"Beauty does not linger, it only visits"

"Beauty does not linger, it only visits." From Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (rediscovering the true sources of compassion, serenity, and hope) by John O'Donohue.

How much energy is wasted trying to make permanent something that is ruined by permanence? 

The beauty of teaching is in the moment where a student is changed, truly changed for life. Much is written about making students more engaged and certainly an engaged student is better off than one that is not. It is truly impossible to teach a student that is drunk or high or otherwise impossible somewhere else while still being in your room. That said the beauty will still be in the moments, not in the day to day. The better we do the day to day the more likely the moments are to come, but by their very nature these moments do not linger.

Random Question about Food Energy

On Dec 18, 2010, at 10:26 PM, Emily  wrote:

> Just a random question... if you eat food warm vs cold do you receive more energy from it because heat=energy???


Great question. Off the top of my head the answer is no and yes a very
little. No there is not more energy to run your body in hot food. The
Calories in food do not go up when you heat up food. However, cold
food like ice cream does reduce your body temperature a little
requiring your body to use more chemical energy than it would have to
keep your body temperature up. This is where it is important to
remember that Calories for food are big C calories which are really
kilocalories. Eating cold food might use up a couple of small c
calories, several order of magnitude less than the the chemical energy
you are taking in. Ice cream is still a very high net calorie food,
celery is very low in net calories. Ice cream is more tasty than
celery.

How can we bring energy to rural Nicaragua?

I am three weeks into an experiment. It is big. I am not sure how public to be about it. Since it is here, I guess I want it to be public and I want help.

A little background. I have been teaching physics for 15 of my 17 years. I was at first working closely with another physics teacher, who is in most ways my teaching mentor. He left close to the start of a school year two years later and I was called up to the big leagues, all the sections of physics. I love it. I love teaching physics because it is the most like being a camp counselor that you can be and still be teaching an academic subject. There is not one experiment (hardly) that kids cannot do.

I have also been blessed to teach physics in an environment rich in technology. I assigned online individualized homework for the first time in 1999. I have always had a large stock of probes and other data gathering devices. It has been wonderful. I started student blogs in 2005, which I think is before it was cool, although not right on the cutting edge.

Two years ago I got an idea from my mentor to organize my second semester course work around the idea of energy. This was not really anything new. I had always studied heat, electricity, and nuclear during the second semester. These are all energy topics but he thought I could tie them into the bigger energy topics of our day, especially the proposed new coal plant for our town. I took the challenge and added in ties to the bigger picture of energy and a required public presentation on an energy topic.

This summer I took a class in curriculum development. In that class was a teacher from Nicaragua. Her job: find power for rural schools that are off the grid. The professor assigned us to work on a project together and the wheels in my brain started turning. What if my physics course was an learning conversation about how we the physics students in Michigan could learn the physics needed to bring energy to schools that do not have it? She thought it was a great idea. A partnership was formed, I am living the answer to that question every day right now. Keep reading and you can come along for the ride too. Better yet chime in and help us out. We have never done this before. The people there need your help too.

There are a lot of posts about the last three weeks built up inside my head. Hopefully they will start coming out at more regular intervals.

A Charge To Care About Energy

Be prophetic critics of the waste, injustice, and selfishness in our society, and be sensitive counselors to the victims of such evils.
via crcna.org

Today we installed elders and deacons at my church. I had not closely read the form for ordaining elders and deacons in a long time. Buried in the charge is this great line.

I know that God calls us to care for his world. I wish the church acted like it more often. I am glad that in my church the deacons are charged to care about energy, the environment and how its abuse impacts people.