issue 2, summer 2015

Technician• •

Thebulldogs.kettering.edu/technician

What’sInside

September 7, 2015 Volume 119 Issue 2

7 86

KES & INEN Partner Lunar Eclipse

3

From Kettering Relay Event Leadership Team

The 2015 Relay for Life Event Leadership Team would like to extend an invitation to all of the Ket-tering community, as well as their guests, to the 2015 Relay for Life event. This year’s event will be held in the Connie & Jim John Student Recreation Center here on Kettering’s campus on the evening of Friday, September 11th. Ceremonies will be kicked off at 7:00 p.m. and conclude at 4:00 a.m.

Participation of any and all form is greatly appre-ciated. The Coin Wars competition will continued to be held on campus during lunchtime Tuesday – Thursday of this week (Located either in the pool or at Sunset, weather dependent). This year, to ac-company Coin Wars is sign-ups for the Luminaria ceremony, an excellent way to honor, support, and/or remember those whose lives have been affected by cancer.

Continued on the second page

Photo courtesy of Kettering Communications

By Adam LecznarCopy Editor

Not an empty seat was to be seen on Thursday, Au-gust 27, 2015 in room 2-225 of Kettering University’s Academic Building. A huge crowd had turned out to listen to one of Kettering University’s most well-known professors, Professor Brian J. McCartin, give a lecture about mathematics and its applications in music.

A professor of Applied Mathematics at Kettering for 22 years, Professor McCartin was well-known and well-respected by students, and it showed in the number of people who turned out to attend his lecture, which was part of a series of lectures put on by the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learn-ing. Reminiscent of times in his classes, where the student who received the highest grade on each test was given a book related to mathematics, Professor McCartin provided a number of books meant to ex-cite people about mathematics and its applications, allowing each attendee of his lecture to take one. For this wasn’t just any lecture; earlier that term Profes-sor McCartin had announced that he was retiring from his teaching career, and this was his chance to say farewell to the university while providing his au-dience with a fun and informative lecture.

In a presentation titled Coda: A Celebration of Musical Geometry, Professor McCartin sought to impress on his audience how he had used math-ematics, and specifically geometry, to prove Cohn’s Theorem, which stated that the Octatonic Scale is the only scale that can be used to partition notes in all form of steps and half-steps.

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McCartin Shares One

More Time

The Admissions office is asking volunteers to help with the Old School Campaign. Current Kettering University students are needed to

take information back to their high schools, FIRST teams, Scout Troops and tell their counsel-ors, teachers, leaders, and coaches about their expe-riences, the classes, the clubs, and the opportunities Kettering has to offer. It is a simple and easy sign up process - just visit kettering.edu/oldschool and fill out the sign up form.

It is as simple as that. Every student that goes back into their high school is one more visit that we can make happen. Your contact may be the most im-portant contact because you know who influenced you to attend Kettering University and they may know who else may be a great student that would do well here. If you have any questions, let us know! The coordinator of this program is: Samantha Foren [email protected], 810-762-7959.

Call for Old School

Ambassadors

Window 10:A Students' Thoughts

Baseball Hall of Fame

Relay for Life

By Chloe HauxwellEditor-in-chief

“The renovation and grand re-opening of Atwood Stadium on our campus repre-sents a significant milestone in the ongoing rebirth of the city of Flint,” said Kettering University President Dr. Robert K. Mc-Mahan. August 27, Atwood Stadium had its grand reopening. More than 200 folks from the community were at the stadium. There were open house activities, with students, staff, and community members playing games and enjoying the stadium; there were also food trucks from the area, with many of the guests also enjoyed. At 5, there was a pregame parade, and then the first game in the new stadium at 7pm.

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The Technician

AnnouncementsSeptember 7, 2015

TechnicianThe

Chloe HauxwellE d i to r-i n- c h i ef

Andy BakkalL ayout Editor

Adam LecznarCopy Editor

Staff writersGabby FeenyMegan CoxTung Pham

Faculty AdvisorWhitney Hardin

Special Thanks ToBetsy Homsher

Bryan BoyseDistribution Editor

Submissions PolicyThe Technician encourages any interested stu-

dents to attend staff meetings. Meetings for Win-ter 2015 will be each Monday and Thursday over the lunch hour in The Technician office, located on the 3rd floor of the Campus Center above the Sunrise Café. Student submissions are encouraged and will be published if their material is in the public interest.

