SI Ψ

This Post Intentionally Left Blank

2011-08-24T20:09:00.000-06:00

Contradiction!

Wow... the things that keep me up at bed time!

Janus Christ!

2011-07-30T21:39:00.001-06:00

Recently I have been doing research related to a type of constructed object called a Janus particle.
During the course of this research I get to play around with very cool equipment, like lasers, confocal microscopes, magnetic fields, laser traps etc.

Janus particles are named after the Roman god of change or transition, and is usually represented by a figure with two faces.
Likewise, Janus particles are constructed with two faces, each having a different physical property.
Many interesting and useful properties can be explored in such systems.

My task was to study such systems, comprised of silica spheres approximately 2 to 3 microns in diameter. In studying such systems I get to observe so very cool physics, and to see surprising images.

One afternoon, after a long and trying period of gazing through the objective of our polarizing microscope, I came across the following particle

"Woah! This is better than that grilled cheese Jesus I read about!"

Now wait a minute... I am studying a particle named for a Roman god, and instead I see something that looks strikingly like Jesus?

Is God trying to tell me something?
If he is, I do not have a clue what it is, or why He chose such an obscure medium. Of course, this is a personalized message if there ever was one. Only I could see such an object at that particular place or time!
Now I know how those NASA scientists must have felt when they saw the face on Mars!

Or, perhaps natural selection has simply programmed my visual cortex to recognize patterns that look like faces, and cultural bias has programmed me to find such a recognition in a surprising location to be the work of a higher power?

I sit for a while, focusing and refocusing on the particle,and as I watch, I notice the image is sort of shaking its head at me.
"A message from God!" Perhaps He must be very disappointed that I would dare assert such things as evolutionary biology and cultural biases as to why I saw Him in His glory... in a microscope image of a silica sphere imbedded in 5CB liquid crystal.

Or, perhaps the shaking and nodding of the head is due to thermal fluctuations... Brownian motion? Humm... now the image seems to be nodding its head.

I debated weather to show these images, as I was ill at ease with the idea that people may decide to make a pilgrimage to my lab in order to see the face of Jesus. (Kidding)

Like most people, I get a thrill and goosebumps when I see a face suddenly and spontaneously appear in a cloud, or a shadow pattern, or in the random alignment of light and color in a glass pane. A parasympathetic response to perceived danger, or the cognitive dissonance of seeing a face where none should exist.
As a scientist, I can step back and appreciate the physics and biology that goes into having perceived the face in the first place. I can think about the cultural programming I have undergone, and must overcome in pursuit of science, that goes into perceiving something of the numinous in a play of light.
This cultural programming leads to some falling to the comfort of religion to explain the face, while leading to others invoking aliens, or spirits.

In any case, when I see a sheep in the clouds, or a face in a cheese sandwich, I can enjoy the thrill, and the subsequent analysis of what I am seeing without resorting to religion or superstition.
Some say this is my loss, and that I am missing out on deeper understanding.
That is something I don't quite see.

Fermi Problem: Why Are Christian Radio Stations So Loud?

2011-06-05T09:27:00.000-06:00

My wife likes to listen to a small shower radio during her morning routine, and she laments the fact that she can only get one decent classical station in, and none of the popular music she likes. However, the Christian radio stations come in loud and clear, as do a few particularly awful country stations, and a long string of Spanish language stations. (Neither of us are fond of modern country music it seems.)

We were discussing this phenomena, that the stations we did not like seem to come in very strongly across the dial, but the "good" stations had short range or were weak in comparison.

"Perhaps the reason why the bad stations are clearer is because fewer people listen to them, and are sucking up all the good stations." My wife commented.

I found this a bit funny and started smiling. "It does not work that way!" I stated confidently, but then I though about it a bit...

"Why do you think that?" I asked?

"Well, my cell phone gets worse signals in areas with lots of users, and the WiFi networks get slower when there are a lot of people using the connection." Why not radio stations.

Why not?
Do radio stations have a set bandwidth, like the cell phone towers or WiFi hubs?
Well, not really. The power a radio station puts out is attenuated mostly by distance from the tower, and the amount of matter absorbing, scattering and reflecting the radio waves.
Also, given the fact that a receving radio antenna is sucking down all the radio stations at once, and it is the tuner that is filtering out the unwanted stations, one could make the claim that an receving antenna would attenuate all the stations equally. One could get picky about how antenna lengths are better at resonating with particular frequencies than others I supposed.

But one may still wonder... does a receiving antenna that is actively tuned to a particular frequency absorb more power from the signal than one that is not active, or tuned to another station?
And if so, how much power?

----- Start Fermi Problem ------

Estimate how many radios there are within 20 miles of a transmitter in any given city.

Estimate how much power a single receiving antenna attenuates from the signal.
When it is active? When it is not tuned to the station?

Calculate the difference in power a receiving antenna would observe at 20 miles if suddenly all the other antennas were to physically disappear!

----- End Fermi Problem -----

There are probably many other reasons for a perceived signal to noise ratio for certain types of stations. And this is a fun topic to think about.

Perhaps country music just seems louder to those who do not want to hear it.
Perhaps country music stations cater more towards a demographic that travels more during the day, and thus they are simply transmitted at a higher power than popular music stations.

Perhaps Christian radio stations like to be louder to catch your attention! After all, they are trying to get their message out and save your soul!

But more listeners would seem to be a very small contribute to relative signal strengths, at least from a physics standpoint.

I see dumb people #7 A Monster Under the Bed!

2011-05-31T21:02:00.001-06:00

Having just posted my rant about the WHO classification of cell phones as a possible carcinogen, and suffering through the crash after my endorphine rush, I have decided to make an analogy to the statement Dr. Sanjay Gupta made on CNN.

Neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta says Tuesday's announcement, "dealt a blow to those who have long said, 'There is no possible mechanism for cell phones to cause cancer.' By classifying cell phones as a possible carcinogen, they also seem to be tacitly admitting a mechanism could exist."

This statement, and what WHO did in general is similar to a parent checking under their childs bed for monsters, so that the children can sleep better.

The child, not understanding that there are no monsters under her bed, is frightened, and asks daddy to please check under the bed for a monster.
"Please daddy! I know there is a scary monster under my bed... can you check and make sure it won't get me?" The child pleads.

"Sweetie, you know there is no such thing as monsters, and you are perfectly safe. All that are under your bed are some little dust bunnies. Now go to bed sweetheart." Daddy responds gently.

"But daddy! There are mean monsters under the bed! The dust bunnies could become mean monsters, and I am scared! Just check!"

The father knows perfectly well there are no such thing as monsters under the bed, but cannot stand to hear the fear in the voice of his child. He checks under the bed, and on verifying there are indeed no scary monsters, only some dust bunnies, tells his daughter she is safe, and kisses her on the forehead good night, tucks her in, and leaves the room... not forgetting to keep the door cracked and the night light on.

However, by checking under the bed, the father is tacitly admitting to the child that there may indeed be monsters.

Neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta says Tuesday's announcement, "dealt a blow to those who have long said, 'There is no possible way there are monsters under the bed. By classifying dust bunnies as a possible monster, they also seem to be tacitly admitting that monsters under the bed could exist."

It is time we grow up, and be able to sleep without the nightlight.

Fuck you, it's magic.

2011-05-31T19:07:00.000-06:00

I am tired. I am simply worn out.

I am so sick of people with positions of authority in one field claiming expertise in another.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a Neurosurgeon and correspondent to CNN is scaremongering about cell phone radiation again, and the morons at WHO are classifying cell phones as a possible carcinogen.

Neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta says Tuesday's announcement, "dealt a blow to those who have long said, 'There is no possible mechanism for cell phones to cause cancer.' By classifying cell phones as a possible carcinogen, they also seem to be tacitly admitting a mechanism could exist."

What bullshit.

I could spend a bit of time explaining the theory behind Albert Einsteins Nobel prize winning work on the photoelectric effect, and how microwave radiation is simply not energetic enough to ionize DNA and causer cancer.

I could explain how the human body is perfectly capable of thermal regulation of the small amount of heating caused by a cell phone.

But I have been doing so for years on years... and all I get is some dumbshit saying "I don't believe" that cell phones do not cause cancer. As if belief has any effect on physical reality.
Reality is not religion people...

Or some twit will argue that Albert Einstein came up with the photoelectric effect 70 years before cellphones came out... as if that really negates the theory.

I am so fucking tired of this.

Pearls before swine it seems.

More money will be spent on useless fucking studies to salve the fear of the those who cannot think critically.

And as for Dr. Gupta... since you cannot understand the basic physics...

You are like the plethora of pre-med students I have seen that think of physics as a class to get out of the way by whatever means needed. It never fails... every semester the students that bitch and moan about their grades are the pre-med students who are afraid of losing their scholarships because they finally came up against a class that makes them think rather than regurgitate.
The ones caught cheating are usually the pre-med students. The ones who think they can blow-job their way to a good grade... pre-meds.

So, I am tired... and sick and worn out of constantly trying to educate twits on a subject that really and honestly is not that hard to understand. So I decided to instead spend my time venting... because at least in this case I get something out of it... the endorphin rush of a good venting.

No More Tricks, Mr. Nan Guo! (A Physicists Perspective)

2011-05-29T10:51:00.000-06:00

There are a wealth of stories throughout history and cultures that are meant to teach a lesson:
The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the story of Icarus, To Serve Man... ;)

Recently I have been exposed to various Chinese fables, which strike me as very well written and pertinent event today. Their beauty lies in their brevity and directness, yet their ability to paint an image in my mind is just as strong as other fables I have read.

A few days ago I was told a fable by a colleague of mine that applies very well to situations I have experienced, and I am sure many of my readers will recognized the theme, if not recognize a player in their life's stage who reflects the actions of one Mr. Nan Guo.

Story and images copied from http://chinablog.cc/2010/04/no-more-tricks-mr-nan-guo/

In the Warring States period of China (475-221 B.C.), there was a state called Qi, the king of which was very fond of listening to music, especially the music played on the Yu, a wind instrument. So he convened a band of more than 300 players from his state. Everyday the band was called in to play the Yu for his Majesty at teatime. And the king seemed to be very satisfied with the band and the harmonies performed.
As a matter of fact, one of the players, Nan Guo, knew nothing about the instrument. But he did manage to pass himself off and went on well with his tricks that each time he tried to seat himself behind and pretended to be playing the Yu together with the others. And everything seemed good for him. He had never been exposed.

Finally, his days were gone when the prince ascended the throne. As the latter would enjoy solo rather than harmony, the players were called each in to play alone before the king. This time, as we have guessed, Nan Guo was embarrassed to find there was no place for him any more. As soon as Nan Guo got wind of the news, he sneaked away as fast as he could.

Mr. Nan Guo had the sense to run away in shame, or perhaps there were other consequences in store for fakers in the waring states period of China.

This story was told to me in response to having run into my very own Mr. Nan Guo, and I was struck by how well the story fit.

Substitute the lack of musical skill for a lack of physics ability in someone who somehow obtained a Masters in physics, and remove the common sense of leaving in shame and replace it with arrogance and violent protesting, and indeed my own personal Mr. Nan Guo was exposed!

Oh well. =(

Every endeavor, every field of study must have it's Mr. Nan Guo. Some fields seem to have a greater percentage than others, but I am still distressed whenever I find one in the sciences or particularly in physics.

Run away now Mr. Nan Guo.... please.

"You are RACIST!" is not an argument.

