Elemental my dear Watson

xkcd

What is it that makes us want to study and learn?  Recently I have been driving my nearest and dearest mad as I have decided to memorise the periodic table - I'm up to Phosphorus 15 currently, so a long way to go! 

Why do some people have this desire to absorb knowledge more than others and also at different times in their lives? I remember going back to a reunion at my old school not long after completing an MSc in a maths related subject and my old maths teacher made some comment like "shame you didn't try harder at school".  My defensive response would have been, "shame there was no one to inspire me", thankfully I didn't say this.  I think I just wasn't as interested in learning as a teenager as I am now.  Over the last few years I have been revisiting the basics, partly due to my kids going through the part of school where my brain was on autopilot but partly due the availability of information across all sorts of media.  The chain of events that led to this current fad is one such modern parable.  

A friend posted on Google+ that he had won a new iPad (not 2!), a "circlee" in his G+ circles posted a link to a blog where someone else had listed their favourite iPad apps, many readers of that blog had reviewed and commented on his suggested "best" apps, I liked the look of the elements one and so followed the shortcut to iTunes and downloaded it to my iMac. Within in a few minutes I was enjoying interactive, entertaining education on a topic that was my chosen area of study. 

So is my desire to learn, a positively selective evolutionary trait, a mid life re-evaluation of what is important to me, a preoccupation with gadgets or perhaps a little of all of these.  I'm not sure it really matters but I am certainly enjoying quenching this thirst for knowledge after walking in the desert for most of my early teens. 

Its about time

So I have had a self instigated moratorium on blogging for a while. Largely due to good weather (don't fancy being stuck at the computer for too long), good wine (couple of 'scoops' at the end of the day and I'm poleaxed), too much work (although I am conscious of the Steerpike maxim from my last attempt at this excuse - "you choose how much you want to work" - a little simplistic for my ethos but a grain of truth nonetheless) and too many end-of-term events. Anyway, with holiday season almost upon us I thought I'd better get this one off my, errr..., chest.

I've recently downloaded an app for my iPad (device review is long overdue - suffice to say 10:10) and it has pushed many buttons for me, the app I mean. I find a great satisfaction in knowing that mechanical watches with ever miniaturised and complex, accurate movements are manufactured - yes I love watches - I am also fascinated with Astronomy, thats the study of celestial objects not the study of terrestrial newspaper fillers. If you were confused by that reference you're probably a sagitarian - they always struggle with concealed irony. This app then, observatory, is designed for people like me - in fact its so perfect I sat there wondering for a brief egocentric-moment if I had actually commissioned it.

I'm not sure the purpose of the app is immediately clear, nor should it be, I have used it to marvel at the differences in various measures of time, to explore the heliocentric movement of the planets, to examine the "accuracy" of time at different points in history, to discover the position of celestial bodies at specific historic events and finally and most importantly to explore the physical, conceptual and philosophical nature of time. I have flicked back and forth between graffiti-pedia and the app grappling with the meaning of Solar Time, the Solar Day, Sidereal Time, The Equation of Time and now I am astounded by the complexity of evaluating what we simply call "a day".

Eventually, as is its wont, my mind drifted off to the subject of time perception. I remember reading that in reality our brain processes a sequence of images and uses "trickery" to make us believe we are seeing a continuous stream rather than this continual stream of separate stills. If one were able to process more images, one would in effect see the world in slow-motion (relatively speaking). This is one reason why we can't catch the fly with chopsticks, it processes many more images per second than we do. So where did this lead me? beyond the capacity to reason is the honest answer, so I was able to experiment - the app can "animate" the solar system with a number of different frequencies. Year, Month, Phase, Day, Hour and Minute. Enough for eons of experimentation. I'll publish the results when I'm done.

Sent from my iPad

It's a Small World

This 2-player version of Small World for the iPad

 (Vyvyan: “yes we’ve got a bloody video” )

                 is one of the best Apps so far! I played 3 games at lunch today. I do hope they expand it to more players, the table top mode would probably cope.  I wanted to write a review but this is better than I could do..