Home Education Archives : Proslogion

Science Roots: A Great Companion For Studying Biology

Biology is a vocabulary-driven science, especially in the introductory classes that are required for high school and early college. In the biology course I co-wrote with Dr. Paul Madtes, for example, students are required to learn more than 15 new vocabulary words every two weeks. More importantly, the later vocabulary words require that they remember the definitions of the earlier vocabulary words, so they must keep all of those definitions in mind throughout the entire course. Needless to say, this can be a serious challenge for some students, especially those who don’t memorize things easily.

Is there a way to help students with this potentially daunting task? There is. Most science terms have their roots in Latin or ancient Greek, and those roots appear over and over again in different vocabulary words. If you learn one root word, you end up having insight into multiple scientific terms. Consider the Greek root hypo, which means “under” or “below.” It is used in biological terms like hypodermis (under the dermis), hypothermia (below-normal body temperature), hypoglycemic (below-normal blood sugar), and hypotonic (below-normal solute concentration). Now consider the Greek root hyper, which means “over” or “more than.” With that information, you know what hyperthermia, hyperglycemic, and hypertonic mean. Of course, this isn’t perfect, because there is no hyperdermis. Instead, we have an epidermis, which uses the Greek root epi, meaning “on top of” or “over.” Nevertheless, knowledge of specific Latin and Greek words can really help you master biological language. In fact, it can help you better master the English language in general, since many everyday English words use these same roots.

Of course, the best way to do this is to learn Latin and Greek early in life. That’s why schools used to require all their students to learn Latin at a minimum. Nowadays, unfortunately, schools are focused on producing obedient, subservient workers instead of educated citizens. As a result, only private classical schools continue to require Latin of all their students. Nevertheless, you can still make use of Latin and Greek roots, even if you don’t know the languages. That’s the aim of Science Roots by Nancy Paula Hasseler (2nd edition revised by Stephen J. Nichols).

Students who use this book will make study card for each root, its meaning, and its source language (Greek or Latin). Underneath that, the student will write biology vocabulary words that use the root. The words are written emphasizing the root. Here is an example, which comes from the book’s introduction:

How will the student know when to make a card and when to add words to it? Well, since it is being published by the same company that publishes Discovering Design with Biology (the book I co-wrote with Dr. Paul Madtes), Science Roots is designed for the student to make and add to the cards when they come to the vocabulary words in that biology book. I already encourage students to make notecards for each vocabulary word, so using Science Roots doesn’t produce a lot more work for the students. They need to make notecards anyway, so why not make this kind? It will have additional information on it, and more importantly, it will help them see the connections between the words that they are learning.

If students use Science Roots along with (or before) Discovering Design with Biology, they will not only have a deeper understanding of the language of biology, but they will probably also have an easier time learning all those words!

Interesting Exercise with Artificial Intelligence Writing

With a new school year coming up, I decided to play with ChatGPT a bit to see if I could notice any patterns that might help me recognize when students use it to “help” them with their writing assignments. I know there are tools that help you do this, but they are not as reliable as I would like them to be. This is because you can ask ChatGPT (and other AI programs) to write in a particular style, which can often “humanize” the writing to a point where even the tools can’t recognize the writing as being generated by a computer program.

For example, I asked ChatGPT to write an explanation of Newton’s Second Law, with an example problem, in the style of Dr. Jay L. Wile (that’s me). Here is what I got. First, I was gratified to see what ChatGPT wrote before giving me the essay:

Dr. Jay L. Wile, known for his clear and accessible explanations in science, would likely present Newton’s Second Law in a straightforward and educational manner.

It also ended with a nice statement:

Dr. Jay L. Wile’s explanations often include practical examples and clear step-by-step problem-solving methods to help students grasp complex concepts effectively.

However, if I look at the essay, I don’t see a lot of my style in it. It does have a less-than-formal tone, which is typical of me, but that’s about it. Interestingly enough, when I put this essay (minus the parts quoted above) into two programs designed to detect whether or not the essay was written by AI, Grammarly’s tool said only 12% of it was AI-generated, while Phrasly said it was 50% AI-generated. Both were wrong, because it was 100% AI-generated.