2011-05-28T11:37:00.000-06:00

This morning I stumbled out of bed and fell in front of my computer, so I determined I should do some perusing of CNN and other news sites. I came across the following article in the opinions section on cnn.com:

Black women ugly? Says who?

The post, by sport columnist LZ Granderson, discusses a somewhat controversial blog post by author and Psychology Today blogger Satoshi Kanazawa on the topic of relative attractiveness between woman of different races.
The blog, titled Why Are Black Woman Less Physically Attractive Than Other Woman was removed from the Psychology Today website, but can be found here.

On reading Mr. Granderson's opinion article, and the many comments posted in response, I was struck by how much hatred and bile there is on both sides of the topic, and how reasonable people posting their opinion were attacked from members of both camps.

Lets start where I did, with LZ's post.

My mother is a black woman.
And she is beautiful.
So to the editors of Psychology Today who thought it was a good idea to post a blog item calling black women ugly, I suggest you watch your back... my mother's cubs are looking for you.
And we are not happy.

A sports writer writer making veiled threats towards the editors of Psychology Today over a blog he finds insulting? Talk about fortifying a stereotype of the angry black man. At this point I skipped over to the blog that had caused such a response.

The basic gist of the blog is that the author believes that statistics he presents show that people feel that black woman are less attractive than woman of other races. Note that the source of the statistics were done by survey, and taken from population samples that are not clearly defined in the blog. His methods, data and experimental construction are not alluded to in his blog, nor are there any references cited.

At this point, Satoshi attempts to determine and speculate on the mechanisms for this data, and does so by some pretty murky and unsupported reasoning, including a reference to a prior blog of his as a supporting datum.

The blog post was a laughable piece of so called science, and easily attacked and dismissed scientifically even on first glance. Regardless of the validity of the observations, i.e. if in fact statistically black woman are less attractive than other races, he did not present his data in a way that can be examined independently nor tested, and thus the data, not to mention his conclusions, are highly suspect.

Note that I was not immediately pissed off by the title of the blog, or its message. The author could have stated the same conclusion about asian woman, or white woman etc. Since it was proported to be on a website run by a scientific journal, I was interested to see the data. (Lets see the data is the principle response of a scientist after all.)

Personally, I am not attracted to most black woman, or most native American woman. I prefer brunets over blonds, smaller breasts over large breasts etc. Those are my personal preferences, and the roots of those preferences are a complex interaction between genetic programming, my cultural and social up-bringing, and who know what else.

Understanding those preferences, and indeed how such interactions on a wider social scale may contribute to the perception of attractiveness is an interesting topic for science to investigate.

However, according to LZ, and many people who commented on his blog, such a preference is "RACIST!"

Back to LZ's blog post.

I do not dispute Kanazawa's credentials as an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, but I do wonder why he even approached the topic.

Hey LZ... why not approach the topic?
In science, no topic is verboten. Any subject, no matter how distasteful, or politically incorrect should be explored, discussed, researched and evaluated. Scientific censorship is a large contributor to scientific illiteracy.
Also, if you cannot dispute Kanazawa's credentials, then dispute his data in a fashion that is not attacking his character. If the data is trash, then any conclusions are trash. At this point step off, because the topic is over with, and your point made.

If a well thought out and implemented study shows that indeed black woman are found to be less attractive than woman of other races, then that is empirical data that can explored for causative reasons.

Calling the study "Racist" is incorrect. The root cause of the trend may be in part due to cultural racism, or it may not be, but to call people who conduct such studies racist, or to attempt to suppress such study as racist is wrong. Debate the science methodology, do not suppress it as politically incorrect. And yes, from your editorial, you would attempt to suppress such research. Shame on you.

I challenge LZ to aquatint himself with the scientific method (and Satoshi would do well with doing the same it seems) so that he can challenge the merits of the statistics and the study rather than taking the lazy (and cowardly) way out and yelling out "Racist!"

Finally, LZ should consider how his call to arms for people to suppress scientific discourse of uncomfortable topics is itself the epitome of scientific (and cultural) illiteracy.

"One Up's" #1

2011-05-23T06:37:00.001-06:00

Lady Gaga

Madonna

Jaded? Geeking Out!

2011-05-08T17:20:00.000-06:00

Jaded

adjective /ˈjādid/

Tired, bored, or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of something.

Becoming jaded is a frightening state to contemplate. What is the point of life if one is bored of it? What is the point of learning if nothings surprises or inspires?
If one does become jaded, are there degrees of this condition? A way back?
Are those states a defense mechanism to over-stimulation.. the brains way of prioritizing information?

I have been accused of being so interested in everything, that I can derive no special pleasure from any one topic. Can interest in everything lead to a "relative jadedness?"

However, recently I have experienced situations that seem to border on the truly jaded, and was a somewhat new experience.

My wife is taking cello lessons, and is captivated by the instrument. She is striving to master and enjoy playing the cello, and experience a new creative outlet.
During this process, she asked me to attend her first recital, and afterwords I had a chance to have a conversation with her instructor.

I firmly believe the ability to "geek out" on a subject is the key indicator of a persons love and enthusiasm for a subject. Geeking out is not only the pervue of techno-geeks, or of Harry Potter fans. Geeking out can encompass any topic of interest and is indicated by a person being able to discuss the minutia and wonders of a topic. One can geek out over music, or the cello, or butterscotch taffy!

I also suspect that if one can induce a person to start "geeking out" about something, one is on a good start to making a new friend.

I started asking some questions of the music teacher, who immediately started geeking out music, the cello, and music theory. His topics ranged to how digital music could never fully replicate the natural sound of a cello with perfect fidelity, do discussion of the golden ratios, musical scales theory, even tempered tunings and Pythagoras.

It was fun, and I was happy to learn his opinions, discover things I did not know, and experience how a musician experiences and thinks about physical topics.

In particular, he was very excited and wanted to show me something cool about a piano string.

He lifted the foot mute pedal on a piano, pressed down the lowest note on the piano (B) and played several other notes. He then muted all the other strings, and noted how the string was able to vibrate and "hum" at those other pitches simultaneously.

"Isnt that cool?" He enthusiastically asks.

All I could think to myself at this point was. "Umm... yeah?"

I did not share his awe and enthusiasm of this observation. This was a phenomenon with which I was familiar, could explain, and have observed many times. I felt bored, and impatient with him, wanting something more than the twist the discussion had taken. Here he was about to show me something really cool, and he shows that a string can support multiple resonance modes at the same time?

But at the same time I had a small frisson of fear, and a little guilt. Here was someone who had noticed something about the world that was not trivial, and I was offhandedly dismissing his observation as trivial, boring, and not pertaining to my enjoyment or excitement.
This was the beginnings of being jaded.

I believe that begin jaded starts when one is dismissive of the pleasure someone gets in observing or doing somethings which you have done or observed many times before. Being jaded is forgetting the thrill of experience, the joy of discovery. Being Jaded is thinking you know all there is about a subject.

I caught myself at this moment in time, and realized that there was no way I should be bored about the music teachers observation of higher resonance modes of the open B string of a piano. If I was bored about the topic, that should be a signal that there is more I can learn about it, more depth to the topic I could explore!

Or, at the very least I could enjoy vicariously the thrill of discovery and learning that the music teacher was experiencing and appreciate his need to share this with me.

I can only hope that I can catch myself before entering this state more often than not, and not let "jadednes" ruin my life experience, or dissuade others from sharing theirs. Find a way to geek out, and one finds a cure for being jaded.

Frankenfoods, and the villagers with pitcforks!

2010-06-16T13:13:00.002-06:00

I love facebook. It is such a nice platform for people to espouse their views, and to call others to arms for their cause.

Take for instance the following wall post:

Call your Rep and Senators and ask them to support the ban on GMO alfalfa.

What? "Why would I do this?" I ask myself, and I reply as such.

Right away comes the reply:

"Click the link and read why.

...and in general GMOs are not what they're cracked up to be. They do more harm than good."

Ok, that is an opinion, but I see no supporting evidence of the claim that GMO do more harm than good, much less a reason why I should support a ban on GMO alfalfa. Therefore I click the link and came to the following conclusion, which I posted to the wall post thread:

Sounds like the multi-billion $ organic food industry does not want cross contamination of their GMO foods (selective breeding over 10000 years of agriculture is in fact a form of GMO) with direct DNA manipulated crops.

The organic industry could lose billions because they could not claim the label "organic" for the contaminated crops, or the milk from cows fed the crops.

This would be bad for the organic industry, the people they employ, the farmers they support, and the stock holders.... See More
Jobs could be lost, farms could go under (or adapt), and vendors could lose money.

However, there is no credible evidence, empirical or scientific that shows such a modern GMO crop would have detrimental effects on the health of humans. There is little evidence that they "do more harm than good", especially when "harm" and "good" have not been defined in this context.

For instance, I would say it is "good" to be able to more economically feed a larger number of humans.
However, too many humans is an issue we face, which can damage the environment. The mere fact of being able to feed more with less is a good and bad thing, depending on what one views as good or bad, and they are not mutually exclusive.

I would urge people to consider the issue carefully before they sign a petition... any petition. The decision needs to be based on careful consideration of all facts available, and all issues, be they political, economic or scientific (not counting moral) rather than on fear based PR.

I am loath to continue the discussion on facebook, because in the past I have lost the battle with people with these sort of viewpoint. In the past I was vilified and thought to be a "hater of nature" or some such crap.

The other side made no attempt at learning, or critical thinking, and would simply dig in and entrench in their worldview, with friends coming to aid and vilified me further. Do I want a repeat?

Oh well... I tried.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/frankenstein%20images%20villagers/BrklynLiberal/frankenstein20villagers.jpg

What has Google cost us? (FPOTD-Solved)

2010-05-31T12:34:00.000-06:00

Today I was reading a MacRumors post about the Google Pacman Doodle.

Some joker posted on the thread the following:

"Oh man, I've been playing all morning. I'm glad the gov't doesn't block Google!
...now I feel bad for wasting your tax dollars. Okay, I won't play any more. Back to work.
Okay, just kidding. I only played one game."
--- A. Joker

Of course, there is always some wanktard on just about any discussion board that wants to whine about how much they hate the government:

"I'm not gonna start on how much I loathe government employees in all areas for reasons like this, so I won't go into the "Nobody Does Their Job" speech. No, the Gov doesn't block that on their computers, but that doesn't mean you should be playing games while you SHOULD be working, and working off of taxpayer dollars I may add. The Gov is the joke it is today thanks to things like this.

I did come to this thread, however, to say how they should leave it like this permanently, but I think I retract that now. People that should be working aren't, because Google turned a standard search function into a game. I know in my mind too, that no one I know is going to pass by it without playing... Sad. "
--- A. Wanktard.

Somebody later posted the thought that in the grand scheme of things, a government employee playing 10 min of Google Pacman was in-consequential.

But the question to be asked, and the Fermi problem to be considered, is how much did Google cost us?

I posted the following to the discussion, then went back to doing some federally funded physics.

----- Start Fermi ----

Hummm...

About 3 million government employees, not counting shadow hires.
Average annual salary lets assume around $40k, or about $20/hr or $.33/min.

10 min of play costs, just in direct pay, $3.33. Lets not forget the massive overhead costs, assume about 3 times direct pay and those 10 min cost about $10.

If every employee played for 10 min, that is $30 million spent.

Remember that most full time salaried workers in most states are allowed by law two 15 min paid breaks, and we can see this is not a big deal. Just install Pacman in every bathroom stall and save on costs!

Now, of course not every employee is going to spend 10 min, and in fact most of them will not play at all for whatever reason. Lets assume 1% of all government employees played for 10 min, and that comes out to a paltry $30k of time spent.

