Link Blog

Link: http://hirophysics.com/Study/thermal-conservation.pdf

There are two glasses. Each contains cold tea (0 deg of C) and hot water (100 deg of C). Assume that the heat does not go outside system.

Can you get more than 50 deg of C of tea? The only source to obtain heat is the hot water provided, but you can use any extra tools.

Maybe you know this! One of the answers is given in the link:

Link: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151118/ncomms9932/full/ncomms9932.html

The paper indicates that this could be one of the innovative methods to fabricate solar cells with suitable and low cost processing. 

The perovskite is the name of structure based upon finding the structure of CaTiO₃ by Lev Perovski. This became famous for creating high efficient solar cells. In addition, it needs a process only at temperature of 500 degrees Celcius that is lower than the other processes. (The perovskite crystal absorbs blue and yellow spectra converting into electricity; thus, more efficient solar cells can be made by combining perovskite with others that absorb red and infrared radiation.) 

The substance abbreviated as PCBM (phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester) is a derivative of fullerenes; namely, soccer balls. The other characteristic of PCBM is being resolved in organic solvents contrary to simple fullerenes. It is technically important to eliminate current density-voltage (J-V) hysteresis to have stable semiconductors in the process. PCBM is proven to aid to have such hysteresis. 

In addition to using perovskite, researchers think to use a planar structure which can much lower the temperature for the development. The temperature can eventually be at just 50 degrees Celsius, so we do not need “wet process” to fabricate the solar cells. 

There are still a lot of obstacles to overcome to commercialize such solar cells, but this development could be promising to have more efficient and less costly products.

Link: http://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/14/steven-singer-why-did-cnn-and-the-democratic-candidates-forget-about-education/

Renovating education is not so simple that people think of. Even though a school raises students’ scores, we don’t know how much these students understand. 

Before spending a lot of money toward education, we should discuss the meaning of education. There are various aspects to evaluate educational organizations. For example, people say, “We must have students-centered education.” However, such simplistic utterance might lead to a wrong way to spoil students. 

We need a superman, but how do we identify him/her? If we don’t know all the fact on education, we will still have to waste our money and time.

Link: http://hirophysics.com/USM-labproject/project2011.html

There are a lot of textbooks and manuals. Some of them are thick and dense with good quality. Some others are easy to understand the related topic.

However, the textbook itself doesn't necessarily teach students what to understand well especially when learning physics. The teachers often divide the hard concept into small pieces for students' understanding, but the ability depends on each teacher.

On the other hand, physics laboratory textbooks are likely standardized (similar contents) at any university. If the equipment for the labs is updated, the manual tends to become useless immediately. Students are often confused with the procedure of the lab because the instruction is not elaborated so they can understand physics behind the setup. As a result, students get frustrated and have a hard time in writing up the report. These are common problems in most of introductory physics courses.

We decided to innovate in the curriculum of physics labs. In order to do this, we started observing students reactions as for each lab instruction in the manual. From the feedback, the lab manuals were modified to more effective way so students can perform and understand it by themselves.

Link: http://hirophysics.com/effective-teaching/qualityedu.html

I wrote this article about 5 years ago.  Most people rely on other's evaluation of teachers.  This leads to ignorance of finding out good teachers for their children.  People tend to choose a person(teacher) who looks good in the first impression and great speech.  However, teaching is the management of various people (students and related staff) through a semester or a longer term.  We need to see various aspects to identify a good teacher.