The Dark Side of Math: A PHS Gopher Tale

Today is the birthday of Lene Hau born 1959 in Vejle, Denmark. Hau is famous for her experiments to slow down light. Her team was able initially slow light to 17 meters/second and, in 2001, were able to stop light to one-thousandth of a second.

The first quote of the day is from Steven Wright. He quipped, "It doesn't matter what the temperature of the room is, it's always room temperature."

The second quote is from Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland.

"It's like a heat wave

Burning my heart (it's like a heat wave)

I can't keep from crying (it's like a heat wave)

It's tearing me apart"

When I was in high school, I was a self absorbed student that waffled between nonconformity and the compliance of peer expectation. I liked mathematics and was a motivated student in that subject, but I was rather fickle in other subject areas--my motivation was dependent on the connection I formed with my teachers.  I made strong connections with my Language Arts teachers but not so much with my science teachers.

I also had a fear that I was underprepared for the rigors of college and that fear drove me to take an array of academic classes. One of those classes, German, I studied my junior year. I was really not aware of what I was getting my self into and very quickly, I was in a conundrum. Learning a foreign language was, well, foreign to me. I was already struggling with the verbal portion of the English language. Why did I think that speaking German would be any different? In addition, I had to memorize. I don't learn by rote. I develop connections that lead from one point to another. Some people believe these connections are linear, but I view them as a web. When I encounter a new idea it vibrates a single string and the entire web pulsates. That pulsation allows me to find the connections to other concepts. This process wasn't working for me in German. I struggled with Der, Die, and Das. I was briefly gratified to find out that these articles are assigned to the gender or neutrality of the subject but was as quickly mortified to realize there are a seemingly endless assortment of exceptions to the rule.

In addition, I was required to join German Club.  German Club was more than a social club for the students. The underlying purpose of the club was to market world language and a student exchange program, AFS. I am not typically a joiner and I was a reluctant participant. This reluctance was transformed to paralyzing dread when I found out I was a founding member of the Schottische Dancers. Our first public performance was surprisingly witnessed by a large audience that included my younger brothers and girlfriend.

This combination of attitude, self prophesying  experiences, and personal characteristics that included cantankerousness and defiance contributed to a student that simply did the minimum requirements. I was complacent but had an underlying frustration that was waiting for its moment to surface. That moment came when the class discussion moved to the measure of temperature.

 Temperature was not new to me. In my mathematics classes, students were already taught how to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa. My mathematical education also include that each resulting formula was an inverse of each other, a reflection over the line y = x, and an intersection at -40°. I ask you to examine the table of temperatures.

My German teacher was demonstrating how to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit using the formula, F = 9/5C + 32. She was selecting nice, positive values that were divisible by 5, 15°C = 59°F, 10°C = 50°F, and 35°C = 98°F (body temperature). She was on a roll but then a mistake. "As you notice students", the youthful teacher quipped in a confident, almost "cocky" air, "the Celsius temperature is always a lower number than Fahrenheit." My head perked up. I raised my hand. She smiled in the achievement of drawing me in, yet another mistake. "Could you convert -40°C for me", I inquired. "Negative numbers?", she murmured, somewhat shaken. "I can do this", she responded energetically. "Uh, the answer is ... -40°F that's not possible, I must of made mistake. Give me another one." Eagerly, I made my play in the game. "Oh, how about -50°?" I inquired, again. "-50°C is ... oh, my, a -58°F, how can that be?" she responded with sweat on her brow and a quivering lip. The blinds rattled  ominously above the closed windows. I leaned back, closed my eyes, and let the piranha feast.

Our German teacher wasn't in class until the following Monday. I don't know if her absence was the result of the failed lesson plan on temperature, the loss of credibility with our class, or a preplanned absence. On Monday, she retaught the lesson and explained how negative numbers had impacted her calculations. She did admit she needed a brief lesson from a resident math teacher. I am sure that with each preceding year, she used this experience as a building block to advance her teaching skill.