Submissions or letters to the editor from faculty and administrative entities will be published if space is available. The Technician reserves the right to edit any and all submissions for brevity and clarity.

Anonymous submissions are rarely published and will be considered on a case-by-case basis. In-dividuals wishing to publish anonymously should consult the Editor-in-chief.

The deadline for the upcoming issue of The Technician is 10th Thursday at 6pm. Expected distribution is 11th Monday. Send submissions to [email protected].

Continued from the front page

The event itself will include many fun events in-cluding wallyball, soccer, ping pong, minute-to-win-it games, and much more. All participants are strongly encouraged to register online at www.relay-forlife.org/ketteringumi . Keep in mind that is not a requirement to be on a team to attend the Relay for Life event. No matter the reason why you Relay, participation shows hope. Let’s all work together to-wards another successful year of Relay for Life here at Kettering University! We look forward to seeing you there.

Relay for Life cont. By Ben Kearney

The Baseball Hall of Fame is full of stars. From Babe Ruth to Lou Gehrig to Randy Johnson, it is filled with players whose names are synonymous with stardom. But the Hall is missing some great players like Pete Rose, the all-time leader in hits. Rose isn’t in because of a gambling problem. Nor is Rose alone; the Hall of Fame constantly snubs worthy players. The problem lies in the fact that the system is biased and arbitrary. I propose creating a new definition for Hall of Fame players. A player would be automatically elected into the Hall of Fame if they met one of several requirements. If Ma-jor League Baseball gave automatic admission into the Hall of Fame if they met certain requirements, fewer players who deserve it would miss out on this prestigious honor.

The current system is set up to allow every player who played for 10 or more seasons and has been re-tired for 5 or more years to be eligible for election to the Hall of Fame. A list of these players is giv-en to the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) for each member to select a maximum of 10 players per ballot. For a player to be elected he must receive votes from 75% of 125 ballots. A player has 10 years of eligibility on the ballot to get elected. The current system strikes many as biased and arbi-trary. There are a few examples of players missing out on votes because of this bias. One voter admit-ted to not voting for Pedro Martinez, one of the best pitchers of all time, because Martinez always domi-nated the Cleveland Indians and the writer is a fan of the Indians. This same voter misplaced his ballot and ended up not being able to submit because it was lost. Another case is Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color barrier in sports and who was a very solid baseball player. Robinson was elected into the Hall of Fame but not with the 100% voting per-centage he deserves. He had a career WAR of 61.5 and was one of the most influential people in sports but only received 77.5% of the vote. Cy Young, the pitcher who has records for most career wins, 511, most innings pitched, 7,356, most games started, 815, and most complete games, 749, and is the namesake of the trophy given to the best pitchers in Major League Baseball, only received 76% of the vote, 1% more than needed to be elected. All these players got into the hall but missed out on votes because of the bias of voters. This system does have supporters such as Tom Gage, a writer for the Detroit News and former voter. He has said, “All that ever gets talked about anymore when it gets to this time of year is how flawed it is, how unfair it is, how wrong

The Hall of Bias it is. But guess what? The writers get it right. Only the unblemished elite make it through, as only the elite should.” Mr. Gage isn’t the alone in his support of the current system. When Joe Torre, famous man-ager of the Yankees, didn’t get in on his first year of eligibility he said, “It's not the Hall of Very Good. It's supposed to be tough to get in. That's why it's special. That's why you see tears streaming down those faces during the speeches.” Gage and Torre both agree that it is an elite club that only the very best get into and according to Gage, the BBWAA ensure it stays that way.

I am not alone in my criticism of the current defi-nition of a Hall of Famer. A growing number of baseball analysts agree. Among them are big names such as Keith Olbermann, the longtime Sports Cen-ter anchor and former host of the sports talk show KO, and Dan Le Batard, Miami Herald columnist and host of the ESPN TV show Highly Question-able. Olbermann has criticized the current Hall of Fame system several times on his show. One of his most notable quotes is, “Close the damn Hall of Fame and start over”. He believes so many players have been excluded for reasons unknown to every-one and that the system needs a revamping. Dan Le Batard was a former voter for the Hall of Fame and has gone so far as to give his ballot to Deadspin.com and have fans choose his ballot. Le Batard did this to make a point that the system is flawed and should be changed. Why should biased writers have all the say? Why not give the fans a say? He was banned from voting ever again for this act.

