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Interferometers are a physical phenomenon studied unto themselves and have an additional purpose of being sensitive detectors, specifically used for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) to detect gravitational waves from supernovae. An interferometer was first used in the classical optics Michelson-Morley experiment in which researchers sought to detect 'aether' flow, the movement of the aether within they thought light travelled. The experimental setup consisted of a single incoming beam of light incident on a beam splitter. The beam splitter passed half of the incident beam through itself (the transmitted beam) toward a mirror and the other half was reflected (the reflected beam) toward another mirror. The beam paths were orthogonal and referred to as the "arms" of the interferometer. At each mirror, the beam was reflected back toward the beam splitter, and at the beam splitter the beams were reunited, or "superimposed" upon each other to create one output beam. The output beam t

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Turing School Prework

Task A- Practice Typing:

• screenshots of scores will be posted in comments

Task B- Algorithmic Thinking & Logic:

• screenshots of completed sections will be posted in comments

Task C- Create your Gist:

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* What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you?

Empathy has played an interesting role in my life. I'm an empathetic person, as I think most people are. I've always "felt" for others but haven't always acted on it. Acting on empathy helped me the most as a teacher. Being a high school physics teacher forced me to put on the minds of my students. Without understanding their perspective and rationalization for misconceptions, I wouldn't have been a very effective teacher. Empathy has also been essential in developing relations with others, both personally and professionally. Having an emotional connection as a foundation for a positive relationship can't exist without empathy.

* How does empathy help you build better software?

I think empathy can help me build better software by seriously considering the end user. If a team is able to consider all of the needs of the user by putting themselves in their shoes, I think a superior product will prevail. It's also interesting to cons

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The first thing I found interesting from the article was on clarifying the pathways to success. When I was considering the pursuit of a physics Ph.D., there was never any 7 steps-to-success pamphlet. I think that clarifying the pathways for achieving what you want in a career woud be helpful for people of any demographic. I think a lot of the "problems" with underrepresented demographics in CS or other STEM/professional fields is a lack of exposure in educational settings that are earlier than college.

For example, when I was a physics teacher, something like 80% of my students were male while other sciences were close to evenly split in gender demographics. Most curricula use examples that excite males more than females. For example, the class I taught was project based with lots of things that interested boys: cars, machines, and things that blow up. This isn't done necessarily with boys in mind or to exclude females. These examples lend themselves almost too easily to physics that they are used without th

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While I think the author has some valid points regarding the intersection of software and the human experience, the majority of the article strikes me as a knee jerk reaction to the election. I agree that there are deranged CEOs using technology to act like philosopher kings raking in the money, but I disagree with the idea that Silicon Valley has an empathy vacuum. It's much more realistic to observe that humans are in the Information Age and haven't adequately developed public policy and education on how we allow technology to affect our lives. I think it's best to focus on solutions and how we can move forward to create a society we're proud of.

I think many issues the author lamented can be addressed via education. When I was first introduced to the Internet, very little of the education I received focused on verifying information found on various sites. Schools should consider adding a digital citizenship course that encompasses topics like verifying information, maintaining security with password mana

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The tactics of the HubSpot culture-makers struck me as very Ministry of Truth-y. Language defines how we think through and about ideas, and controlling word usage can limit the scope in which people consider ideas or are able to engage in metacognition. It's very unfortunate that companies such as HubSpot prey on the entry level worker and dangle benefits in front of them instead of providing them with tangible compensation and supporting their individual growth. I don't think I could work for a company like HubSpot. It seems that they are very concerned with the uniformity of thought of their employees. It also seems ironic that places so concerned with "creating amazing culture" have little room for people that have different opinions and needs. While a pleasurable work environment is nice, I need some personal space and time to think and process. Deep practice doesn't happen with bros shooting nerf darts at you.

The most important thing I'm looking for in a job is how they'll support me in growing my s

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Lightning Talk: How Interferometers Work

Presentation Info

Presentation will be given Wednesday, 12/21/2016 to module 1 students.

Possible Topics to be Included

• Einstein's Theory of Relativity
  • spacetime visualization
  • how LIGO tests the theory with curent setup

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Setting Group Expectations

Group Member Names: Dan Olson, Katy Farmer, Courtney Meyerhofer

Project Manager: Courtney Meyerhofer

0. What is the project manager's role? How do we want the days to be scheduled? What do we want included in the daily schedule?

• Scheduling:
  • Keep track of pairings
• summary of each day (accountability, cards)

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Tokenization

require 'ripper'
require 'pp'
code = <<STR

10.times do |n|
  puts n
end
 

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Intermediate SQL Workshop

• Run psql
• You may need to run CREATE DATABASE intermediate_sql;
• To exit this shell, you can run CTRL d

Create tables

Let's create some tables in the database.