How Children Succeed QCCQ

Quote- "Not long ago, the United States led the world in producing college graduates; now it leads the world in producing college dropouts." (Pg.150)

Comment- I chose this quote because it really stood out how the US, the most powerful nation, has one of the lowest percentage of students who graduate from college. "But in college completion--the percentage of entering college freshmen who go on to graduate--the United States ranks second to last, ahead of only Italy." That is really sad how a lot of students who start college can't and aren't able to graduate for multiple reasons. I think it is really important to go to college but actually graduate because then you'll have a career and have a good job. "An American with a BA can now expect to earn 83 percent more than an American with only a high-school diploma." That is a lot more, more than half! Agree with what Goldin and Katz said, "a young American today who is able to complete college but does not do so 'is leaving large amounts of money lying on the street.'" That is a very interesting way to look at it and I think if more high school students looked at it that way, there would be more students going to college and actually graduate.

Something else that I thought was really interesting from the reading was where it said, "The far better predictor of college completion was a student's high-school GPA." I thought this was very interesting because, like the author said, college-admissions officials usually think it is more about your SAT or ACT scores, but does really don't make that big of a difference. "ACT scores revealed very little about whether or not a student would graduate from college." Your high school GPA makes a bigger difference. "High school grades reveal much more than mastery of content. They reveal qualities of motivation and perseverance--as well as the presence of good study habits and time management skills--that tell us a great deal about the chances that a student will complete a college program," which I really agree with.

Connection- I can relate to the idea of good grades and what they actually represent. For me, getting an "A" in a class means that I was able to learn all the material and remember it during tests and quizzes, that I worked hard and managed my time in order to turn in all of my homework done well and on time. They also represent how dedicated I am to my own education and how much it matters to me as well as how I am a hard worker. I think this will help me succeed in college because now I'll just need to keep doing what I have done basically my entire life.

Questions- I didn't really have any questions about the reading. It was very clear and easy to understand. 

Drive QCCQ

Quote- "Our beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our abilities--what she calls our 'self-theories'--determines how we interpret our experiences and can set the boundaries on what we accomplish." 

Comment- I chose this quote because it really stood out to me to think about how what I believe about myself can affect what I accomplish. I think that is very true because I've notice people who are always saying they are not smart, they are not good at different things, and so they just give up and not even try to understand what they are stuck on and they don't accomplish to learn the material and do well on quizzes. It is like what the author was talking about people who have the entity theory. "Those who have an 'entity theory' believe that intelligence is just that--an entity. It exists within us, in a finite supply that we cannot increase." They are just stuck where they are because they don't think it is possible to get better. But there is also people who have the "incremental theory. "Those who subscribe to an 'incremental theory' take a different view. They believe that while intelligence may vary slightly from person to person, it is ultimately something that, with effort, we can increase." These type of people believe that you can increase your intelligence, that you can always improve and learn new things.

I agree with this because I believe that intelligence is something you develop rather than something you demonstrate. No one is born knowing everything, little by little they begin to learn everything around them, then usually they chose something they are really passionate about and become an expert on it. Day, by day we learn knew things and some learn more than others because there are those who want to learn in order to keep expanding their intelligence and those who just want a good grade. This is like what the author was talking about when he mentions the difference between performance and learning goals. With performance goals, you are basically focusing on getting an specific grade, while with the learning goals you are focused on actually learning what you are being taught. I think learning goals are a lot more important because it is like how teachers say all the time that grades shouldn't be your first priority, you should be more concerned of actually learning. "With a learning goal, students don't have to feel that they're already good at something in order to hang in and keep trying. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they're smart."

Connection- I am most of the time very positive about everything and I think that has always really helped me in order to accomplish a lot of things. Even if challenges seem way too challenging at times, I try to stay positive and remind myself that I can do it if I only put my time and effort into it. I am confident in myself that I can achieve what I want if only I try my best. Also in school I try to not to worry to much on my grades and mostly focus on learning because there's no way I can't get a good grade at the end if I learn well all the material.

Questions- What does it refer to in the first paragraph where it says "flow"? How exactly do professors conduct studies to find different stuff? How do they set up their experiments? Who do they usually experiment with? 

Mindset QCCQ

Quote- "All of these people had character. None of them thought they were special people, born with the right to win. They were people who worked hard, who learned how to keep their focus under pressure, and who stretched beyond their ordinary abilities when they had to." (Pg.92)

Comment- I chose this quote because I thought it was the main point that was being made in the article, which kept repeating that mindset is more important than talent. For example, in the article when it talked about Jackie Joyner-Kersee hailed as the greatest female athlete of all time, it said, "It was not natural talent taking its course. It was mindset having its say." (pg.88) This article said that sometimes having the natural talent is a curse because they can easily fall into the fixed mindset. As the article says, "The naturals, carried away with their superiority, don't learn how to work hard or how to cope with setbacks," and this is what happened to Pedro Martinez, "the brilliant pitcher then with the Boston Red Sox, who self-destructed when they needed him most." The article also mentioned how people "prize natural endowment over earned ability...We don't like to think of them [our champions] as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary." I agree with the author, that says that this is a lot more amazing. It is more impressive to see someone work their hardest to win a battle or game than to see someone who is naturally talented and just shows up and wins. Hard work and discipline is not just important in sports but in life.

