DOING GOOD DOES YOU GOOD BUILD THE COMMUNITY THROUGH GIVING
Volunteering not only strengthens the community but also benefits the person who serves. For those who enjoy spending their time giving back, check out how volunteering opportunities can benefit you! Improves Mental and Physical Health When you do good, you feel good. Those positive emotions lead to emotional resilience, which helps you in the face of crisis or stress. They also decrease stress while increasing positive, relaxed feelings. Volunteering gives you a sense of meaning and appreciation, which can reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Volunteer activities also keep people moving. Whether it is carrying donation boxes, walking around the neighborhood, planting a community garden, or even cleaning litter from the roads, this moderate physical activity can help strengthen muscles, reduce blood pressure, and even alleviate symptoms of chronic pain. Prevents Isolation and Promotes Socialization Many older adults face social isolation, and it can have negative impacts on their overall health. Volunteering is a great way to network with members of the community and meet new people.
Likewise, after moving to a new neighborhood or leaving a career, it is difficult to find a new social group. But when you work with people toward the same goal, you may find you have common interests with other volunteers. You can even invite your family or friends to help, and then catch up while doing something good for the community.
Gives a Feeling of Purpose Sometimes as life changes and you grow older, your sense of purpose may begin to fade. Volunteering can help recharge a zest for life and may even motivate you to set and accomplish new goals. You should volunteer for many reasons, whether it’s to give back to the community, help the environment, or satisfy your own personal needs. No matter why, it’s a great way to get out there and do some good.
A CAT COAUTHORED AN INFLUENTIAL PHYSICS PAPER
The True Story of F.D.C. Willard
Cats defy the laws of physics all the time, so it’s only fitting a cat would teach us physics more directly — by coauthoring a highly cited, influential physics paper.
paper manually on his typewriter. Time was short, and Hetherington had done all the work himself.
The professor didn’t feel too guilty for trying to deceive the publisher: “Why would I do such an irreverent thing? … If it eventually proved to be correct, people would remember the paper more if the anomalous authorship were known. In any case, I went ahead and did it and have generally not been sorry.” The journal loved the paper, but the ruse stayed secret among his close colleagues until a visitor arrived to meet the authors. When Hetherington told them the truth, they laughed, and not long after that, the feline coauthor became quite famous. F.D.C. Willard not only saved Hetherington from rewriting the entire paper, but also continues to inspire cat-related academia antics. On April 1, 2014, the American Physical Society (APS) announced all cat-authored papers would be made freely available. “Not since Schrödinger has there been an opportunity like this for cats in physics,” they wrote. We couldn’t agree more.
According to Hetherington’s 1982 book, “More Random Walks in Science,” he explained, “After an
In 1975, Jack H. Hetherington was a professor of physics at Michigan State University,
evening’s thought, I simply asked the secretary to change the title page to include the name of the family cat.” And that’s what happened; the professor named his Siamese cat, Chester, as his coauthor.
and he completed a paper on atomic behavior. However, he had a problem: As a sole author, Hetherington had used “we”
throughout the paper. A colleague pointed out that publishers reserved that language for papers with multiple authors.
Of course, the name Chester wouldn’t look convincing as a scientific paper coauthor. So, he invented “F.D.C. Willard.” The initials stand for Felis Domesticus Chester . The last name, Willard, was the name of Chester’s father.
With today’s software, this would be a minor
inconvenience. But to fix his error in 1975, Hetherington would have to retype the entire
2 • www.garryliday.com
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