My physics work has taken me into a world of things hanging from ropes and pulleys, either unmoving at equilibrium or moving at a steady, industrial speed. For a moment I wondered why all this was necessary, and then I took a drive through my neighborhood and saw these things everywhere. The traffic lights, hanging signs, streetlights and phone poles held by guy wires, all of them are high school physics problems in the "real world" of a city infrastructure.

I never, ever thought I would see an American city destroyed. I am still in shock about it, even though I was only there for one memorable day. I have heard that some of the French Quarter, including that restaurant where I did the sketch, probably survived, though it was vandalized and looted. Right now, every time I look at the dry streets, flourishing business, and even the traffic of my urban area, I don't take it for granted any more. Not to mention the hilly terrain, that would keep many places safe from floods. All those sines and cosines, the ups and downs and co-efficients of friction, build a working world.

A Damn Long Road to Reality

An Electron reader wrote to me suggesting that I read THE ROAD TO REALITY by British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose. I went to the bookstore and opened a copy of it. Good grief, there were more equations on those pages than I had done in a whole year. And they were highly advanced stuff, things I may never ever get to. Or if I get to them, I'll be really old. Penrose's reality is somewhere far away from mine, where I am still cranking high school mechanics for the foreseeable future.

Let's face it, there is no good reason why I should ever need to learn mathematics and physics to the level of Penrose's book. Why should I trouble my curly little head with attempting to learn this stuff. I should stay in my studio making pretty pictures and cute signs. But I have my own personal reasons why I want to eventually attain enough mathematical and physics knowledge to read Penrose's book intelligently. I enumerated some of those reasons last year in an entry from March 12 though some of those reasons, both right and wrong, have changed a bit. When it comes to physics, I feel like an old-fashioned kid looking at a big league baseball game. I know that I will never make it past the sandlot, but I admire the skill and ability and achievements and feats of the big league players so much that I want to be like them. If I ever were to read Penrose's book and understand his equations with real comprehension, it would be like running the bases at Fenway Park.

Posted at 1:42 am | link