Playitbackward

Physics teacher proves that lectures are not effective in teaching physics.

Also: how to effectively teach 150+ students in a lecture hall.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April11/bicycle.html

Bicycles balance by themselves when going fast, but new research suggests that common explanations miss the main cause.

My Question

String theory began with the observation that properties of particles behaved like properties of vibrating strings, and makes unique predictions like string harmonics creating heavier versions of familiar particles.

Just because string theory is hard to disprove doesn’t mean its impossible to disprove, or that it is useless or delusional. String theory might end up being like the luminiferous aether, false, but leading to experiments that lead to Einstein’s Special Relativity. Or it could be like any of a number of theories based on observations that were difficult at first to disprove, but were true none less.

I don’t believe string theory is necessarily true, but I do have strong feelings about it being declared useless. The standard model, general relativity, and their add-ons still can’t explain singularities, or the plaank length, or why electrons have charge and photons are massless, even with a Grand Unification Theorem in the works. New physics is needed. Isn’t that reason enough to examine string theory or loop quantum gravity?
If you have any thoughts at all, please answer this question.

For me, there would be nothing more poetic, no outcome more graceful, no unification more complete, than for us to confirm our theories of the ultra small […] by turning our most powerful telescopes skyward and gazing silently at the stars.

—Brian Greene, in the closing sentence to his Fabric of the Cosmos.

My physics teacher used these tshirts as part of an experimental apparatus on Friday. Now I know all about otters holding hands and otter tshirts, and they are pretty cute. (P.S. I was missing out completely on the otter meme before Friday.)