ANN ARBOR–Following Ruination’s Thursday evening 0-4 loss to the Ypsi Aces, defenseman Mark Woods traded in his helmet for his thinking cap, providing auxiliary lectures for several of the players who are finishing degree programs at the local college, thanks to his celebrated “triple Ph.D,” as coined by defensive partner Sean Payeur.
“It all starts with the photon,” lectured Woods, opening with quantum physics, “and we find that the photon has energy hf = hc/l and momentum = h/l , where h is Planck’s constant, 6.63×10-34 J s, f is frequency, l is wavelength and c is velocity of light.”
Most of the team nodded in ascent, though a few looked a bit confused. “The photon is a quantum of light: an indivisible chunk which gives light its particle nature; thus light has both wave properties and particle properties,” Woods explained.
After a rousing 45 minute lecture, Woods pressed on to neuroscience. “Let’s say you stimulate a CA3 hippocampal neuron once and record from the postsynaptic CA1 hippocampal neuron, as we see here,” Woods illustrated. “When you stimulate the CA3 neuron twice, you find the synaptic response to the second stimulation is bigger than the first! Can anyone explain why?”
Finally, Woods moved on to media studies. “Looking back on Cultivation theory, Gerbner et. al.– meaning Larry Gross, of course, proposed the idea that as media consumption increases, acceptance of the materials as more realistic increases, that is, it ‘cultivates’ the viewer’s perception of reality. Television essentially becomes a ‘magic window’ to the world.”
He provided an example, stating that “heavy” viewers of soaps tend to overestimate the percentage of doctors, lawyers, and police officers in the workforce due largely to the over-representation of those occupations in daytime television.
Several players said they enjoyed the lectures, as it explained “a lot” regarding Woods’s on-ice performance.