paul le

How I Kicked My Facebook Addiction

As I was looking though the Chrome extensions that I had collected over the past few years to remove the ones that I didn’t use anymore, I noticed an old one that I had from my university years - News Feed Eradicator for Facebook. In my late high school and university years, I was addicted to Facebook. In high school, I would come home from sch...

How to Write a Sensational Science Article

Photo by Death to Stock Within the media, journalists often sensationalize headlines in order to gain more readers. This has the unfortunate consequence of information being misrepresented, and a loss of accuracy in what is being reported. This is most strongly felt when topics of science, especially physics and astronomy, are reported on. Re...

Focus Only on What You Can Control

Photo by Death to Stock A few weeks ago, I read Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. It was a book that was recommended to me by many, that I had been meaning to read for a long time. I was on vacation with my family for two weeks, and thought that it would be a fitting book to read, as this was the first real break I have had from the hustle and...

Physics in Motion

Physics is the study of nature. It is a dynamic and exciting subject, full of many mysteries and intriguing ideas. Yet for many people, the word “physics” conjures up images of teachers lecturing to sleepy students in a classroom, and of having to write exams in a hall full of hundreds of other students who would rather be doing something els...

How Computer Programming Revolutionized Physics Research

There is an interesting history behind the relationship between computer programming and physics, at least in astrophysics and nuclear physics. In the late 1950’s when computers were first starting to become more prominent in academic research, many physicists saw the potential that computers had in doing calculations: computers were able to ...

The Importance of Hobbies

Photo by Death to Stock Whenever I feel like I am in a rut in my life, I try and focus on my hobbies. Most of the time, I find that I am in a rut because I have stopped practicing my hobbies. It could be because of how busy life can get, or because of laziness, that I begin to neglect my hobbies. Whatever the reason, as soon as I catch myself...

Improving Support Workflow Through Human-Centered Design Part II

In my previous post, I gave an introduction to the problem that I was trying to solve, I had talked about the process that I would take in solving that problem, and then I began going through that process and describing what I was doing at each step. If you have not read part I yet, then please check that out first, as this article is a continua...

The Three Values of Science

Photo by Death to Stock The following is a transcript of a speech that I did for a Toastmasters club meeting a few months ago. The objective of this speech was to research any topic that I chose, and then present a structured speech on this topic. After the speech, I would receive feedback and advice for improvement from the audience and my s...

No Excuses

Photo by Death to Stock Growing up, there was one movie that I had watched almost daily, over and over again: Pokémon: The First Movie. Back in those days, my parents used to own a coffeeshop, and that was where I spent most of my time after school. Unfortunately, there was no cable TV in the coffeeshop, and all I had was one VCR tape to watc...

Sequences and Series in Physics

One thing I wish my mathematics professors emphasized more (or at least mentioned in passing) was how useful sequences and series are in physics, especially Taylor Series. The main idea with Taylor Series is that you can represent any analytic function as an infinite sum of terms calculated from the values of the function’s derivatives at a sin...