This is the one hundredth posting of mine here at ELECTRON BLUE, and it also happens to be at the beginning of a new year. So I am taking this time to review what I have done in the last four years and where I hope to go. Before I start, I wish all my Electron Readers, the entire handful, a very happy and serene New Year.

It has been more than four years since I visited Fermilab and resolved to learn what I had never learned. I began my math studies in early 2001, starting literally from the beginning. I started with kiddie math from elementary school, including long division, which was where I remember losing any ability to do math back in third grade. Once I had re-acquainted myself with arithmetic, I moved on to first year algebra, which had tormented me in high school. I finally redeemed my high school agony by learning to factor quadratic equations and solve them with the quadratic formula. By late 2001, I was toiling my way through endless stacks of polynomials and doing high school senior year algebra.

In 2002, I "graduated" to first-year college algebra, using a vintage textbook from 1958. I worked through systems of equations in two and three variables along with determinants, systems of quadratic equations, inequalities, imaginary numbers, and much more. I also introduced myself to sequences and progressions, which I did since they were in the book. I solved endless series of problems, including the dreadful Word Problems which were the bane of my youth and many other folks' youth as well. Regarding physics, in 2002 I was introduced to some basic classical mechanics, including Newton's laws, how to mathematically describe straight-line acceleration, and determine the distance traveled while accelerating.

By autumn of 2002 it was time for something else, so I acquired a geometry book and worked my way completely through it in just less than a year. Geometry was the only mathematical thing I was good at in high school, so it was less challenging for me to pick it up again after the decades since my last exposure to it. I did hundreds and hundreds of proofs, with thousands of congruent or similar triangles. They proliferate, as if they were living things.

Having come to the end of my book of geometry, I then proceeded, in the autumn of 2003, into trigonometry. Of all the mathematical studies I have done so far, I found trigonometry the hardest and the most tedious. When it came to solving triangles with their sines, cosines, tangents, and so forth, I was adequate; after all, this has to do with geometric space, in which I was now at home. But I found trigonometric identities oppressive. Their endless, complex equivalencies multiplied and multiplied, and it seemed I would never get free of them. Nor could I figure out what purpose these trigonometric identities had in the "real world" of physics or any other science.

Trigonometry dragged me into 2004. When I began this Electron Blog back in February of 2004, I was still doing those blasted trigonometric identities. I did them all through the winter and into the spring and early summer, when I finally decided to give up on trigonometry, more out of exhaustion than any other reason. From trigonometry I moved into Logarithms, another tedious discipline without any visible purpose. Using the 1958 book and the tables in its back pages, I learned to find the logarithms of numbers without using either calculator or slide rule. This was a rather pointless achievement, given that I had both calculator and slide rule at hand.

Later in 2004, I returned to sequences and progressions, which I find much more interesting than trig or logs. In the autumn of 2004 I reached a milestone, when I finally declared myself ready to approach calculus. I am well-stocked with books on the subject, and as 2004 ended I stood at the outskirts of Newtonville (not the one in Massachusetts) or perhaps Leibnizburg.

I must admit that if I were to be given a sudden test in any of these subjects, other than geometry or elementary algebra, I would not pass it. I would have to review and study hard to pass a test in intermediate algebra, progressions, trigonometry or logarithms. I am glad that I am not in a formal school program. The anxiety about the tests would just be too much for me.

I now have some mathematical background suitable for physics: familiarity with algebra, and with one basic concept of calculus, that is, change in velocity divided by change in time. I am now, finally, addressing physics directly, working from a few basic texts designed for people who want to teach themselves physics or review physics for tests. I have reviewed Newton's Laws, though I still have trouble wrapping my mind around the Third Law: equal and opposite forces? I have to remember that force is proportional to mass. I am finally learning about momentum and potential energy and kinetic energy. I am learning what is conserved and what is transformed. It's likely I'll be doing classical mechanics for a long time to come. I wonder whether I will ever get beyond it, let alone into the higher reaches of relativity, particle physics or the much-ballyhooed string theory. Well, the "landscape" may be mountainous, with my path only in the lower valleys, but all I can do is keep walking and hope that I get somewhere.

I have a book, from the notorious Barron's series of high school review texts, called PHYSICS THE EASY WAY. Fortunately, this book does not have fantasy characters in it. But it will be anything but easy, at least for me. I don't believe anything is worth doing if it is easy, except perhaps sauteing onions. This book is full of problems. I'll solve as many of them as I can, for as long as I need. I like to solve problems. It's one of the few things that makes me feel good. I don't care if they're pointless, unreal problems that don't help humanity. Just let me solve them.

I still feel a great force of resistance and inertia, coming from my peculiar circumstances. Very few people, as far as I can see, attempt to learn physics after their high school years. I've heard from one or two, but lately they seem to have given up or gone away. It seems you are either a whiz at it, gifted with undeniable talent, in which case you are already bound for a scientific career at age 10, building your own computers out of spare electronic parts, or you are a hopeless case who will never go beyond rolling balls down inclined planes. And it still seems very much a boys' world to me, including boys who are in their thirties and forties. Physics seems to me like a strenuous sport, where you cannot hope to do anything with it if you start when you are middle-aged. Imagine an out-of-shape middle-aged lady trying to learn skateboarding or mountain-biking or surfing, having never done it before. Very inappropriate for someone like me. You can get hurt doing these things! Watch out, I could hurt myself accelerating too fast and not conserving my momentum!

So here I am at the beginning of 2005, poking my way through beginning physics that I should have learned in junior high school. In fact, I remember not learning it in Mr. Cinkosky's seventh grade science class. He was a sweet old guy, a World War II veteran, who tried to teach us about falling objects, friction, and "mechanical advantage," how simple machines like levers and pulleys worked, and other beginning physics stuff. The demonstrations stayed with me, but the math certainly didn't. I didn't build anything electronic in my youth, (though I certainly worked with enough electronic music gadgets) and it was clear that I would never do anything scientific; coming from a family of artists, I was destined to be something artistic.

Yet something came over me four years ago, an infusion of mathematical grace from the atheistic world of science, that somehow transformed me into someone who looks forward to studying calculus. Back in junior high I could imagine that I would be doing art or writing fantasy in my later years. That seemed natural. But math and physics? Perhaps some burst of exotic particles re-arranged an area of neurons in my math-disadvantaged brain. Why I am doing this, and why I have stuck with it for four years when most people assumed it was just another of my whims? Never underestimate the power of Inappropriate Desire.

Posted at 2:36 am | link