Since I was struck by the fact that ChatGPT added notes about how I write, I wondered if it would recognize other scientific authors. So I asked ChatGPT to write the same essay, but in the style of other authors. Some were authors of homeschool science material, while others were authors of well-known university physics texts. Of the six authors I tried, it added statements about only one, Dr. Raymond A. Serway. It mentioned his organized, methodical style, which I agree with (I used his text in my calculus-based physics courses when I taught it at the university level).

Even though ChatGPT didn’t add statements about the other 5 authors, the style of each essay was slightly different. I don’t know if ChatGPT didn’t recognize those authors and just used different writing styles or recognized them but didn’t add statements about their writing. On a whim, I decided to ask it to write the same essay in the style of an author who doesn’t write about science, Andrew Pudewa. I got his permission to share what it came up with. I am familiar with Andrew’s work, and once again, I don’t see a lot of his style in this essay. Nevertheless, note that it did add a comment about his writing style:

Andrew Pudewa, the founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing, is known for his clear, engaging explanations that make complex ideas accessible…This style of explanation emphasizes clarity and relatability, making complex concepts more understandable and engaging.

I would agree with that assessment.

Now, of course, ChatGPT is free, so I am sure there are better AI tools out there. Nevertheless, based on this little test, I am not very impressed with AI writing. At the same time, however, I would say that AI seems to be accurate when it comes to evaluating an author’s style when it decides to add an evaluation.

My Review of Exploring Creation With Physical Science, 4th Edition

I wrote the first two editions of Exploring Creation With Physical Science, but the publisher used a different author (Vicki Dincher) to make changes for a third edition. As I noted on this blog, there were many serious scientific errors in that third edition, and the discussion of some topics was very confusing. I assume a lot of people agreed with that assessment, because after only four years, the author significantly revamped the course to produce the fourth edition.

When I heard that the fourth edition was coming out, I hoped that the author had corrected the serious scientific errors that I pointed out in my full review of the third edition. Fortunately, some of them were. For example, the author no longer states that we measure heat with degrees Celsius. That’s good, since heat is a form of energy. Thus, it needs to be measured with an energy unit, not a temperature unit.

However, the author still doesn’t define temperature properly. In the third edition, she said it was a measure of the heat energy in a substance, which is wrong. In this edition, she leaves out “heat” and says it is a measure of the energy in a substance. That’s better, but still not correct. The proper definition of temperature states it is a measure of the energy of random motion in the molecules of a substance. This is important, because a ball sitting on the floor has less energy than a ball sitting on a desk, but if they have been in the same room for a long time, both balls have the same temperature. Thus, temperature is not a measure of the energy in an object.

While some of the major errors have been fixed, many of them have not. For example, the author still incorrectly informs the students that the works of the Greek philosophers were lost when the West Latinized, and they weren’t “rediscovered” until the Renaissance. That is blatantly false. Greek classics became influential once again beginning in about the 10th century, and they were debated vigorously throughout the rest of the Middle Ages. Similarly, both editions still misinform the students about acceleration. The author says negative acceleration means an object is slowing down. That is simply not true. Since acceleration and velocity are both vectors, they can be either positive or negative depending on direction. If the velocity’s direction makes it negative, then a negative acceleration indicates that the object is speeding up!

Other issues are partly fixed. For example, in the third edition, the author refers to all metric units as SI units. They are not. There is only one SI unit for each measured quantity. For example, while you can use many metric units to measure mass (grams, milligrams, micrograms, etc.), there is only one SI unit: kilograms. She has mostly fixed this, but not completely. On page 19, she says, “If you wanted to measure the length of something small, the only unit you could use in the English system would be the inch. However, if you used SI units, you would have all sorts of options for which unit to use.” That’s false. There is only one SI unit for length: the meter. Thus, that would be your only choice in SI units.

So if the author didn’t fix all the errors in the third edition, what is the point of having a fourth edition? I am not sure. The biggest difference between the editions is that the fourth edition has many sections called “advanced concepts.” They are set apart from the rest of the chapter, and the introduction to the book says that students are encouraged to read through the advanced concepts, but unless the students are on the “advanced track” they don’t need to worry about answering questions about those concepts on the study guides and tests.

