Corona Diary Week 3 Distance Learning

One time when I had the flu as a kid, my mom found a home remedy in a magazine. (No internet back then.) It was tea with lemon, lots of honey, and a good dose of chili powder. I love my mom. She's a wonderful person, creative and smart: she can teach, sew, knit, cook and bake. But in this case, I didn't know what I was in for.

So I took a big swig, which was at first sickeningly sweet... but then it turned into fire in my mouth. I will never forget it. For years afterward, I couldn't have anything that tasted like honey, because I kept expecting it to burn.

But I did get better. Was it because of that awful tea? Or would I have gotten better anyway?

That's the problem. My mom was sure it was because of the tea. (And I have to admit, I was tempted to lie and say I felt better just so I wouldn't have to drink any more.) But when you only have one case to look at, how could you ever know for sure if it was the tea that cured me?

"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" means After this, therefore because of this - which is a logical fallacy. Just because one thing happens after another, that doesn't mean it happened because of it. After I drank the tea I got better, but I could never say for sure whether it was because of the tea or just a coincidence. In science, in order to say that one event caused another thing to happen, we have to look at a lot of cases to make sure that it isn't just a coincidence.

When you have only a few cases to look at, we sometimes call it anecdotal evidence. I mention it because there's a temptation to want to trust anecdotal evidence now with the problems the Corona virus is causing. The problem is that the large scale testing that we need to do with lots of cases is just now starting, and it will be a while before the evidence comes in on things like chloroquine, zinc and other possible prevention strategies. Yet, there will be plenty of people who will tout these things (or even stranger things) as cures with only anecdotal evidence. See for example, this piece on Snopes about a viral video of a "physician" saying you should drink seltzer water.

Good science takes time because we can't just go by a few cases. More on how we test next week.

This week, you are going to have to complete the design your own coaster project.

Each of you was in a different spot with this. So I'm going to be sending out emails Monday to each person with a pic of your coaster and what you need to do.

The video shows how to do the calculations again and has suggestions if you never started yours.

Look for my email on Monday. Some will just have to finish up calculations in your notebook and send them to me. On the other hand, if you never started yours, you'll have to draw it on scrap paper first and make up heights for your hills, then do the calculations.

	Intro Quick intro for the week. The Worth a Closer Look is coming in the mid-week update. Four lessons this week, each one might be more than 20 minutes, but this is a five day week, and the fourth lesson is for the DU, so I think it will all work out to average no more than 20 min/day.
	Lesson 1: Conservation of Energy Concepts This video shows you how to use the PhET Simulation that you will need to answer the questions in the worksheet. Do them in your notebook, take a pic and email them to me. I'll let you know if they're right. PhET Energy Simulation wkt 1: Energy Concepts
	Lesson 2: More Conservation of Energy Problems Watch the video, try the problems linked below. The worksheets have blanks for the given numbers; choose numbers in the suggested range. Do them in your notebook, take a pic and email them to me. I'll let you know if they're right. wkt 2: More Conservation of Energy Problems
	Lesson 3: Conservation of Energy and Heat Watch the videos, try the problems linked below. I broke it up into two, since it ran long. More on the Chelyabinsk meteor in the mid-week update! The worksheets have blanks for the given numbers; choose numbers in the suggested range. Do them in your notebook, take a pic and email them to me. I'll let you know if they're right. wkt 3: Conservation of Energy and Heat
	Lesson 4: DU Problems These are optional, unless you want to go for the DU this week. If so, watch the video, try the problems linked below. In the video, I hadn't made up a fourth problem, but there is one in the worksheet. You still only have to pick two of the four. The worksheets have blanks for the given numbers; choose numbers in the suggested range. Do them in your notebook, take a pic and email them to me. DU problems should be in BEFORE FRIDAY 9 PM. FIXES SHOULD BE DONE BY SATURDAY. I'll let you know if they're right. wkt 4: DU Problems

The Playlist

Corona Week 3 Playlist

Song	Artist	Year	Comments
Wild Thing	The Troggs	1966	That 60s garage rock sound.
Big Time	Peter Gabriel	1986	The song "Sledgehammer" from Gabriel's album So got a lot of attention, but it was my least favorite song on the album. There's much better, including this song. It's a parody of consumerism and what it means to "make it" in society.
Trip Over	Idaho	1999	Found this on a free music sampler on Amazon back in the early days of Amazon. Quite nice.
Enjoy the Silence	Depeche Mode	1990
Mississippi Queen	Mountain	1970	Loud, bluesy 70s rock.
Hey Ladies	The Beastie Boys	1989	From the album Paul's Boutique - an album that became a turning point in hip-hop.
The Scientist	Coldplay	1993
Gloria	U2	1981	Many groups had albums with hits and when you listen to the whole album, yeah - those are pretty much the only good songs. But some groups also had more good songs on their albums that never really became popular. That is definitely true of U2's early albums Boy, October, War and A Sort of Homecoming. Also true of The Doors (see below).
Dirty Work	Steely Dan	1972
Seymour Stein	Belle & Sebastian	1998	First heard this song in the John Cusack movie High Fidelity. So mellow and nice. The main characters in the movie work at a used record shop and are very obsessed with music. While watching the movie with Ms. Newhart, she turned to me at one point and said, "So it's not just you, huh?"
Rebel, Rebel	David Bowie	1974
Better Man	Pearl Jam	1994
Spanish Caravan	The Doors	1968	Another group with hardly a bad song on any of their first four albums: The Doors, Strange Days, Waiting for the Sun and The Soft Parade. Their guitarist, Robby Krieger, liked flamenco guitar and played it marvelously on this song.
I Confess	The English Beat	1982	So much good music of the 80s didn't really make it out of the decade. You hear not-as-good 80s songs all the time. This one deserves more airplay. The English Beat were a Ska oriented group.
Autumn Sweater	Yo La Tengo	1997	Before the morning annoucements were done with video, they were over the PA, and a student named Ross Reilly (among others) would play DJ and put music on before homeroom. He made me a mix-CD and this was on it. Thanks, Ross, wherever you are now!
Long Distance Runaround/The Fish	Yes	1972	Many old albums have songs with no gaps between them. One song just leads to another. How do you do that with separate songs in a digital age?
My Little Red Book	Love	1966	This could have been a punk song from 20 years later. Love and their main songwriter Arthur Lee were way ahead of their time. This one is a cover, though, but very different from the original.
Burnin' for You	Blue Öyster Cult	1981	Originators of the heavy metal fake umlaut.
Right as Rain	Adele	2008	First heard this on my favorite music podcast, Sound Opinions. I was so out of touch with pop music (and still am), I had no idea how popular she would become.