Stem Academia - Blog Posts
in my academic weapon era ✍️
physics feels so inaccessible.
like what do you mean the only information on this topic is a power point presentation from ten years ago with only half of the information on it?
or you tell me there's three ways to download the software i need for the calculations, but only one of the ways actually works and you don't even tell me how to do it!!!
never mind the sheer amount of prerequisites. i never struggled with math too much, but i also never took the opportunity to skip a level in math. when i was starting out, you can't do anything without trig. so then i went and learned trig on my own, but then i needed matrices. so i went and i learned matrices and vectors on my own, but now i need calculus. and holy shit is there a lot of stuff within calculus.
half the important papers are hidden behind paywalls and the diagrams are so confusing they take me forever to figure out. maybe i'm just inexperienced, but isn't the whole point of diagrams for the information to be more accessible?????
i might be wrong since i'm young and inexperienced, but it seems as if there's this tone of exclusivity in physics. why is it so hard to find mentors, and when i do, they have such trouble believing in me? i might be young, but i can still understand and help with something. why would you ignore all my emails and just tell me to take the easy way out? i'm in it for the long run.
tonight’s setup 😊 hopefully I go to bed at a reasonable time. I still have TWO lab reports to finish though.
I thought my math homework was going to be chill because it was just two problems but tell me why I open it and it’s part a-p 😭
Star Trails taken by Rob on February 24 2024
Star trails are photographs taken over long exposures, where the rotation of the Earth causes the stars to appear as arcs in the sky instead of points. The Earth rotates around its axis every 23 hours and 56 minutes.
Typically, star trails are focused on Polaris in the northern hemisphere, but I found this photo unique because it opted for a different composition. It also really highlights how dense the sky is with stars.
It begs the question, why isn't the sky infinitely bright with infinite stars? This is actually the observation that helped cosmologists find theories for the age of the universe. For a young universe, not enough time has passed for the light from incredibly distant stars to reach us, leading to the dark sky we see when we look up at night.
Dolphin Head Nebula taken by Ben Brown on February 23 2024
The Dolphin Head Nebula, Sh 2-308, is an emission nebula caused by the Wolf-Rayet star EZ Canis Majoris. WR stars have completed fusion of hydrogen and are now fusing heavier elements such as helium and carbon. They have unique emission spectrums for this reason, with no hydrogen emission lines.
The temperature of WR stars is much higher than typical stars, reaching 20,000 K to 210,000 K. WR stars are some of the most luminous stars due to their high temperatures, but most of their output is in the ultraviolet spectrum, meaning we can't see it with the naked eye.
This UV radiation ionizes the gas around it, leading to the emission nebula you can see in the photograph.
#3. Keeping momentum
You are tired. You are lazy. You can't do anything. Those are the voices I hear, and you might hear, after a long day at school. All I want to do is lay down on the couch and take a nap or get lost scrolling on my phone. But I know if I do, I'm going to spend the next two hours doing absolutely nothing.
Try not to stop doing stuff when you have a break. And I don't mean you should be constantly working. Make yourself a cup of tea. Journal. Call your friend. Something that keeps your momentum. It's harder to stop when you're stationary compared to when you're already moving.
"Anything that is easy for me must be worthless." — Impostor syndrome in a nutshell
my new favorite poem ✨
The Large Magellanic Cloud taken by Rory Broesder on Februrary 18 2023
The LMC is a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, set to collide in 2.4 billion years. It is an easily observable object from the southern hemisphere and is the fourth brightest galaxy in the local group. Within this galaxy is the Tarantula Nebula, a very active star forming region.
It was once a barred spiral galaxy before it was disrupted through tidal interactions with the Milky Way galaxy and Small Magellanic Cloud. In fact, there is a bridge of hot gas showing the connection between the LMC and SMC which is also an active star forming region.
The LMC is one of around sixty other satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.
#2. Red light, Green light
More study tips! Separate your to-do list into three buckets: red light tasks, yellow light, and green light.
