Class had begun and I was there. A few friends shared the seats beside me as we together took up half of the front and center row of the room.

http://www.twitvid.com/embed.php?guid=JYE27&autoplay=0

Walter Lewin, MIT professor emeritus of physics, had returned to Building 26-100 — the hall where he has given more than 800 lectures — to deliver one last talk. The visit was pegged to the release of his new book, For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time — A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics (Free Press), written with Warren Goldstein. Many audience members held copies of the book, released just two weeks ago, I was one of them, for Lewin to sign.

Videos of Lewin’s lectures on MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), YouTube and iTunes U have been viewed more than 5 million times by people all over the world — including me. I certainly would not have survived 8.01 or 8.02 back many years ago, or more recently 8.03, without the helpful digital teachings of Prof Lewin himself.

(I’m in the front row, left side of this picture in the red shirt/black jacket!! Win! :)

During his Monday evening lecture, Lewin recreated some of his most popular demonstrations, including a famous experiment showing that a pendulum’s period remains constant regardless of mass. Lewin, 75, confessed that it had been 12 years since the last time he performed the stunt — a tricky exercise requiring him to cling to a five-meter pendulum while operating a stopwatch.

Lewin held on, swinging back and forth as the audience counted the number of swings. It has been many years since he performed this stunt, “Can’t you guys count a little faster?” he shouted to the audience as he clenched to hold on, showcasing what a painful stunt the pendulum demonstration is, especially with added years.

At 10, Lewin dropped to the floor, spent, to whoops and hollers from the crowd. According to the timer, the pendulum’s period was the same with or without Lewin aboard. Triumphant, he shouted, “I told you! Physics works!”

The MIT News article describes Lewin as an ambassador of physics. They are right. Lewin was not just another professor; even in his final lecture at MIT, twelve years after last teaching the introductory physics courses at MIT he was style able to invoke wonder and excitement about physics in his students.

It was an emotional night for all of us – especially for Prof Lewin.
On Facebook: # I cried with Walter Lewin at this final lecture at MIT. An incredible experience.

After a one-hour lecture Lewin opened up the floor to the audience. Questions ranged from why do rainbows work to what inspired you to become a teacher. I was lucky enough to ask the final question of the night.

Even in the front row, I was asked to use the microphone as the infamous Walter Lewin approached me. Between his interruption and his eccentric eyes peering into me I mustered to ask, “Professor Lewin, what advice do you have for a student aspiring to be a physicist?”

His gaze was so powerful and full of emotion as he looked into me and said, “You have to love it. You have to really, really love it and be excited about physics.” I felt the love as he spoke to me. My friend Dhaval, seated next to me, told me later in a phone conversation, “OMG Zsuzsa, thank you so much for dragging me from my room to the lecture. That man was incredible – he touched my soul!”

My phone was chiming off the hook that night with friends texting me and sending me emails, congratulating me on my question and thanking me for giving him the opportunity to share his love in a more personal way.

He then shared that with the thousands of people who watch his videos, he gets over 25emails a day. He shared that the most common question he receives is about how he does his dashed lines – check it out. :)

Oh Walter, you beast.

Article & Photos adapted from MIT News Article.

I’m sorry.

I challenged myself – that I would not post on my blog for a semester at MIT – my first semester back, to see how I do. And, I have missed it sorely. I have had so much happen – so much growth, so many experiences – and have not been able to share them all with you!

In the next few weeks I will be posting everything that has been missed…

For a teaser: I ran in my first ever 5k race two weeks ago! The LiveRight race raising money for HBI – the Hepatitis B Initiative.

Check out my name on the results on Active and Cool Running!

I was tag#68 and completed in 34min. For my first ever race: I’ll take it. :)

I tasted, tasted love so sweet
And all of it was lost on me
Buttons sold like property
Sugar on my tongue

It’s never enough to stay still and hold you,
To break loose and run the taste of you,
Wild on my tongue.

I kept falling over
I kept looking backward
I went broke believing
That the simple should be hard

Am I no good to you now?
Am I no good to you now?

All we are we are
All we are we are
And every day is a start of something beautiful

I wasted, wasted love for you
Traded out for something new
Well, it’s hard to change the way you lose
If you think you never won

Spent my days with doctors,
And my nights with crooks,
And all of them who sell me for a song.
So I’m here.
Safe Dear.
A fiction in your arms.

‘Couse all we are we are
All we are we are
And every day is a start of something beautiful

Am I no good to you now?
Am I no good to you now?

I’m giving up.
Starting over.
I wanna be,
I wanna hold you.

Cause all I say,
It doesn’t matter anyway.
All I say,
It doesn’t matter anyway.
I’m giving up,
So call my bluff.
Cause I just need to be reminded who I am.
I’m falling apart.

And in the end the words won’t matter
‘Cause in the end nothing stays the same
And in the end dreams just scatter and fall like rain

So get me out
Start me over
For heaven’s changed
I should have told you

‘Cause all we are we are
All we are we are
And every day is a start of something beautiful, something real

Come on love.

