I'm Not Trying To Be Apathetic! Honest!

I am sitting in a computer lab right now and I am trying to write up a physics lab report that is due in less than seven hours. It really should not be that hard; all I really have to do is recap what I already did in the lab last week. I have it written down on my worksheet. It's just that this feels so incredibly tedious.

What in the world is the point of an E&M lab when half the experiments don't really let you visualize what's going on? All you do is get readings from instruments. This does not help you get an intuitive feel for what you're learning. Hands-on labs may work in mechanics, but not here. We'd be better off doing something with an online applet that actually shows a figurative image of what's going on, like actual current flowing through a wire represented by little circles that move at a certain speed.

I feel such a large discrepancy between the cutting-edge research that's going on around me at this university (that sounded much more exciting before I actually became a student here, ha ha...) and my physics lab, where I affirm that indeed, the formulas I was taught in lecture really do work!

Maybe it would be cool if instead of doing labs once a week and doing worksheets and writing lame reports about them sometimes, we instead had something like a project, kind of like in my programming class; you come up with some sort of big, crazy circuit that has all of the concepts we learn in the class built in, and if you do it right--if you create the right magnetic field to deflect particles in a certain direction, it sets off some switch that activates this other part of a circuit that you have to wire right so that it charges a battery and still has enough power to light a lightbulb or something, I don't know... something like a puzzle. Something like a chain reaction, a contraption like Mouse Trap. Now that would be fun. That would cause me to think about what I am doing instead of just writing down a bunch of numbers.

Gimme Summa That LIGHTNING

What if lightning didn't hurt you? What if it just tickled? Or what if it gave you an absurd amount of pleasure? What if every time there was a thunderstorm, everyone went outside and started climbing on top of buildings, holding up huge antennas to get struck?

Or what if lighting was pleasureable and it came more often? What if you went outside during a thunderstorm and were more or less assured that you would get tickled a few times? What if this was no big deal? Maybe we would dance in the rain more.

What if tornadoes were easy to walk away from unscathed? What if they were more like a natural thrill ride than a terror? Then everyone would go running after them when they came.

I hope in the new creation we might get to see some of this. Think about what a picture of God that is, if lightning was enjoyable! It's like God reaching out and touching us physically!