I also wanted some advice on the supplement essays for stanford
for the first question:
Stanford students are known to possess intellectual vitality. State one idea or experience that you had that you find intellectually engaging.
I wrote two, any comments would be helpful
Like most testosterone filled teenage guys, I have always been fascinated by speed. I remember being in awe when I first starting understand light and how fast it travels. And this amazement has never died down, even in my senior year of high school when I was first introduced to Einstein's theory of relativity. I was thrilled to learn that nothing can go faster than light. I immediately tried and am still trying to poke holes in the theory that has been the basis of modern physics. What about something that doesn't seem to have a speed such as gravity? After all it's only a force as opposed to a wave. If the sun suddenly ceased to exist, light would continue to reach the Earth for around 10 minutes but would it still keep revolving around a now-nonexistent sun for those 10 minutes or would it just float through space? And what about a when you shine a spotlight into one section of the sky and then swing it to the other. Didn't the light move across the sky faster than light itself? And what if Person A is on Earth and holds one end of a stick and Person B is on a planet more than a million miles away. If person A shakes one end of the stick, Person B should feel the movement instantaneously which means the stick moved faster than the speed of light. I was dismayed when I realized my attempts at taking down Einstein were futile since light and sticks are both made up of particles which individually are obeying relativity. I then started thinking about what the implications would be if light speed could be surpassed. Moments after the Big Bang if everything had traveled faster than light, we would never be able to witness any of these galaxies, solar systems or stars. They would be traveling faster than light and thus the light waves would never reach us. And what if light could be slowed down to below the velocity of a car? There would be a lot more accidents for sure since it's pretty hard to avoid a car that you can't see.
My jaw almost hit the floor as I heard a guy in my class casually tell our teacher that he didn't believe in evolution. My hand went up so fast; I might have torn a tendon in my shoulder. I then proceeded in a half hour rant about why evolution is obviously what has created out species and anyone that thinks otherwise would be foolish. But I was amazed by how stubborn and unconvinced people in my class were. They couldn't accept fact and instead tried to promote their religion's theory as much as they could while trying to shoot down evolution. They complained about little evidence there is in support for evolution while their own theories had absolutely none. It made me wonder about how religion plays such a huge part in so many people's lives that they can't even accept scientific fact. When we talk about gravity, everyone readily accepts it as truth but when we talk about evolution which has no less proof than gravity, people start arguing since their respective religions say otherwise. In our day and age, with all our technology and scientific knowledge it's extremely surprising that people still put their unconditional faith in their religion's theories even though they are being proven wrong with more proof accumulating by the day. You would think that with the advancement in society, people would be educated enough to give up medieval beliefs and accept proven facts. But instead, people still shut their eyes to anything but what their religion tells them. If tomorrow, their leader says that evolution is a fact, then all of a sudden everyone will accept it and people will retract everything they have ever said about it. This is extremely ironic since what they said earlier was supposed to be their beliefs. The scariest part of this is that this trend doesn't look like ending at all. No matter how much technology advances and how much knowledge we gain, these people are going to stay firm in their beliefs which raises the question: how will society ever advance with people like these?
thanks
for the first question:
Stanford students are known to possess intellectual vitality. State one idea or experience that you had that you find intellectually engaging.
I wrote two, any comments would be helpful
Like most testosterone filled teenage guys, I have always been fascinated by speed. I remember being in awe when I first starting understand light and how fast it travels. And this amazement has never died down, even in my senior year of high school when I was first introduced to Einstein's theory of relativity. I was thrilled to learn that nothing can go faster than light. I immediately tried and am still trying to poke holes in the theory that has been the basis of modern physics. What about something that doesn't seem to have a speed such as gravity? After all it's only a force as opposed to a wave. If the sun suddenly ceased to exist, light would continue to reach the Earth for around 10 minutes but would it still keep revolving around a now-nonexistent sun for those 10 minutes or would it just float through space? And what about a when you shine a spotlight into one section of the sky and then swing it to the other. Didn't the light move across the sky faster than light itself? And what if Person A is on Earth and holds one end of a stick and Person B is on a planet more than a million miles away. If person A shakes one end of the stick, Person B should feel the movement instantaneously which means the stick moved faster than the speed of light. I was dismayed when I realized my attempts at taking down Einstein were futile since light and sticks are both made up of particles which individually are obeying relativity. I then started thinking about what the implications would be if light speed could be surpassed. Moments after the Big Bang if everything had traveled faster than light, we would never be able to witness any of these galaxies, solar systems or stars. They would be traveling faster than light and thus the light waves would never reach us. And what if light could be slowed down to below the velocity of a car? There would be a lot more accidents for sure since it's pretty hard to avoid a car that you can't see.
My jaw almost hit the floor as I heard a guy in my class casually tell our teacher that he didn't believe in evolution. My hand went up so fast; I might have torn a tendon in my shoulder. I then proceeded in a half hour rant about why evolution is obviously what has created out species and anyone that thinks otherwise would be foolish. But I was amazed by how stubborn and unconvinced people in my class were. They couldn't accept fact and instead tried to promote their religion's theory as much as they could while trying to shoot down evolution. They complained about little evidence there is in support for evolution while their own theories had absolutely none. It made me wonder about how religion plays such a huge part in so many people's lives that they can't even accept scientific fact. When we talk about gravity, everyone readily accepts it as truth but when we talk about evolution which has no less proof than gravity, people start arguing since their respective religions say otherwise. In our day and age, with all our technology and scientific knowledge it's extremely surprising that people still put their unconditional faith in their religion's theories even though they are being proven wrong with more proof accumulating by the day. You would think that with the advancement in society, people would be educated enough to give up medieval beliefs and accept proven facts. But instead, people still shut their eyes to anything but what their religion tells them. If tomorrow, their leader says that evolution is a fact, then all of a sudden everyone will accept it and people will retract everything they have ever said about it. This is extremely ironic since what they said earlier was supposed to be their beliefs. The scariest part of this is that this trend doesn't look like ending at all. No matter how much technology advances and how much knowledge we gain, these people are going to stay firm in their beliefs which raises the question: how will society ever advance with people like these?
thanks