————————————————————————

Honesty is especially hard with yourself… but, you’ve got to do it. You just do.

As for me: this is about right.

Well, here’s what I have to say to Computer Programmers:

Yup. Mathematicians win.

Okay, so in case you didn’t know that is an xkcd comic – one of my favorite comic strips. Yup. :)

I was so happy yesterday – I picked up my very own copy of xkcd volume 0. It made for a wonderful night of math and happiness.

xkcd has changed lives, one most importantly of the guy who writes it. He lives local to MIT in Somerville, MA – even when he worked for NASA as a robotoicist he just couldn’t get enough of a nerdy surrounding, so he quit and became a webcomic artist.

Too cool. I hope to find my own infinitely nerdy sanctuary someday, perhaps with my own webcomic, but that’s for another time. For now, I’ve got my nerdy, mathy blog.

Yup, countable amounts of people have done this.

The look on her face is just incredible.

The comic has inspired chess in some alternate settings, like on a helicopter:

It’s also inspired other coaster-gaming folk:

Alright… I’m seeing my favorite board game entirely underrepresented here.

Who wants to join on the roller coaster of Life with me? :D

I’m not entirely certain what possessed me, but while looking up something for an application essay I am writing, I typed ninjas into thesaurus.com and it told me:

“Ninjas cannot be found.”

Well played, ninjas, well played.

I’m really not entirely sure yet what a terrifying teddy bear running at me has to do with ninjas or an empty hallway – but it can all be terrifying.

I really have never understood the obsession people have with ninjas. I welcome your commentary.

I really just don’t have anything else to say on the matter.

Potentially Counterfeit Petzl products have been discovered that are being manufactured in China. The Counterfeit products are NOT SAFE.

These counterfeit products have serious defects that affect their performance and strength. For example:

There is a significant risk that these counterfeit products could open or otherwise fail at low loads and under normal use:

• These counterfeit products do not meet UIAA or CE safety standards.

• These counterfeit products do not meet Petzl safety and quality requirements.

It will be very difficult for you to identify these fakes:

They have been reproduced in a way that makes them very difficult to identify. The following features have been reproduced nearly identically:

• Design
• Color
• Product markings
• Batch number
• Instructions for use (down to the most minor details)
• Packaging

Only an in-depth analysis allows us to identify these counterfeit products, due to minor differences in the tools used to produce them.

To date, only a few counterfeits have been found on the market, and thus far none in North America.

What can you do?

• Only purchase from an authorized Petzl retailer to be sure that you are purchasing a genuine Petzl product.

• If you have any doubt as to the authenticity of Petzl products, please help us and contact Petzl America at info@petzl.com or (877) 807-3805. For a list of Petzl retailers, please visit:
  • The Professional Products Dealer Locator
  • The Sport Products Dealer Locator
• If the retailer from whom you purchased your equipment is not listed, please contact Petzl America at the email and phone number listed above.

Petzl is working hard to stop these counterfeits, which put users’ lives at risk, from reaching the market.

Be SAFE and Please forward this information to reach those whose lives these products may affect.

But no matter, you love them anyway.

Let’s not get too caught up in being a number theorist today and let’s talk about geometry. As is the case with say Sierpinski’s Triangle or Pascal’s Triangle, you don’t even need to see, or know, the numbers in order to understand the basic rules that then result in incredible geometry.

Excellent.

So what’s even better than thinking about math? Did you forget there was something better? Let’s do it naked. Specifically, let’s talk a little bit about Mike Naylor’s Naked Geometry.

You want to know why we’re going to do this? If you’re not ridiculously passionate about doing math naked, or at least talking about it, you probably shouldn’t be reading my blog. So I’ll carry-on and talk about it anyway.

Beautiful expressions of mathematics stimulate the aesthetic centers of the brain in the same way as beautiful artwork or music. By combining mathematics, art, and the human form, Naked Geometry seeks to simultaneously appeal to the reader’s mind, body, and spirit. Besides, what could be better than thinking about math while looking at naked people?

yes. Yes. YES.

Though I’ll be totally honest, I prefer to look at only one naked person when thinking and talking about mathematics, but with only two people and a limited number of side-lengths the game runs out pretty quickly.

Hey, what the heck? For the sake of mathematics let’s be polygoniously-polyamorous for a while. *heart* <3

So this brilliant guy Mike Naylor started doing this in 2002 and quickly moved from clay models to digital art, check it out:

So from polyhedra we can move to fractals…

To the Golden Ratio…

A square may again be removed from a golden rectangle; the remaining portion is another golden rectangle. The process may be continued infinitely.

To tesselations…

And let’s not forget to expand my favorite bagel pastime to the Mobius Strip…

… and so on. Okay, now I really involved things by bringing bagels into the equation.

