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Comment Community helps, learning for yourself is better (Score 1) 701

My suggestion is similar to another comment: educate yourself. If you are his grandparent and find you are too "old" to learn the topic (which I would consider a cop-out, though it's your choice to decide), your fall back is the home-schooling community.

It seems as if his parents are somewhat neglectful since they haven't taken the time to address his reading level (as others, I am assuming no disability), so get other people to help you. It seems everywhere I go there is a hidden home-school community; it might be hard to find, but it is likely there. If you are having trouble finding the community, I'd suggest asking a local high-school educator for introductions to parents (s)he happens to know that home school. I think you will find that other parents are very kind and helpful. Often I see people "trading" their children to other parents who happen to know more on a subject than them. If you are expected to participate in this by teaching students in return for chemistry lessons, don't downplay your own education.

If your a grandmother you are likely at _least_ over 50 years old. You have a lot of life experience you can share. Teaching, especially home-schooling, is not necessarily about science, math, and geography. It is also about developing young well rounded minds. Teach them something you know, if that's just knitting, then by god teach them knitting. You will teach them patience, spacial co-ordination, and social aspects (people go to knitting clubs to talk, not just knit). Above all, though, educate yourself. Nothing helps you understand material better than teaching it. Seeing other peoples views on things that you could have missed. This is not just an opportunity for your grandson to have an excellent education in things he enjoys, but it is an opportunity for you to continue you your amassed world knowledge with further specifics.

You are never too old to learn something new.

Comment Re:Easy fix? (Score 2) 465

Someone who has actually used one of these could probably confirm or deny this, but I believe they are designed to just have people walk through them in an orderly fashion to not hold up lines. If everyone stopped and did a little ballerina turn in them it would slow things down immensely. Also that would detect things sewn into clothing, but probably not thin things like wires taped to the body.

Comment Non-physics major explanation please. (Score 2) 502

I see a lot of joke comments talking about hooking this LED, that is getting a significant amount of high entropy heat and turning it into higher entropy light, to a photoelectric cell. I can understand the heat to light in terms of thermodynamics, but assuming an efficient enough photoelectric cell isn't turning high entropy energy into low entropy usable electrons "cheating?" Could someone tell me why this wouldn't work in the real world (I just assume it can't)? Do photovolts not work at that energy level? Would the energy be so low that the photovolt would simply loose the electrons to signal loss before generation enough of a voltage gap (though this would be fixable with well insulated micro circuitry one would think)? The explanation of turning heat into light thermodynamically seems acceptable to me, but I do not understand where the loss would come when converting said light back into electrons.

Comment Sign me up! (Score 1) 337

Say it takes 10 years of massive funding to build a colony ship. And someone figures out a clever way to get an average speed of .5c out of the thing. Give me a little time dilation, and some lucky advances in longevity, and I could be there!

I'm totally in.

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