There are about 300 million people in the USA, lets say 1/2 are of tax paying age.
This means that those employees playing Pacman for 10 min cost each of us $0.0002.

I think I would rather pay for that than for many other things the US government uses my tax money for.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2074/2491881324_120c82a0ac.jpg

Double me Down!

2010-05-01T13:16:00.002-06:00

Recently I have been reading about the "horrors" of Kentucky Fried Chickens new Double Down Sandwich.
A product that is "...so meaty, there's no room for a bun!"

http://sweettater.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/kfc-double-down-chicken-sandwich-really/

According to the advertisements:

"The new KFC Double Down sandwich is real! This one-of-a-kind sandwich features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel's Sauce"

Actually, the dammed thing sounds and looks pretty dammed tasty to me!

But you should hear (read) the monkey-screaming-while-flinging-feces reaction on the blogsphere.

"Just look at this atrocity."
"...heart attack on a plate."
"How dare KFC attempt to market such an abomination!"
"Makes me sick to think this is available for my kids to eat!"
"Potentially lethal!"
"Angina on a plate!"

The list goes on.
A spark people article (yes, I use Spark People... I can't help but to spin the login wheel!) goes on to rant about the vileness of the sandwich.
The interesting thing are all the comments, a majority of them agreeing about how the sandwich is vile, a heart attack on a paper wrapper, and how KFC should be boycotted. And what about this "nutritional nightmare"?

Lets take a look at the nutritional content of the Double Down:

Fried Double Down:
540 calories, 32 grams of total fat, 10 of them saturated and 0.5 trans fats, 1380 milligrams of sodium.

OMG run for the hills!

How dare KFC market such an abomination! Lets see, a 540 kcal Double Down is 1/5th my total daily allotment of calories, and 66% of my sodium intake limit according to the RDA. I should sue!
I should go to Wendy's instead!

Umm, wait a min... that Wendy's Triple Baconator sure looks good! I cannot eat the bun because I am sensitive to Gluten, and it makes my hair fall out. I will be "good" and skip the fries and a drink.

Lets see how many calories are in this hamburger:

Holy Crap! 1180 kcal? That is more than twice as much as the Double Down!

"Just look at this atrocity."
"...heart attack on a plate."
"How dare Wendy's attempt to market such an abomination!"
"Makes me sick to think this is available for my kids to eat!"
"Potentially lethal!"
"Angina on a plate!"

Ok, so one can find an abomination on the menu of nearly every fast food chain.

There is bad shit out there in the world people. Avoid stepping in it. Don't let your kids eat what you think is bad for them, but quit bitching about what is bad for me.
I can do totally fine with eating a Double Down. I can go grilled so that I don't get the breading if it makes me sick. I can do without the excess sodium, but hey, its my body.

A person losing weight has to abide by the laws of physics... to lose weight you must consume fewer calories than you burn. Simple. I can choose those calories to be crap, and feel sick and under nourished, or I can choose my calories to be good for me, with veggies, fruit, meat etc. and feel less sick, or even healthy. I am an experimental physicist, and can read the data. I do not need my research in how my body reacts to food be be hindered a-priori via legislation to ban certain foods. =)

So, I have about 2600 kcal to play with today. I am going to eat a Double Down, with a side of potato wedges, and an iced tea. My total calories will be around 800 kcal. (Still almost 400 kcal less than the bunless hunk of meat Wendy's calls the baconator.)
This is very reasonable calorie count for a meal.

Hell, I may later on eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's pistachio pistachio ice cream. (Hey, check out their marketing.) This will come out to about 1000 kcal. What do you know, I will still have 800 kcal to play with. Think of how many fruits and veggies I can eat to make up 800 kcal!
Or... I could eat another Double Down with potato wedges! YUM!

If you never see any more blog posts from me, you will know without a doubt that the Double Down killed me off, and you can say "Ha Ha!"

Let Your Fingers Do The Walking. (FPOTW)

2010-04-30T08:25:00.000-06:00

Recently I have returned to my swingers life.

http://www.utahagenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Swing-Dancing.jpg

By this I mean Lindy Hop of course! =)
This means less time for this blog, but not to fear, as I will continue to post despite dancing and Oompaloompas.

On a swinging note, lets talk about Django Reinhardt, perhaps the greatest of the Jazz and Gypsy Swing guitarists.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Django9.jpg

As a youth, Django was injured in a house fire, leaving him with reduced leg mobility, and paralyzed the ring and pinkey fingers of his left hand.
Such and injury would be devastating to a guitarist, but despite the handicap, Django retrained himself to excel in guitar despite his injures. His guitar work served as an inspiration to following generations.

Below is a video of Django playing. Note how he lets his fingers do the walking!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iJ7bs4mTUY

---- Start Fermi Problem ----

Estimate how many miles Django's fingers traveled over the fret board over his lifetime.

How many notes did Django play over his lifetime?

How many calories did he burn playing these notes?

--- End Fermi Problem ---

Oompaloompas!

2010-04-13T15:53:00.000-06:00

http://www.rustygoffe.co.uk/Image11.gif

Ommpaloompas are scheduling and hindering my free time, and thus the time I have for this blog.
As soon as I get things ordered and my time managed, I will be back at it!

In the meantime, check out this TED talk by Michael Specter:

The Danger of Science Denial

Space Ring Habitat Fermi (FPOTW)

2010-03-12T09:26:00.001-07:00

This is my current desktop theme:

Artist : Alexander Preuss

I wish I knew the artist and the name of the piece shown above. For some reason, this particular piece has captured my attention, and my imagination. I have spent some amount of time estimating various physical properties of the space ring habitat represented in the drawing.

The Fermi problem is as follows:

Estimate from the picture the diameter of the ring, and the diameter of the tube the habitat is constructed from.
What is the angular velocity needed to maintain a 1 gee environment?
What is the volume of air in the habitat?
Estimate the population.
Estimate the mass of the habitat.
Estimate the reaction mass needed to "spin up" the station to the angular velocity estimated above.

If anyone knows the piece or artist, please tell me so I can properly attribute the image.
=)

Update: 4/30/2010

As in the comments below, the artist attributions are added! Thank you MJWT.

Who needs a loop counter?

2010-03-01T07:52:00.001-07:00

No sense of scale.

2010-02-23T06:46:00.000-07:00

I always get a kick out of eavesdropping on conversations at our local coffee shops.

http://lishacauthen.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/eavesdropping-1.jpg

Well, eavesdropping is not really the correct term, as the people pontificating at coffee shops usually do so loudly so that others may bask in their perceived intellectual glory.

The topics range from philosophy:
"All we really know... I mean all we really know, is what we are told."

To the latest in medicine:
"It is the specific type of cheese that works, and the more organic the better! It cures muscle pain."

To current topics in health care and energy policy:
"We don't need nuclear power. If the government wants to solve the current obesity and energy crisis, they need to put the 100 million overweight lard-asses on treadmills hooked to generators, and dangle some bacon in front of them. The energy produced would more than suffice to power the needs of the rest of the US population."

Wait.... what... huh?

First of all, I ask the philosopher what kind of coffee he is drinking and how it tastes. "It's good... it is this special Colombian blend with a hint of vanillia."
"Did someone tell you it tastes good?" I ask, then move on.

"Tell me more about this cheese? Why not simply take aspirin?" I ask the medical student.

"Well. there are these specific enzymes that deaden pain receptors and reduce inflammation! It is all natural and it helped this Olympic skier win a gold medal. If it works for a world class athlete, then there must be something to it!"

"If an Olympic fencer said that trephination would relieve headaches, would you do that?" I ask, then move on.

"Hey, Mr. Bacon, " I interject to the energy/health guru/pundit and his cadre.

"Lets try some critical thinking and some math on your proposed solution to our energy crises."

I take a deep breath.

"100 million overweight people at 40 lb over weight (Using your numbers.) is roughly 4 billion lb. of fat. 3500 kcal of energy per lb of fat. That comes out to roughly 6e16 joules of energy.
America uses about 1.5e19 joules/year of electricity.
So if all the fat energy was magically converted to electricity, we could power the country for .004 years, or about 1 and a half days."

The pundits table falls silent.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/star%20trek%20riker%20picard%20bored/God_in_an_Alcove/StarTrek/FacepalmRiker.jpg

Obviously they do not get the point, so I continue:

"Worse yet, the average human puts out 100 Watts of power day and night, and while exercising may get up to a max of 200 Watt for short periods of time. Try the math to figure out how much "treadmill" energy the entire overweight population can provide per day until they lose their excess baggage."

Silence.

I shrug, bus my coffee cup, and head out into the real world, where the only people caught dead on a treadmill seems to be spandex clad models. (Or cute dogs).

I see dumb people #6 Quantum Zero Point... Zero Pain!

2010-02-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

Are you in deep pain? Are your quantum vibrations misaligned with your chakra points?

http://www.lisabeachy.com/images/chakra_img.gif

You are in luck! Linda Miller has the cure for you, Quantum Zero Point Energy!
How does this wonderful treatment work? Lets see what Linda has to say:

"Oh my! I am BEYOND excited to share with you…
… an Ancient natural therapeutic wisdom of applying Futuristic Technology in the Area of Quantum Physics to support Individuals with Natural Energies to eliminate pain and stress on the body and increase their immunity."

Ancient? Wow! How long has quantum zero point energy been known of? I can only find references at most 100 years old, but perhaps I need to expand my google search to include Linear B?

"This will not be for everyone because everyone will not choose to believe it… and that’s ok. This is for those who do choose to believe."

Wait, what... huh?
If all I need is belief, then why use something like Quantum Zero Point Energy? Why not use bananas? They may help align my root chakra with my splenic chakra!

"The products, backed by over 25 years of R & D, supports Self Care and these tools empower people to allow their bodies to heal naturally."

25 years? GREAT! With all those years in researching the quantum mechanics needed to understand what exactly is meant by zero point energy, also known as the vacuum energy, perhaps you can answer this question:

Consider a p-orbital electron characterized by |n,l=1,m=+-1,0> (You can ignore the spin angular momentum in this state vector)

Subject this electron to a potential:
V = lambda(x^2 - y^2) where lambda is a constant.

Obtain the "correct" zeroth order energy eigenstates that diagonalize the perturbation. Don't worry about evaluating the energy shifts in detail, but show us the three-fold degeneracy that are now completely removed.
What happens to the energy eigenstates under time reversal?

If you can answer this, I might switch from the banana brand pain killer!

Darwin Day Fermi Problem (Darwin Award)

2010-02-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

Happy Darwin Day!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Charles_Darwin_seated.jpg

200 years ago today Charles Darwin was born.
You may also have heard of the Darwin Awards, an award given (usually) posthumously to commemorate those who improve our gene pool... by accidentally removing themselves from it.

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Here is a nice Fermi problem to determine candidacy for a Darwin Award. This is based on a discussion I had at work.

------- Start Fermi Problem -------

A manager brings a problem to a physicist to design a system to put a pure nitrogen blanket into a small enclosed (but vented) box. However, there is some concern on assuring that the percentage of nitrogen in the box is as close to 100% as possible, and how to measure this.

A first design is to pump pure nitrogen from a gas cylinder into the box, and (relatively) quickly empty the bottle so that there is no diffusion of O2 back into the box through the vent holes. This should purge most of the O2 from the box.

