Foreign Perspectives

We set out for there this morning and even skipped out on the tailback into Ballycastle by going down a side road as soon as we reached the end of the traffic jam so were pretty much right in the thick of it at the off.

The problem was that “in the thick of it” meant that we could see just how packed the crowds were before we needed to decide on car parking. Way too packed to make it any kind of a pleasurable visit so instead we changed tack and had a nice BBQ along the coast road and had the BBQ area pretty much to ourselves the whole time. Much nicer than packed solid into a mass of people.

The problem with the Auld Lammas Fair is that it was pretty much at full capacity a few years ago yet there are lots more people in Northern Ireland these days and so it looks very much over capacity now. Time for a change to add a few days to it and spread the crowds over a longer period I think.

Anyway, tomorrow is back to school day for the little guys (though John is feeling poorly so perhaps not for him). That means hunting out the uniform (done), labelling it (not done yet), trying to remember where the school bags were dumped a couple of months ago and getting back into the buying something for their snack.

The final TMA of the astronomy course looked pretty much impossible to do at first glance and seems to be the cause of a substantial number of people seriously considering dropping out of the course if the forum comments are anything to go by.

The big difference between this one and the previous one is that it’s very much into the theoretical physics (ie mathematical) side of the course basically because it’s largely based on the cosmology section of the course where the heavy duty mathematics comes in. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s particularly difficult but what it does require is a completely different way of thinking about the questions. So, instead of looking up how to describe the appearance of a galaxy you get questions like “Using information from An Introduction to Galaxies and Cosmology, estimate R(t1) / R(t0)” which require a major shift in problem solving techniques from what went before.

Once you have flicked over to the mathematical approach, the seemingly impossible questions turn out to be fairly easy, albeit involving scary looking numbers most of the time. Essentially what’s required for most of them is to find a formula in the book which refers to the pieces of information that you’re given and getting out the calculator. Even the most complex doesn’t require more than a relatively simple rearrangement of a formula given in the book and seeing as they go so far as quoting the chapter in the book from which the questions are taken, it’s not too difficult to find the necessary formulae.

What it does show is that the guidance in the “Are you ready for S282?” guide that the “level of maths required for S282 is not high”, whilst true, is rather misleading. No, the level of maths isn’t that high but what it does require is that you are able to think like a mathematician.

That’s the final TMA that counts towards the result. There is a CMA to do but that doesn’t affect the mark so whilst I’ll have a look at it, I’ve not decided whether or not to do it as ’tis time to get going on the revision.

James left Belmont in June and was to be starting in Strandtown next week with John following two years later which was shaping up to be a logistical nightmare for us for the next few years.

We decided a while back that it was going to be better for them both to be in the same school so had looked into a few options over the last four or five months. However, by the time we’d made our final decision the schools were all closed for the summer so we couldn’t do anything about it ’til earlier this week.

Surprisingly, it turned out to be very easy to change schools. We’d expected some major inquisition, loads of forms and lots of “why?, do you really want to do this?” etc. but in fact it turned out to be basically “OK, no problem”.

Funnily enough it’s the school that was originally towards the top of our list of candidates and the school that my Mum (who we think is somewhere in the photo) started in the year it was built.

Unusually it was a privately owned surveillance system that caught Mary dumping a cat into a wheelie bin but now her moment of madness is visible throughout the internet and she’s under police protection.

Whilst her actions can’t be condoned, I’m not so sure that it’s quite right for the cat owner to effectively create an instant mob by way of Facebook either. As he says in the interview in the Mail, he feels that it should be handled by the proper authorities although given the reactions of some people to her actions I’d say that he wishes that he’d left it to them in the first place.

It’s right that appropriate action should be taken against her, of course, but is it right that an instant mob was created by publishing the video on the net?

Quite why it is, I don’t know but the astronomy TMAs have all taken me an awful lot more time than expected to do and, of course, the final one is no different.

It seems that I’m not the only one with this problem as an awful lot of people seem to be having serious difficulties with this one. All for the same reason too: it appears to be seriously difficult. And yet, once it clicks, it’s actually quite easy to do.

The key thing to do is to basically ignore that astronomy label and consider it purely as an exercise in mathematics for almost all of the questions. Thus, if it asks you to calculate the radius of some orbit what you need to do is to look for some equation in one of the chapters of the book referring to that question that can be used to calculate the radius in terms of the information that you have to hand. That seems even more so for the seemingly much more complicated cosmology question. After all, at first glance when you’re asked to calculate the critical density of the universe, I’m sure that most peoples’ reaction would be “eh?”, but it’s very easy to answer that one (no, really, it is).

Which “just” leaves me with about 1 1/2 questions to do. I’d have done them this evening but with the spurt of progress my brain went into meltdown!

As to whether my answers are actually right or not, who knows? but at least I have some kind of answer when yesterday I was seriously contemplating handing it in with questions unanswered.