While I don’t have a problem with that in principle, most of these “advanced concepts” are not advanced at all. They belong in a standard physical science course. For example, in this edition, the definition of a scientific model is an advanced concept. Additional “advanced concepts” are the distinction between heterogeneous and homogeneous solutions, the definitions of sublimation and deposition, the description of isotopes, how to deal with squares in mathematical equations, the difference between charging by condition and induction, and how series circuits are different from parallel circuits. As near as I can tell, the author went through topics that weren’t explained very well and simply made them “advanced concepts” that the students could skip. In my view, this is simply dumbing down the course.

Before I received this new edition, I was hoping that the author had fixed the many problems of the previous edition so that I could recommend it. Unfortunately, I cannot. If you are forced to use this course because of a co-op that you are in, please encourage your student to thoroughly cover everything, even the “advanced concepts.” It will be difficult, since they aren’t explained well, but if the student doesn’t do this, I would say that the level of the course is, at best, seventh grade.

A Schedule for Using Discovering Design With Chemistry in Classical Conversations

As some of you may be aware, I am not a fan of the third edition of Exploring Creation With Chemistry (ECC). Others have also taken a dim view of ECC (see here, here, and here). Because I couldn’t recommend ECC to homeschoolers, I wrote a new chemistry course, whose front cover is pictured on the left.

Not everyone seems to agree with my view of ECC, since there are some homeschooling organizations that still use it. One of those organizations is Classical Conversations (CC). Over the years, I have had many CC mothers tell me that while the CC classes use ECC, they are using Discovering Design With Chemistry at home so that their students can learn chemistry more completely. However, it can be difficult, because the two books cover topics in a different order. Therefore, I have come up with a guide that allows you to synchronize my chemistry course to the CC schedule.

If you would like to use my chemistry course and be synchronized to the CC schedule, click here.

Talon Smith, Homeschool Graduate and Accomplished Pianist

Talon Smith at the piano. The quote is from a Gramophone review of a performance. It says:
“Talon’s two utterly independent hands and acuity in rhythmic pointing stresses line over mass evoking memories of Josef Hoffman’s 1937 legendary Golden Jubilee performance.”
(click for source)

During the 2018/2019 academic year, I had a physics student named Talon Smith. He was excellent (A’s on all the assignments), but he frequently missed class. His mother would warn me ahead of time, saying that Talon had a piano concert or recital at which he had to perform. Since he was clearly learning the material, I didn’t worry about him missing class so much. Well…several years later I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw a post from Talon Smith Music (I try to play the piano, so I get random piano-related posts). The post linked to an incredible video of a pianist playing four Chopin pieces at the 18th Chopin competition in Warsaw, Poland. The name rang a bell, but I thought, “That can’t be the student I had, can it?” Well, I looked up my old records, found his email address, and matched it to the Facebook page that made the post. I suddenly realized that he missed my physics classes so that he could perform at world-class music events!

I was able to catch up with Talon in the New Year, and our discussion was fascinating. He started taking piano lessons when he was 5 years old. He says his very first teacher was the perfect fit, because he did not confine Talon to a regimented way of teaching. Instead, he taught Talon as an individual, which nurtured Talon’s love for music. When Talon moved on to another teacher (at the age of 9), the new teacher noticed his obvious talent (and love for the music), so the teacher entered him into a competition. He started doing more competitions, and at the ripe old age of 13, his big break occurred. His teacher at that time encouraged him to enter The Gina Bachauer piano competition, which is international. He was hesitant, but he practiced for the audition for six weeks, and based on that audition, he was accepted into the competition (in the age 11-14 category). By the time the actual competition came around, he was 14, and he won his age category. He says that he was very surprised to have won, but decided that he was very grateful for the process, from which he learned a great deal.

He has continued to perform in concerts and competitions around the world, and has continued to receive accolades for his work. You can find several videos of his amazing performances by searching his name on YouTube. My favorite comes from the 17th Arthur Rubinstein Competition, where he plays 24 pieces of his own composition. I have purchased the sheet music for those pieces, because I think I might be able to play two or three of them (with a lot of practice).

Here is how he sums up his piano career so far:

There are a lot of pianists who probably work harder than me, but so many things have gone right for me. Not because I deserve it, or because of my efforts, but God has given me some great opportunities and great people in my life. My mom manages me and is the single most important person for me accomplishing what I have accomplished.

