for record-keeping
These are just my answers to the Google Form.
on project satisfaction:
If you have read any of my blog posts, you will have probably noticed that I repeatedly talk about how little secondary research I was able to get done. Initially, I blamed that mostly on myself, but having been at it for 2 months now, I realize that there's simply not a whole lot of literature for the theoretical physics of plying. That can be pinned on a variety of different factors -- not a lot of people are interested in textile physics, how plying impacts a yarn depends on the fibre composition (e.g. monofilament vs. staple, superwash vs. feltable, etc.), whatever have you. It's one of those things, I feel like, that is so intuitive and pervasive in real life that you expect science to understand it completely, only to discover that it's really *not*. I think a lot of 'ancient' technologies operate in this way -- because while we understand much of the physics of things we invent nowadays (we engineer them with that specifically in mind), that's not necessarily how these sorts of things existed in the past. 'That's the way things have always been done' is the best answer we have for so many of these things.
It's sort of like questioning how the first person figured out how to make a knot; and when did they figure out how to make it adjustable? How did people decide that they could take sheep hair and somehow make it into cloth (sure, there's the comparable modern decision of cat owners to collect cat fur and spin it -- but there's historical precedent for that, besides the fact that shedding gives a reason for them to think about this)? That rubbing sticks together made fire? How did early humans figure out herbal medicine? Or, if you want to get kind of philosophical -- how do animals figure out how to build solid structures, despite their purported lack of ability to understand physics (humans alone are capable of abstract thought, and theoretical physics most certainly requires abstraction)? Because *that* is also how humans have figured out some things.
Of course, if I was feeling better (or had more time) during this project, I might've been able to do more research/experiments to put together a more operational theory. Alas, I was neither feeling great nor did I have an abundance of time -- and thus, it's hard for me to even trust the data that I *did* collect. I spent most of my time reading papers that, though fascinating, weren't applicable to what I was looking for, and therefore became somewhat annoying. So -- while this is absolutely an interesting topic to me, and I absolutely think that there's some interesting physics that governs it, I was unable to properly capitalize on this.
on things I'd change:
My website would be a lot more organized, for one. (Honestly, I'd probably also have a lot more videos explaining a lot more things, as well.)
One of my early considerations was working with actual fabrics to see how their tensile strengths behaved -- and that's something I still think about. During my secondary research, I came across a lot of papers about the tensile strength of fabrics, so maybe that would be a more fruitful endeavour (especially because I actually have a stronger background in knitting than spinning).
I have a fair amount of regrets regarding the way I went about the experiment -- so if I had more time (a *lot* more time, admittedly), I think I might go back and redo it. I think one thing I might do would be creating specific time intervals for when to add the water to the bucket -- that way, I could be certain that the amount of time didn't cause the data to become skewed. Another thing would be washing all my yarns at the same time, so that I could ensure that they were all treated the same way. This would reduce the possible variation due to phenomenons such as felting. I think I'd also look into different ways to rig up the bucket for testing. While the optimistic part of me says that the knot should not have had much of an impact on the relationships between my data (they were all, in theory, knotted the same way), I'd like to pick a knot/rigging method that would have minimal impact on tensile strength. Also, I would want to clearly define some measurements beforehand -- for example, I would want exact values for how long the tails on either end should be. This would ensure that the length of yarn, and the tightness of the knot, are more consistent.
Then again -- if I had a LOT more time, I would want to redesign my entire experiment so that it didn't take place somewhere that would trigger my chronic illness and thus cause me to miss both a week of school and also a vaccine appointment that took *way* too much effort to get.
On that note, part of what I would do is probably just to slow down and take more time do to things. I know that sounds an awful lot like 'procrastinate and be lazy', but I think that my work would be better if I wasn't constantly making ridiculous mistakes. My sleep schedule for the past week has literally involved about 2 hours per day -- I'd say that it's quite self-evident how lightening my load could make me more productive and improve the quality of my work. (The issue of 'if you sleep more you'll be more productive, but not productive enough to make up for the loss of time due to sleeping, but [...]' is one I've been running into a lot, but since this is a physics reflection, I will spare you the details.)
Anyways -- there's a lot more I could say (my anxiety insists that I have a million regrets about everything), but I'm going to end this here.
on improving the project:
I have to admit that I'm not really sure. (I try not to think a lot about how enjoyable projects/courses are when I'm doing them, mostly because my brain is mostly just yelling about how annoyed it is, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that.)
The most obvious things that come to mind are related to the pandemic. This includes things like timelines (the quadmester system...), access to materials (can't really shop in person for anything), ease of communication (there's nothing specific here, just... things feel weird), etc.
I would say maybe a clearer assignment overview sheet? (It's possible that I just managed to miss this.)
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