i can't quite remember what really got me on the wrong foot with Mr. Bruce Lee, the physics teacher i mentioned in the last post. i guess i just wasn't a very good student then. and he believed in hard discipline, like the good old Chinese teacher. not that he could get away with physical punishment, even back then, but he did look quite formbidable and scary. and as i was playing my class clown thing there was no way he could let me get away with it. and because i wasn't really that bad of a student, in terms of intellectual curiosity and stuff, i felt i was picked on for silly reasons. so i couldn't really get along with the guy.
there was one incident though, that i remember quite clearly. i was doing my usual thing, joking around with friends instead of doing class assignments (always hated those). and then Mr. Bruce Lee barked my name and asked: so, how do you measure the distance between the peaks of the wavefront!
in a rare moment of sharpness i looked up the blackboard & felt i more or less understood the problem to which i should have been paying attention but hadn't. so if you throw a pebble into a pond you create a ripple. the ripple have a certain spatial frequency. but because it is moving, how do we measure the thing? if you put a ruler next to it to measure it, you need to move along with the wave which is pretty hard.
so i said: er... yes, sir. you can put a ruler next to it, and then take a picture with a camera. then in the picture you can see the static wavefont at a given moment, together with the ruler which gives you the spatial scale, we can....
Mr Bruce Lee said: no! that would take too long for the photograph to be developed. we need a solution to give us an answer now!
well, you can take a Polariod, sir. i must say i felt rather pleased with myself, for not being too slow on that day.
but he said: no! that's *incorrect*! the *correct* answer is that you use a *stroboscobe*. now, who can tell me how to spell the word stroboscobe.....
to those who want to find out WTF is a stroboscobe, you can look it up yourself. it's an ancient, clumsy device that could also do the job. it may do other cool things too, i don't know. but for this specific problem, today i'll just use the camera on the phone.
thinking about it now, i see that my teacher was no real Bruce Lee. this poor guy didn't deserve the right to call people "useless" coz he didn't really understand what it means to be useful and practical ....
***
physics was actually my favorite subject back then. but i lost interests after having been taught by Mr Bruce Lee for 2 years. in hindsight, really, it wasn't his fault. he's a good guy. just an ordinary teacher - not any more mediocre than i myself am - trying to do what he could. the system itself was kind of dull & rigid. spelling stroboscobe correctly was the correct way to do well in the exam.
but as you see from the HK protests, the kids still turn out alright. they are anything but dull. somehow, people learn to be 'useful' after all, in this city, under essentially the same system. it would be a pity for us to not to try to understand why.
i got a B in physics in the open exam in the end. that was my best grade. i got C in average. D in chemistry - which was why i was so pleased to have gotten a paper published in the journal *Molecular* Psychiatry recently (which wasn't really about anyting molecular, but still).
because i did so badly in the sciences i wasn't allowed to continue to study these subjects in the same school. from there i studied economics and other stuff in a different school for a couple of years, and made it to university. but then because i lacked the science background, i wasn't allowed to study the hard sciences anymore. which was how i got into psychology & philosophy.
ah well. maybe i should thank Mr Bruce Lee after all.
there was one incident though, that i remember quite clearly. i was doing my usual thing, joking around with friends instead of doing class assignments (always hated those). and then Mr. Bruce Lee barked my name and asked: so, how do you measure the distance between the peaks of the wavefront!
in a rare moment of sharpness i looked up the blackboard & felt i more or less understood the problem to which i should have been paying attention but hadn't. so if you throw a pebble into a pond you create a ripple. the ripple have a certain spatial frequency. but because it is moving, how do we measure the thing? if you put a ruler next to it to measure it, you need to move along with the wave which is pretty hard.
so i said: er... yes, sir. you can put a ruler next to it, and then take a picture with a camera. then in the picture you can see the static wavefont at a given moment, together with the ruler which gives you the spatial scale, we can....
Mr Bruce Lee said: no! that would take too long for the photograph to be developed. we need a solution to give us an answer now!
well, you can take a Polariod, sir. i must say i felt rather pleased with myself, for not being too slow on that day.
but he said: no! that's *incorrect*! the *correct* answer is that you use a *stroboscobe*. now, who can tell me how to spell the word stroboscobe.....
to those who want to find out WTF is a stroboscobe, you can look it up yourself. it's an ancient, clumsy device that could also do the job. it may do other cool things too, i don't know. but for this specific problem, today i'll just use the camera on the phone.
thinking about it now, i see that my teacher was no real Bruce Lee. this poor guy didn't deserve the right to call people "useless" coz he didn't really understand what it means to be useful and practical ....
***
physics was actually my favorite subject back then. but i lost interests after having been taught by Mr Bruce Lee for 2 years. in hindsight, really, it wasn't his fault. he's a good guy. just an ordinary teacher - not any more mediocre than i myself am - trying to do what he could. the system itself was kind of dull & rigid. spelling stroboscobe correctly was the correct way to do well in the exam.
but as you see from the HK protests, the kids still turn out alright. they are anything but dull. somehow, people learn to be 'useful' after all, in this city, under essentially the same system. it would be a pity for us to not to try to understand why.
i got a B in physics in the open exam in the end. that was my best grade. i got C in average. D in chemistry - which was why i was so pleased to have gotten a paper published in the journal *Molecular* Psychiatry recently (which wasn't really about anyting molecular, but still).
because i did so badly in the sciences i wasn't allowed to continue to study these subjects in the same school. from there i studied economics and other stuff in a different school for a couple of years, and made it to university. but then because i lacked the science background, i wasn't allowed to study the hard sciences anymore. which was how i got into psychology & philosophy.
ah well. maybe i should thank Mr Bruce Lee after all.