God willing, he is looking for a long and successful career in music. However, he primarily sees what he is doing as a way to enjoy music while glorifying God. He makes it clear that he doesn’t think he needs to be playing sacred music to glorify God. He says:

The Bible says to do whatever you do for God’s glory. So music doesn’t necessarily have to be sacred to glorify Him. What glorifies God most is excellence – trying to reflect the excellence of God’s character and His nature in what you do. That can speak louder than what is actually being done.

I wholeheartedly agree. Whether you are playing a Beethoven sonata or doing a physics experiment, you glorify God by doing it in an excellent way!

So why does he say that his mother is “the single most important person” for his accomplishments? First, she helped to developed a love for music in him by playing classical music in the house, even while he was still in the womb. Second, she provided him with a balanced homeschool education. Throughout his K-12 homeschooling experience, he took all the standard courses that students take, as well as more difficult courses (like physics) that some students avoid. Nevertheless, by homeschooling him, she gave him the flexibility he needed. He could concentrate on the academically rigorous courses at times when he wasn’t consumed with practicing for a competition or concert. In the end, he doesn’t think he would be as accomplished a pianist if he hadn’t been homeschooled.

I want to end this with one of the most important things Talon said, at least from a musical perspective. He said that when he started out doing competitions and concerts, he was focused on not making any mistakes. However, as he matured, he began to agree with a quote that is often attributed to Beethoven:

To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.

While Beethoven probably never said that particular phrase, one of his pupils indicates that he would agree with the sentiment. Talon said that when he doesn’t focus on mistakes and instead just focuses on enjoying the music, he likes his own playing much better. For someone like me (who often plays like he is wearing mittens) that’s a comforting thing to consider.

Annie Lee Keller, A Homeschool Graduate With Many Options

Annie Lee Keller demonstrating a Taekwondo skill.

It has been a while since I updated this part of my blog, but I really want to add some more material, since I have had the privilege of meeting many incredible homeschooled students over the years. One such student is Annie Lee Keller, who was in two of my online courses (honors chemistry and honors physics).

Because she was one of my online students, she sent me her graduation announcement at the end of the 2022 school year, and I was intrigued to learn that she was earning two degrees at the same time: her high school degree and her associate degree in digital media from Marantha Baptist University. She uses the talents she developed while earning that degree to produce unique gifts that she sells at her online store. Her work is so impressive that the printing service she uses to produce her gifts selected her as one of three people to travel to Riga, Latvia (all expenses paid) to attend their largest trade show!

How did she manage to earn two degrees at once and be so successful with her online store? She has been homeschooled since the very beginning of her education, and when she reached high school, her mother suggested that she work toward a post-high-school degree in addition to her high school degree. Since she already did photography for her parents’ business (Taekwondo instruction) and her church, she decided to study digital media. She took her classes online, and homeschooling allowed her to flex her schedule so that she could easily fit the demands of those classes into the rest of her education. After earning her associate degree, she is currently working on a bachelor’s degree in business (online once again) and hopes to get a master’s in creation apologetics. She is also the ministry assistant at her local church.

What does she want to do with all this experience and education? She thinks she might work in the graphic design department at an apologetics ministry. However, she also has a black belt in Taekwondo and is an instructor. In fact, there is a charter school near her where Taekwondo is a part of the curriculum, and she teaches (along with her parents) in some of those classes. Thus, she could also continue in the family business. The point is that homeschooling has given her lots of options, a lot more than she would have had if she’d been a public- or private-school student. She says:

Homeschooling gave me the ability to learn and grow in the areas that I am passionate about, and I got to do it in my own style.

That is, of course, one of the most important strengths of homeschooling. Students are not given a “one-size fits all” education. Instead, their education can be tailored to them so that they can, indeed, learn in their own style.

What’s an example of learning in her own style? Sometimes, she would stack all her homeschooling work for the week into a couple of days so that she could spend the rest of the week concentrating on her digital media work or spending time with her friends. In fact, she thinks homeschooling allowed her to have more of a social life than she would have otherwise had, partly because of its flexibility, and partly because she didn’t have to worry about completing busy work.