These are two of the loudest critics but neither has proposed a realistic fix. So I set my mind to creat-ing a solution to this problem the Hall is facing. I propose a new definition to the term “Hall of Fam-er”. My proposal is any player who played at least 10 years is automatically admitted into the Hall of Fame if the player met at least one of the following requirements:

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Continued from the front page

With all of the new renovations since Kettering University took over ownership, Atwood is busier than it has been in years, putting high school athlet-ics back at the forefront. Powers Catholic faced De-troit Country Day in boys soccer Tuesday, Aug. 25, and Southwestern Academy went against Kearsley on Friday night, Aug. 28, in football.

More than $2 million has been invested in the state-of-the-art FieldTurf, also used at Ford Field in Detroit and Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.

After months of construc-tion, Ketter-ing officials were proud to unveil the stadium's new look.

"This stadium becomes an anchor, and it's always been an anchor, for the community," said Kettering University President Robert K. McMahan. "After all, if you think about it, this stadium has 11,000 seats and 300 parking spots, so it was designed from the very beginning to be in the center of the com-munity."

Atwood Stadium Reopening

The Technician September 7, 2015

Student Perspectives

By Adam LecznarCopy Editor Summer 2015 marked another term at Kettering that introduced new professors to the university. One such professor found herself in the Department of Liberal Studies, engaging in discussions with students on literature, art, and similar ideas. Professor Vivian Kao recently earned her PHD from the Department of English at Rutgers University this past May. Having earned her PHD in Arts, Media & Culture, which covers a broad range of subjects ranging from literature to art to film studies, Professor Kao now finds herself a professor at Kettering, where she is beginning her first official teaching job out of Graduate School by teaching the Sophomore-level Humanities 201

course at Kettering. “I liked the idea of Kettering because it seemed like a place that valued teaching,” Kao commented. “I also welcomed the challenge of teaching Humanities at an Engineering school.”Professor Kao has found herself welcomed here at Kettering and appreciates the environment the university provides its students as well as its faculty. “Here I get to interact with faculty whose research and studies are very different from mine,” explained Kao while recalling her time as a Graduate Student and Teaching Assistant at Rutgers, where the English Department was very large and did not offer as many opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction with other departments.Kao has also found that the students at Kettering provide different ideas and ways of

thinking about her studied subjects, which allows her to explore different teaching methods, such as relating engineering/scientific concepts/practices to literature. “At Kettering students are more likely to focus more on larger themes, but are able to analyze readings in great detail,” Kao mentioned. “I am impressed with their work ethic; I think work instills discipline.” Kao, who was originally born in Houston Texas, and later moved to Washington, now finds herself living in Michigan, a place she believes will fuel her love of outdoor activities like biking, hiking and camping, for the first time. She has found that she enjoys living in Flint and learning about its surrounding communities, including being welcomed into the Kettering Community.

New Professor Introduced to Kettering

Enthuse them or lose them!

By Megan CoxStaff Writer Thursday, August 8th, Kettering University welcomed a visiting Professor from Reutlingen Germany, Prof. Dr.-Ing Steffen Ritter. With an audience almost filling the entire lecture hall, it is obvious that his lecture was a much anticipated one. Dr. Ritter spoke about the “…benefit of active learning…” He claimed, “The greatest influence on student progression in learning is having highly expert, inspired, and passionate teachers…” Dr.

Ritter introduced a process held at the University, Project Engineering Process (!PEP), that encompassed his initial message of “Enthuse them or lose them.” Project Engineering Process (!PEP) is a unique program at Reutlingen University led by Dr. Ritter that teaches through active learning. !PEP initially began as an experiment and has been going on for about 2 ½ years. Students design and produce products “just like reality”, completing the entire production process, starting from a design and ending with a finished, packaged product. A

few examples that Dr. Ritter showed the audience were plastic paper clips, headphone holders, and toy planes. Dr. Ritter proceeded to outline the various advantages and disadvantages of !PEP. On one hand, the program allowed the students to gain real life experience, similar to here at Kettering. However, it is also a complicated process, sometimes too complicated. In spite of this, Dr. Ritter said that “the #1 success factor is motivated and engaged students.”

