Been a while...

Hey everyone...it’s been a while since we've been in touch. My apologies, school has been super crazy and vacation was full of traveling to see family and friends. A lot has happened since I have returned to Siena. School work has been the main focus of my attention, between the four lectures and four labs, however this semester has been a little more unique. Since the beginning of the term, one of my classes has been introduced to a neat program. I'm not supposed to say too much about it since the program is just being developed, but our physics class is using a new software called "Matlab". Within Matlab we are able to set up a number of different applications. Force vectors, electric fields of particles, positions of particles during their encounters with particles, etc....I know this may sound kind of geeky, but it’s a really nice way of visualizing the problems we solve in class after crunching the numbers. I am a hand’s on learner so it’s a good conceptual tool to see our answers, through the support of mathematics. The program is still being tested, meaning there are still some bugs in the system that our class can inform the designers about, but overall it’s a pretty solid tool for the class to learn from. I think it is really neat that we get to be the guinea pigs for something like this. We use other computer software like Logger Pro, excel and such for chemistry, but it’s cool to be able to say you were the first to work on it....Well, anyways, that’s all I got for you today, hope you all are enjoying the weekend. I am going to do the same.

Take care....Josh Baillargeon