I asked her what she would say to students who are being homeschooled, and if you knew Annie, you would understand that this statement really encapsulates her approach to life:

Treat each day as unique, because every day you learn something new and something different…each day is special.

She then hastened to add this wise tidbit:

Don’t leave God out of the equation. He needs to be the first variable. He needs to be the first thing you think about when you get out of bed. He needs to be first.

I couldn’t agree more.

Homeschooling and a Cowboy Church Lead a Former Associate of Richard Dawkins to Christ!

Josh Timonen and his Family
(Image from the video embedded below)

I was sent this very interesting video from Living Waters, a ministry founded by Ray Comfort. It’s a discussion among three men associated with the ministry and Josh Timonen, a former associate of Richard Dawkins.

The video is rather long and a bit disjointed, so I thought I would give you a summary, along with my “color commentary.”

Josh Timonen was an American computer programmer who was also an atheist, and he spent a lot of time reading atheist websites. That’s how he learned about Richard Dawkins. However, he noticed that Dawkins didn’t have a website. After watching “Root of All Evil?”, he found an email address for Dawkins and wrote to him, offering to build him a website. To his surprise, Dawkins responded. They decided to meet. While Timonen and his wife (also an atheist) were traveling back to the U.S. from India (they were volunteering for a charitable organization there), he met with Dawkins (who lives in England), and Dawkins decided that Timonen should definitely build a website for him. This was just before The God Delusion was published, and Timonen’s work on the website earned him a mention in the preface:

Nowadays, a book such as this is not complete until it becomes the nucleus of a living website, a forum for supplementary materials, reactions, discussions, questions and answers – who knows what the future may bring? I hope that www.richarddawkins.net/, the website of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, will come to fill that role, and I am extremely grateful to Josh Timonen for the artistry, professionalism and sheer hard work that he is putting into it. (p. 7)

Dawkins was obviously very happy with Timonen’s work, since he dedicated his next book, The Greatest Show on Earth, to Timonen.

Timonen then started to work on a documentary with Dawkins, but because of some people associated with Dawkins (Timonen calls them “unstable”), Timonen decided to stop working on both the documentary and the website. He didn’t want to be associated with Dawkins anymore. This did not go over well, and Dawkins ended up suing him in 2010. However, that lawsuit was dismissed, and Timonen’s countersuit was settled out of court.

Timonen and his wife then moved to Portland, Oregon. The riots that happened there in 2020 became a wakeup call for him. He was distraught by the violence and was disheartened that many of his atheist friends (and the media) supported it. As a result, he and his family (by this time, they had a daughter) left Portland and moved to Waco, Texas. They started homeschooling their daughter (as atheists), but they decided that she needed some socialization. His wife mentioned a “cowboy church” nearby (Top Hand Cowboy Church), so they decided to see if it would give their daughter the socialization she needed. Mind you, they were still atheists at that point. However, they decided the church worked for their daughter, so they kept going.

Of course, hearing the Word preached (even though he didn’t believe it) made an impact. At some point, he realized:

…ok, I see how [the church is] benefitting the community, the people that are going. Maybe I should give it a better shake…so I started reading the Bible…when I got done with that I…thought to myself well, that’s something, but there’s still a lot of crazy stuff in here that I don’t think I buy.

However, he did come to the realization that he had always just accepted what the atheists said and had never really looked into it for himself. Thus, he read Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Christ. He eventually realized that he had to:

…deal with the fact that it was real. That Jesus was real.

He started reading the Bible again, and he also read more books about the Bible. Of course, since he and his wife were experiencing this church together, he also had a lot of discussions with her about Christ. Eventually, he was convicted that what the church was teaching is true. He says

I didn’t have an answer for every atheist thought that had come before…but that conviction is there, in the moment, that seed, that initial peace, that you know is true, and you’re like, well the rest of it will figure itself out.

I love that statement. He didn’t think he needed an answer to every atheist argument, because he was convinced of the truth of Christianity. More Christian organizations need to stress this fact. Understanding the truth of Christ doesn’t require answering every challenge to your faith. It simply requires realizing that God’s truth outweighs those objections.

Of course, as a homeschooling advocate, I also love the fact that homeschooling his daughter played a pivotal role in his journey to Christ. Had they not been homeschooling, he and his family would never have gone to a church.

