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Patricle Physics
My best friend forever is a guy I've known in 6th grade named John Bols. For years our fav group activity has been arguing. We don't see eye-to-eye on many things, and on the surface I don't think it appears we get along well. Quite often, he flat out annoys me. However, I'm not a masochist in saying he's my bff. I admire him alot, and I think it's because he's a true rebel to the extreme. You see, he's not just a rebel, hes a rebel OF REBELS. He rebels against the popular counterculture, so he winds upcoming off as conservative -- but in a very perverted way. However, he has none of the "idealism" that comes along with true conservatism. No old time morals, no religion whatsoever; he simply has disdain for most people.
So it's with this bedrock came my final actlab project. So often in the class, Sandy or Joey would scold us for expecting a normal "listen to a lecture, take notes, do an assignment" class. I often felt very frustrated with the class' approach. I'm all for self-motivation, but often they promoted "do what you want to do" just to go around and criticize these acts for not being what they wanted. So it became a vague but sturdy "do what we want you to want to do" situation. So in answer to my frustation with the class, I decided to hack the class' approach by turning it into a straightforward "listen to a lecture, take notes, do an assignment" presentation.
My girlfriend happens to be a physicist, so I asked her to teach me what she had studied as an undergrad. I had decided I didn't want to make a presentation where I parroted info without understanding, or just flat out making things up in a convincing way -- I actually wanted to TEACH in my presentation and present info as properly as I could. So she and I had a three hour crash session where she explained particle physics to me. My powerpoint presentation was essentially a point-for-point reworking of our study session. As of the Monday before the presentation, I had ZERO previous knowledge of this subject and figured particle physics would be a big, imposing, and impressive subject to have as a guerilla lecture.
Because I was worried I wouldn't have enough of a project, I made up quizzes for the class to take. I actually did write up two varying forms of the quiz (shuffling answers and questions) to "discourage cheating."
After my presentation, I was quite impressed with the reaction. Sandy saying it was one of the better attempts to quickly teach physics (something along those lines) and my girlfriend telling me "you didn't make *that many* mistakes" made me pretty pleased. I think it'd be cool if I maybe almost taught someone something in an actlab class.