Friday Research

My trip to the library was successful today. I actually have not been to the library yet this year so I did not know much on researching and renting books. I started by asking a librarian for some help on where to begin researching my topic. She was very helpful in assisting me and teaching me how to use the online library. She taught me how to look for opposed views when looking for an article and how to search for a book specific to my title. She also taught me how to limit my search so that I could retrieve information that would be helpful when writing this paper. I found many books and many articles on my topic. The first book I found was "Alcohol Opposing Viewpoints." This might help me get a better view on how everyone around us perceives alcohol, whether it is abused or not. I also got a book called, "Current Controversies in Alcoholism," because I want to be sure to make a fair argument on drunk driving. "Alcohol, young drivers, and Traffic Accidents," was another book that may be useful to me, but it could also be a little biased. I will have to be careful with this source. The last book that I will take a good look at is, "Young Driver Accidents and Delinquency." This book is another one that I might have to watch out for just because it could be biased toward young drivers. It could also contain some pretty good statistics that may be useful to me. When searching for articles I tried to be specific and found some interesting points. I will probably use an article called, "The relationship between serious injury and blood alcohol concentration (BAC) in fatal motor vehicle accidents." I think this will definitely be helpful in stating my statistics to help make fair judgments. One more article I found that may be useful is, "DUI Laws are Discriminatory and Do Not Prevent Drunk Driving." This will definitely give me a good view on the other side of my argument. During my research paper I realized I did not give enough views on "the other side" of drunk drivers. This time I will make sure to research both sides, the good and bad, of alcohol and make a clear point. Overall, this library trip helped me tremendously and I have all I need to write my annotated bibliography.

Extra Credit

Last week our English 105 class took a trip around campus. As a class we visited P211.T45, the Friday Flyers, and the Foucault pendulum. This was a great experience. We learned many things about each one of these important aspects of Clemson. My favorite was probably the Foucault pendulum. This was my group's task to research. Researching the pendulum was interesting to me because I have not heard of anything like this before. I really did not even know this was on campus even though I passed it many times. This shows just how little attention we, college students, pay as we are walking around and getting to our classes. The Foucault pendulum was created by Dr. Albert R. Reed who was a physics and anatomy professor at Clemson University. The pendulum bob is balanced by turning down a lead cylinder cast around a steel rod to a 9.5-inch diameter sphere. This is capped with two brass hemispheres, the lower of which held a permanent magnet. The magnet is a component of the kicker system designed to overcome the damping of the swing. We also learned, on our field trip, that the pendulum uses Faraday's Law. The precession rate can be calculated from apparent forces in the rotating frame on the surface of the Earth. The swing plane should make a complete rotation in 23.9/sin(latitude) hours. For Clemson’s latitude of 34.7 degrees, this is 42 hours. Typically, the precision rate for our pendulum is about 36 hours. We all learned a great amount on this field trip and had fun tricking people with our facts.