The manager has read about people dying from Nitrogen asphyxiation, and is concerned that he could suffocate if he used too much nitrogen.

http://www.loupiote.com/photos/461387862.shtml

The physicist, after glancing at the room where the box is to be located, and the size of the pressurized nitrogen bottle, confidently proclaims that there is no real danger.

Is the physicist a Darwin award candidate?

Note that the dimensions of the room are 15 ft x 30 ft x 8 feet.

As an aside, assuming a standard airgas bottle of compressed nitrogen (250) what is the smallest size room you could safely vent such a bottle in?

You may have to look up (or estimate) what O2% is dangerous to such a candidate. =)

And finally, as a back of the envelope problem:
Say the box is 3 feet by 4 feet by 3 feet.
Design the flow rate of N2 and vent holes such as to assure a 99.99% purity of N2 after 1 hour. ;)

---- End Fermi problem ---

Note, because nitrogen does not trigger a suffocation reflex in the human body, breathing pure nitrogen gas is very dangerous. Just two or three breaths reduces the amount of O2 in the lungs where the O2 diffuses back into the lungs from the blood stream. For this reason, even if you determine the physicist is not a Darwin award candidate, please take precautions in dealing with nitrogen gas, and maintain adequate ventilation of the room.

A quick rule of thumb to file away for future Fermi problems:

Liquid to gas expansion ratios: Liquid:gas (approximate)

N2.    1:700
O2.    1:860
He2. 1:760
H2.    1:850
Ne.    1:1400

Taking the average expansion of the first 4 gases, a rule of thumb is that if you deal with many liquid cryogens, the expansion ratio is about 1:800.

To err is human, and part of skepticism

2010-02-08T10:55:00.001-07:00

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tEPnUfb_xEc/RrJQw1Uz-CI/AAAAAAAAADY/PNgQjTiLPCw/s1600/skeptical-cat-is-fraught-with-skepticism.jpg

John Kreb posted an article today on skepticism and how science is self correcting. The article discusses how science is, at its core, the very definition and application of skepticism.
John discuses the history of the scientific method, and its modern roots that are steeped in the worldview of treating the assertions of anyone, even supposed experts, with healthy critical thought.
He then goes on to discuss how climate science both succeeds and fails crutial tests of critical thinking, how scientist are imperfect practioners of critical thinking, and how the general public has issues where their skepticism is based on mistrust and ignorance of a process rather than a search for the truth.

The article is a very interesting read, and impels me to re post a list of what I believe skepticism is and is not.

Skepticism does NOT mean being correct.
Skepticism is asking questions, and looking for evidence rather than blindly accepting what one is told.
Skepticism will not always lead one directly to the right answer to any question, be it scientific, moral, political or what not.
Skepticism does not constrain one to stating an opinion only if one is right.
Skepticism allows one to change their mind in the face of evidence, not in the face of browbeating, political pressure or snarky comments and ridicule.
Skepticism is not being afraid to ask stupid questions, and not being afraid to seem stupid to others while asking them.
Skepticism about a topic does not require you to be an expert in that topic.
Skepticism does not require a "science degree"
Skepticism is not denial-ism.

The Printed Word (FPOTW)

2010-02-05T14:00:00.009-07:00

http://linzworld.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/newspaper.jpg

Newspapers have been the mass media for a few hundred years. In this day and age of instant CNN coverage, web pages and blogs, people have predicted the end of the newspaper.
However, the printed word still has great power. Power to change things for the better, or to act as fuel for destruction and death.
Lets examine the Fermi of the newspaper.

---- Start Fermi Problem ----

How many newspapers are printed each day in the United States?

Estimate how many trees are used to make the paper, per day.

Estimate how much ink is used in printing these papers each day.

Make the same estimates for the world each day, each year.

A few years back, 12 (I believe) caricatures of Mohammad were printed in various newspapers around the world.

http://www.internetphotos.net/albert-einstein-caricature.html

Einstein != Mohammad of course, and I do not risk a Fatwa for posting a caricature of Einstein that is for sure.

Estimate how much ink was used to print these caricatures.

How many people died as a result of the protest riots? (Time to practice your google-fu)

Compare the volume of blood of the dead to the volume of ink used to print the caricatures.

---- End Fermi Problem ----

I guess the power of caricature is greater than that of the printed word.

Fun back of the envelope!

2010-02-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I run across a blog that just makes me smile!

Rhett Allain over at Science Blogs posted on his blog, Dot Physics, a back of the envelope solution on the power source of a light-saber.

I love this type of back of the envelope problem, as readers of my blog know well.

More... MORE! =)

Earning a grade?

2010-02-02T12:43:00.001-07:00

I am constantly astounded by the contortions some students will go through in an attempt to improve their grades. These contortions are usually more strenuous and less likely to work than simply studying harder.

http://www.genemasterssalerno.com/Contortion_of_the_Psyche.html

For instance, and most recently, a friend of mine who is a Teaching Assistant was lamenting the fact that a student was constantly emailing him about a grade given him last semester.

"Man, this guy keeps emailing me about grades. And this is from a class that he took last semester!" My friend states one day over coffee.

"Really? What did he get?" I reply.
"A C+. He really did not deserve even that, and I gave him and the class a bit of slack."

"And he is still bitching? What does he want?"

"He says he would like to meet me and discuss his grade, and that he needs at least a B+ to keep his GPA up."

"Oh..." I smirk, "let me guess... he is either a Bio-Chem major, or pre-med?"

"I am not sure, let me check... yes! How did you know?"

I just laugh. It seems that the worst offenders of the "I deserve to get a good grade in your class even though I did not study" type students are the pre-med or bio-chem (read pre-med here as well) majors.
All of these students are required to take undergraduate physics, and many feel it is a waste of their time.

Many of the complainers are shameless in their whining for higher grades. They do not even bother with claiming the death of their grandmothers... no... they come right out with statements like: "I need an A- in your class or I will not get into medical school. What can you do to get me a higher grade?"
They nit pick on missing one point in a 15 point quiz, when the net effect of that one point is negligible on their grade.

They do not seem to respond well to replies such as: "I cannot do anything for you except give you a list of good books to study, and the name of a good tutor."

The usual response to this is more whining and threats, such as how they pay my salary and that they have better things to do than waste time with a stupid subject such as physics.
They seem to think that insulting a subject I love, and a vocation I have chosen will make me more sympathetic?
They threaten to go over my head to the instructor. This is funny because the instructors, after years of dealing with students likes this, are even less sympathetic than the TA's.

I once told one very persistent and whiny student I could help her with her grade if she promised to give me 30% of her future gross earnings after (if) she graduated medical school.

"That's unethical!" she complains.
"And asking me to give you a grade you do not deserve is ethical?" I reply.

She goes storming off to the instructor to tattle on me. The instructors prompt reply? "The going rate from professors is 45%, so you should have taken him up on the offer."

I defend my acerbic remarks on whining students by asking a simple question.
Do you, as a possible future patient of one of these students, really want a dishonest cheating person treating you for an illness? If they do not work hard enough, or are not smart enough to get the grades they need for medical school, is it in the public best interest to graduate them in the first place?

Well, as for contortions, perhaps they should be careful, for this is the "end" result.

Compactified Dementia - The hierarchy problem of cranks

2010-01-30T08:00:00.005-07:00

Over the last couple of days I have come across several blogs (and tweet's) relating to cranks (crackpots) and how they choose to interact with scientists, the general public, and themselves.
I have had a special place in my heart for crackpots (cranks, kooks, nutters) for the last 15 years since running into them abruptly on Usenet (now google groups). I have framed my very first snail mail crackpot letter I received shortly after publishing a paper in Nature. The rest I have consigned to a cardboard box.

There are many useful web sites and resources out there regarding cranks, and I very highly recommend reading Underwood Dudley's fantastic books on cranks.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/The_Trisectors.JPG

I have battle cranks for many years, but some comments on a blog about how cranks never seem to communicate with other cranks reminded me of a Usenet post I made several years ago. At the time I was doing research on short range tests of gravity, which would be able to put constraints on the size of compactified extra dimensions according to some string theory models by Arkani-Hamed et. al. I decided to write the following post. Enjoy. =)

Compactified Dementia - The hierarchy problem of cranks

The hierarchy problem of cranks is an interesting topic. Why are their arguments so weak compared to the average person? One answer might be that they reside in their own dimensions, compactified and placed out of the way somewhere.
Many people think that cranks (crackpots) live in their own universe, a universe that has nothing to do with our own. However, the Yankovich theory states that universes cannot interact directly. Since it is empirically obvious that cranks do in fact interact with our universe, this would mean that cranks in fact reside somewhere in our universe. This would mean that crackpots (cranks) live in their own compactified dementias, with bits of their crankiness "leaking" across to our regular Space-time.
There are some interesting properties associated with those compactified dementias.
1. There are absolute reference frames in Dementia-Space. This allows such things as faster than light travel, and the Ether.
2. Any GPS device entering such a Dementia is rendered useless.
3. Computer Keyboards have broken shift keys.
4. While communication from Dementia-Space is easy, communication into Dementia-Space is very difficult. In fact, one could postulate that there is no information transfer into Dementia-Space. Further tests are needed.
5. Residents of Compactified Dementias are very xenophobic. They think that occupants of regular space-time are in a vast conspiracy to "Hide the truth" and "Steal tax payers money".
6. Mathematics in Dementia-Space do not allow proper multiplication of negative numbers, but seem ideally suited to solve Fermat's last theory.
7. Time does not exist.
8. Clocks are broken.
9. The second law of thermodynamics does not hold in Dementia-Space.
10. Intelligence in Dementia-Space is dictated by the NIT. [1]
11. Diversified population makeup. [2]
This is but a short list. At this time, very few studies have been made into the fundamental physics of Compactified Dementias. At this time, most study has been simply to categorize (and catalog) the crank species that are emitted. For example, the list compiled by OM [3], while interesting, does not in fact explain why the interaction length of a crank is so small. Usually, crank interaction is limited to such an extent that the general population is rarely aware of cranks. Cranks have little effect on the physical world, much less any socio-political clout.
There is a new parameter space to explore when it comes to Compactified Dementias.

[1] M. Crank, Negative Intelligence, sci.physics, March 3, 2003 http://www.google.com/groups?&selm=oNwda.123485%24L1.17357%40sccrnsc02
[2] www.crank.net
[3] http://www.google.com/groups?as_q=crank%20list&as_uauthors=old%20man

Meniscus Fermi

2010-01-29T08:00:00.002-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dew_2.jpg

As you have probably guessed from a previous post, I find that dimensional analysis is a powerful tool for back of the envelope type problems.

Therefore I present this problem on surface tension as an exercise in dimensional analysis. Of course, most dimensional analysis solutions, as with most solutions to Fermi problems, are order of magnitude. So after having some fun with the following problem, see if you can refine your model a bit.

---------- Start Fermi Problem -----------

Add water to a clean glass, and you will notice that the water likes to "climb" up the wall to a certain height. This is called a Meniscus, and is caused by a physical property called surface tension.

http://www.ecawa.asn.au/home/jfuller/liquids/hydrometers.htm

You can put some water in an ice tray, and freeze it, and you will be able to see the frozen meniscus as a raised lip on the top surface of the ice cube.

Estimate how high the meniscus is for water.

Here is a hint for you:

The surface tension for water is about 0.07 N/m

------------ End Fermi Problem --------------

At the end of the day, you can do an experiment to help refine your model. Freeze some ice, and measure the height of the meniscus.

Liquid Crystals and the Buckingham Pi Method

2010-01-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

http://zenwerx.com/pi.png

Physicists have at their disposal many mathematical tools to help them solve problems. However, some of the most powerful are dimensional analysis methods.