Red light tasks are the hardest things you have to do. Typically, there is some planning involved, different components, and it will take you multiple days to work on it. Think essay, presentation, big project.
This might come as a surprise but studying for hard tests I put in the yellow light category. (If you’re cramming put this in the red category, but pls don’t.) You are going to want to split up hefty homework assignments and big tests into smaller actionable pieces. The idea is to study a bit every day. The idea is that there is more flexibility and resources while you study, and each problem generally has a clear solution.
Green light is something like emails, routine Khan Academy practice, reading a chapter of a book, or small homework assignments. The point of my system is to be flexible and put things into categories based on how I’m feeling and how much time there is as well.
What this does is it reduces your to do list into three sections, makes a plan, and helps you quantify how urgent tasks are.
Here is my typical schedule for these tasks:
After school:
Break for 1hr
Green as a warmup
Yellow for one hour for 1-1.5hrs
Red after dinner for 2~hrs
Green until tired .5hrs
Weekends:
Finish ALL Green in the morning Sat
Red for 5~ hrs (or however much you need) Sat
Breaks interwoven between
Dinner and relaxing Sat evening
Yellow for 2-3~ hr Sun
Red for 1-1.5hr Sun evening
Day off where I wasted the entire morning:
Red for 2hrs
Yellow for 2hrs
After dinner do Green until tired
i went to the local library to pick up some books today :) i'm literally so dumb because i was in the wrong row for the nonfiction section (looking for spacefarers) and i did not even stop to question why all the books around me were on the culinary arts.
i heard the master of djinn is a really good book and would be good for people that liked arcane. IF I MAKE IT THROUGH THE BOOK, maybe i'll write a review. hopefully i can because it looks really interesting...
i have a lot of random stuff to do these next two days since i wasn't productive for the first three days of break :(
study for computer science midterm
calculus unit 4 problem sets
magnetostatics FRQ
read literature for research project
update astrophysics notes
work on cosmology simulation
f=ma exam…. either i cooked or completely flunked lol
International Space Station transit of the Moon taken by Quinn Groessl on January 31 2023.
The ISS orbits the Earth at a typical velocity of 28000 km/h (very fast) and at a typical altitude of 400 km. Gravitational forces keep the ISS in constant freefall, but with the forward velocity of the ISS, the overall distance to Earth and velocity stays pretty much the same.
These transits are pretty infrequent. The angle of the moon from the orbital plane can vary over time, and any small changes in the ISS orbit can have major effects on its path. In the sky, they are both fairly small objects, leading to smaller probabilities as well.
An important factor that allows these events to occur is that the ISS is traveling much faster relative to our perspective on Earth compared to the moon. The ISS orbits the Earth around 16 times a day, while the moon takes around a month (27.3 days).
You can see the video of it at this link. It's incredible how precise astronomers have to be with how short of a timespan there is to record this.
AAAAAAHHHH I HAVE A MATH TEST TMRW
Normally, I’m not so stressed, but I missed class this week (I was skipping shame on me 😭) and I have no clue what’s going on… Me and the math teacher are besties because he’s the coach of the golf team, so I’m scared of disappointing him with my bad test scores.
I also had a long lab in chem this week. It’s really sad because we got bad results even though we ran our trial for over and hour lol. I think it’s my lab partner’s fault because he keeps on putting his crusty fingers all over the cuvettes which is messing up the spectrophotometer. Hopefully he actually writes his part so it’s not another repeat of last year.
- Practice midterms for matrices
- Grade practice midterms
- Write lab report
- Debug binary system simulation
- Work on astro research paper
- Work on program applications
- Finish new deal research
- Finish college assessment
- Email people back 😬
Don’t ask me why we have a midterm in January… I have no clue.
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) taken by Auvo Korpi on January 27 2023.
During the formation of the sun, there was a protoplanetary disk (cloud of debris and gas) that orbited around it. The farthest parts of this disk were far from the heat emitted, and cooled down. The cold material clumped with frozen gasses and water, creating icy rocks.
