Greetings, Earthlings!
One of my favorite physics teachers often started class this way, gently and lightheartedly moving the class from a babbling cohort to a serious cadre, ready to engage some of the most important stuff we didn't know. It also helped us settle into the classroom setting—to shift our thinking from local considerations to more global perspectives. Just as the derivative of a function gives the rate of change at each point, while its integral is proportional to its average over a continuum of points, we were transported from our own nearby concerns to the plight of the planet with that one phrase (at least, on our better days). As I embark on my first turn with The Physics Teacher, I invite you to sit back and reflect with me a bit more on this contrast between the parochial and the universal.
Have you ever noticed how the...