Dimensional analysis not only helps you check if a formula you derived (or copied down to your test sheet if you are a student) is correct at least dimensionally, but it can help you estimate the answer to many physical systems.

For example, say you are a physicist who is trying to understand how their watch liquid crystal display works.
They have done some reading in the popular press and have found that a watch LCD is probably made of a twisted nematic liquid crystal cell, which can be switched with a magnetic field. (Or electric field).
The physicist reads up on Wikipedia about liquid crystals, how energy efficient they can be, how they are switched on and off, how polarizes are used and that nematic is derived from the Greek nema, which means thread. After some more reading our physicist starts wondering how strong of a magnetic field is needed to switch the LC cell.

http://www.matdl.org/matdlwiki/images/thumb/2/2c/Nematic.jpg/200px-Nematic.jpg

Of course one can simply look up the answer online, but our intrepid physicist decides to use dimensional analysis, and more specifically the Buckingham Pi method to determine the general form of the strength of the magnetic field.

Lets start with an aside on the Buckingham Pi method.

Suppose you are attempting to describing a physical system with a physically meaningful equation of n measurable variables.

where each is expressed in terms of k independent physical units.

The above equation can be restated in terms of dimensionless parameters constructed from of the form

where each are rational numbers.

From this we can construct the new equation:

Note that this solution is not unique, and is only one of a set of dimensionless parameters you can generate with your measurable variables in terms of physical constants. This method does not choose the best form, or even the most physically meaningful form. But it is very useful none the less.
Note that independent physical units are those such as length, time, mass etc. The fundamental SI units (of which there are seven) represent such a set of independent units.

New, lets see how we can use this method to determine a physically meaningful form for an equation to determine the magnetic field strength needed to switch the LCD cell in question.

Consider that we have a cell full of a nematic liquid crystal. The liquid has an elastic constant K, which is measured in Newtons. The LC is also diamagnetic in that it will anti-align with the magnetic field. How strongly the little "threads" or "nemas" in the LC will interact with an external magnetic field has to do with the diamagnetic susceptibility of the LC, .
The "threads" in the LC are twisted, which means that the "threads" in each layer of the LC is rotated, or "twisted" a bit from the direction the previous layer is facing. Picture a DNA molecule, or a helix spiral staircase. This means that the thickness, l, of the cell that is holding the LC is an important variable, as each layer will require a stronger or weaker magnetic field to anti-align the "threads".

In general terms, the little threads like to align along the direction (actually opposite) with the external magnetic field. But the restoring force of the liquid surrounding the threads want to keep this from happening. Sort of like trying to rotate raisins in a bowl of jello. Unless you hold the raisin in place, they spring back to their old alignment due to the elastic constant of the jello.

These little threads act as a polarizer, and you can rotate this polarizer using an applied magnetic field. Crossing the LC polarizer with another fixed polarizer stops light from being transmitted through the LC cell. This is switching the LCD ON.

http://www.fpga4fun.com/images/LCD_FPGAs_are_fun.jpg

So, using dimensional analysis, the general form of a dimensionful equation is:

We then construct a set of dimensionless quantities from this equation, and equate the exponents to determine the final form.
Lets examine each variable, and determine its dimensional quantities.

H -> magnetic field -> Amperes/meter -> [A][L^-1]

K -> elastic constant -> Newtons -> [M][L][T^-2]

delta_mu -> diamagnetic susceptibility -> Henry/meter -> [M][L^2][T^-2][A^-2][L^-1]

So, equating the fundamental SI units we get:

Equating exponents we get a set of 3 equations and 3 unknowns.

Solving this set of equations we get:

Therefore the dimensionful equation is:

Now, lets do a sanity check; Does this equation make sense?

First, the units check out. So the equation is dimensionally correct. Check.

As the elastic constant K increases ("jello" force increases), it makes sense that you would need a stronger magnetic field to rotate the "threads" in the LC. Check.

If a larger means a greater interaction with the magnetic field. This means that a weaker magnetic field can couple to the "threads" and overcome the "rubberyness" of the LC, and therefore the magnetic field does not have to be as strong to rotate the "threads". Check.

As the thickness of the cell increases, there are more "threads" that are already nearly aligned to the ON position. The more threads that are aligned, the less light makes it through the cross polarizers, and therefore a weaker field is needed to switch ON the LCD. Check.

So, the equation makes physical sense, and is dimensionally correct.

Our physicist uses their google-fu and determines that indeed this is the correct form, up to a multiplicative constant.

Of course, there may be a reliance on other variables, such as temperature, on how the LC behaves. More than likely these are subsumed into K, but can be put into our model later.

This is a very simplistic treatment of the Buckingham Pi theorem , as well as of twisted nematic liquid crystals. However, I hope the power of dimensional analysis is evident in this example.

Fermi Gravity (FPOTW)

2010-01-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a Fermi problem with a (perhaps) surprising answer, and several methods of attack.
The question is simply stated thus:

Where is gravitational acceleration greater, on the Earths surface, or 100 km underground?

There is a very easy way to solve this, a Fermi way that will answer the question. There is also a back of the envelope method, which will give a numerical answer.

For a hint I give you the following picture:

Enjoy!

SkyCity Restaurant Diameter (Fermi Problem)

2010-01-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

These last couple of weeks since Christmas have been very busy for my wife and I. We are preparing to move to a new apartment in Boulder, we traveled locally to a family get together for Christmas and for New Years, and we have just returned from a trip to Seattle.

After all this running around frantically (and having little time for blogging btw) I decided it would be nice to blog about a nice dinner I had with my wife at the SkyCity restaurant atop the SpaceNeedle!

We were within a short walking distance of the SpaceNeedle, and so 47 min before our reservation we headed out.
This being Seattle in January, the weather was drizzly and cool, with fog. Surprisingly, even though it was 47F, the air felt warmer than an equivalent temperature would in Colorado. Any rain that came down did not feel like the soaking-freezing kind that is common in Colorado, but just seemed like an ever present misting. My wife and I rather enjoy such weather, so we were happy on our walk.

On our ride up the elevator we are regaled by the busboy about how tall the SpaceNeedle is, how fast the elevators go and what sort of earthquakes and winds the tower can withstand.

As we looked out the window of the elevator, we were a little disappointed that the view would be obscured by the rain and fog. The busboy commented: "The view from the SpaceNeedle, on a clear day is unrivaled, with views of the sound and Mt. Rainer. The SkyCity reasteruant rotates once in exactly 47 min, and is powered by a 1.5 HP motor. So you should be able to go around at least once or twice during your meal!"

We were shown to our table and our server (who earned her tip!) gave us our menu and took our order. (I wont go into detail, but it was not cheap!).
As my wife and I sipped our martinis, we gazed out of the window at the view, which despite the fog and snizzle was still really nice!

As we awaited our food, I wondered out loud about the diameter of the restaurant. When our server returned, with our food, I asked her about the diameter.
"Wow, no one has asked that one before! They always ask how high the SpaceNeedle is or some other question. I am not sure! I will ask the others and see if I can find out." And off she goes to ask around on the diameter of the SkyCity restaurant.

"Well heck..." I say to my wife; "I have enough information right now to estimate the diameter.

"Why not look it up online on your iPhone?" My wife asks as I look around for a piece of paper to scribble on.

"What is the fun in that?" I reply; "I will do that later for verification."

So, on to one method of estimating the diameter of the SkyCity restaurant!

------------------ Start Problem --------------------

So, the restaurant rotates once every 47 min. The dining seats and table are on a rail while the windows and the rest of the super structure remain stationary.
This can be seen in the cutaway drawing below.

As you can see in the picture, the windows slope outward on the rise. This means that there is an average diameter, as the max diameter is near the ceiling, and the min are at the floor. I decided to say the diameter of would be at my eye level as I was seated. Since this was a back of the envelope type problem, I did not really expect to estimate much better than a few percent anyhow.

So, first lets draw a rough sketch:

By simple trigonometry, the distance S is given by:

Where theta is in radians.

For a quick and dirty estimate, I would assume that the width of the window we were sitting in front of represented a short enough chord to use a small angle approximation for the radius.

The small angle approximation states that when the angle as measured in radians is much less than 1, or "small", then Sin[angle] ~ angle. Using this approximation and rearranging terms, I get an estimate for the radius R.

Then by adding up all these little chords I can approximate (and slightly underestimate) the radius of SkyCity.

Now lets consider some numbers:

The window pane I estimated to be about 6 feet in length. There is some error as I did not have a measuring tape, and my wife insisted I not get up to measure with my arms.
Taking out my handy dandy iPhone I timed the transit of the window to be approximately 57.5 seconds.
This allows me to set up the following ratio that is equivalent to adding up the chords:

On solving for R I estimated the radius to be:

R = 93.7 feet.

Done.

------------------------ End Problem ----------------------

A few minutes later our server returns:
"You know, no one knows the answer. Sorry about that."

"That's ok. It is about 94 feet in diameter, give or take." I reply.

"Really? Where did you find that out?"

"I estimated it." I reply.

My wife and I return to gazing out the windows and at each other while enjoying our meal. For desert we ordered the Lunar Orbiter, which was wonderful and foggy! As we finished off the last of the ice-cream, I decided to look up the diameter on my handy dandy iPhone using some google fu.
According to the SpaceNeedle web site the diameter is 94.5 feet. This is surprisingly close to my estimate.

In fact, my estimate is within 0.9%, or around 1.25 feet of the real answer. That is simply too fortuitous. Perhaps a future blog will deal with error propagation and error sources in such an estimate.

Well, all in all it was a wonderful evening! I was with my wonderful wife, at a nice restaurant, and I got to play with a Fermi problem.
=)

Images from:
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2007/03/century-21-exposition.html

Upcoming Blogs

2010-01-08T13:18:00.003-07:00

Yikes what a few weeks this has been!

http://ugandaninsomniac.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/pullhair.jpg

Week long trips to Seattle on business, moving back to Boulder. Getting ready for more research at CU. Design changes, New Year parties... more moving.
I will be getting back to the posting this next week, and will include a Back of the Envelope on the Seattle SpaceNeedle. A slightly belated Fermi Problem of the Week, and some more fun.

Stay tuned!

Fermi Christmas (FPOTW)

2009-12-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.mwctoys.com/images/review_crumpett_1.jpg

There is much to read about with respect to Christmas Fermi problems.
Here are some questions to ponder while out and about today.

If all the wrapping paper used to wrap Christmas gifts were compressed to a ball with the average density of cardboard, how big would ball be? How much would the ball weigh?

How many miles of scotch tape are used to wrap all the presents?

How many Christmas trees are killed each year? If burned for energy, how many houses could this heat for a day?

Estimate how many collective years are spent listening to Christmas music in the last 30 days? The last week? Just today? (Is there a distribution?)

How many times are the words "Have a merry Christmas!" used over the last 30 days? Week? Just today?

How much food is consumed Christmas day as compared to an average day?

How many calories are expended Christmas day as compared to an average day?

Give a rough estimate on how many gifts are given, and how many are returned, and how much gas is burned returning all those gifts to the store?

Enjoy the time you spend with family!

I see dumb people #5 More "Homeopathetic" nonsense.

2009-12-23T12:07:00.002-07:00

It seems that homeopathy proponents really like to make fools of themselves.
For your viewing pleasure, and to practice your critical thinking skills, I present:

THE MECHANISM: How Homeopathy Works

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpC8BvHyorg

Note that the ratings for this you-tube video have been disabled. Humm... I wonder why?