By Megan CoxStaff Writer

A students perspective, freshman Circo Napolen-tano gives his opinion on Microsoft's latest operat-ing system:

Q: How long have you had Windows 10?

A: I updated to Windows 10 about 3 weeks ago.

Q: What are some of Windows 10’s features that you like?

A: The Snap, Task View, and Multiple Desk-top features allow for easy multitasking and organiz-ing. I like being able to have up to 4 apps running on the same screen. Also, I can use the Alt+tab keys to shift through apps that require the use of the entire screen.

Q: Microsoft was really promoting Microsoft Edge, which is their new browser. What do you think of that?

A: At a glance, it doesn’t seem all that spe-cial, but after I found out about the annotation tool and Cortana, I think Microsoft Edge is really useful. I haven’t used Cortana that much, but I like that I can highlight and add notes to web pages.

Q: What is your favorite part about Windows 10?

A: Probably the start menu. I like that I can customize my tiles like you can on Windows 8 and 8.1, but I also like how it’s similar to the Windows 7 menu, and it’s not a separate page.

Q: Is there anything you don’t like about Win-dows 10?

A: I haven’t had Windows 10 long enough

to discover anything I don’t like or any problems.

Q: Overall, what do you think of Windows 10? Would you recommend it to other people?

A: Overall, Windows 10 is a step in the right direction. I would highly recommend upgrading it if you already haven’t. It seems like there really isn’t reason not to.

Windows 10 at a Glance: A Student's Perspective

The Technician

In PicturesSeptember 7, 2015

From top:• The FIRST robotics high school camp conclud-

ed with a basketball/soccer game • Over the term, Kettering has invited a number of

different elementary school groups in the FIRST Robotics Community Center for Lego camps.

• The annual CRIM marathon had a great turnout. Kettering's own radio club WKUF was on site providing some tunes for the racers.

Photos are courtesy of Kettering Communications


Top, clockwise:• More than 300 prospective students and their

families attended Discover Kettering on August 8, the largest Discover open house since 2009 and more than 100 prospective students larger than last year's Discover Kettering.

• More than 60 volunteers from General Motors' GM Cares program, Kettering Univeristy and Powers Catholic High School removed over-grown brush and cleaned up land near Atwood Stadium and the Flint River Trail as part of Ket-tering's monthly Service Saturday's program on Aug. 8, 2015.

• Ketterings Atwood Stadium Grand Re-opening celebration ended the night with fireworks over the stadium that were reportedly heard from parts of campus.

Photos are courtesy of Kettering Communication


By Adam LecznarCopy Editor

I2EAU, the initiative otherwise known as Inno-vation to Entrepreneurship Across the University, took a large step forward at the beginning of this past school term as two organizations that are part of the initiative partnered together to create better opportunities for discussion and the development of ideas.

INEN, or the Innovation to Entrepreneur-ship Course of Study, is an elective course that Kettering students may take after completing their Freshman Experience Course: FYE 101. This course is aimed at developing entrepreneurial mindsets in Kettering students, and giving them the tools to bring that mindset into their Co-Op settings.

This past term, as the class instructor, Profes-sor Massoud Tavakoli, was preparing for his group of students to arrive for INEN 201, he found that there was no schedule that would allow the group to meet for one hour twice a week. So Professor Ta-vakoli contacted the Kettering Entrepreneurial So-ciety student group – a group that teaches students

entrepreneurial practices and provides seed funding for student start-ups – to inquire about using their meetings for the class. KES graciously agreed, form-ing a partnership between the two groups. The two are now jointly reading through and analyzing a text titled Disciplined Entrepreneurship, which high-lights several steps to successfully bring a product or idea into a market.

“INEN 201 in particular is engaged in creating a process for developing an idea and bringing it to market, even before the product is ready for pro-duction,” commented Tavakoli, on the purpose of reading the text, which covers steps that need to be taken before entrepreneurs enter a specific market.

