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News Wire: Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist and some-time model railroader, dies at 76

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Posted by RDG467 on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 10:18 AM

I wonder if the 'good doctor' was really a cyborg in his latter years.  If you cannot move and only speak through synthesized speech, how do you know he was still human?  Maybe someone was fooling us all and just programming him to say all kinda strange stuff???

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Posted by NKP guy on Friday, March 16, 2018 9:27 AM

tree68
Disagree.  Pretty much every student in a class desires to pass - but they need the proper information to do s

   A very good teacher herself, Lady NKP (pace Firelock76) has said that students are like dogs, in that they want to please; it's just that they need to be shown clearly what the teacher wants them to do and how to be successful in class.  Making them guess about it is unfair and a waste of everyone's time.

  BaltACD:  What a great anecdote!  I'll bet you were a fine student in that class.

 

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Posted by BaltACD on Friday, March 16, 2018 8:08 AM

tree68
 
CSSHEGEWISCH

The problem isn't the inability to explain a subject at a level that can be understood, it's the inability to explain a subject to an audience that just doesn't care. 

Disagree.  Pretty much every student in a class desires to pass - but they need the proper information to do so...

Granted, there are those who are only there because they have to be...

Part of the requirement for a effective teacher is make the students care.  If a teacher is unable to make students care they aren't worthy of the title 'teacher'.

I had a instructor at Vincennes University that taught 'Classic Literature' - a class that was required - that going into I could have cared less about.  I have lost the woman's name in the half century since I took the class, however, she taught those books in a manner that brought the words to life and brought them into the world of the students she was teaching.  That class could have been one that would allow me to catch up on my sleep but it became an hour that I was brought alive into the world of the writers making.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, March 16, 2018 7:34 AM

CSSHEGEWISCH

The problem isn't the inability to explain a subject at a level that can be understood, it's the inability to explain a subject to an audience that just doesn't care.

Disagree.  Pretty much every student in a class desires to pass - but they need the proper information to do so...

Granted, there are those who are only there because they have to be...

 

LarryWhistling
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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Friday, March 16, 2018 7:05 AM

The problem isn't the inability to explain a subject at a level that can be understood, it's the inability to explain a subject to an audience that just doesn't care.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by wanswheel on Friday, March 16, 2018 12:54 AM

 

Excerpt from A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking https://books.google.com/books?id=oZhagX6UWOMC&pg=PA17&dq=%22the+big+difference+between+the+ideas+of+aristotle%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6_JbOou_ZAhVnuVkKHfvNCA4Q6AEIOjAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20big%20difference%20between%20the%20ideas%20of%20aristotle%22&f=false   The big difference between the ideas of Aristotle and those of Galileo and Newton is that Aristotle believed in a preferred state of rest, which any body would take up if it were not driven by some force or impulse. In particular, he thought that the earth was at rest. But it follows from Newton's laws that there is no unique standard of rest. One could equally well say that body A was at rest and body B was moving at constant speed with respect to body A, or that body B was at rest and body A was moving. For example, if one sets aside for a moment the rotation of the earth and its orbit round the sun, one could say that the earth was at rest and that a train on it was traveling north at ninety miles per hour or that the train was at rest and the earth was moving south at ninety miles per hour. If one carried out experiments with moving bodies on the train, all Newton's laws would still hold. For instance, playing Ping-Pong on the train, one would find that the ball obeyed Newton's laws just like a ball on a table by the track. So there is no way to tell whether it is the train or the earth that is moving. The lack of an absolute standard of rest meant that one could not determine whether two events that took place at different times occurred in the same position in space. For example, suppose our Ping-Pong ball on the train bounces straight up and down, hitting the table twice on the same spot one second apart. To someone on the track, the two bounces would seem to take place about forty meters apart, because the train would have traveled that far down the track between the bounces. The nonexistence of absolute rest therefore meant that one could not give an event an absolute position in space, as Aristotle had believed. The positions of events and the distances between them would be different for a person on the train and one on the track, and there would be no reason to prefer one person's position to the other's.