Did you think these homeopathetic idiots would just stand by and take all the scathing attacks by skeptics and people who actually have a scientific understanding of the world? No.
Here is a rebuttal.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/12/22/Why-Skeptics-Love-to-Hate-Homeopathy.aspx

A PhD! Wow! That convinces me that homeopathetic proponents may just have something...

For me to poop on!

I keed, I keed!

A randy(i) skeptic

2009-12-18T21:14:00.001-07:00

James Randi, a well known and well respected skeptic, recently stated his opinion on the global warming debate.
He really stepped in it.

And by "stepped in it" I do not mean he screwed up, or did something wrong. He simply stepped in the steaming pile of crap the whole pro global warming and the global warming deniers have left for all of us to wade through.

http://www.roulettestudios.com/epitaph/images/Skeptic%20Tank.jpg

Many supposed "skeptics" attacked Randi on their blogs, or in comment sections of Randy's blog. They berated him for not being an "expert" in global warming. They blasted him for using his "status and influence" to support the global warming denialists. Some crowed about how Randi's chemotherapy was destroying his critical thinking because he dared question the "reality" that global warming is caused by humans.
Others seemed to trumpet on how even a skeptic can screw up.

A couple of days later Randi posted this clarification, reiterating what he said in his prior post about not being an expert, but that he is applying some skeptical critique to the subject.

"You should keep your mouth shut unless you are an expert in global warming" shouted some people.
"Leave the science to the scientists Randi, lets listen to what the climatologists have to say about the matter rather than the general scientists signing a petition." cry others.

You know what I find most interesting while reading about the whole global warming debate and Randi's addition to the subject? The way so called skeptics seem to attack Randi for stating his opinion. It seems that many of these "skeptics" equate being skeptical with being right.

Well, I have some news for those "skeptics", and a list of what being skeptical means. A bulleted list at that!

Skepticism does NOT mean being correct.
Skepticism is asking questions, and looking for evidence rather than blindly accepting what one is told.
Skepticism will not always lead one directly to the right answer to any question, be it scientific, moral, political or what not.
Skepticism does not constrain one to stating an opinion only if one is right.
Skepticism allows one to change their mind in the face of evidence, not in the face of browbeating, political pressure or snarky comments and ridicule.
Skepticism is not being afraid to ask stupid questions, and not being afraid to seem stupid to others while asking them.
Skepticism about a topic does not require you to be an expert in that topic.
Skepticism does not require a "science degree"
Skepticism is not denialism.

I think many "skeptics" would do well by understanding these realities.

Entropy and making my bed.

2009-12-17T13:45:00.001-07:00

I am not a neat freak.
I am not dirty per-se, I do not wallow in filth, but I am very disorganized and like to leave clutter around for my wife to trip over.

I also hate making my bed.

http://i.pbase.com/v3/61/168361/2/47254771.IMG_8916.jpg

No, this is not my bed, nor are these my cats. (I do like cat's tho...)

I have always hated making my bed. Something about spending a few min in the morning flipping, folding and tucking just seemed wrong somehow. I mean, all that will happen later in the evening is I will mess it up again.

Of course, I cannot stand sleeping under a totally ruined set of blankets, but it takes far less effort and time to straighten those out after a few days of use.

When my mother would tell me to make the bed however, telling her no because it will just get messed up never worked.

Then I encountered physics!

I learned about the second law of thermodynamics, or the universal law of entropy, and thought I had a well justified excuse for never making my bed. I was saving the universe!

A property of entropy is that in a system, a process that occurs will increase the entropy of the universe.

What is entropy? Well, simply put it can be thought of as a measure of disorder of a system.

Some of the properties of entropy are:

The entropy of the universe will always increase (or stay the same at best) even if in a local system the entropy can decrease.

Heat is considered to be directly related to entropy, as a value of its entropy.

Entropy is thought to set the direction of times arrow.

For instance, consider a child who has very carefully set up a toy solder army in a very specific and organized manner, with neat little rows of solders according to color, height, rank etc.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/10/Toy_Soldiers3.jpg

In doing so, the child has decrease the "disorder", or entropy of the system of toy soldiers, but has also expended energy in making the arrangement. This expended energy is not 100 percent efficient at reducing the entropy of the system of toy soldiers, and some was wasted as heat. This heat increases the entropy of the child's surroundings, and consequently increases the entropy of the entire universe.

It even gets worse. Over a period of time, even if the child were to leave the soldiers alone, the state of disorder of the toy soldiers would naturally increase by itself. Dust, microbes, changes in temperature, quantum effects of decay, statistical impingement by cosmic rays would all serve to erode the plastic and over time the system becomes more disordered.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/toy%20soldiers%20images%20cat/papito_chiulan/close2.jpg

All these processes contribute to the increase in entropy of the universe!

Say a cat (I do like cats tho..) walks by and dashes the toy soldiers into a wrecked battlefield of scattered plastic. Not only did the cat directly increase the disorder (entropy) of the system, but in doing so wasted some of its energy as heat, which increases the universes entropy.

http://images.shops.godaddy.com/shop83351215/0_9_b6834eba-4cb5-4af5-a913-6abfeb49f2a6.jpg

You can't win... or more precisely, the universe cannot win.

Why is increasing the entropy of the universe a bad thing?

As the entropy of a system increases, the ability to draw energy from it to do work decreases. The thermodynamic free energy decreases.

The ability of a process to draw energy from somewhere, or to use thermodynamic free energy allows for the process to decrease entropy locally (at the expense of the universe). This work can be used to create stars, planets, babies, snow flakes, and all the wonders of the universe.

However, if the entropy of the universe reaches a maximum, it will evolve toward a state known as the Heat Death.

This means there is no thermodynamic free energy, and therefore no way to continue creating new stars, new life or new snowflakes. And this is a major bummer.

Every act you do sends the universe closer to heat death. Every act of creating and kindness, of hatred and havoc increases the disorder of the universe. Nothing can be done to stop this, but why not spend that energy, and waste some heat doing good? Create, be kind!

So, to extend the time till the heat death of the universe by just a little bit, I claim that I should put the energy of making my bed to better use!

I am saving the universe! (Take that you environmentalists you!)

My wife is not buying this...

Chillin'.

2009-12-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

I need to vent. There is a little bit of physics in this post, but this is more about how arguments start.

I always like to talk about using critical thinking as a way make decisions or draw conclusions without being ruled by one's emotions. I try and paint a picture of dispassionate analysis, and clear logical thinking.
In the real world emotions can run high, cloud ones judgment, and can lead one to draw erroneous conclusions even if one is very good at critical thinking.
It is really hard to think critically during an argument.

http://www.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2008/07/argument-380x258.jpg

Here is an example of how discussions can degenerate to arguments between two well educated critical thinkers.

The other day I was working with some colleagues on taking temperature measurements of an object. The object was made from stainless steel and delrin, and we had an RTD temperature sensor mounted in a small air gap in side the object.
Our plan was to immerse a small area of the metal part of the object in ice water, and measure the time it took to equilibrate to the ice water, then remove the object to air and measure the time it took to equilibrate back to room temperature.

One of my friends said that the two equilibration times would be nearly the same, and that we would not be able to measure the difference within experimental limits of our measurement system, and that at most the difference would be a couple of seconds.

I was pretty darned sure that the difference would easily measurable. The moment he said that the difference would be two seconds, I was wary.
Our RTD sensor is pretty accurate, and has a good response rate. But due to some limitations of the sensor suite we can only sample the temperature every two seconds.
Lets assume that the time it takes for a tennis ball sized hunk of stainless steel partly immersed in ice water and attached to a solid plastic pipe to equilibrate in a few minutes. Lets say 5 min, even though that would probably be an understatement.
If the difference in equilibration times are indeed 2 seconds, that represents 0.7% difference. That would indicate that there would be a very small difference in the thermal conductivity of air and water. Plus a .7% difference just smelled very very wrong to me.

All this went through my head, and I decided to argue the point, and with a smirk/grimace I tactlessly blurt out: "I don't agree, I think there will a signifigant difference it in the two times."

My friends eyebrows rise and he responds: "Really, why's that?"

"Because the thermal conductivity of water is huge compared to that of air." I respond smugly.

Aside:
I was saying this with a bit of a smug attitude. It is common in physics culture to act a bit cocky and smug and self assured when arguing theory or such with your colleagues. It is commonly done, but it is not taken very personally, and in the end one is always ready to change their opinions in the face of evidence.
This may not be true in chemistry culture, but one data point cannot let me be certain.

My friend shakes his head and replies: "Don't assume I am stupid, I know that it will take longer to equilibrate in air than water, all I am saying is that it will not be measurable with our system. And anyway, the heat capacity of air is huge, and greater than water."

I again smirk: "Actually, water has a greater heat capacity than air. But that does not matter, because at my old job when I did similar experiments we saw large differences, greater than 20% in some cases, and..."

"I don't care what you did at you old job!" He interrupts. "That was a different experiment, and not the same situation!"

Now I was getting pissed, and I retort:
"Of course it is not the exact same experiment, but from experience and extrapolation the differences will be large!"

"Prove it!" He demands.

Now, know that heating and cooling of bodies is a very non-trivial problem. It is difficult to develop exact models in arbitrary shapes, and even in simple models such as spheres there are difficulties such as volume to surface area ratios, turbulent flow of convection.
Our system was made of various odd shaped materials, so the situation was difficult.

Knowing this, I tried to argue from authority and "common sense".

"I don't have to prove anything. It is common sense that it will take longer to come back to room temperature in air than it took to cool down." I say heatedly.

At this point my other friends interjects: "Hey guys, umm... let's just agree to disagree... OK?"

I round on the poor guy and say: "That is such a cop-out to say that." (I really do think that, but the reasons are for another blog)

"Look, say I drop a ball here from this height and measure its acceleration. Then I move it two feet over to that part of the floor and do it again... the two values will be nearly the same! Then if I were to tell you that if I moved it to a third spot that the value would again be the same, you would not tell me to prove it. My experience and ability to extrapolate and predict would..."

"What..." he interrupts again: "Are you telling me that there is no difference in the gravity from that point to that other point?"

"Yes... " I start to reply

"Aha!" He triumphantly shouts, "Gravity is not the same, because the Earth is round and there are other masses around..."

"Don't tell me about gravity!" I yell back, "I did thesis work on the topic! Science is predictive, not just something done to verify every freaking propisition! Science can help us avoid testing every case by allowing us to extrapolate and predict from theories we create from observation..."

At this point the argument went way down hill.
He kept insisting that my prior experience was useless in this case, since I had not done "exactly" the same thing.
I kept inisting that my experince was good enough that I could predict the value of the difference. In the end he kept going back to "prove it" and "lets do the experiment".

And truthfully, he had a point. We were arguing about something that could be settled by simple experiment.
He was pissed off at my smugness, and I was pissed that he would not accept my conclusions based on my experience.

I really dislike having my opinion questioned. I know, I should be able to defend my position, and accept questioning with grace. But sometimes I don't want to always be defending what I say. I feel that the time and effort I have spent educating myself should confer a bit of acceptance of my ideas among my peers.
I always say not to blindly acept what someone says. But questining every little thing is pointless and a waste of time.
If I asked a native speaker of Tagalog to teach me the word for water, and then argued with him and ask him "How do you know that is the word for water", I am certain the teacher would give up in disgust.
And this is how I feel when someone questions my about my experience or expertise.
I knew I was right, as both theory and experience coulded with the predictive powers of science were on my side. And probably I could have convinced him if I did not cop to the attitude I had. (Or perhaps not.)