These rocks orbit far away from the sun in huge elliptical orbits, in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. At one point, the icy rocks get closer to the sun. The ice is heated and releases dust, known as the comet’s trail.
Comet ZTF was first discovered in March 2022, but came closest to Earth in a long time in January of 2023. At first, the comet was believed to be an asteroid, but when it got closer to the sun, it was observed to have its signature green glow.
The green comes from the diatomic carbon, which is part of the comet’s atmosphere. As it got closer to the sun, the molecules became excited and radiate green light. This is also why the green color doesn’t extend to the tail, instead it is happening in the comet’s nucleus.
I remember going out with my telescope around this time to view the comet. At that point I think it was just above the Taurus constellation, and I had a lot of trouble angling the lens to point that high up.
I don’t remember being able to see the tail, but just with the naked eye, I could see the comet’s light. I can’t believe it’s already been two years since then. Time really flies.
my first 24 hour hackathon!
NEVER AGAIN in my life am I building a website from scratch 😭 it’s torture. if only my dumb self knew that frameworks existed…
NGC 1316 taken by Hubble Space Telescope on January 26 2021
NGC 1316 is an elliptical galaxy formed by the collisions of multiple galaxies near the constellation Forax in the southern hemisphere. What makes this galaxy unique is the dark lanes of dust visible around the galaxy. These are indicative that they galaxies NGC 1316 was formed by were spiral galaxies.
What helped scientists determine that this galaxy was created due to a "recent" collision where different types of images taken of NGC 1316. Hubble's images helped to reveal huge collisional shells and a small number of globular clusters. Collisional shells are formed from debris of the parent galaxy, which under the effects of gravity and tidal forces. These tails last for a long time, before eventually being reabsorbed into the progenitor (object of origin). Globular clusters are a group of stars bound by gravity.
These two events were indicative of a merger that occurred within the past couple billion years.
Pretty winter sunset but I’m stuck inside 🌅 Just cleaned my room though so I don’t mind that much.
3rd picture is my desk— should I put something on the wall? I don’t want to drill anything in.
Today was pretty frustrating for a variety of reasons, so I didn’t think I would get much done today but then I hopped on to Tumblr and saw a bunch of people’s study posts so I guess I’m trying this again.
- Study for math test
- Work on research program applications
- Upload a new software onto my computer
Good luck 👍
“Since it is now past 2 AM, perhaps it’s time to get some sleep and tackle this tomorrow?”
Especially as a student, it seems necessary to sacrifice sleep in order to study for a test more or get that last homework assignment done, and I get it.
It’s a never-ending cycle— stay up late to study, too tired the next day, procrastinate because you’re tired…
I used to sleep around 8 hours, which is generally the norm, when I found that I was still procrastinating and still tired. I thought that this was due to stress and therefore needed to study more to reduce my stress about upcoming tests. This led to me sleeping 6-7 hours instead.
These past couple of weeks, I’ve decided to listen to my body a lot more, often sleeping 9-10 hours.
I’ve become more productive: being able to work towards my goals without losing out on my health, being more energized, and also having more free time.
It seems counterintuitive, right? Sleeping three hours more should reduce how much I get done in a day, but no. I realized I spend a lot of time while I study being off track or doomscrolling on my phone. This actually is a logical result of being tired— not having enough energy to focus on a task and needing the dopamine in a fast release.
So what do I do if I enjoy working late at night? Especially in high school, there’s strict schedules and timings for when you have to be up so that you can be on time. Unless you can get a prep period, you have to wake up at 7:00 am.
I started taking naps as soon as I get home. If I’m not feeling as if I’ll get anything done, I try to get off my phone and just listen to music or daydream as I try to get a little bit of sleep.
