Final Assignment

       During the course of this class I was able to gain seek to learn by using the classes' learning objectives.

To consume information I was able to examine many different ways of gathering information. I was given some good books that were assigned for me relating to the 18th century and for openness. The sound unbound was an interesting take on how music is spreading and how remixing happens. It was quite hard to follow because it doesn't have one main tenant that it is attempting to prove so I wasn't really able to gain much from the book. It did come with an interesting music CD though with some odd but intriguing music.

       To meet the course objective for consuming information I used lots of different sources. Mainly I looked at things that were online but for much of the information on Copernicus I gathered my information from what I have learned in my astronomy class and my physical science classes that I took here at BYU in the past. I also looked at information online about how different traditions came about. When my grandmother passed away this semester I wondered how modern funerals had come about so I began researching information about how modern funerals came about. I did this mainly through google searches but I specifically was looking for educational site and organizations that were not .com sites cause many of these types of sites seem to have a better understanding of the information that I was looking for.

       One of my favorite blogs was about fair use I went to the governments own site to see what copy right laws actually are. I found it interesting that much of our fair use law hasn't changed in over 50 years. It kind of made me wonder if we needed to adjust the current system because there has been such a large change in how information is presented in the last 50 years. It was really interesting to get to gather information from lots of different sources because some of the information is so biased that looking at the opinions of fair use was a challenge to not just read someone's article and immediately adopt their position because it sounded good.

       Coming up with an idea of what to research was the hardest part most of the time in the creation process. Sometime there were videos that really helped to get a good solid understanding of a topic, like TEDx. Other times content was not as well presented like looking at videos from youtube in an attempt to find some information to make my blog have something catchy to attempt to draw others attention.

       Because of this class and being assigned the topic of openness at the start of the semester I was able to chat candidly with my cousin who is a computer buff about the topic of how SOPA would affect media and internet if the legislation was passed. This was only possible because of class interactions and being able to comment back and forth with people on google+ (I can't figure out how to link to google+ comments).

       By the end of the class it had become much easier to more easily direct what I wanted to learn about. It was extremely nice to be able to have a group that could be given assignments and actually not have to worry about them being accomplish and not seeing anyone person having to take on an extra hard load because of someone not wanting to take the initiative and take on tasks that were little out of their comfort zones. 

       From Digital Civilizations I was able to learn a new way of connecting and learning from others. It is extremely simple to get connected with a Professional in just about any field that I could want to learn about.  Learning platforms come in many different forms and I was able to see that there is not just one set way to learn about a subject. Information can be gathered extremely easily from outsiders and experts are always somewhere close by to help with starting to learn about a new subject. 

Thank You Professor Burton and Zappala 

Presentation Invites

For the asking of people to the presentation I did what the Professors mentioned for us to do which was look at the people we know and have been getting in contact with and ask them to watch our performance. I asked eight people to watch the performance online cause most of the people I felt would find our class applicable were people who do not live here in Provo.
I asked Jesse Spackman, Brian Pincock, Aaron Dietrich, Jeff Hoffman, Sid Smith, Tyler Dodge, Lainey Thompson, Richard Howard. Jesse and Brian are engineers and they are both involved in the current science movement so I told them that I thought this would be beneficial for them because they would be able to see some changes that could be made in science to improve how science is relayed.
I asked three people in person with the fliers to the performance so that they would remember the performance. Unfortunately only one of the people was able to make it that evening but at least someone was able to make it to see our classes awesome performance. In person I asked Rebecca Plante (who attended), Kevin Walton, and Brady Hirst. Rebecca is a teaching major so this was super beneficial for her to be able to see some of our ideas for how to improve teaching. New teachers are the people who will probably be able to change how the education process is happening.
I thought that the presentation went really well and found the all of the different groups performances extremely well done.(even with the couple mistakes technical mistakes)

Higgs Bison Particle

Following up a bit on my Antoine Lavoisier I thought about what we know about the particles in a cell. Originally people believed that if you took a log and cut it in half you would still have even if you continued to cut the log infinitely. We now know that this is not correct but after you cut a board long enough you will reach a point where you will see the basic building block of life the cell.

A cell is not even the smallest part that you get a cell is made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Quarks then are what make up electrons, protons, and neutrons. Which is made up of even smaller particles.

These different particles could not be found until there were advances in technology. Through technology new theories are able to be verified. Currently there is a theory about a particle being called the Higgs Bison particle. This theory was developed in 1964 but because of technological shortcoming his theory couldn't be proven at that time. Today with the aid of particle accelerators scientist are thinking that they may be able to prove the existence of the Higgs particle in the coming months.