The theme for KES this year is also “The Internet of Things.” This topic covers the scope of products that are able to connect to each other across the internet or a wireless connection to exchange data. Group mem-bers are thus asked to design a theoretical product, just an idea, based on this concept, and go through

each of the steps in Disciplined Entrepreneurship using this product as a model. This is invaluable for KES members and INEN students, as it gives them

the op-p o r t u -nity to practice the steps in the b o o k without h a v i n g to ac-cept any risk, and t h e r e -fore de-v e l o p e n t r e -p r e -n e ur i a l m i n d -

sets.“This collabora-

tion allows us to es-tablish a common language between the groups,” KES president Cheyne Westerman, who is also an INEN stu-dent, elaborated. “It allows us to teach and discuss with people who aren’t in INEN in this common lan-guage.”

The groups also function alongside each other. Stu-dents in INEN are

welcome and encouraged to attend KES meetings as members, while KES members are given the op-tion to attend the other INEN student session and engage in discussion about the steps given in Dis-ciplined Entrepreneurship. This creates a lot of op-portunity for both groups to grow.

“We’ve never been able to hold onto 30 people at KES meetings for this long,” exclaimed Tavakoli. “This has created a lot of excitement and value for INEN and KES and caused a boom for member-ship.”

Partnerships Formed as KES, INEN Seek to Improve & Expand

All photos courtesy of Kettering Entrepreneurship Society

All photos are from a Kettering Entrepreneurship meeting earlier in the term.

Campus Life


Hall of Bias cont.Continued from page 2

Hitting 500 homeruns, collecting 3000 hits, strik-ing 2500 batters out, having a career Earned Run Average (ERA) of less than 3.00, or having a career WAR of 55 or more.

Any player caught using performance enhancing drugs will automatically be banned from entering the Hall of Fame. This new definition will take the voting out of the BBWAA’s hands and make this bi-ased, unfair system, into a less biased system.

To properly understand the entirety of my propos-al, I have to explain why I chose each of the require-ments and what they are. One of the requirements for the new definition include having a career WAR of above 55. WAR is wins above replacement. It is calculated using the number and success rate of on-field by a players in base running, batting, fielding, and pitching, with higher values reflecting larger contributions to a team’s success. For example a player with a WAR of 6 for a season suggests that a team won 6 more games than expected due to that player playing. WAR is a great way to determine the success and talent of a baseball player. I selected a career WAR of 55 or above because the median ca-reer WAR of members of the Hall of Fame is 59.8 according to the Baseball Almanac. So the 55 is just less than the average of all current of Hall of Fam-ers which is just the caliber of player that belong in the exclusive club. The reasoning behind including the WAR as one of the requirements is it includes the players who don’t have the flashiest stats, but were solid baseball players who contributed to their teams year in and year out. These players probably won’t win a Most Valuable Player but their teams and the game of baseball wouldn’t have been the same without them.

Along with a career WAR of 55 or above, a player may also collect 3000 hits or 500 home runs and gain automatic admission into the Hall of Fame. The 3000 hit club and 500 home run club are very exclusive groups having 29 and 26 members respec-tively. To hit 3000 balls means two things, you are a special hitter and you were in the game a long time. All 29 members were in the game at least 15 years and very few less than 20. The 500 home run club is the exact same way. So these players were faces of the game and important to fans. These two feats are very difficult to accomplish and warrant special recognition. To have these amazing hitters be given automatic admission should be a no-brainer.

Pitchers generally don’t have the gaudy hitting stats position players do so they have a separate set of requirements for automatic admission. If a pitcher has a career Earned Run Average (ERA) of less than 3.00 or at least 2500 strikeouts, they are given auto-matic entry. These two are the most important stats of a pitcher. The ERA is how many runs a pitcher al-lows per nine innings. So an ERA of 3.00 translates to a pitcher allowing 3 runs for every nine innings he pitches. I selected the number due to the fact that there are currently only 77 pitchers all-time with a career ERA of less than 3.00 and the average ERA of a Hall of Fame pitcher currently is 3.23 which I believe is too high of an average. The strikeouts are just as important. A pitcher can be successful without striking out many batters but fans love the

strikeout. It is a flashy stat and the requirements of this proposal would have to be pleasing to fans. 2500 strikeouts is an impressive milestone as only 30 play-ers have amassed that many. For pitchers to reach the mark, they have to show skill and longevity as the batters do to reach the 3000 hit mark. These two stats are a very good judge of the skill of a pitcher.