Let that be a lesson to the churches out there: People come to you for lots of reasons other than to hear the truth. You shouldn’t expect them to believe what you believe right away. Rejoice for whatever reason they have come, and simply preach the Word. If you do that, you will transform lives. Just look at Josh Timonen’s!

Discovering Design With Physics

As I mentioned in my previous post, I haven’t been blogging much because I have been busy teaching classes and writing my new physics course, Discovering Design with Physics. However, that book is now at the printer, so I have more time for blogging. My previous post discussed how I begin and end the course, and now I want to give my readers an idea of what the differences are between my new physics course and the one that is still in print (Exploring Creation with Physics, 2nd Edition).

I wrote Exploring Creation with Physics, 2nd Edition almost 20 years ago, and while the material required for a college-prep physics course hasn’t changed since then, there have been some new developments in physics that are worth addressing. For example, over the past 11 years, the Voyager spacecrafts left our solar system. That is not only interesting in and of itself, but it is also a dramatic demonstration of Newton’s First Law of Motion. After all, they have been moving at roughly the same velocity since 1989, despite the fact that they haven’t used their fuel for propulsion since then! As another example, Pluto lost its status as a planet about 17 years ago. Thus, in this new physics book, it is not listed as one of the planets in the solar system.

More importantly, I decided to take a completely different approach in writing this new book. The “traditional” approach to physics is to start with the definitions of displacement, velocity, and acceleration. From there, you use equations to analyze motion in both one and two dimensions. After that, you then discuss Newton’s Laws, which actually dictate the behavior you have been using equations to analyze. That’s how I wrote Exploring Creation with Physics, 2nd Edition, because that’s the way every text from which I taught did it. However, I have never been happy with that approach. So for the new book, I decided to discuss displacement, velocity, and acceleration in the context of Newton’s Laws. That means the students learn about displacement and velocity in the context of Newton’s First Law, and then they learn about acceleration in the context of Newton’s Second and Third Laws. That way, the students learn why the motion being analyzed actually happens. The PhD physicist who reviewed the book for accuracy told me that this was a more satisfying treatment of motion.

In addition, I decided to take a new approach with the experiments as well. In the previous book, the students did several experiments where they were measuring things like acceleration, velocity, the period of a system’s motion, etc. Since those experiments involved measuring short intervals of time, the students had to repeat the experiment several times and then average the results so as to reduce experimental error. That is an important technique to learn, but it is also time-consuming. In the new physics course, the students do fewer experiments like that. They still learn the technique, but since they don’t use it as much, the experiments are not as repetitive or time consuming. Of course, that doesn’t mean there are fewer experiments. In fact, there are six more experiments in the new course compared to the old course!

Also, since I have been teaching physics for many years since the first book was written, I have learned better ways to communicate some of the more difficult concepts in the material. As a result, students will understand the material better. To ensure this, I field-tested the course with more than 70 students. They regularly communicated with me regarding how they were learning, and they even offered some excellent suggestions which led to some changes in the text. I have something very exciting to share about the results of that field test, but I am not at liberty to do so at this time. Be assured that I will do so when I am allowed.

Finally, my publisher has given me assurances that the student text will always be published as a hardcover book, since we encourage parents to use it for all their children over the course of many years. This is important, as there are some homeschooling publishers who have been producing their student texts as softcover books, which I think is unfortunate.

Of course, you might be wondering whether or not you should get this new text if you already have Exploring Creation with Physics, 2nd Edition. The new course is most certainly better than the old one for the reasons mentioned above. However, the old one is still a very good course. Thus, it really depends on how much strain the cost of the new course will put on your budget.

How I Begin and End My New Physics Book

Dr. Alfred Kastler (left), Dr. Isidor Isaac Rabi (middle), and Dr. Nathan T. Brewer (right)

My blog has been mostly silent because I have been teaching classes and working on my new physics book, Discovering Design with Physics. However, classes are winding down, and my new physics book is at the printer. I will have a more thorough post about the book itself next week, including how it is different from my old physics book. For right now, however, I thought my readers might be interested in how it begins and ends. The introduction to the student text begins this way:

Have you ever taken something apart in an attempt to figure out how it works? I have. Usually, I end up ruining it and not learning much. On the rare occasion when I am successful, however, I get a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. In some ways, that’s what the subject of physics is all about. We try to “take the world apart” to see how it works. We look for laws and equations that allow us to analyze processes that occur on a very small scale (like electrons traveling through a conductor), processes that occur on an everyday scale (such as baseballs being hit by bats), and processes that occur on a very large scale (like planets orbiting the sun). If we can properly analyze these processes, we can start to understand how the world works.