Here is a quote from Time Magizine,
"Working from Higgs' theory, scientists postulate that initially weightless particles move through a ubiquitous quantum field, known as a Higgs field, like a pearl necklace through a jar of honey. Some particles, such as photons — weightless carriers of light — can cut through the sticky Higgs field without picking up mass. Others get bogged down and become heavy; that is the process that creates tangible matter."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1729139,00.html#ixzz1qCAT43To

Through technological advances much of the scientific gap can be closed.

Phobia:
a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, orsituation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.
A phobia is defined as an irrational, intense fear of an object or situation that poses little or no actual danger
I took my little sister to the doctor this week and she had to get her ears checked out.  She is exceptionally afraid of having things near or in her ears.  She doesn't fall under the scientific definition of a phobia, however she would under the typical view of society.  Phobia is a term often overused to define regular fears.  People use the word to describe regular fears like the fear of spiders or bugs.  

Phobias are only considered such if they get in the way of normal functioning and everyday life. However, fear in the traditional sense is a normal part of life.  

Annotated Bibliography

Smithsonian.com, Copernicus Unearthed, Smithsonian Magazine, 2006 Here they address a lot about how Copernicus was the first person to be able demonstrate that the earth orbited the sun and not the other way around. It also shows that even when you are the person who comes up with a great new concept you will not always be accepted for it.[Internet]

Ludwig Heinrich Heydenrich, Leonardo da Vinci, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2012 This covers the whole life and the scientific works of da Vinci. He was a man who didn't have formal training is science but was able to come up with detailed scientific research because he was one of the first people to document and use the scientific method.[Internet]

Peter Saundry, Lavoisier Antoine-Laurent, The Encyclopedia of Earth, 2010 Peter Saundry talks about the life of Lavoisier and how his work was influential in changing how the world views science. Didn't work within the current scientific system because he didn't go to the typical schooling of scientists at his time period. [Internet]


Nielsen, Michael. Reinventing Discovery, Princeton University Press, 2011 Michael talks about how science has had the ability to now have people work on something and have rapid contact by other people to help in the development and vetting of new ideas. He uses examples of things like how the human genetic map was compiled by many different people.[Professor Burton]

Beretta, Marco. Lavoisier in Perspective, Wolf & Sohn, 2005 Lavoisier in Perspective speaks about how Lavoisier was a man who was able to introduce revolutionary changes in chemistry. Lavoisier was able to help make many changes in the science world through his ability to look at work of others and connect their work together to become something coherent that actually made sense.[Library]

Guerlac, Henry. Lavoisier-The Crucial Year. Cornell University Press. 1961 Henry makes note of how we don't really know all that much about the time when Lavoisier switched from his early research to his research on combustion. This switch of his is what let him to understanding that matter is conserved in a reaction and has the same mass at the end of a reaction.[Library]

Center of the Universe

For the longest time people believed that the earth had to be the center of the Universe and that all the stars, the moon, and the sun revolved around the earth. This is what I call a self centered problem, first the world is flat and then the center of the universe, seems like we have to feel like we are important.

There is a man who's name was Copernicus, he is the man who helped us move away from this problem of not understanding where the earth is placed in reference to the rest of the Galaxy. Copernicus had studied the work of astronomers in the past and from these things he posed the theory that the earth was not what everything revolved around. He believed that the sun was the center and that the earth and all of the other planets revolved around the sun. 


It turns out he was correct. Copernicus was not a man though that wanted to shake up the system if he was not absolutely sure he was correct. He could have published his finding early on in his career but he didn't want to be proven wrong. Copernicus was a scientist who went more of the traditional root that we think of for science today he went to university and studied about arithmetic, geometry, geometric optics, cosmography, and  theoretical and computational astronomy.


Copernicus's theory was called Heliocentrism. According to Heliocentrism the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe. Through study Copernicus was able to learn from past experts in his field and expound and add to the theories that were being developed.

Antoine Lavoisier

Have you ever heard of this man? When you think of chemistry he is probably not the first thing to come to mind but Antoine is one of the people that made real change happen is the field of chemistry.

Antoine was a man who didn't have any formal training is science. In fact he went to school to become a lawyer. This was his parents wish but after he was done with his schooling he never did practice law. Instead Antoine devoted his efforts to science.

What was his greatest discovery and theory, the conservation of mass is basically what his theory was. Antoine believed that if you contained a reaction all parts of the chemical reaction and weighed the inputs and the out puts that the products of the reaction would weigh the same. While Antoine wasn't the person who first came up with this idea he was the man who figured out how to make it so that other people could understand the process and information and was able to show that discoveries were true thank to doing studies over again. This show that to create real change you do not necessarily need to come up with amazing new ideas but you do have to spend the time to check the findings of others and then explain the concepts in greater detail to truly make a difference in the world.