Connection- I could relate to a lot of things this article talked about because I play soccer so I have experience with winning and losing and being part of a team. I know that the best games are the ones where we try our hardest rather than giving up right in the beginning after the other team scores on us. I remember clearly I game I played with my team a few weeks ago. We started off not so great because we didn't have our usual goalie so one of our players, who had not much experience, play as a goalie. The other team scores on us and at first we sort of started giving up because we knew they were a better team but we knew it was going to be one of our last games and we should be a competitive team so we gave it our best, we scored on them and although we lost, we played really well as a team and personally for me I would say that at that game I played my best, better than in any other game in the season. I felt proud of my team and I and how we were able to play to our best against that team.

I think this also connects with math because there are some people who are naturally good at math but there are some that have a hard time. I think it is important for those who are not so great at it to work hard in order to understand it and do well in tests and quizzes.

Questions- How long did it take Ben Hogan to get back to the top after he was hit by a bus? How was he able to do that? 

Leibniz QCCQ

Quote- "During this entire period Leibniz read, wrote, and thought continually, pursuing ideas with a strength and intensity known to ordinary people only in their pursuit of wealth and power." 

Comment- I chose this quote because of how it lets us know what type of guy Leibniz was. He was always learning something new and doing something new. Even as a child he, "acted for the most part as his own teacher, leading a self-propelled intellectual life even as a small child." He would read a lot, which he seems to have learned a lot from. "He began teaching himself Latin at the age of 8, and soon mastered it sufficiently to read it with ease and compose acceptable Latin verse..." He was constantly learning and teaching himself to do something new. In the reading in page 142 it said, "He had an insatiable appetite for discovering the meaning and purpose of everything around him." In page 147 on the reading it said that he was a librarian, a family historian, an informal minister in charge of scientific and cultural affairs, he was also an engineer, a landscape architect as well as so many other things. He was also into law and philosophy and math and science. It is just amazing that a person can be so many things and be good at almost all of them. For example, it said that he had been called, "the greatest librarian of his age."  He just did so many different things not just math and science.

Connection- This made me think about last week's reading about Newton and how he was the first one to have come up with differential and integral calculus during the two years that universities were closed because of the plague, but he didn't publish his work and therefore at the time it seemed as Leibniz had been the first one because his papers of 1684 and 1686 were the earliest publications on the subject. In the reading, in page 141, it mentions what was mentioned in last week's reading, "The ideas of calculus were "in the air" in the 1650s and 1660s...The last steps putting it all together were taken by two men of great genius working independently of each other: by Isaac Newton in what he called 'the two plague years of 1665 and 1666," and also by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during his sojourn in Paris from 1672 to 1676."

Questions-  Why was it known to people only in their pursuit of wealth and power? What were some major differences between Leibniz and ordinary people of this period? How was it so easy for Leibniz to learn new languages? How was Leibniz calculus different from Newton's? How were they similar? What was specific about each one of them? How was Leibniz able to do so many different things and be good at so many different things? 

Newton QQC

Quote- "He published some of his discoveries, but they were greeted with such contentious stupidity by the leading scientists of the day that he retired back into his shell with a strengthened resolve to work thereafter for his own satisfaction alone."

Comment- I chose this quote because I thought it was interesting how Newton was so smart and did so many findings but he wouldn't really publish them because his findings were way above what people could understand at the period in time. This caused him to battle with Leibniz and fight for his reputation for the final 25 years of his life. He was the first one to have come up with differential and integral calculus during the two years that universities were closed because of the plague, but he didn't publish his work and therefore at the time it seemed as Leibniz had been the first one because his papers of 1684 and 1686 were the earliest publications on the subject. He would have avoided this whole battle with Leibniz and everyone else if he had just published his work.

It is also interesting how he knew the answer to Halley's question, that he had had in mind for years, but had not published anything about his findings and had even lost his notes. In pg.134 it says, "It is interesting to speculate on Halley's emotions when he realized that the age-old problem of how the solar system works had at last been solved--but that the solver hadn't bothered to tell anybody and had even lost his notes." This makes me wonder if there might have been a lot of other findings he had made but had just forgot about and lost his notes for them that they were just lost. What if he found out a lot more stuff than the ones we know about? It is good that he decided to publish the Principia, "The Principia was written in 18 incredible months of total concentration, and when it was published in 1687 it was immediately recognized as one of the supreme achievements of the human mind."

Connection- In page 134 when it said, "The Principia has always been a difficult book to read, for the style has an inhuman quality of icy remoteness, which perhaps is appropriate to the grandeur of the theme," I thought about how in chapter #5 of the Bryson reading it talked about how Hutton had great ideas and insights but he just didn't know how to explain himself in his books, it was very difficult for people to read his work and understand it. They wouldn't make much sense so therefore no one really paid attention to them.

