Harper College is closed on Friday, April 18, for Reading Day.
We all have plenty to distract us: unread texts, current events, childcare responsibilities, overdue assignments—not to mention an overflowing email inbox. When everything becomes overwhelming, it’s a good time to pause for your mind, body, and soul and gain perspective on the amazing things we often take for granted. We spoke with five Harper College instructors about everyday phenomena from their fields that may be invisible or underappreciated by most people yet are humbling and awe-inspiring to those who truly pay attention.
Professor Deborah Damcott, PhD, teaches physics at Harper, but her background is in nuclear engineering. Thus, her source of wonder is the oft-maligned and misunderstood force of radiation. As a Pennsylvania native, she got interested in radiation after the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident in 1979, which turned radiation and nuclear energy into sources of fear and mistrust. But Damcott begs to differ: “There have been fewer people injured from nuclear plants than any other energy source. It is an incredibly highly regulated and monitored industry, and a very safe, very reliable form of energy.”
Radiation itself is more helpful than people realize. “People always worry about things like X-rays,” she says, “but you get about eight times more radiation from a cross-country airplane flight than you do from an X-ray at the dentist. And there’s a radioactive isotope called Potassium-40 in every banana you eat”—a phenomenon the EPA calls natural radioactivity in food. “The fact that you can’t see it or feel it or taste it, but it’s always there is intriguing,” says Damcott. “It’s with you 24/7 for your entire life, but you don’t even know it. And you don’t know what it’s doing for you.”
“I teach classes students are terrified of, let’s be clear,” says Karen Dailey, PhD, assisted professor of chemistry. “But I do try to explain to them that it’s accessible.” Her goal is to help her students build “molecular vision,” the ability to see that “if we can start to understand how things work on the molecular level, we can have control over their properties in the macroscopic world.”
Dailey’s example: blue jeans, which come from the indigo plant pigment. “But why is it blue? Chemists know it’s a flat molecule with alternating single and double bonds, and that it absorbs and reflects a certain frequency of visible light. Just by changing the pattern of the bonds within the indigo molecule, we can change the color of it.” Thus, why she is in awe of chemists in general. “We work with the molecular world to give us conveniences or perks that manifest macroscopically,” like the billions of blue jeans lining store shelves around the world.
To Kevin Cole, Assistant Professor of Earth Science and Astronomy at Harper, one aspect of Earth science that is so common yet still so fascinating to him is weather. “I’m always amazed at weather patterns and how they develop,” he says. In particular, the thunder and lightning that come with storms—and the 1.3 billion volts of electricity they create, as found in a study reported on by Jason Daley in Smithsonian Magazine—are to him one of the more awe-inspiring aspects of our planet.
“A bolt of lightning is as hot as the surface of the sun, but it only lasts for a fraction of a second, and yet it has enough energy that if it hits a tree, it boils the water inside that tree and makes it explode.” That sheer power and unpredictability make storms not just another everyday occurrence but also a thrilling phenomenon right outside your front door.
Associate Professor of Mathematics Karega Cooper, M.S., is fascinated by the concept of infinity. “Early mathematicians thought of infinity as something you could capture,” he says. But it turns out that not only can we not fully count infinity, but there are actually different sizes of it. “There are the counting numbers: one, two, three, and so on. There is an infinite number of those, which we call aleph-naught. But there is also an infinite number of numbers between zero and one, which we call aleph-one. It’s not even possible to count all those numbers. It really boggles my mind that there are things we can’t count.”
His key takeaway: infinity is really big. “It’s just so beyond big that we can’t even make sense of it.” So, for those who struggle to understand math, abstract or otherwise, take comfort in knowing that even mathematicians do, too.
For a small glimpse at the wonders of astronomy, all you have to do is keep your eyes open on Harper’s campus. According to Bhasker Moorthy, professor of astronomy, the Avante Center was designed to take advantage of the sunlight, especially around the fall and spring equinox when the Chicagohenge phenomenon, as shown in NASA’s astronomy picture of the day, is most evident and alternating bands of light and shadow decorate the concourse floor.
The design has practical effects, too. “The horizontal metal plates outside the building allow the low winter Sun to shine through while blocking the high summer Sun, making the concourse warm and bright during the winter and cool and shady during the summer,” says Moorthy. Few things feel more routine than the Sun rising and setting every day, but Moorthy encourages you to let your mind wonder. “There is much more you can discover by watching the Sun’s changing path across the sky, including Earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun.”
We all have our own daily grind, which is necessary to meet our needs and create the life we desire. However, don’t forget to take a moment to appreciate the small things and cultivate curiosity about the hidden wonders around you.
Source: Environmental Protection Agency, Jason Daley, NASA
Originally Published Apr 18, 2024
