Physics

   

my elegant husband

This past weekend Mike downloaded a physics book on his kindle called The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. Mike is looking forward to learning more about string theory and stuff like that. And he asked me if I know what the Theory of Relativity is? So I recited the obvious stuff to Mike like the entire energy of the universe is relative to the mass of the universe times the speed of light squared, and we will never be able to go faster than the speed of light and that means space travel as we imagine it can never happen and that is sad, so Einstein has to be disproved so Star Trek can be real.

     Mike said, “so you really understand all of that?” 

     Oh my gosh, all the fuses that started to go off in my pea brain! I grabbed a pen and paper, “Let me get all these notes down for my memory-a-day blog before the sparks stop glowing!”

     My understanding of physics is, was, tenuous at best.

    When the spaceships are passing each other going at almost the speed of light – yeah, I can't wrap my brain around that. (I try, and then my whole body starts shaking, just like when computers in Star Trek go up in smoke because Captain Kirk has spoken illogically to them!) Sometimes I can almost see what the theories are painting, and then when I have to do the math to figure out which spaceship gets where first, well, it all slips away – kind of like someone else is pulling the universe strings leaving me in the dark.

    The day in physics class when we took our exam on all this stuff, there was one particular question about two vehicles going almost the speed of light, and I think the moon was involved, and somewhere in my thinking, I concluded that it was a trick question and my answer was nothing more than a paragraph of why the whole situation was not possible.           When I turned in the exam and walked out into the hall, my teacher was standing there smiling at me. I asked him about the trick question only to find out, of course, that it was not a trick. Sigh.

    What did I learn in college physics? There are no trick questions, just tricky solutions.

    That summer, after two semesters of physics, one with a B and one with a C, I had to meet with my adviser. It was the end of junior year, and many of us would be applying to other schools after graduation. And these other schools would be looking for recommendations from professors and advisers – so Dr. S. was trying to get to know everyone.

     He and I chatted for a little bit, and finally Dr. S. went over my grades. “Tell me more about this C in Physics,” he was expecting a sob story about some relative dying or anything to explain why I did so poorly when obviously I was a bright and intelligent young woman deserving of so much more!

     “Dr. S!” I began to babble, “I earned every last bit of that C! My pea brain can only grasp C's worth of the material. You did not ask me about the B! I did not deserve the B, but my blood, sweat and tears went into that C of second semester!” Dr. S realized he would not have to worry about any recommendations for me. And he was right.

      Hopefully Mike will grasp the material in the Elegant Universe without much difficulty – but right now he is telling me about bouncing photons, bouncing himself as he talks about them, and the speed at the front of the train versus the speed at the back of the train, and I'm afraid the train tracks might take him to a whole other quadrant of the universe, and without the capability of Star Trek travel, how will we be able to pluck him back to our little corner of the world again?

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