The argument ended with I asserting that the effect would be 20%-25% while he asserting there would be no measurable difference.

At the end of the experiment, the time it took the object to heat back up to room temperature was 30% greater than it took to cool to ice water.

After showing him the data, all I got was a grunt and a shaking of the head. All that arguing for nothing it seems.

So, I was close to right. But, how I approached the discussion was wrong.

Neither of us used much critical thinking. Both of us were talking past each other. My friend could just as easily been in the right, but our tempers did not allow us to discuss the problem rationally and constructively.

It was a case of "I had to be right" for both of us.

What a useless and fucking stressful waste of time.

What I need to take from this is that in future situations like this, I need to chill, and not always have to prove I am right.

Mountain of Meat! (FPOTW)

2009-12-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

I must say, I like cows.

http://benford.co.nz/dump/wp-content/gallery/image-dump/meat.jpg

Braised, roasted, grilled... you name it.
While eating a nice steak this evening, a friend and I were discussing how nice it was of the vegetarians to leave more meat for us, and that we should come up with a nice Fermi problem to show our appreciation. The basic theme is the number of cattle slaughtered to fill our collective stomachs.

---- Start Fermi Problem ---

How much beef is consumed in the United States each day?

How much in the world each day?

How many cows have to be slaughtered to provide this much beef, for the US and the world respectively?

If you stuffed all the cows in a big cube, what would the dimensions be for the amount slaughtered in the US and the world respectively?

How long until there would be a "mountains" worth of cows slaughtered?

How many cattle are slaughtered each second for the US and the world?

From these numbers can you estimate how many slaughter houses there are?

---- End Fermi Problem ----

Where is the beef?

Liquid Sugar (FPOTW)

2009-12-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

A friend and I were walking around the mall waiting for the movie theater to open. We were lamenting how much the tickets would cost, and formulating plans to smuggle food into the theater. Why in the hell should we spend more on the snacks than on the tickets? Like a flash out of the blue a Fermi problem presented itself to help us while away the time:

---- Start Fermi Problem ----

How much soda pop do Americans drink each day?

If you could put all that soda into a cubic container, what would the containers dimensions be?

How much sugar energy is represented?

How long would that energy power an average home?

---- End Fermi Problem ----

As is usual for a Fermi problem, we are only concerned with accuracy of an order of magnitude.
You can look up certain numbers such as kilo calories per gram of sugar if you don't know it, but in a Fermi problem one should use common sense and reasonable guesses rather than looking up numbers. And since most of you do not carry a calculator around everywhere, you should be facile with numbers.

Fat of the Land (FPOTW)

2009-11-29T17:09:00.001-07:00

Ugg... I am stuffed! All that turkey, all that food. =( =)
Leftovers!

I was reading an article in CNN about the percentage of overweight and
obese people in the good old USA. The pundits and experts agree that 65%
of Americans are overweight, and 30% are obese.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_D0-ozOVkxqY/Sc7o6Vgp79I/AAAAAAAAAE4/c6x-JuFlv7U/s400/100+lbs+of+fat.jpg

---- Start Fermi Problem ----

If you were to liposuction the excess fat off of Americans, estimate how much you would get.

If you could burn the fat for energy, for how long could you power an average home?

---- End Fermi Problem ----

The radical Muslims could now say: "Kill all Americans, and burn them for electricity!"

I see dumb people #4 conCERNed morons

2009-11-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.concerned-international.com/

A lawsuit to stop CERN's LHC.
All I can say is... wow...

I see dumb people #3. Sinister LHC

2009-11-22T03:46:00.000-07:00

http://angrygrayrainbows.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/i_see_dumb_people_o_o_by_cool_slayer.jpg

I have to wonder what makes seemingly normal, semi intelligent people believe stupid things and fear what they do not understand?

For instance, there is a blog I have recently read who's followers believe that the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are up to no good, that they are up to something "sinister".

These outwardly normal seeming people truly believe that the LHC could end humanity as we know it.

Some of them believe that the physicists are doing this on purpose, that they want to destroy the world they live on. Other readers believe that the physicists are doing this because they don't know what they are doing.

This is just a projection. The readers do not understand the physics and science invololved, and so project their inadiquacies on the scientists at the LHC.

As for those who think the physicists are doing sinister things, I have to wonder what projection that represents.

But in general, these people simply fear what they do not understand. They seem no better than hooting primates (oh... wait... am I insulting primates?) faced with fire. They scream and hurtle feces.

However, fear is natural. It is hardwired into our physiology. For instance there is something I fear, and I admittidaly do not understand it very well, and that is stupidity. Oh yes, I understand that there are those who through brain damage or natural selection are simply stupid. But I am speaking of "stupidity" in the form of willful ignorance. Willful ignorance is where a person, even after being show massive amounts of evidence actively chooses to ignore said evidence. A side effect of willful ignorance is that those who chose to be "stupid" often want to spread their stupidity to others.

This form of stupidity can lead to injury to me or my loved ones. Stupidity can lead to death and destruction on many scales. Stupidity is something to be feared.

These people scare me. They are the types who hold back medical progress. They are the ones who enforce their ignorance on others by legislating bans on teaching evolution. These are the type of people who kill people to protect animals, or threaten the families of those who do animal based medical research.
These are the type of people who burned Giordano Bruno at the stake.
These are the type of people who, not content to live their lives as they want to, instead want to spread their fear and ignorance to others, and want to force others to live in the same intellectually decrepit state as they.

Yes, when I see such willful ignorance, I get a small thrill of fear.
Perhaps I should be more scared?

The Days, Months and Years of Our Lives (FPOTW)

2009-11-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

Small moments... that is what our life is comprised of.

http://glitteresque.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/clocks.jpg

We all see the reports of how much time the average person sits in front of a television, or how much of our lives are spent sleeping, or driving to work. But the most mundane and trivial aspects of our existence pile up to large numbers.
How much time do you spend on the toilet? How about brushing your teeth? Picking your nose?
Here are a few ponderables to while away some of the time left over in your life. After considering these, spend some time coming up with some of your own.

---- Start Fermi Problem ----

How much time does one spend picking their nose?

How much time is spent brushing ones hair.

Brushing teeth?

Masturbating?

Crying?

Laughing?

What is the total percentage of your life that your eyes are closed?

Sitting on the crapper?

Doing Fermi problems?

---- End Fermi Problem ----

Damn... my nose itches...

The 10 weirdest physics facts bull$hit

2009-11-15T17:35:00.001-07:00

Twitter...
Seems to me a way of mindlessly parroting what thousands before you think is cool and trendy. Heaven forbid you actually pause and think for a second about what you read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzsprung-Russell_diagram

Take the latest #physics re-tweets about an article called The 10 weirdest physics facts, from relativity to quantum mechanics.

My god... for the last week this has been re-tweeted numerous times. Don't any of these people actually read the comments to this article pointing out the obvious factual errors? Do they even stop for a millisecond and perform a sanity check?

OK people, here is a small tutorial on how to think critically about such an article.

1. Approach everything you read with a modicum of skepticism.

Any article that states weirdest physics facts causes my bullshit meter to twitch. "Facts" is a term most physicists like to avoid writing down, even if they secretly believe in those facts. All facts are open to the possibility of being disproved. Just design an experiment to test the "fact".

2. Check the authors credentials.

When I read in the opening paragraph the following, my bullshit meter starts to really twitch:

"The humanities-graduate writer of this piece would like to stress that this is his work, so any glaring factual errors he has included are his own as well. If you spot any, feel free to point them out in the comment box below"

A humanities graduate writer is writing a piece on physics? Humm... it is a pretty good bet they don't know enough to write cogently about the subject, but that is ok, they are simply going to write an article for mass consumption to promote science as cool and interesting. Thanks for the help Mr. Humanities-graduate writer.

And don't give me any crap about Einstein being a patent clerk etc etc. Crackpots use this argument in support of their bullshit physics assertions. Einstein had the training and the credentials. For every Ramanujan out there, who literally came from nowhere (but still had the training) there are a million others who put in vast time and effort to learn the subject. Don't pander to the exceptions. 99% of the time it is safe to be very skeptical of anything a humanities-graduate writer will write about physics.

Also...
WTF? Are we, the readers supposed to correct the writers misconceptions? Whatever happened to checking your facts before posting? The writer is making the assertion, and in science it is up to the asserting person to make his case.

3. Perform a Sanity Check on one of the topics.

Lets make this easy, and lets look at the very first one:

If the Sun were made of bananas, it would be just as hot
"The Sun is hot, as the more astute of you will have noticed. It is hot because its enormous weight – about a billion billion billion tons – creates vast gravity, putting its core under colossal pressure. Just as a bicycle pump gets warm when you pump it, the pressure increases the temperature. Enormous pressure leads to enormous temperature."

Wow, where to start? Oh yeah, how about starting where he states that the sun is hot because of its enormous weight.

It is very easy to calculate the amount of energy the sun produces. This number was pretty well determined over a hundred years ago. This number is about 4E26 J/s.

We can trivially calculate the gravitational energy of our "banana sun" by assuming that the sun was assembled via self gravitation of bananas falling toward a central point from a very large distance.
The potential energy of a sun's mass of bananas falling from infinity to the radius of the sun is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun gives us some facts about the sun:

M ~ 2E30 kg
R ~ 7E8 m

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant

G ~ 7E-11 m^3/(kg s^2)

E_G ~ 4E41 J

Therefore the gravitational energy of the bananas can produce the energy radiated by the sun for a total of 31 million years. Considering that the sun has been shining for about 5 billion years so far, we can see that the authors statement is the monkey digested remains of all those bananas.

The sun is powered by nuclear fusion. The banana's are made of the intergalactic vomit spewed by a dying star, in other words what the star could not consume. Chances are a banana sun would not last comparatively as long.

4. Don't waste your time.

At this point we have direct empirical evidence that the article will be bullshit. If the very first entry on the 10 "facts" is trivially disproved, then you have better things to do than waste any more time with the article. Go crack a book on physics. There are literally thousands of good texts or even popular accounts out there. Hell, even Scientific American is better than some random article on a internet news site.

And please stop re-tweeting this bullshit.

Balloon Boy and the Spherical Cow (FPOTW)

2009-11-13T18:34:00.002-07:00

Sorry, no balloon boy here, at least in the popular media sense... sorry.

Rather than my usual Fermi problem, today I would like to present a physics thought experiment.

Real life physics is not a textbook exercise. This is because reality rarely gives you all the variables. It is up to you, as a scientist, a physicist and as a critical thinker to determine what is germane to the solution of a real life problem.

A common joke among physicists is as follows:

One day a physicist was asked by a friend of his, a dairy farmer, to help design a better milking machine for her business. The physicist readily agreed, and asked for a couple of days to think about it, after which he would present his results and design to his friend.

Sure enough, a couple of days later the physicist come over to the farm with his laptop and a beautiful power-point presentation titled: "Explorations towards a better milking machine."

After setting up the projector and gathering his notes, the physicist presents his findings:

"After much though and calculation, I have come up with a workable solution to the cow milking problem. First, let us assume that the cow is a sphere of radius r, homogeneously filled with milk..."

Although the following problem is not meant to be solved exactly, it can be explored to any depth you wish, by any method you choose! You can solve a simple rule of thumb Fermi type problem, and have plenty left to explore by adding an udder to a spherical cow. ;)

The situation is thus:

A helium balloon as shown above is at neutral buoyancy a distance above the ground. Attached a given distance below the basket is a bucket. In the basket is an identical bucket filled to the brim with b-b's. In the bottom of the basket is a hole.