Mathematics + Naked + Bagels.
Or is it Naked + Mathematics + Bagels?
Or Bagels + Mathematics + Naked?
Or….. oh what the hell, a true mathematician will believe, if only for an instant, that if instead of Naked, Mathematics and Bagels we use numbers then the commutative property will tell us these are all the same.

However, I beg to differ. Do we start by getting naked first, then talk about mathematics, then add bagels? Or do we start talking mathematics to get things in the mood, then get naked, then add bagels later?

Okay… let’s start over.

One.  Stretching a point in any direction, say along the x-axis, creates a one-dimensional line segment.

Two.  A one-dimensional line segment can be stretched along an orthogonal axis (in the y-direction) to make a 2D square.

Three.  If a 2D square in the x-y plane is stretched in the z direction, a 3D cube may  be formed.

Four.  Stretching a cube along the w-axis (perpendicular to each of the x-, y-, and z-axes) can create a 4D hypercube.

1, 2, 3, 4 …. or is it…?

I don’t know. If we ask Fibonacci it’s as easy as 1, 1, 2, 3.

Well shit, that’s no good. Not in making our hyper-naked-sex-cube anyway. Thanks Mike Naylor.

Okay, so to give you a little teaser about what else I’ve got brewing in the ol’ draft folder, I want to talk about NUMBERS. Yum.

Let’s not get crazy and talk about the sick number games going on in my head, but if you’re a number theorist you are absolutely enamored by prime numbers. And even though you’ve got your primes memorized up to at least 1,000, that doesn’t change that primes, in general, are difficult to find.

Oh wait, we don’t really need to know what the numbers are…

Say, if I asked you to find me the highest even number you’d be like, “that’s silly. Give me the even number you think is the highest and I’ll just add 2 to it. BAM!” Amazing.

But guess what the highest prime number we know is??

2^43,112,609 – 1

Just to give you an idea of what a big deal prime numbers are – the guy who found this one won $100,000. Whoa.

Prime Numbers to come.

Well, one of the cyclists at Dutch Bike Co. was caught without studded tires when it started snowing, but no matter, that’s nothing that a box of zip ties can’t fix! This MacGyver trick isn’t new, but now that winter is here, it’s worth bringing up.

Fritz Rice, the DIYer in these photos, says that while the ties look “completely ludicrous,” they work “beautifully.”

I can accelerate, brake, and corner with aplomb, even on the vile snowpack/sheet ice mix the plows leave in the bike lanes. The zip ties dig nicely into the hardest packed surfaces, but they’re thin enough not to bounce the bike around at low speed or on short pavement sections.

As you can see on this last photo, (brilliant) the tie heads are positioned so that they give extra grip when you are cornering, but they stay out of the way when going in a straight line. Just make sure you have enough clearance on all sides.

Cool, eh? :)

Oh yeah, and especially important in the winter with less daylight via shorter days, it is especially important to have good lighting on your bike. In Snohomish County you are required to have a front and rear light when riding after dusk.

Check out this light, similar to the Fiber Flare, a long line LED bike light system. The Bike Glow is a three metre long length of flexible tube that you wrap around your bike frame any way you wish (tape and ties included). These lights have three settings: always on, a slow pulsing and a fast flashing. You’re looking at ~50hours of light for steady and ~120hours for flashing from the 2AA battery pack.

These are $25 at REI or direct from Bike Glow via GearCaster. They are available in Red, Green, Blue, Aqua, Pink, Purple, Yellow and White. Online reviews state that yellow is your best bet for safety.

It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish bicycles from Christmas trees these days. Well, ’tis the season.

Credits: TreeHugger

I will happily say that I finally started off my bit of holiday mental cheer with the annual holiday kick-off: my brother and I watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Oh yes. :)

Of course, him and Alethea

have been watching Mickey’s Christmas Carol repeatedly for weeks (mostly as cheery background movie, and entertainment for their dog)… ha… but yes, so it is time that the Max Peck show does our thing: time to kick off the Christmas spirit with something truly exceptional.

This year, I am featuring my absolute, all-time favorite Santa photos.

Enjoy! :)

Just-Got-Out Santa

Ambient Santa

This has got to be the scariest Santa EVER!!!

The Grinch in a Santa costume

Mumbles-Profanities-Under-His-Beard Santa

Please? Please, take her back Santa

Serial Killer Santa

Too much Xanax Santa

Happy to see you Santa

Jeffrey Dahmer Santa

Drunk Santa

Also Drunk........

I hate life Santa

Shaft Santa

Woke up late for work Santa

Uncle Steve as Santa

UK Santa

Scary Father Christmas

Been dead for 3 days Santa

He sees you when you're sleeping Santa

WTF?!?!?!

Actually, this time Santa isn't the sketchy one!

Don't worry buddy, I'm terrified of clowns, too.

Santa traded clothes with the kid. Maybe he’ll get some presents this year.

Nightmare before Christmas Santa

:) Happy Holidays, from the Max Peck show.