Paste your essay in here…Albert Son
Ms. Dunham
AP Physics 2
19 May 2017
Theory of Everything
Introduction:
Alright, our wonderful Physics journey is about to be concluded with a mind-shattering documentary about literally everything. As we took a ride with Stephen Hawking’s genius mind, I was able to relate a lot of his ideas with topics we learned about in class this year. Our minds were blown by two documentaries/ movies: Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design and Stephen Hawking’s Theory of Everything.
Summaries:
Grand Design Episode 1:
This episode was more philosophical than empirical because it tried to tackle one of mankind’s greatest questions: What is the meaning of life? Although it did not completely answer the question, this video approached the question by applying physics to everything. Renee Descartes, father of modern philosophy, once said that humans are made of the body and the mind, a “complex biological machine.” His famous saying, “I think therefore I am” suggested that the mind was connected to the pineal gland and thus created by the brain. The brain also contains as many neurons as there are stars in the milky way. But why do we have consciousness and how did it arise? Life essentially evolved from amino acids. “The more aware an animal is of its environment, the more successful it will be.” Humans are essentially self aware bodies with a brain. Descartes then concluded with the mind and the body are interdependent, where they cannot exist without each other. The video then moves onto the topic of free will, where Hawking argues that a complex chain of events called the “butterfly effect” actually determined it for us instead of our own decision. The video provided an example where a man decides to drink apple juice over orange juice solely because he had a memory in the past of a pleasant day in an apple orchard. It also questioned our free will when it showed that we can trigger finger movements during brain surgery with a simple touch. Next, the video presents John Conway creating a program called the “Game of life.” In the game, life is presented as a grid of squares and the squares either light up and live or dim and die based on the squares around it, such as overcrowding, loneliness, birth and death, interactions, and reproductions. I also found the fish bowl metaphor to be interesting. Where differences in perspective doesn’t mean one has a lesser mind. And it also showed the cops taking the fish bowl away from the girl and the girl chases after them on a bike. Overall, I really don’t think I can relate anything to what we learned in Physics 2. However, this did enlighten me when Stephen Hawking argued that our understanding of the world is restricted to a model-based reality. For example, when we tried to explain how protons were made up of quarks even though they were impossible to see on their own. I also came to the conclusion that not everything in this universe can be explained by pure physics because we actually do have free will that isn’t purely influenced by memories of the past.
Grand Design Episode 2:
This episode focuses more on the predecessors and the founding fathers of modern physics. First, it showed Isaac Newton, the man who founded the laws and equations for classical physics and even calculus. It also showed how James Clark Maxwell invented color photography, discovered equations and laws for magnetism, electricity, and electromagnetic waves. And then Albert Einstein makes an appearance by asking “how fast is the train moving?” Although speed is relative to our perspective on things, the speed of light is fixed regardless. Then this genius proposes the theory of special relativity, where space and time are related through a space-time that can be warped by large gravitational fields. Then the video shows how Theodore Kaluza can teach himself anything through reading a book, such as swimming, and so he approached physics with the same attitude. Although classical physics can be explained fairly easily, quantum physics requires just a little bit more extra details to understand it. For example, fast moving electrons fired through slits can take any and every path possible and the video represents soccerballs as an example of an electron. This is where Richard Feynman comes in because he used probability and uncertainty to theorize that the probability of the velocity and the position of an electron is the best thing to help us get close to exact values. Even after all this, Hawking is still looking for a perfect design to explain the universe and string theory may be the closest thing we have. The video represents String Theory with a string quintet playing beautifully and harmoniously, which is used to show how different vibrations in spacetime can produce different fundamental particles. A lot of information from this episode coincides with what we learned this year. All the way from electricity, magnetism, and electromagnetic waves to quantum physics and special relativity, I almost felt nostalgia while watching. Although I felt as though I had a pretty good understanding of quarks and leptons already, the introduction of string theory was the only part I wasn’t familiar with. The explanation on special relativity and the uncertainty principle felt like a reinforcement of my previous understandings, but their explanation on string theory actually left me even more uncertain about physics. I still don’t understand what m-theory is and how there can be more than 3 dimensions, let alone 11(?).