Questions- Why did Newton keep turning away from Science? What made him decide to go back to it each time? How did his mental illness start and why? How was Newton able to concentrate on one problem for up to weeks?   

   

Bryson Chapter #5

Quote- "It was while puzzling over these matters that Hutton had a series of exceptional insights. From looking at his own farmland, he could see that soil was created by the erosion of rocks and that particles of this soil were continually washed away and carried off by streams and rivers and redeposited elsewhere...Above all, what Hutton's theories suggested was that Earth processes required huge amounts of time, far more than anyone had ever dreamed. There were enough insights here to transform utterly our understanding of the Earth."

Questions- Why wasn't it possible for Hutton to express his ideas and insights clearly? Did he ever ask for help in trying to write what he meant and what he was thinking? Was he proud of the books he wrote? Could he understand what they were saying when he read them out loud? 

Comment- I chose this quote because as I read it, it automatically made me think about environmental science class because we had a whole unit about soil and the different layers of soil, and we also learned about the different kinds of erosion. His observation was very accurate for being back in the 1700's. I also picked this quote because it says how Hutton had enough insights "to transform utterly our understanding of the Earth." This meaning that he had great ideas and insights but he just didn't know how to explain himself in his books. They wouldn't make much sense so therefore no one really paid attention to them. As it said in the chapter, in 1785, one of Hutton's papers was read at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh but no one in the audience had an idea of what he was talking about. This was similar with the books he wrote, even "the greatest geologist of the following century and a man who read everything, admitted he couldn't get through it." It is sad how the people at the time couldn't understand what he was trying to tell them. In the chapter it said, "Hutton was by all accounts a man of the keenest insights and liveliest conversation, a delight in company, and without rival when it came to understanding the mysterious slow processes that shaped the Earth. Unfortunately, it was beyond him to set down his notions in a form that anyone could begin to understand."    

Bryson Chapter #4

Quote- "Today, scientists have at their disposal machines so precise they can detect the weight of a single bacterium and so sensitive that readings can be disturbed by someone yawning seventy-five feet away, but they have not significantly improved on Cavendish's measurements of 1791."

Questions- How are scientists today, with so much new technology and machines, not able to improve Cavendish's measurements dating back to 1791? How accurate is Canvendish's estimate? Are scientists today thinking of a better way to more accurately find the Earth's weight? Will we ever know what the exact weight of the Earth is?

Comment- I thought it was really interesting how scientists back then were able to find all of these things even though they didn't have the kinds of machines and technology we have now. For example, as it said in the chapter, "Interestingly, all of this merely confirmed estimates made by Newton 110 years before Cavendish without any experimental evidence at all." It is really amazing how scientists like Newton were able to do very precise estimates, without much experiments to back up their numbers. It seemed as if scientists back then spent most of their lives trying to do a new discovery and would spend many, many years trying to prove old theories. There were lots of scientists traveling to other places of the world trying to prove new things. As said in the chapter, "With the instinct for ordeal that characterized the age, scientists set off for more than a hundred locations around the globe...It was history's first cooperative international scientific venture..." I think it seems as though scientists back then discovered more things than scientists now because scientists now have less things to discover since a lot of things were discovered by scientists back then.

Bryson Chapter #3

Quote- "'There's something satisfying, I think,' Evans said, 'about the ides of light traveling for millions of years through space and just at the right moment as it reaches Earth someone looks at the right bit of sky and sees it. It just seems right that an event of that magnitude should be witnessed.'"

Questions- Why does it say in the chapter that a supernova occurs on average once every 2-3 hundred years but It says that Evans, from 1980-1996, averaged two discoveries a year?
How does a supernova look like? How do they look like to Evans with his sixteen-inch telescope?

Comment- I thought supernovae are really interesting. Like it says in the chapter, "Supernovae occur when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time brighter than all the stars in its galaxy." We are able to see the Sun, but we are not able to see supernovae, which are a lot bigger than our Sun. I think it is so amazing how we are not able to see up in the sky an event so big and so bright as a supernova. I understand that they don't happen that often, "In a typical galaxy....a supernova will occur on average once every two or three hundred years," but I think it is interesting how we are not able to see it when they do happen. I think this also connects to how, as it said in the chapter, only about 2,000 stars can be seen from any one spot while just with a small two-inch telescope that number rises to 300,000 stars! That is why Evans is able to see what he sees with his sixteen-inch telescope. As it said in the chapter, it is surprising how  "little of the universe is visible to us when we incline our heads to the sky." I think this is kind of disappointing because there are so many amazing things out there in the universe, that we are unable to see without a telescope. But even with people who have a telescope it is not that easy to find a supernova. As it said in the chapter, "Finding a supernova therefore was a little bit like standing on the observation platform of the Empire State Building with a telescope and searching windows around Manhattan in the hope of finding, let us say, someone lighting a twenty-first-birthday cake."