobble on our axis over a long period of time which would change the intensity of seasons over long periods of time but is not the reason we have seasons. You're talking two different things here.). Looking at one year, it has nothing to do with the face we have seasons. We don't have seasons because we wobble on our axis. We have seasons because the planet is tilted and travels in a nearly circular path around the sun that results in each hemisphere facing (being more direct to...however you want to say this...this is the part where a flashlight and a globe come in really handy) the sun more directly during its summer and more angled in the winter.
If I have this wrong and you are not saying that our seasons are due to our planet wobbling on its axis, accept my appologies but that does sound like what you are saying and it is wrong. This is another common misconception about why we have seasons. You could take our wobble away and we'd still have seasons.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 05-17-2013 at 04:33 AM..
Once, my son was correcting the teacher, which he often needed to do and she asked if he wanted to teach the class and when he got up to do so, she told him to sit down. I say, we take up a collection for the kid in the video to put him through teacher's college and clone him. You can just feel where he is coming from. My son got so frustrated with school because of the crap as did I some 25 years before him. The kid in the video clip will go far in life. Also, it doesn't matter what you are paid, you are either good at your job or you aren't and if you accept a job, you accept the salary and you should be giving it your 100% whether it is minimum wage or $100.00 an hour. I am so tired of people taking a job and doing a poor job because it doesn't really pay that much. A question of integrity or not.
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