Week 7

Week 7: Honing our Writing

Link to your peer reviews (shared folder). Link to our internal page.

Monday, Nov 8

• Discussion of peer reviews

• Some references that may be useful (for some projects)

  • "Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will," B. Koberlein (2018) Scientific American Blog

  • "Quantum Mechanics, Free Will, and the Game of Life," John Horgan (2021) Scientific American 

  • Quirky Quarks, Bahr (accessible via UCR VPN)

  • "How Randomness Can Arise From Determinism," Mutalik. Quanta Magazine (puzzle article)

  • Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire, Ed. Thomas Lin; selections from Quanta Magazine

    • "Quantum Weirdness Now a Matter of Time"

    • "Entanglement Made Simple"

    • "In a Multiverse, What are the Odds?"

  • Other Quanta articles:

    • "Quantum Insanity" on determinism 

    • "Does Time Really Flow?"

    • "How Godel's Proof Works"

Wednesday, Nov 10

• Presentation of sketched figures and main ideas

• Spotting misleading graphics

• The Minard plot (english)

Homework

• Due Monday (11/8): [submission link] Please submit a one page peer review of blog post #1, assignments are on our internal page.

  • Make sure your review is at most one page long, in any format (e.g. bullet points are okay if that format makes sense). 

  • Start by briefly saying what the blog post is about. 

  • Then give constructive, *actionable* suggestions. Make sure the advice is KIND, but also USEFUL. 

  • End the review post with encouragement, explicitly state what you thought was very strong about the blog post.

• Due Wed (11/10): Mini-presentations, aim for a few minutes.

  • Please be prepared to sketch a figure on the whiteboard related to your blog post. The sketch should represent or complement the main idea of your blog post. (You must use a whiteboard marker to draw something.)

  • You will state:

    • What is the specific technical idea you are presenting? You don't have to present a "whole" deep-dive into a big idea. It's sufficient to introduce one small piece of a much bigger idea.

    • What is the main goal of your blog post? (This is different from the first point!)

    • How your piece of scifi can support your goal.

    • How does your figure support your goal.

• Due Monday (11/15): [submission link] Revised blog posts. Note the revised requirements:

  • The blog post must include a figure. I encourage you to create your own figure. You may also adapt an existing figure (with appropriate citation), but you will be assessed on the appropriateness of any adaptation.

  • The total page limit including the figure is 2 pages. This means you should have a little more room to add text, but you are not obligated to write additional text. Ideally, your figure will help you reduce the amount of text you need.

  • Make sure you have a clear goal for your blog post: what should your audience feel/do/think after reading your post? How should your blog post transform your reader?

  • Make sure you clearly articulate the technical idea you are presenting.