The American Jobs Act by the Numbers: 40

Cross-posted from the White House blog.

Today, President Obama continues his?American Jobs Act Bus Tour?to highlight the many aspects of the?American Jobs Act?that will?build an?economy that lasts, such as putting construction workers back on the job rebuilding America’s schools?to provide a world class education for all of our students.

This week, we’re?bringing you numbers?from the?bus tour?that demonstrate?how the jobs bill will impact your community; numbers like 40, which is the average age of the American public schools that will be modernized with the?American Jobs Act.

The American Jobs Act will invest in?retrofitting at least 35,000 public schools across the country, supporting new science labs, Internet-ready classrooms and school renovations in both rural and urban communities. These investments will give American students the edge they need to prepare for?the 21st century economy and compete with students from around the world.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan?explained?the challenge we’re up against:

[Imagine] trying to design the next generation of tablet computers using mainframe hardware from the Eisenhower administration. Or American automakers trying to out-engineer foreign competitors on an assembly line with equipment from the 1960s.

Unfortunately, just such antiquated facilities and barriers to innovation exist today in precisely the institutions that can least afford it: our nation’s public schools. The digital age has now penetrated virtually every nook of American life, with the exception of many public schools.

And as President Obama has?said, when school buildings get too old without repairs they begin to crumble:

They start leaking, and ceiling tiles start to cave in, and there’s no heat in the winter or air-conditioning in the summer.? Some of the schools the ventilation is so poor it can make students sick.

How do we expect our kids to do their very best in a situation like that?? The answer is we can’t.? Every child deserves a great school, and we can give it to them, but we got to pass this bill.

Updating science labs and connecting classrooms to the Internet are investments that need to be made. And getting electricians,?engineers and carpenters back on the job?making those investments in?the education of our students?is just one of the common sense solutions in the?American Jobs Act?to give the economy the jolt it needs.

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Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart

The book under review Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart is worth reading by one and all.

Ian Stewart is the author of over sixty books. In a very lucid style he explains the complicated mathematics that is found in nature to a layman.

He writes the well-known 'Mathematical Recreations' column in the famous magazine 'Scientific American'.

To the non-mathematical readers the book is a boon.

The book has nine chapters namely, The natural order, What mathematics is for, What mathematics is about, The constants of change, From violins to videos, Broken Symmetry, The rhythm of life, Do dice play God, Drops, Dynamics, and Daisies. All the chapters are with very interesting examples.

In chapter one titled, Natural Order, the author explains the amazing facts of patterns that are found in the nature! In nearly all flowers, the number of petals is one of the numbers that occur in the strange sequence 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89!

The great scientist Kepler found that if you take the cube of the distance of any planet from the Sun and divide it by the square of its orbital period, you always get the same number. It was the same for all the six planets!

Io, Europa, and Ganymede are three of Jupiter's larger satellites. They orbit the planet in, respectively, 1.77. 3.55, and 7.16 days. Each of these numbers is almost exactly twice the previous one. There is a significant pattern.

It is interesting to note about the Ship/Dock theorem. That is, if you want to change the word ship into the word dock by changing one letter at a time and getting a valid word at every stage, you will find that all solutions have one thing at common: at least one of the intermediate words must contain two vowels. Readers will be motivated to do this puzzle on their own to find out the result.

The rhythm of life is wonderful. In nature everything is rhythmic! There are numerous examples given in the chapter 'The rhythm of life'. The author analyses the chaos theory in the chapter 'Do dice play God'.

There is a list of books for further reading to those who are interested to know more about natures' secrets.

It is highly recommended that all should read this book to understand natures' secrets or rather secrets of God!

S. Nagarajan is a vehicle body engineer by profession. He has written more than 1300 articles in 16 magazines and published 18 books. He is revealing Eastern Secret Wisdom through T.V. Programmes, magazine articles, seminars, courses. His email address is: snagarajans@gmail.com. His articles on Yoga, laughter, efficacy of mantras and sound, Hypnotism, Tele Kinesis, Power of Prayer, Vastu and Feng Shui, Auto suggestion, Success Formula, Out of Body Experience etc are regularly appearing in EzineArticles.com. So far seventynine articles have been published in EzineArticles.com.

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