Determination: An Extended Definition

Determination is the steadfastness of mind that, once a task has begun, it will be completed regardless of the adversity. It is the ability of an individual to say, “If this is what it takes to reach a goal, I am willing to press onward, regardless of the odds, in spite of what anyone may say, no matter the difficulty, pain, or rejection.” Determination cries, “I can see where I am at and where I need to go; I have a purpose and a goal; nothing will stop me from attaining my aspirations!” Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines determination as the “Decision of a question in the mind; firm resolution; settled purpose.” Benjamin Disraeli once stated it this way, “Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.” For a Christian, the Apostle Paul put it aptly in Philippians 3:13-14, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Had the renowned inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, given up on his work of inventing an incandescent light bulb, there is a possibility that electricity as it is know it today would not exist. After over 9,000 attempts at electricity, the right connection was made and current began to flow through the wires and produced light. Edison was willing to fail again and again. Unlike the average person, with each failure he picked himself up and kept persevering onward to his goal. He once said, “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

The most powerful and perfect pattern of determination is that of Jesus Christ. He stated in recurrent passages of Scripture that His purpose on earth was to do His Father’s will. His purpose was, “…to seek and to save that which was lost.” Christ went through much temptation, suffering and anguish, yet, He doggedly refused to yield to the pain and to the torment. This became most evident in the account of Christ’s time in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion. Here in the garden, all alone, Jesus spent some time praying, not necessarily that His impending death be taken away, but rather that, as He submitted to God’s will, He would be granted the determination needed to press on. “And he was withdrawn from them [the disciples] about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, saying, ‘Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.’ And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 19:41-44) Christ followed through with the plan that the Father had for Him. He was determined to do the right thing, even to the point of death.

Determination is one of the most difficult traits to acquire. It is a compilation of faithfulness, loyalty, and courage. Just as Christ displayed all of these in His determination to die on the cross for the sins of the world, so ought every Christian be unwavering in their stand for what is right and carry on the work that Christ has called them to do. As Paul said, “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

Published!!!

So get this.....................................

I sent my latest blog post in to my local news paper as a letter to the editor

and

they

published

it!!!!!!!!!!

Click here to read!

LHC

I had to write this paper for my science class, and I know that Jason wanted to read it, so I just decided to post it for anyone who is interested.

The Large Hadron Collider


The Large Hadron Collider, also known as the LHC, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN), is a 27 kilometer ring that runs 175 meters underneath the French and Switzerland border. It is the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator, and was built for the purpose of finding out what happened right before and right after the Big Bang. Using Physics, the end goal is to figure out what caused the Big Bang and what the universe was like before, during, and after it; and trying to find out if the Higgs boson is real, or if it is simply a myth. In addition to these, the LHC will also attempt to discover other “new physics,” and try to find missing forms of matter that were supposedly created during the Big Bang.



Scientists, trying to discover how the world was created, are attempting to recreate the Big Bang and figure out the missing parts of the Standard Model, which is how they prove the Big Bang. They are also making attempts to find the Higgs Boson, a hypothesized particle that is necessary for the Standard Model to work, but has as of yet to be found anywhere, or seen acting in the universe, or some other particle that will fill in the gaps and make the Standard Model correct. Some of the key questions that physicists are hoping to answer through the LHC are, “Is the Higgs Mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model indeed realized in nature?” “Are electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weaker nuclear force just different manifestations of a single unified force, as predicted by various Grand Unification Theories?” “What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?” “Are there extra dimensions, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we detect them?” “Are there additional sources of quark flaw or violation beyond those already predicted within the Standard Model?”[1] Professor Stephen Hawkings (University of Cambridge) said, “Whatever the LHC finds, or fails to find, the results will tell us a lot about the structure of the universe.”[2]



Operation began on September 10, 2008 when the first proton beams went completely around the main ring of the Large Hadron Collider. However, only a few days later on September 19, 2008 when two of the superconducting magnets faulted resulting in millions of dollars in damages, and halted the LHC for over a year. In all, 53 magnets were damaged during the incident. The plan was to once again begin operation sometime mid-November 2009, but that has been pushed out to sometime in December 2009, with the hopes that the LHC will be up and running by Christmas 2009.





