The Universe in Essays

Written: March 29th, 2015. Abstract: Were the earliest Christians liars and deceivers? Did they dupe the whole world into believing something they knew was false? In any case, can this suggestion be disproven? Herein I address the so-called conspiracy hypothesis: roughly, the idea that early Christians made everything up (out of thin air, presumably) about Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection. I argue that not only is there no evidence for this claim, but there are many and varied reasons to reject it.

Written: March 2015 Prompt: Please select 2-3 International Baccalaureate Learning Profile Traits that you think are the most important for students to exhibit. Discuss why you believe those traits are most important and create a plan for how we can better foster the development of those particular traits as a school. Too many people go through life day after day, their only concern making it to the next day. They survive; they do not live. It is the pride of International Baccalaureate schools that they aim to produce students who do not merely survive, but truly live. They do this through the IB learner profile, a series of characteristics that represent the ideal life-long learner. By cultivating these traits, one moves beyond the daily grind of survival into real meaning. One need only list those attributes to be convinced: inquirer, knowledgeable, communicator, open-minded, caring, and so forth. While the above is not a controversial thesis, it is a matter of debate whic...

Written: February 12th, 2015; revised March 1st, 2015. Prompt: In what ways does Sophocles' Oedipus the King represent the perfect tragedy, as understood by Aristotle? While perfection cannot be tragic, tragedies can be perfect. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King is the perfect tragedy. In it, he outlines the events surrounding and befalling the great king of Thebes, Oedipus. Oedipus the King exemplifies at least three features of Aristotle’s perfect tragedy: plot, characterization, and diction.

Written: February 2015 Prompt: Compare and contrast two ancient civilizations. Every civilization on Earth, no matter the distance in space or time, has commonalities with every other civilization. This should come as no surprise, for humans, despite what they may think, are more alike than different. Consider two civilization in particular: China and Rome. Roman civilization came into being in the seventh century B.C. with the founding of the city by the same name, and Chinese civilization developed in the seventeenth century B.C. China and Rome, sharing the same continent of Eurasia, had comparatively similar religious and political systems, but differing economies.

Written: February 2015 Abstract:  There is no surer way to start an argument or end a friendship than by bringing up religion. Religion speaks to the deepest needs of the human heart, so a natural defensiveness results when others question one’s own religious afflictions. Moreover, religion is taken to be a subjective phenomenon, leading to the common belief that all religions are equally true.   It is argued that this under-standing of the nature of religion, and the resulting implication, is fundamentally mistaken. The paper ends with a consideration of how people might come to know which of the world’s many religious traditions is true.

Written: February 2015 Originally Published: Half Measures: Chemical Reactions: Elemental Analysis . As a certain wise man wise once said, elemental analysis is not the sexiest thing around. But is a very necessary thing. Learn it, and then you can move onto more interesting concepts. In short, elemental analysis is the determining of the empirical and molecular formulas for some compound. We'll examine each of these in turn.

Written: December 2014 As daunting as quantum numbers may seem, they needn't be. Simply put, they are a relatively simple method of classifying electrons. Many analogies have been used to help explain what quantum numbers are and how they describe the electron (e.g., comparing them to a hotel, describing them as a city, etc.). The problem with this approach is, each analogy becomes overly complex in order to maintain similarity to the actual situations quantum numbers describe. So, no analogies will be presented here.