“Worth The Wait”

Pictured above is me, Michael, and Stephen outside of Westminster Abbey during the commonwealth. The Commonwealth was scheduled to start at 3 pm and we got there over 2 hours early. We were able to find a spot up on a hill to see past the news reporters. That day we were able to see Meghan and Harry’s last event as royals! AND OF COURSE, we got to see the all mighty Liz (AKA THE QUEEN). We fangirled and this was a highlight of my trip!

“Widen Your Gaze”

When at the Salisbury Cathedral Dr. Albers and I walked around in the Magna Carta part of the Cathedral and really took a step back and looked more in detail of the room itself and all of the glasswork. When looking at the stain glass windows we noticed these white flowers in the borders as well as mixed in through the pictures themselves. Before leaving we realized the tops of the columns in the rooms were in the shape of the flowers on the stain glass windows. It is amazing how intricate historical buildings can be so it is important to widen your gaze and truly see all of where you are at.

“Look For Ohio”

On almost every trip I have ever gone on somehow I find something related to Ohio. Whether it be a person from Ohio, an Alumni from OSU, a whole bar related to Ohio State, or block O’s glowing in red at a pub. We thought it was super funny so I thought I would share!

I really enjoyed researching for my project as well as listening in on all of the other student’s podcast. There are some amazing scientists and discoveries that came out of Ohio state that I would have never realized unless hearing the other students’ podcasts. What really stood out to me from the project was how the ambulance started out at Ohio State. With the doctor coming up with a way to get to cardiac arrest patients quicker by actually coming to them was a genius and has completely changed the way emergency situations are handled. I also thought it was interesting the cancer vaccine for cats brings in the most profit into Ohio State, I didn’t know how big of a killer it was with cats but has significantly helped them. I also lastly liked how the other group went more in-depth about the all-girl expedition to Antarctica and how they not only have to deal with the harsh environment of the continent but also having to deal with the men that looked down on them! They tried so hard to prove a point to the Navy that they are less needy than the men, so they asked for less help when in reality they should have been able to ask for help if they needed it. Overall this was a great project and would recommend you do this next year!

The movie started off really interesting by going over the experiment of taking 3 “savage” children from their homes and tried to teach them civilized manors and Christian beliefs. They believed that if they returned the children back to their home that they would teach the other people in their community. But as soon as they brought the children back, the children went back to their old ways. I also completely forgot that this was in the time where science v. religion was in full force, so this kind of relates back to class discussions of how it can be hard for people to believe in new ideas because they go against everything they were taught their whole life, so I can see during this time why there was such turmoil when all of these new findings came out.

I also didn’t realize that Darwin studied monkeys. This makes a ton of sense due to monkeys evolving into humans and potentially the start of his theory. With this, I like how the movie shows his struggles with his discoveries, from losing his monkey friend to the church hurting his daughter for his beliefs, and also his struggle with his health.

Overall I really liked how this film was made. It gave a good insight into how Darwin came to his conclusions but also the struggles of this discovery. He had a constant battle of believing in God or his theory. This struggle related to the whole religion v. science debate that was in full force during this time. I think this discussion is still in the debate even today!

The overall concept of a black hole is the idea of “Trapping”, some can enter the black hole but cannot escape. Black holes exist due to gravity. Gravity is a universal force that makes everything attract everything else. If you put a lot of masses within the same region, then they will be pulled in from the attraction of a different mass, creating a black hole. The story of the black hole went through 4 iterations.
Iteration #1:
– Newton’s Law of Gravitation
– Newton’s Law of Motion
– In 1783 John Mitchell used Newton’s principles to come up with the idea of a dark star
– This came to a dead end because it isn’t considered a black hole due to Newton’s laws state that things can escape rather (not a black hole)

Iteration #2:
– Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity in 1915
– General relativity is a consistent theory on its own, and this theory predicts the existence of black holes which trap anything that falls into them.

Iteration #3:
– Stephen Hawkings in 1975 still uses the idea of general relativity but adds the thought of quantum theory.
– a problem that comes up is the black hole paradox
– in this third iteration, we find that mass (or equivalently, energy) is not trapped, while information is either lost or trapped, depending on our assumptions about the endpoint of black hole evaporation.