Many scientists and other people are concerned that the Large Hadron Collider will be the end of the world. There are many “doomsday” theories predicting black holes on the earth. A black hole is a spot that has such a large pull of gravity that everything falls in, but nothing can come out. Another fear is of strangelets, which have been hypothesized to be made from quark. Quark is also a hypothesized elementary particle which is vital to the Standard Model. In 2003 and again in 2008 the European Organization for Nuclear Research mandated a study safety analysis to be done, and both of them reported that the Large Hadron Collider was safe, and would not cause any permanent negative damage to the earth. These reports were backed by the Executive Committee of the Division of Particles and Fields of American Physical Society, as well as a peer-review by the Journal of Physics G.[3] There have been several major news media outlets including The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sydney Morning Herald, Time, CNN, and MSNBC that have protested in some way the possible threat to the earth caused by the Large Hadron Collider. In September 2008 Romania’s Conservative Party protested the Large Hadron Collider before the European Commission mission to Bucharest.

Hawking radiation could help to relieve some of the fears of black holes. It is a thermal radiation predicted to be emitted by black holes due to quantum effect.[4] The type of black holes that the Large Hadron Collider could produce is a type that loses matter faster than they gain it because of the Hawking effect. If the LHC can produce black holes, they would disappear almost as fast as they were created, removing almost all of the problems that they could create on the earth.



The design of the Large Hadron Collider is very complicated. The LHC has 1,232 dipole magnets which are used to keep the protons going around in a circle. It also had 392 quadruple magnets which keep the beams focused. Another 1,600 superconducting magnets are used to keep the temperature at -271°C, colder than outer space! The total weight of the magnets is over 27 metric tons (approximately 59,525 pounds)!

The proton beams are put into two bunches and rotated around the circle at set intervals so that the interaction between the proton bunches happens at set times that are no more than 25 nanoseconds apart. [5] The proton beams are accelerated during their rotation through the LHC to as high as 14 TeV, that is approximately 99.9999991% of the speed of light and takes less than 90 nanoseconds for a proton beam to travel once around the main ring. This equals about 11,000 times around the ring per second![6] The data that the Large Hadron Collider produces is astounding! Every year the LHC puts out 15 petabytes of information. To put that in perspective, if someone were to take all the words that are spoken each year by everyone in the world it would only equal approximately 2 to 3 petabytes! According to The Thai Indian article “The Large Hadron Collider” the LHC will at the most reach half of its potential by 2011,[7] which means that the LHC has the ability to produce even more information than it already has produced.

There are four main experiments that are planned for the Large Hadron Collider. The first one is ATLANTIS which is attempting to figure out from where everything came, and more specifically, where mass comes from. ATLANTIS is also trying to find “new physics” to help find the origin of the universe. CMS, the second experiment, is looking for the Higgs boson, and is also trying to figure out what dark matter is, and what it does. ALICE is attempting to find the liquid form of matter, also called quark, or gluon plasma, that supposedly existed right after the Big Bang, but disappeared at some unknown point in time and has never been seen by scientists. The final experiment called LHCb simply is trying to find where the anti-matter disappeared, and why it disappeared. ATLAS and CMS will look for super symmetric particles to test likely hypothesis for the makeup of dark matter.[8]

The world is desperately trying to come up with answers for how the universe began. They don’t want to have to admit that there is a God that they will have to answer to, so instead they turn to science and spend millions of dollars just so that they don’t have to be accountable for their sin. “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” – Ephesians 4:18. As Christians we know that God created the world. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” –Genesis 1:1 “To whom them will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.” - Isaiah 40:25-26. The world needs to see that without God they will not be able to find any permanent answers. As Christians it is our responsibility to tell them of Christ and his salvation. “But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he [Jesus] unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.” – Matthew 9:36-38



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[1] www.wikipedia.org/largehadroncollider/purpose

[2] www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2710348/Stephen-Hawking-Large-Hadron-Collider-vital...

[3] www.wikipedia.org/LHCsafety/introduction

[4] www.wikipedia.org/LHCsafety/safety_arguments

[5] www.wikipedia.org/Larg_Hadron_Collider/design

[6] www.wikipedia.org/Large_Hadron_Collider/design

[7] www.thaindian.com/newspaper/largehadroncollider

[8] www.cern.com/LHC/why_LHC

Published!

I was published in the Pure Little Ladies Ministry magazine this month! You can read the article here.