Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Monday, May 06, 2013
Dancing Atoms
IBM Research produced a video of atoms dancing titled A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie. It's an incredible movie where the atom is an individual atom and the boy is a small collection of atoms grouped to resemble a boy. The movie was made with an electron microscope and you can see how IBM made the movie here.
It was not so long ago, about 100-years actually, when atoms were mere postulates on what comprised matter. Einstein thought about them and from that we had the experiment of pollen dancing in water as the water molecules hit the grains of pollen. It was the first indirect proof of molecules and atoms. Now, we can see a movie with individual atoms as the actors of the movie.
This is truly amazing.
It was not so long ago, about 100-years actually, when atoms were mere postulates on what comprised matter. Einstein thought about them and from that we had the experiment of pollen dancing in water as the water molecules hit the grains of pollen. It was the first indirect proof of molecules and atoms. Now, we can see a movie with individual atoms as the actors of the movie.
This is truly amazing.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
On Line Courses: Some Statistics
Not long ago, I took the on-line course titled "Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation" given by Mr. Umesh Vazirani. The course is offered by Coursera which hosts a large selection of courses. The course site and the way the courses run is worthy of a separate posting. For now, let me share some statistics that Mr. Vazirani sent students at the end of the class.
The original numbers are, I think, misleading. The fact is that over 1500 people completed the class and almost 400 did so with distinction. That means that this free course, in a subject that is not for everybody, reached over 1500 people who benefited from Mr.Vazirani's lectures and efforts.
That's remarkable.
Some of you have asked about course statistics, which we are glad to share with you:So, you can see that about 26,000 people signed up for the class; I was one of them. Yet the attrition was tremendous. Half the people who signed up even watched the first lecture. Then half of that turned in the first assignments, and the numbers keep dropping.
- # of people signed up for the course: 26K
- # of people that watched the first lecture: 12K
- # of people who turned in the first assignment: 6K
- # of people who turned in the fourth assignment (midpoint): 3K
- # of people who took the final: 2104
- # of certificates: 1523
- # of certificates with distinction: 373
The original numbers are, I think, misleading. The fact is that over 1500 people completed the class and almost 400 did so with distinction. That means that this free course, in a subject that is not for everybody, reached over 1500 people who benefited from Mr.Vazirani's lectures and efforts.
That's remarkable.
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