Iteration #4:
– Gravity is described by a quantum theory of spacetime
– Matter is described by quantum theory as well
– the hole takes the form of a fuzzball, which traps neither energy nor information

This was one of my favorite talks that I was able to attend due to being able to put the past more into perspective. What these scientists were doing was insane and going against what everyone believes to be true. I like the exercise where we had to try and explain what air and oxygen were like we didn’t already know it existed. When putting myself in the general publics’ shoes when a scientist tried to explain this concept I would have been so confused and probably would have dismissed it at first. It makes senes now because the reason why we breathe is to get oxygen into our bodies, but if I believe my whole life that there was no such thing as air with all of these gases in it I would have been mind blown. It is truly amazing to see how far we have become as a society on how much we have learned, and it is crazy to think that we have truly only touched the surface. In class, I wondered how students years from now will be learning about our generation’s innovations and discoveries and they might look at them the same way we looked at the past with this notion of how did you not know that? But if you spent your whole life learning that this was the way it is and then all of a sudden someone is combating your beliefs, it would be hard to get on board.

When listening to Dr. Alber go more in-depth with Pasteur it made me reflect more on the movie we watched that previous Sunday. While most of the movie was accurate, she was able to go more in-depth on what parts were accurate and what other parts were a little bit far fetched. I also really appreciated her opinions on someone being considered a genius. I feel like our generation has such easy access to education now that it is hard to differentiate each of us. Our view is more based on the effort and hard work you put into your education and innovation rather than just being a pure genius. While I do believe that there are people who are geniuses if they don’t have the work ethic to use their abilities than it could go to waste. Back when people were truly innovating the concepts were completely insane to grasp. The fact that in order to test his theory Paseur literally injected a vaccine into a young child before testing the product. If this went south than he would have been sentenced to death. If that would have happened today, Pasteur I believe if caught would have immediately put in jail if not given permission.

I sadly wasn’t able to make the Carol Anelli talk/presentation but I instead spent time research a little bit about her. When I researched more into Carol I saw that she was apart of the Department of Entomology. To be honest I had no idea what that meant so I dug a little bit into that. Entomology is a branch of zoology that focuses on insects. In order to get the full experience, I found a video of a Q & A session that involved Carol Anelli titled “The Intersection of Faith and Evolution”. I loved Carol’s thought process on the fact that the general public especially students should understand evolution and how we have grown. By having greek mythology/natural thought of science, to the renaissance scientist thought, to today. The quote that stood out most to me was when she said “science advances only when great and curious minds are allowed to pursue it”. This quote stuck to me because this has been a very big topic in our discussions about different scientists and innovators throughout history. Whether it be an ethical dilemma, not having enough money, or not having the same privilege of getting an education if we allow great and curious minds to flourish then they can change the world as we know it. I chose this study abroad because it is completely out of my comfort zone and I wanted to be more aware of past and current scientists that have truly made the world the place it is today. Being a business major we aren’t really exposed to the past but really only what’s next to come, and this class has given me a better perspective on respecting the past and building the future on the accomplishments of the ones before us.

I really liked the fact that we were able to explore a part of the campus that I have always heard was full of fascinating things, but I just never have gotten the time to go. Dale was so enthusiastic about his work and you could truly see his passion and desire to teach by the way he talked to use. What stood out to me the most during our visit was when he brought all of the different creatures that lived in Ohio and the United States. Being able to see the mammoth tooth up close and getting to see the ridges in the teeth were amazing. I never truly understood how such large creature ate only grass like foods but seeing how the groves and edges along the tooth can grind it up much easier was really awesome to see up close. I also loved all of the pictures of him putting students near fossils in order to get a size perspective over just getting a picture for the student. Overall great guy and a great experience.

Last week, when Jan Weisenberger came in and talked about different all the different faculty with their accomplishments, blew me away. No matter how big or small an innovation was, Ohio States’ accomplishments have really shaped the way life is today. From its very origin to even today. The two stories that stood out to me were first the women’s research trip to Antarctica. I never knew about that and the fact that there was so much pressure on the women to succeed was insane. If they messed up then this could have hurt women scientists and researchers’ reputations and could have lost respect due to women being looked down on. I also was surprised by the fact that students and faculty from Ohio State came up with the way drum sticks are able to keep their ice cream from leaking through the cone. By adding hard shell chocolate in the inside to create a seal, it tremendously helped the drum stick company.