Theory of Everything Ep 1:
This video focuses more about Stephen Hawking himself, but still tries to use physics to explain everything in the universe. Hawking had Lou Gherig’s disease, but he was unfazed and continued to try and unify Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. Roger Penrose gave rise to how physics could be applied to answer big questions such as “why are we here?” And “where did we come from?” This video touches on how the theory of relativity works by showing how a penny orbits around a ball (massive object) because it is trapped in the curved space. However, this wasn’t enough to satisfy Hawking and Penrose and so they added black holes into the equation. And what is inside that black hole? Singularity. “We use singularities to hide our ignorance.” -Michio Kaku. But what happens when an atom meets a black hole? First, positrons and electrons are created out of nowhere, exist briefly in pairs, then annihilates each other. But when negative mass falls into the black hole, the mass of the black hole decreases (???) while the positive mass barely escapes and is then observed as thermal radiation. Therefore, as more negative particles fall into the hole, the hole becomes smaller and hotter until it explodes. The scene then quickly cuts to Hawking enjoying lunch with his PhD students. Again the video starts off with throwback material such as the theory of relativity, space time warping due to gravitational mass, and black holes. While the idea of massive objects warping space time seems pretty clear to me, I was a little confused about how that could explain our existence. The most mind blowing part about this video was the fact that adding negative mass decreases the mass of the black hole. I mean, what exactly does negative mass look like? Mathematically, it would make sense that adding negative mass would decrease mass, but I just can't think about the concept of there being a negative mass.
Theory of Everything Ep 2:
The video starts off with why the universe has four fundamental forces. Four forces melded together at creation to form a super force and thus the Big Bang. Then they separated into Electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear, and gravitational force. However, gravity is technically not part of the club because it is the weakest force. Then the video goes onto supersymmetry, where everything was made of the same stuff in the beginning but as the universe expanded, things became unequal and more things began to form. Then the video introduces string theory by Professor Michael Green: It describes the universe as being made up of string-like objects that appear as different objects due to varying vibrations. The video also touches on superstring theory, where the universe is actually made of 11 dimensions that cannot be observed and would also explain why gravity is so weak compared to other forces. Then the video reflects on how much particle physics has advanced over the past 20 years and goes over some of the struggles that Stephen Hawking himself has to face everyday, such as writing a book and communicating with others. This video actually confused me the most because it made me question everything I already knew about such a familiar force. I would never have imagined that the “downwards-pointing” gravity could act in 11 dimensions. However, I think this video was a good attempt at uniting the theory of the large with the theory of the atoms by utilizing string theory with gravity.
Reflection:
Over these past 2 years, I have challenged a plethora of preconceived notions I had about the world I live in. For example, everything I knew about life became a lie when I realized space and time are flexible and can even theoretically be reversed. In both AP Physics classes, I was repeatedly bombarded with unique and interesting theories about how this universe actually worked. I not only learned wonders about quantum physics and the theory of relativity (in high school??) but also learned that a lot of ideas about this universe is still left unsolved for curious geniuses in the future. Although I do feel grateful for being given the opportunity to understand all these concepts (I feel smarter when I can confuse people with quantum talks) I honestly don’t think that physics was the right course for me. Don’t get me wrong, I would rather take physics over biology or chemistry because physics can literally be applied to anywhere in the universe. But I’m the type of person to appreciate mind-boggling breakthroughs rather than work through the same free response questions over and over again. Nonetheless, this class really did make me think about my life and how and why we were put into existence.
Conclusion:
These videos were definitely more enjoyable than the AP because I could actually learn myriad theories and ideas about how our universe works. I think we are really close to coming up with a perfect model for this universe (string theory?) so I am more than excited to see what Stephen Hawking will discover and share with us. Thank you Ms. Dunham for a stressful but interesting year in physics and I will stay tuned for major breakthroughs that will relate to these topics you have taught us.