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Posted by Ulrich on Thursday, March 15, 2018 4:37 PM

tree68

 

 
BaltACD
Anyone that thinks they are an Expert in any area, that can't explain that area in a manner that normal lay people can understand - is not the Expert he thinks he is.

 

I've had teachers like that.  

 

 

Same here... had one that spoke no known language... just gibberish. I thought I was lost until the girl sitting next to me asked me "is he speaking FORTRAN?".. that's when I knew there was at least one person in the class who understood even less than I did.. 

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Posted by tree68 on Thursday, March 15, 2018 2:15 PM

BaltACD
Anyone that thinks they are an Expert in any area, that can't explain that area in a manner that normal lay people can understand - is not the Expert he thinks he is.

I've had teachers like that.  

LarryWhistling
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Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you
My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date
Come ride the rails with me!
There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...

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Posted by BaltACD on Thursday, March 15, 2018 1:37 PM

Ulrich
Really enjoyed his books.. not many uber smart people are able to explain complex subjects to the average person in an interesting and intelligible manner. He certainly had that gift.  He was the Newton of our time and will likely be remembered for centuries. 

Anyone that thinks they are an Expert in any area, that can't explain that area in a manner that normal lay people can understand - is not the Expert he thinks he is.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by edblysard on Thursday, March 15, 2018 12:31 AM

Ulrich

Really enjoyed his books.. not many uber smart people are able to explain complex subjects to the average person in an interesting and intelligible manner. He certainly had that gift.  He was the Newton of our time and will likely be remembered for centuries. 

 

es, he does explain a lot of things in such a way as to be understandable to folks who don't ponder black holes and such all the time...

23 17 46 11

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Posted by wanswheel on Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:30 PM

 

https://www.snolab.ca/news/2012-09-16-professor-stephen-hawking-visits-snolab

Excerpt from My Brief History by Stephen Hawking   https://books.google.com/books?id=i4WODQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11&dq=%22and+he+brought+me+an+american+train+%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw6JzaqOzZAhXBwVkKHXpnD2YQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=%22and%20he%20brought%20me%20an%20american%20train%20%22&f=false     ...Toys were not manufactured during the war, at least not for the home market. But I had a passionate interest in model trains. My father tried making me a wooden train, but that didn't satisfy me, as I wanted something that moved on its own. So he got a secondhand clockwork train, repaired it with a soldering iron, and gave it to me for Christmas when I was nearly three. That train didn't work very well. But my father went to America just after the war, and when he came back on the Queen Mary he brought my mother some nylons, which were not obtainable in Britain at that time. He brought my sister Mary a doll that closed its eyes when you laid it down. And he brought me an American train, complete with a cowcatcher and a figure-eight track. I can still remember my excitement as I opened the box. Clockwork trains were all very well, but what I really wanted were electric trains. I used to spend hours watching a model railway club layout in Crouch End, near Highgate. I dreamed about electric trains. Finally, when both my parents were away somewhere, I took the opportunity to draw out of the Post Office bank all of the very modest amount of money that people had given me on special occasions, such as my christening. I used the money to buy an electric train set, but frustratingly enough, it didn't work very well either. I should have taken the set back and demanded that the shop or manufacturer replace it, but in those days the attitude was that it was a privilege to buy something, and it was just your bad luck if it turned out to be faulty. So I paid for the electric motor of the engine to be serviced, but it never worked very well.

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Posted by Ulrich on Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:05 PM

Really enjoyed his books.. not many uber smart people are able to explain complex subjects to the average person in an interesting and intelligible manner. He certainly had that gift.  He was the Newton of our time and will likely be remembered for centuries. 

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Posted by blue streak 1 on Wednesday, March 14, 2018 12:47 PM

Sheldon Cooper will go bananas !

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Posted by Brian Schmidt on Wednesday, March 14, 2018 10:08 AM

Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine

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