If I keep this up, hopefully Copilot will stop criticizing my sleep habits 😁
chemistry has been kicking my butt lately. so i’m staying after school to study. yay 😀
on the bright side, i somehow managed to secure more than 100% in my comp sci class with a huge fail rate… not really going to question it in case it was a mistake tho. take the wins when they arise
target haul!! i went to go grab two notebooks (one for physics and one for math) i normally just use one for the entire year, but this time i’ve already run out of pages in one semester 😳
my computer science teacher says f the trees (his words not mine) and that you should use the paper to do your work and not try to compress it super small. a little extreme, but the point is, don’t be shy to take up space with your notes.
i went for a walk later this evening to decompress and it was so pretty— prepare for more sky pics because i will be going outside more often after today.
- final review physics 2
- ap frq practice
i failed one of the frqs which was pretty disappointing. focusing on the positive, i now know what i need to practice before my final tomorrow!
study tip: eat chocolate 🍫 (unless you’re allergic please don’t die)
i couldn’t sleep last night and ended up falling asleep at 5 am. waking up this morning was really difficult and all my muscles were feeling achy.
i didn’t think I would get anything done, but then i had half a chocolate bar…
- rc circuits problem set
- rc circuits quiz
- electric circuits unit test
now i’m spending the evening working on python and then scrolling on pinterest 👀
typically, sweeter snacks are frowned upon because of the high sugar content which can cause you to crash and make it difficult to maintain focus.
however, chocolate also contains cacao. cacao improves focus and memory, and also relieves stress.
before school, i’ve started adding cacao nibs to yogurt, oatmeal, and smoothies. it’s a great way to boost your mind in an easy and delicious way :)
happy new year! 🎉🎉🎉
I wanted to lock in before the new year, so I finally got through the final part of my circuits lecture!!! I think this one was the longest yet (it took me like the whole day).
I did stop for a walk outside though (that’s the picture I took on the left) so that helped me clear my mind a little bit. Definitely a goal of mine will be to focus more when it’s time to work and then relax guilt free in order to prevent days like this.
Overall, I’m not disappointed since it’s difficult material. I really like the problem solving aspect of it since it’s like working a puzzle— especially the multi-loop ones.
today is a study day (fortunately or regrettably depending on your perspective). this problem set is really cool and i actually like learning about circuits, which i didn’t expect.
- circuits problem set (88 mins)
- circuits quiz (39 mins)
- advanced circuits lecture
i’m REALLY behind in my course and i need to catch up by the time school starts again so i probably have another 4 hrs of work minimum. it’s finally feeling like crunch time lol
I just made a playlist of songs that I listen to while I study 📚 Unfortunately, I have to lock in over the holidays, and I know some people are in the same boat so hopefully this will help motivate!
I didn’t do this on purpose, but it turned out EXACTLY 2 hours long, so it’s a sign from the universe that you should listen to it 😁
long study day at the library! there was a lot of snacks since it’s finals week but getting a spot was so impossible 😦 my friend and I saw three people leaving from behind some bookshelves and it was like the hunger games trying to grab our stuff and get seats before anybody else could take them
the library closed kind of early so now I’m back home and I have a long night ahead of me
- analysis study sheets (5/5)
- extra credit poem
- email people back 😭
- comp sci practice tests
- chem study sheets???
i made this post a while ago and omg its even worse than i thought. i'm working on some electrostatics problem sets rn. how are you going to have v for velocity, V for electric potential, V for the volts unit, V for volume, U for potential energy, u for energy density, v (or i guess nu) for neutrinos, v for frequency???? they all look the same...
don't even get me started on k
why are there so many variables in physics? it’s like reading a whole new language and i’m dying here 😭
who decided that both electric potential and electric potential energy were going to be a thing 😑 we need a serious discussion!
i’m back in the library and i’m actually getting some work done which is good! i’ve been feeling kind of down lately so focusing on homework has gotten a lot harder.
finals are coming up and all i want to do is watch arcane season 2 and rewatch voltron before it leaves netflix 😭 two more weeks….
studying outside ✨ but then getting nothing done bc the weathers nice…. still have to finish up my notes for astrophysics and then go through the lectures for e&m