As I have mentioned, I am taking a course on Cosmology (the study of the Universe) at North Island College.

Now I took lots of physics classes in my life starting in high school and on into University.  I am an Engineer.  And I kind of thought I had a handle on this whole package.  Gravity, photons, neutrons and galaxies but I am finding out that I knew very little.

So there we have a class of about 24 seniors (70 percent women) taking a class where the professor is introducing us to concepts that would make Sheldon on the TV program sweat.

( I may exaggerate a bit).

But Joel tells it in such an interesting manner that we are all fascinated.  It is only the second class but he is showing us things that I never knew before, or did not question.

You would think looking around our group that half would drop out but everyone is hanging on and talking about his classes.  Lots of questions flowing back and forth.

Did you know that light is made of particles called photons that have mass?  That is why light can be bent by gravity and explains why infra red light stopped at your skin turns into heat.

Did you know how we can determine the makeup of the molecular elements of a sun 100 million light years away.  How do you know that a galaxy is heading towards us or away and how do you determine its speed?  And the big question that we are waiting for is where did the Big Bang originate.  We already know it occurred 13.9 billion years ago, but where?  And what was there before?

This may sound like a special class for nerds but it shows that a good teacher can keep everyone interested.  He even makes Newton’s law of gravity understandable (well acceptable anyway)

Love it.