Well this evening I have been up to my eyeballs in Lorentzian Intervals, Spacetime Events and Euclidean Geometry. And now my brain hurts. A lot. Today was the first day I sat down and started to read through my course notes for my Astrophysics and Relativity MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).
I managed to get through most of the homework problems in one piece, except for a minor miscalculation resulting in there now being 1000cm to a metre! This is what comes of being an engineer and dealing in millimetres and metres. It is also what comes when astrophysicists use grams and centimetres to measure the masses and radii of planets!!
I've always loved learning new things, definitely more so than applying what I have learnt. There are some people that hated studying and couldn't wait to stop but I'm the opposite, always wanting to learn a new skill or fact and never far away from places I can do that - be it virtual or physical.
These MOOCs are a great idea, there are plenty of websites out there offering them and the array of topics you can try your hand it is staggering. There are some pretty snazzy institutions on there as well such as MIT, Edinburgh, Stanford, Harvard so you can be sure you are getting top people on the case.
But what is it about learning? Why do some people love it and some despise it? It surely can't be as simple as some people enjoy it because they are good at it whereas others aren't and so don't like it? I have always enjoyed it and thankfully I'm not too bad at it but I think it takes a certain mentality to want to learn beyond the point of compulsory education!
Some people seem to simply enjoy the process, others are much happier applying knowledge rather than acquiring it. It is a fascinating subject to me, what is it that drives the pursuit of knowledge of in some but drives others away from ever picking up a textbook or randomly trying to learn something new? I have very rarely met someone who is in the middle of this debate, although maybe my vast amount of time spent studying it more likely to bring me into contact with "perpetual students".
It is a topic that I definitely need to probe a bit more and get to the middle of. Now if only I could find someone to take on the role......oh wait.....
Today's #randomfactoftheday - Queen Victoria has the longest reign of any Queen in recorded history, for now. Queen Elizabeth II is only about 18 months away from surpassing her.
Today's #badjokeoftheday - Doctor, Doctor, I keep painting myself gold. Don't worry, it's just a gilt complex.
Today's #websiteoftheday - A sense of scale; the Universe (http://htwins.net/scale2/)
On this day: 1942, the first gold record is presented to Glenn Millar, for "Chattanooga Choo Choo"
Till next time
DT
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