As you start “taking apart” the world in this course, you should be struck by how intricately designed everything is. The world runs amazingly well, because all its parts have been designed to work together. As French physicist and Nobel Laureate Alfred Kastler states:

The idea that the world, the material universe, was created all by itself, seems absurd to me. I only conceive of the world with a creator, therefore a God. For a physicist, a single atom is so complicated and so rich in intelligence, that the materialistic universe has no meaning.
(Fabre-luce Alfred, L’été de la résurrection, Grasset 1971, p. 105, translated from French by Fernando José Walsh)

I hope that as you read this book, you will come to see the truth of Dr. Kastler’s words.

After spending 16 chapters “taking apart the world,” I end my discussion of physics this way:

You have reached the end of this high-school physics course. You have learned a lot about how God’s creation works, and I hope that this has given you a deeper sense of awe for our Creator. That’s certainly what studying physics has done for me. As I learn more and more about the intricacies of how the world works, I cannot help but be filled with wonder for its Designer.

I think Dr. Isidor Isaac Rabi, who won the 1944 Nobel Prize for physics, said it best:

Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, “Will it bring you nearer to God?”
(“I. I. Rabi As Educator and Science Warrior,” Physics Today, 52(9):38, 1999).

I think that’s a great question to ask of any endeavor you wish to pursue.

It’s important to note that many other scientists share Dr. Rabi’s view. Homeschool graduate Dr. Nathan T. Brewer is a nuclear physicist whose research is focused on creating new elements. He says,

The world is absolutely breathtaking, and studying the world’s beauty fuels my faith.
(https://blog.drwile.com/dr-nathan-t-brewer-homeschool-graduate-and-nuclear-physicist)

As you continue to study more of the amazing creation that God has given us, I hope you end up agreeing with Drs. Rabi and Brewer!

Number of Families Homeschooling Drops, Probably For The First Time

When the pandemic shut down the schools, many parents were horrified to see what their children were being taught on a daily basis. Others saw that “zoom school” just wasn’t a good way to educate children. As a result, many parents started homeschooling. Along with others, I read the news reports (like this one) covering this phenomenon.

Unfortunately, I have a rather cynical view of my fellow parents. I think that a lot of people who have children would be better off with pets, because they don’t really want to spend the time, effort, and energy necessary to properly raise their children. Thus, while I was happy to see more parents choosing the most effective model of education, I was skeptical that it would last.

Well, homeschooling researcher Dr. Brian Ray has released an analysis that at least partially confirms my cynical view. Using data from the United States Department of Education, the United States Census Bureau, an Education Next survey, and all state-level departments with relevant publicly available data, Dr. Ray estimated the number of students being homeschooled in 2020, 2021, and 2022 and then compared those numbers to previous estimates. The results are shown in the graph above.

Notice that homeschooling grew quite a bit from 2020 to 2021, which is consistent with the news reports. However, in 2022, the numbers dropped, which is consistent with my cynical view of my fellow parents. Nevertheless, I am actually surprised at how little the numbers dropped. Look at the growth in homeschooling from 2016 to 2019. In that three-year period, it grew by about 9%. Compare that to the growth from 2019 to 2022, which includes the year of decline. That growth is 25%! So even after a lot of people left homeschooling, the growth has still been unusually high.

Now, of course, there are at least two caveats here. First, it is very difficult to estimate the number of children being homeschooled. However, given the fact that Dr. Ray has been doing it for decades, I think he is probably the most reliable source on the matter. The second caveat is that 2022 might not be the last year in which the numbers drop. We will have to wait and see.

Nevertheless, given what we know now, it seems that many more parents have discovered the fact that homeschooling is the best solution for their children. More importantly, they have stuck with it (at least so far). This gives me more hope for the next generation.