As I stated earlier there is only one thing that can ban a player, the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). As can be gathered from the name, these drugs improve a player’s performance in the game and improves their overall stats. Using these drugs is a form of cheating and players who use them are a disgrace to the game. All drugs that will be considered to be performance enhancing for this proposal are the same as the ones stated by Major League Baseball to be performance enhancing. This clause was added to the proposal as a way to keep all cheaters out of the Hall of Fame. The drugs are ille-gal according to the rules of Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame is a place of the excellent and elite, not cheaters. This ban only applies to players caught using PEDs not ones suspected and not con-victed. This proposal will take a stance of innocent until proven guilty with PEDs. With this clause we can keep the Hall of Fame’s integrity.

These requirements are set in place to help save players who are being rejected or overlooked by the BBWAA for a variety of reasons. Alan Trammell is one of the most prominent players whose WAR is excellent but who doesn’t get the recognition he's due because of the lack of “flashy” stats. His WAR of 70.4 is better than Mr. Cub himself, Ernie Banks, 67.5. Banks is a member of the 500 home run club and is remembered as one of the best Chicago Cubs ever. Trammell doesn’t get into the Hall of Fame be-cause of "lack of skill". But he played 20 years collect-ing 2365 hits and was a member of one of the most lethal double play combos of all time. Considering all that he misses out on, that is a shame. Another great who is missing out is Pete Rose. His admission into the Hall of Fame is a hotly contested debate. He was caught gambling on games he was managing. Rose was thus banned from baseball for life, which included not being admitted into the Hall of Fame. Rose would have made it too. He is the all-time hits leader with 4265, has the record for most games played, 3562, won an MVP, was selected to the All-Star game 17 times, and is one of the best players of all-time. He also never used PEDs. He is denied be-cause the current system is punishing him for gam-bling as coach and in the last few years as a player. His gambling may have cheated the game, but it was as a coach and when his playing years were coming to a close. His career before that point was so incred-ible that he should be forgiven and his gambling for-gotten. My proposal would immediately give Rose automatic admission into the Hall of Fame.

The system has failed in the other direction as well. There are many players in the Hall who are not deserving. One is Rabbit Maranville who spent 23 years in the game finishing with a WAR of 42.8, 2605 hits, and 28 home runs. These are not Hall of Fame stats. He won the World Series in 1914 and that must be the reason by the BBWAA put him in the Hall. He is an average player who had a long

career. Rabbit isn’t alone though. Another unwor-thy player is Herb Pennock. He pitched 22 seasons and had a 3.60 ERA and 1,227 strikeouts. Those stats are not good for how long he pitched. His WAR is nothing special either - 44.9, which is almost as low as Maranville's. He won 7 World Series rings, which is impressive, but it was because his team was awe-some, not him. The definition needs a new meaning to make sure players like Trammell can get in and Rabbit Maranville will be kept as far away as pos-sible.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is broken. It’s as simple as that. Every year worthy players miss out. But it can be fixed. If a new definition of “Hall of Famer” is established based on set statistical criteria, there would be no need to worry about a good player, who goes under the radar, being overlooked for the hon-or. This proposal won’t fix this unfair and biased sys-tem completely, but it will move the Baseball Hall of Fame to a more perfect, less biased system. Players will get justice and fans will see baseball improve as a whole.

For more information, the research for this piece is included below:

"Baseball Hall of Fame Members : A Voting Per-centage List by Baseball Almanac." Baseball Hall of Fame Members : A Voting Percentage List by Base-ball Almanac. Web. 13 Mar. 2015. <http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hof/hofmem4.shtml>.

"Career Leaders & Records for Strikeouts | Base-ball-Reference.com." Baseball-Reference.com. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. <http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/SO_p_career.shtml>.

"Career Leaders & Records for Wins Above Re-placement | Baseball-Reference.com." Baseball-Ref-erence.com. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. <http://www.base-ball-reference.com/leaders/WAR_career.shtml>.

"Hall of Fame Pitching Register | Baseball-Refer-ence.com." Baseball-Reference.com. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. <http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_pitching.shtml>.

Justice, Richard. "Hall of Fame Voting Process Works Correctly." Major League Baseball. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. <http://m.mlb.com/news/arti-cle/26284102/>.


Continued from front page

However, before he got into that, Professor Mc-Cartin began with a short biography.

