Jan (Jack) Francis Beda's Home Page

About Research Projects Languages Contact Archival

Languages

The fastest way to convey competency in a language is just to speak in that language and let other people see. Below I include some short pieces of writing in the various languages I have spent time learning to provide a sample of my ability. All of these have been written first-draft, exclusively by me, with minor aid from a dictionary, and without the use of a spellchecker/grammar checker, and so the mistakes within should provide a good metric of my ability. These texts were all written on November 2, 2023.

Norwegian

Jeg begynt å lære norsk som alle begynner med språk på Duolingo. Heldigvis, bare noen uker etter jeg hadde lastet ned appen, skolen min ble kansellert på grunn av pandemien og jeg fant meg selv med ingenting å gjøre ellers en å studere norsk. Jeg registrert meg selv på norskeprogrammen ved universitet i North Dakota og gjennom pandemien tok fem kurs der (NORW 101, 102, 201, 202, 433) og fikk certificat i norsk fra dem. Det var vinteren 2021 da jeg ble ferdig med norsk 433, og jeg bestemte å ikke fortsette på norsk der først og fremst fordi det var vanskelig å ta norskkurs på toppen av det vanlig arbeidet i fysikk i Edinburgh. Den andre grunnen var at, etter å ha lærte masse norsk, det ble klart og tydelig at det finnes ikke mange nordmenn i hverden, og de fleste snakker skikkelig god engensk. For disse grunner, jeg sluttet med norsk og gikk over til å ta kveldkurs i kinesisk i Edinburgh. Det finnes masse flere kinesisk folk i hverden enn nordmenn, og kveldkurs var litt mer rolig en den formelle universitetskurs i North Dakota. Med det sagt, jeg var ikke helt ferdig med spåket. Sommeren 2022 jeg tok "Intensivt mellomkurs i norsk - trinn III" ved internasjonale sommerskolen i Oslo. Det var et skikkelig hyggelig erfaring, og jeg kan nå demonstrere B2/C1 compentanse i språket. Jeg elseker både språket og landet, og er alltid glad for å finne meg tilbake i Norge for å kunne bruke språket og hoppe rundt de fine fjellene. Om det har bruk til deg kan jeg selvfølgelig gi deg karakterutskrift fra enten universitet i North Dakota ellers universitet i Oslo.

Chinese

我说汉语说的没有我挪威语的好。 我2021春天,在孔子学院,开始学习中文。 我学习汉语因为我很想去中国旅行,也很喜欢中国文化和历史。 现在,我在孔子学院上了五个课。 我最喜欢的季节是冬天因为我非常喜欢下雪的时候。 但是苏格兰的冬天很少下雪我也喜欢着的冬天。 我也很喜欢冬天因为圣诞节的时候我能看我的家人和吃很多好吃的饭。

French

Mon français c'est assez terrible. Au Canada, J'ai pris l'immersion francais pendant huit ans en école elimentaire, mais j'ai absolutment détesté l'expérience. Il'yavait un temp je pouvais parler B2 français, mais maintenant ce n'est plus cette époque. Je me sens un peu gêné que je ne peux pas parler un langue je me sens je devrais pouvoir parler, mais ça fait longtemp depuit que je faudrais utiliser la langue. Peut étre, dans l'avenir je vais essayer de reapprendre un peux de mon français, mais maintenant je suis très contente à apprendre autre langue.

About

Hello hello! I am Jack Beda. I currently study MPhys Mathematical Physics (5 years) at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in my 3rd year. I grew up in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada and attended high school at Kenner CVI in the IB program. Primarily, this website is a side project to help me learn HTML and Javascript when I have little better to do, but you may find some useful information here regardless.

Outdooring

I have, for much of my life, had a keen interest in hiking/canoing/mountaineering/skiing/running/climbing and all sorts of things outside. In Canada I primarily enjoy admiring the lovely lakes and trees of Algonquin and the Kawartha Highlands. In the UK, where fewer trees, lakes, and canoes are to be found, I enjoy climbing all of the various grassy, rocky, and snowy lumps around whenever I can.

Academics

Below is a list of all of the courses I have taken so far (or are currently taking) at the university of Edinburgh. Each course links to the relevant DPT (degree program table) at the university. Some of the DPT pages will gradually go out of date.

* Of note, if you also study at the university, you may notice that the courses here are a little strange. This is because I originally started in the Theoretical Phyisics degree and then moved to Mathematical Physics in second year, which was a bit of a pain, and definitely non-standard. I don't include here a few of the courses I took "course only" into which I was enrolled for the switch to work. What I list here is only the courses to which I sat an exam.

My Research Projects

Here I detail all of the summer-research-project type activities I have undertaken so far.

Microscope Synchronisation with Raspberryi Pi Pico

Dr. Florian Ströhl's research requires synchronizing a sheet laser at high precision to a rolling-camera that sweeps through biological (or any) samples such that the laser illuminates a specific part of the sample only when the camera is exposing that specific line of the image. The camera outputs an electrical pulse signal when it is exposing (which drops to zero at the end of the frame). My project was to recieve as input this pulse signal to a raspberry pi pico, and produce as output using a DAC (digital to analogue converter) a voltage that steadily increases when the camera is exposing, and drops to zero when the camera is not exposing (almost like a sawtooth wave), so that a galvometer can be attached to scan the sheet laser across the sample. In this project I :


Birefringence of Packing Tape

Dr. Aaron Slepkov had at the time been studying the birefringence of various different household tapes (packing tape/cellotape/sticky tape), with the aim of collecting sufficient data on the tapes to predict the colours produced when the tapes are viewed between crossed polarizers. When viewed between crossed polarizers, birefringent objects, like the tapes, appear vividly coloured, and this phenomenon can be used to create pretty pictures (from Dr. Slepkov) among other applications. In this research project I assisted by re-taking large quantities of spectrometer measurements on the tapes, to verify the data previously gathered by Dr. Slepkov.

Related:
here is an article I wrote that was listed as the jIAPS (journal of the international association of physics students) article of the month on birefringence.

Contact Me

At the moment the best method of contact is probably by email or my UK cell. But I include all methods below:

Archival

This tab displays the original "jack.beda.ca" website, as made by my dad a long long time ago


The address for this page is <http://jack.beda.ca/>. Any other addresses may change without notice. Please bookmark and link appropriately.


There really is not anything here yet, except for links to photos that my parents have taken of me.


Here is my birth announcement:

		From: John 'Johann' and Rachel Beda <johann-st@beda.ca>
		Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 3:17 PM
		To: John 'Johann' and Rachel Beda
		Cc: Rachel Wortis Beda
		Subject: Jan 'Jack' Francis Beda born September 19, 2003
		
		
			Avast ye maties!
		
			We are very pleased to announce the birth of our second son, 
		Jan Francis Beda (who we have been calling "Jack"), at 5:30 AM 
		on Friday, September 19, 2003. Weighing in at 8 lbs 1.2 oz 
		(3.665 kg) and a length of about 21.5" (55 cm).
		
			Rachel and Jack are doing very well. Johann is a bit sleepy 
		having gotten up at about 2:30 AM, and Robert is excitedly waiting 
		to visit Jack this afternoon for the first time.
		
			A very few photographs are on the web, but more will probably 
		follow fairly soon. Jack's email address and web pages should 
		be operational fairly soon.
		
		
		

Jack's Home Page - Robert's Home Page - Johann's Home Page - Rachel's Home Page

This page © 2000 and maintained by

jack-st@beda.ca