SPARKS ACROSS the GAP: ESSAYS by Megan E. Mericle, B.A
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SPARKS ACROSS THE GAP: ESSAYS By Megan E. Mericle, B.A. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing University of Alaska Fairbanks May 2017 APPROVED: Daryl Farmer, Committee Chair Sarah Stanley, Committee Co-Chair Gerri Brightwell, Committee Member Eileen Harney, Committee Member Richard Carr, Chair Department of English Todd Sherman, Dean College o f Liberal Arts Michael Castellini, Dean of the Graduate School Abstract Sparks Across the Gap is a collection of creative nonfiction essays that explores the humanity and artistry behind topics in the sciences, including black holes, microbes, and robotics. Each essay acts a bridge between the scientific and the personal. I examine my own scientific inheritance and the unconventional relationship I have with the field of science, searching for ways to incorporate research into my everyday life by looking at science and technology through the lens of my own memory. I critique issues that affect the culture of science, including female representation, the ongoing conflict with religion and the problem of separating individuality from collaboration. Sparks Across the Gap is my attempt to parse the confusion, hybridity and interconnectivity of living in science. iii iv Dedication This manuscript is dedicated to my mother and father, who taught me to always seek knowledge with compassion. v vi Table of Contents Page Title Page......................................................................................................................................................i Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... iii Dedication ................................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents .....................................................................................................................................vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. ix Autonomy .................................................................................................................................................... 1 Sklowskodite ............................................................................................................................................. 27 Eating from the Hybridized Tree of Knowledge ................................................................................. 54 Breaking Circuits ..................................................................................................................................... 78 Decoherence: The Metaphor in Physics..............................................................................................106 Stuffed Microbes .....................................................................................................................................130 A Mosaic on Tears................................................................................................................................. 159 Why Aren’t Electrons Black Holes? ....................................................................................................201 Works Consulted .................................................................................................................................... 221 vii viii Acknowledgements In this collection, the essay “Autonomy” has previously appeared inEntropy Magazine. Overall, the collaboration between science and writing in this manuscript would not have been possible without the advice and encouragement of my mentors in all realms. Their voices have helped shape this work, and have added another dimension to my researched life. First I would like to thank Daryl Farmer for his feedback and patience in reading many drafts of these essays. His sense of the underlying pulse of story has helped me center so many of these essays, and his mentorship over the course of the past three years has been extremely influential in my writing process. I would also like to thank Sarah Stanley for her enthusiasm, and our conversations about the links between this manuscript, my project paper, and my teaching. Her guidance has helped me to see my work within a larger context throughout my graduate school career. In addition, Gerri Brightwell’s attention to detail in her feedback, from workshop to the final draft of this manuscript, has inspired my own attempts to keep the reader engaged in each moment of the story. Thanks also to Eileen Harney, whose kind words and advice were most welcome, and to Mary Beth Leigh, for taking time out of her busy schedule to serve as an outside examiner and provide her scientific expertise. Finally, I would like to thank Elena Sparrow, who was generous enough to speak with me about women in science, and through sharing her story, provide a new perspective on sexism in the field of science. I am also forever grateful for the care and encouragement I’ve received from friends and family. I’m always impressed and inspired by the work of my writing peers in the Fairbanks MFA program, and would like to thank all those who’ve provided feedback in and out of workshop. Their careful consideration has helped throughout revision, and their own work helped to break down my assumptions in order to see writing anew. To Maeve Kirk, my mental ix twin, for your welcome diversions, Taylor Swift motivation and endless “you’re fine, you’ve got this” moments, I give an extremely grateful grimace-smile. And to Jon Hays, I always appreciate your constant support and confidence in me—thank you for being the accompaniment behind endless drafts and revisions. For my family, thank you for your willingness to appear in this manuscript. I hope my perspective on these shared memories compliments your own. To my mother, your heart is a constant reminder of my emotional responsibility as a writer, and your support keeps me grounded. And to my father, thank you for being my sponsor and continual tie to science, and I am so proud and grateful that many of our conversations inspired these essays—thank you for your trust as I shifted directions and for your constant support of my writing. Finally, I would like to thank my sister Mandy for her humor, commiseration and boundless enthusiasm, and my grandparents for their faith and affirmation throughout graduate school. Love to you all. x Autonomy At two in the morning, my father wakes to strange voices and crashing sounds. He ventures slowly into the living room where he sees me—his drowsy six-year-old— watching BattleBots in my footie pajamas. “What are you doing?” he asks sternly. “I couldn’t sleep,” I reply, without tearing my eyes away from a bot spinning madly around its opponent, looking for an opportunity to attack. “Go to bed,” my father says, barely concealing laughter behind the order. I stall, distracted by Bill Nye, who appears as a floating bobble head on the screen to explain how the 48-by-48-foot battle arena is rigged with steel spikes, pop-up rotary saws and a giant hammer that the robot competitors can push each other into, crushing circuitry. I watch as two teams compete, each equipped with a complex remote control that they use to drive their robots. The only objective: to incapacitate or adequately destroy the opponent’s carefully constructed creation. Teams build, operate and repair their bots through several rounds of competition, and the bot’s instruments of destruction range from hammers to spinning blades to flippers, the last of which turns a bot into a beetle on its back, unable to move and vulnerable to attack. I am also frozen in place, too involved with the battle to fully register my dad’s command. “Go to bed,” he repeats, raising his eyebrows. I fumble with the remote briefly, stalling as he waits, and I realize that my late-night viewing, which I think of as an upgrade from sleepless tossing and turning, still falls under my father’s jurisdiction. 1 Eventually I power down the television, listening to its sharp static blackout before I stumble back to bed, leaving Deadblow to shred Kegger into steel strips with a sharpened blade anchored on the end of a hammer pivot. I In my first year of high school, I was required to complete a science experiment for Mr. Ivie’s Earth Science class. At the time, I was engrossed in The Universe in a Nutshell and the complex world of cosmology, so I told my dad one evening that I had picked light for my topic. “What about light?” he asked. “I don’t know—maybe the speed of light? Or something with prisms?” My dad paused, thinking briefly, and then told me to come look at a book he had in the basement. I followed, watching as he dug out an old physics textbook and flipped to an early chapter. “Here,” he said, pointing to a section on the original measurement of the speed of light. Beneath the text was an image. Galileo stood on a grassy hill, while his assistant stood on a hill a mile away. They both held glowing shuttered lanterns. According to the textbook, Galileo first un-shuttered his lantern and began counting. When his assistant saw the flash of the lantern, he un-shuttered his own lantern, and Galileo continued counting until he saw the response. His idea was that the speed of light could be found by halving that time, but the experiment failed. Light is imperceptibly