“I have musical genes,” McCartin began, recall-ing that his father was a musician, and tried to teach him at a young age how to play instruments. “But I was distracted.” The launch of Sputnik I in 1969 and the beginning of the Space Race between the US and USSR turned McCartin’s young mind toward science.

“I wanted to be a scientist more than anything, but I couldn’t decide what kind of science to study,” he declared. “And I discovered that if I went into Math I could do them all.”

Therefore Brian McCartin set forth to earn his Doctorate in Applied Mathematics, before moving to Flint, MI. There he took a job as a Professor of Applied Math at Kettering University, but he still felt the urge to play. He began taking piano classes at the Flint Institute of the Music, where he met his wife Barbara. They had a piano duet together and were known as the Killer B's, performing in McKin-non Theater periodically.

Soon enough McCartin began to want to apply his knowledge of math to his love of piano. So he sought to prove Cohn’s Theorem, which had been proven using enumeration. This meant that it had been proven by going through each note on a piano and showing that they could only be partitioned us-ing the Octatonic Scale. McCartin sought to prove

this theorem mathematically using geometry.“I’m geometrically-minded,” McCartin com-

mented. “There’s no permanent place in this world for ugly math.”

He used the analogy of The Book. The Book, oth-erwise known as God’s Books of Beautiful Math-ematical Proofs, is a symbolic book that is said to contain one proof for each law of the universe, but only the most beautiful.

“There are many proofs for each law of mathemat-ics,” McCartin explained. “I hope my proof for this can be found in The Book.”

McCartin’s proof required some simplification, so he used known properties of the piano to reduce the number of notes being studied from 88 to 12. To do this he simplified multiple notes known to have equal temperament, harmonic equivalence, or octave equivalence into a 12-note scale. This he as-signed to a circle, like the face of a clock.

“When we use mathematics to describe our world we have to make simplifications,” he elaborated. “Our world is simply too complicated for us not to.”

McCartin’s explanation of his proof was elegant and entertaining. His presentation utilized simple slides that made it easy to visualize the Octatonic Scale and the partitioning of it. He even provided the audience with audio recordings of examples of the Octatonic scale used in music, something that is not common. One of his examples came from a Rock song, while another was from the theme to the

science fiction movie Starship Troopers.To prove Cohn’s Theorem, McCartin showed all

of the possible ways to partition the 12 notes us-ing multiple scales, and the only one that followed Cohn’s Theorem was, of course, the Octatonic Scale.

McCartin’s last recording was of a self-written piece titled “White Dwarf,” which was written with the intention of using any and all mathematical tricks. The piece is meant to express the birth and death of a star.

The culmination of McCartin’s research was an academic article published in 1998 titled A Prelude to Mathematical Geometry and another published in 2007 titled A Geometric Property of the Octa-tonic Scale. Both have been cited multiple times in music theory.

McCartin’s lecture ended with roaring applause, but not before he addressed the audience once more.

“I said earlier that music is in my blood. Well, teaching is also in my blood. My mother was a schoolteacher, and I was blessed for that. She set a standard for me and my siblings,” McCartin said. “It occurs to me now that this brings a close to my 40 year teaching career. And I am doubly blessed be-cause I got to spend the last 22 years here at Ketter-ing. I tried to live up to that standard. Thank you.”

After the lecture, attendees were encouraged to take any remaining books, and a number of students asked him to sign the copies they had been given.

McCartin Talk Continued

This Month in Astronomy: Total Lunar Eclipse

By Gabby FeenyStaff Writer

What is a lunar eclipse?When the sun, moon, and Earth are aligned with

Earth in the middle, a total lunar eclipse will occur as the moon passes directly behind Earth. Passing into Earth’s shadow, the moon appears to turn a

darkened, reddish color due to the refraction of the sun’s light through Earth’s atmosphere.

What is a Harvest Moon?The Harvest moon is considered to be the full

moon closest to the September equinox, when day and night are roughly of equal length.

Eclipse of the Harvest MoonOn Sunday, September 27th, a total eclipse of the

Harvest moon will be visible in the Americas and parts of Europe. The moon will be partially eclipsed by 9:07 pm EDT and totally eclipsed by 10:11 pm EDT. It will span a total of 72 minutes, so try to catch a glimpse of it!

All photos from nasa.gov

issue 2, summer 2015

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