And thus concludes August
Sep. 1st, 2010 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nerwengreenIt turned out to be a very astronomy-heavy kind of month. First, there was a history article where the main topic was supposed to be "history of medieval astronomy." Well, it turns out that all the fun parts were right before and right after the medieval period, which didn't leave me much to write about. So I ended up summarizing the Classical and Renaissance periods instead. ;)
A Brief History of Astronomy: Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance
Then, I'd also picked up "Higgs boson particle." See, a couple years back, I and a bunch of friends had ourselves an online kerfuffle about the guy who thinks the Large Hadron Collider is going to make black holes. We wrote some blog posts about it (elsewhere), the guy himself showed up with a bunch of his friends to argue with us, and this led us to dig into his litigation-rich personal life and post more blog posts about that. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. ;) Anyway, the main thing that the LHC actually wants to do is find the Higgs boson particle, which we all sort of knew but it was kind of a tangent to the kerfuffle we were having. So when I saw it in the list of topics I thought, "aha! I actually recognize what that is, sort of!"
Little did I know... T.T
To make a long story short, I learned all sorts of interesting things about nuclear physics and particle physics while trying to figure out what a Higgs boson particle is and actually be able to write the article. It took about a week and a half of intensive research. I used way more Wikipedia than I probably should've, but also found some cool lecture series on Youtube (and my main source was still two chapters from my intro physics textbook).
Then I started trying to write the thing. With all the particle physics info whirling around my brain, I had to write all of that down too, to pin it down. I was up to about 1200 words when I realized that the vast majority of it was actually a really long tangent having nothing to do with Higgs bosons, so I chopped out 700 words from the middle and turned it into four bullet points. The final Higgs boson particle article is about 600 words long.
Which left me with 700 additional words of a completely different standalone article. Plus I had enough notes to do at least one other one. So I pestered the editor into letting me write more of them, and she said yes! Most of those extra 700 words became The Four Fundamental Forces of Physics and the rest eventually went into Elementary Particles of the Standard Model. The overall Particle Physics in Cosmology series basically covers the same material from different approaches - I tried to write them in such a way that you can read them in any order and it all still makes sense.
Aside from that, I wrote one for genetics and one for gaming. I have a personal goal to write a least one article per Bright Hub editor per month. Thus:
How is a Gamete Different From Other Cells in the Body?
From Mysterious Egg to Phoenix in Treasure Isle: A Strategy Guide to the Bottom of the Volano
Then, in addition to all the regular articles ...
Bright Hub has just launched a new project called the "super guides." Basically, each guide is a single page on a broad topic. It has an intro at the top and a bunch of links to other Bright Hub articles having to do with the topic. It's supposed to automatically update with new material as people write stuff, thus causing visitors to come back and look again and again. So far they haven't worked out all the kinks in the auto-article-picker-thingy, but they've already got people volunteering to write the intros to these things. We don't get any upfront pay for writing them, but in theory at least, they'll be great for trickle income later when everything is actually working. I picked up 8 of them, and 6 seem to be up:
Coral Reefs
Insects
Plant Life
Celestial Bodies (astronomy)
Scientific Classification (biology)
Solar System
I also did "ocean" and "natural selection" but they don't seem to be there yet.
It turned out to be pretty fun overall, though completely the opposite of what the regular articles aim for. These are very "think broad, very broad" exercises. Also, short - so I can't just ramble on and on. ;) I picked up 8 more of them to do this month, we'll see how it goes. The main downside is that they aren't paid for right away, so for all practical purposes I'm doing them for free. Hopefully they'll turn out to be a good investment later.
I think that pretty much covers it. Up next: 3-Day Novel! :D This has become somewhat of a tradition for a writing group I'm in. One of us takes it very seriously and always writes a full novel, whether he enters officially or not. The rest of us write along because it's always more fun to write with other people toward the same time goal. I've only started a brand new project once - the other years, I just use the time as an excuse to work on existing stories. Anyone else want to join in, lemme know and I'll tell you where we hang out. ;)
A Brief History of Astronomy: Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance
Then, I'd also picked up "Higgs boson particle." See, a couple years back, I and a bunch of friends had ourselves an online kerfuffle about the guy who thinks the Large Hadron Collider is going to make black holes. We wrote some blog posts about it (elsewhere), the guy himself showed up with a bunch of his friends to argue with us, and this led us to dig into his litigation-rich personal life and post more blog posts about that. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. ;) Anyway, the main thing that the LHC actually wants to do is find the Higgs boson particle, which we all sort of knew but it was kind of a tangent to the kerfuffle we were having. So when I saw it in the list of topics I thought, "aha! I actually recognize what that is, sort of!"
Little did I know... T.T
To make a long story short, I learned all sorts of interesting things about nuclear physics and particle physics while trying to figure out what a Higgs boson particle is and actually be able to write the article. It took about a week and a half of intensive research. I used way more Wikipedia than I probably should've, but also found some cool lecture series on Youtube (and my main source was still two chapters from my intro physics textbook).
Then I started trying to write the thing. With all the particle physics info whirling around my brain, I had to write all of that down too, to pin it down. I was up to about 1200 words when I realized that the vast majority of it was actually a really long tangent having nothing to do with Higgs bosons, so I chopped out 700 words from the middle and turned it into four bullet points. The final Higgs boson particle article is about 600 words long.
Which left me with 700 additional words of a completely different standalone article. Plus I had enough notes to do at least one other one. So I pestered the editor into letting me write more of them, and she said yes! Most of those extra 700 words became The Four Fundamental Forces of Physics and the rest eventually went into Elementary Particles of the Standard Model. The overall Particle Physics in Cosmology series basically covers the same material from different approaches - I tried to write them in such a way that you can read them in any order and it all still makes sense.
Aside from that, I wrote one for genetics and one for gaming. I have a personal goal to write a least one article per Bright Hub editor per month. Thus:
How is a Gamete Different From Other Cells in the Body?
From Mysterious Egg to Phoenix in Treasure Isle: A Strategy Guide to the Bottom of the Volano
Then, in addition to all the regular articles ...
Bright Hub has just launched a new project called the "super guides." Basically, each guide is a single page on a broad topic. It has an intro at the top and a bunch of links to other Bright Hub articles having to do with the topic. It's supposed to automatically update with new material as people write stuff, thus causing visitors to come back and look again and again. So far they haven't worked out all the kinks in the auto-article-picker-thingy, but they've already got people volunteering to write the intros to these things. We don't get any upfront pay for writing them, but in theory at least, they'll be great for trickle income later when everything is actually working. I picked up 8 of them, and 6 seem to be up:
Coral Reefs
Insects
Plant Life
Celestial Bodies (astronomy)
Scientific Classification (biology)
Solar System
I also did "ocean" and "natural selection" but they don't seem to be there yet.
It turned out to be pretty fun overall, though completely the opposite of what the regular articles aim for. These are very "think broad, very broad" exercises. Also, short - so I can't just ramble on and on. ;) I picked up 8 more of them to do this month, we'll see how it goes. The main downside is that they aren't paid for right away, so for all practical purposes I'm doing them for free. Hopefully they'll turn out to be a good investment later.
I think that pretty much covers it. Up next: 3-Day Novel! :D This has become somewhat of a tradition for a writing group I'm in. One of us takes it very seriously and always writes a full novel, whether he enters officially or not. The rest of us write along because it's always more fun to write with other people toward the same time goal. I've only started a brand new project once - the other years, I just use the time as an excuse to work on existing stories. Anyone else want to join in, lemme know and I'll tell you where we hang out. ;)