At time t=0 the b-b's are poured through the hole at a given rate, where they fall straight down and into the bucket hung below.

Describe the subsequent motion of the balloon.

That's it.

Hint:

Ask yourself if the color of the spots on the "spherical cow" have an effect on the solution?

Have fun!

I see dumb people #2. Cell phone danger!

2009-11-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/10/cell.phones.cancer.tumors/index.html

Come on people... simple physics indicates that cell phone radiation cannot ionize a molecule and is not a source of ionizing radiation.

"The jury is out" is bullshit, considering that science is not done by jury, or its validity in a court of law.
Dr. Ronald Herberman is now appealing to our genetic tendency to want to protect children in his latest warnings on the dangers of the "harmful electromagnetic radiation from cell phones".

But of course, you should read the article for yourself, and apply some critical thinking skills.

Power to the People (FPOTW)

2009-11-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

Incandescent light bulbs are very inefficient. Use a google search engine to find out just how inefficient.
Compact florescent bulbs are much more efficient in the percentage of watts producing visible light.
This information is also on google.
www.google.com "how to use google" is a good place to start. =)

---- Start Fermi Problem ----

Estimate how many incandescent 100 Watt light bulbs there are in the United States.

Estimate how much power is used to power the light bulbs.

Estimate how much power is saved by switching all the light bulbs to equivalent lumen compact florescent.

Assume that the old light bulbs are thrown away. How much landfill space is taken up if the bulbs are not broken?

How about if the bulbs are broken?

What is the mass of the broken bulbs?

Some Physics: What is the weight of the broken bulbs compared to the weight of the unbroken bulbs? Remember, I said "weight" here.

---- End Fermi Problem ----

Estimate how many Poles it takes to screw in all those light bulbs. (old POLEitically incorrect ethnic joke here)

Project Tuva, Feynman Lectures online!

2009-11-03T21:30:00.001-07:00

On nearly every physicists bookshelf you will find three particular books. These books may be in hard cover, or they may be in soft cover. Sometimes they are published with an additional book in order to sell the set to a new generation of physicists. This set of books are collectively known as the red books, the physics bible, or The Books.

They are The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

It is not all that uncommon to hear students quote from the Feynman Lectures in biblical fashon, quoting book and verse:

"Oh, you want to know how I did that least action problem? Check out Feynman, Book 2, 19-5."

Students use the red books to study for qualifiers, or for their GRE's (and perhaps that is a mistake).
Other physicists make a once a decade pilgrimage to spend a significant portion of their free time reviewing the red books cover to cover.

Why this devotion? Because the Feynman Lectures on Physics is perhaps one of the greatest collection of books on general physics that exists!

The classes the lectures were based on were by all accounts a nightmare for most of the regularly admitted students. The courses were an experiment, and a work in progress. However, the classroom where the lectures were given was always full, as in standing room only. Most of those in the class were grad students or other professors auditing the lectures. You see, the lectures are best appreciated after one has already made it through the gauntlet of an undergraduate physics curricula. The books are not good for learning physics for the first time, but are wonderful to come back to and font of wonderful insight and nuggets of wisdom.

Ahh the internet! What a wonderful resource! The generation before widespread use of the web were lucky indeed if they ever had a chance to view a Feynman lecture. It was a special treat when someone would bring a reel to reel or a VHS of a Feynman lecture. I heard tales from my teachers of the beer parties where someone would produce a beat up and well played VHS or Beta of a Feynman Lecture.

Now days, it is rather easy to "bittorrent" a copy of almost all of Feynman's works, be it written or in Audio or Video.
The ease of getting these gems on the net in no way detracts from their power. Feynman had a powerful way of presenting ideas, and in presenting physics. Perhaps only Carl Sagan rivaled Feynman in clarity and insight. But Feynman was first, and as much as I like Sagan, in my opinion was the better at "explaining things."

Bill Gates recently announced his Project Tuva. He rhapsodizes on his goal of bringing science and physics to the masses by making Feynman's Messenger Lectures freely available to the masses.

These lectures have long been available through sharing sites, or torrents, but it is nice to be able to view a legit copy, with captions!

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/

I highly recommend everyone to watch these lectures. They explain the place of science and physics in the world. Feynman goes into detail on what science cannot explain, and what it excels at explaining. And how scientists think about problems.

They are a template for critical thinking. They are scientific literacy embodied.

P.S.

Some Google Fu will tell you why the website is named Project Tuva. For a more interesting explanation, read Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman.

I see dumb people # 1. The physics of Homeopathy

2009-11-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I come across (or someone sends me) an example of stupidity so mind-shattering, I am left speechless.

For your enjoyment I present to you the Physics of Homeopathy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0c5yClip4o

Microwaved Nuts (FPOTW)

2009-10-31T23:00:00.001-06:00

Critical thinking skills.
Sadly, such skills are not taught in class or in school.
There was a time when the ability to think critically would help ensure survival. Now, medical advances keep dumbasses alive long enough to procreate.
Critical thinking has gone out the window.

Cell phone radiation! I know several people who will absolutely not carry their cell phone in their pockets for fear of irradiating their nuts.
"I want to have children some day!" they cry.
Some people are dumb enough to drop a small fortune on an air acoustic headset for their cell phone, so that the microwaves do not travel up the headset wire and irradiate their brains.
Humm... balls or brains... quite the tossup on what to nuke.

A few simple numbers for consideration:

Average maximal cell phone power is about a Watt.

Cell phones transmit at a frequency of about 800-900 MHz. Call it an even GHz.

To cause a chemical reaction, a couple of eV are needed. To ionize a molecule, a few eV are needed.

The average human body produces about 100W of power.

---- Fermi Problem ----

Estimate how much you will raise the temperature of your left nut (if you don't have one, substitute your right ovary) if you were to dump a Watt of energy into it over a period of an hour.

Calculate the energy of the incident microwaves in terms of electron volts.

Estimate how many people think that microwaves are only good for cooking their food.

---- End Fermi Problem ----

Of course, high tension power lines are another matter... I mean just look at the grass under them! The grass is taller under the wires than away from the wires. If you don't believe me, just ask the row of birds sitting on the wires.

Critical Think Link #1

2009-10-27T15:00:00.001-06:00

Below are some links I came across that are good practice for critical thinking skills.
Some of them hit emotional buttons.

Does Economics violate the laws of physics? (Is this the new global warming?)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-economics-violate-th

Dark Energy rips cosmos and agencies. (Anti-Science types love to pick on dark matter)
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091027/full/4611182a.html?s=news_rss

Iraq Veterans wife faces deportation. (Sometimes immigration laws are total bullshit.)
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=7084417

French court convicts Church of Scientology of Fraud. (Score one for the side of critical thinking!)
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/27/france.scientology.fraud/index.html

Gang rape (What the fuck is wrong with people? I am with Penn & Tell on most topics, but this story scores a point for capital punishment.)
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/27/california.gang.rape.investigation/index.html

Games with Wolfram Alpha

2009-10-25T15:22:00.000-06:00

http://homeworkday.wolframalpha.com/

Last week Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica and more recently Wolfram Alpha, had their first annual Wolfram Alpha Homework Day.
Having nothing better to do that day but suffer from the effects of the H1N1 flu, I tuned in and watched the festivities.
The whole point of the day was to encourage students to send in their homework problems online, and the wizards at Wolfram would show you how to use Wolfram Alpha (W|A) to find the answer.
Actually, the whole point of the day was to advertise W|A out the wazoo, but I digress on the obvious. =)

The event lasted 14 hours, and had a live video feed of interviews with people like Brian Greene and Lawrence Krauss discussing the roll of computable knowledge in education, pitching W|A and the like, and a painful interview with Richard Dreyfuss.

Also featured were various educators singing the praises of Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica in their classes.

Throughout this whole presentation I was constantly feeling like many the teachers and students intervewied were pushing for a rather shallow understanding of the subjects they were teaching, or learning.
For instance, rather than letting a student come up with further questions after W|A gave them their answers, W|A would do that sort of chain of thought thinking for the student.
And example would be after a student calculates a volume of an object, W|A then goes on to compare that volume to a bunch of other objects. I myself would like the student to be thinking to herself: "Humm... how does this compare to say, a baseball?" and then go looking for or calculating the answer themselves.

I think that tools like W|A, if misused, can atrophy the already poor critical thinking skills of many students, and put them in a mindset that answers should be given to them rather than sought out or figured out on their own.

However, when used correctly W|A is an exceedingly powerful tool, and fun as heck to use! Just like I am apt get caught up in a wiki hunt, where each link takes me to something new and fun to learn, I can get caught up in the same sort of thing with W|A.

To this end, I would like to explore last Friday's Fermi Problem of the Week: The Great Flood
I will introduce a neat little trick to add to your toolbox, go over three of the questions using basic back of the envelope calculations and also show how W|A can be used to rapidly come up with and explore answers to back of the envelope calculations.

----- Start Playing! -------

I will not give away the answer to the first part of the question, which is asking how much the oceans will rise if the polar ice caps melt.
Instead, we will go over another question:

Estimate how much water is needed to cover the Earth such that the highest mountain was under water.

To calculate this answer as a back of the envelope, you need to know the following:

Radius of Earth

Height of the tallest mountain.

The radius of the Earth can be found with some Google-Fu. As you may realize, the Earth is not a sphere, but because of its spin angular momentum is an oblate spheroid with a polar radius of approximately 6356.8 km, an equatorial radius of 6378.1 km, and a mean radius of 6371.0 km.

Since this is a Fermi problem, we will assume the Earth is a sphere of mean radius r = 6371 km.

The tallest mountain is Mt. Everest and is h 8848 m tall (above sea level, which we take as Earth mean radius)

What we would like to do is compute the volume of a spherical shell of inner radius r, and outer radius (r + h), which will give us the volume of water (not including the oceans) that will cover the Earth to a depth of the highest mountain.
Of course, this volume will be different than the actual volume, due to other mountain ranges and the like, but we are estimating to order of magnitude.

One may calculate this volume by subtracting the volume of the Earth from the volume of the water covered Earth as:

And then we would be done, and by plugging in the numbers we would obtain a volume of water of:

Vss = 4.52034*10^9 km^3

However, at this point I would like to introduce you to a common trick that physicists like to use when dealing with small changes, such as in the term (r + h)^3.
This trick involves simplifying the Vss equation to a more tractable form for computation.
One may wonder why we would care to do so, when in this day and age of Mathematica we can simply plug and chug? The answer in terms of a Fermi problem solution is that making calculations of this type as simple as possible is a great thing to do, as it saves writing, and the chance of making errors.

In a general sense, a physicist is always interested in how the model behaves at extreme values, such as the very small, the very large, very slow and very fast. Being able to know what terms affect the solution in various regimes is an important skill do develop. Knowing how to deal with infinitesimal changes is one of those skills.

Cute Trick Digression, AKA the binomial series

First we note that h << r. In some cases, if we were to simply approximate the volume of the sphere of radius (r + h) we could neglect the h term, and be done. But in this case doing so would yield a spherical shell volume of zero.
To solve this problem we manipulate the sphere radius equation as follows:

Here we notice that h/r << 1. Again we could neglect the h/r term, but we will use the binomial series, which states:

where n is an integer.

In our example we will take the binomial series to order 1 and we obtain:

Plugging this into our spherical shell equation and simplifying gives us:

Plugging in the numbers:

Vssa = 4.51407*10^9 km^3

Note that this is much simpler to compute with than the first version, and indeed for our problem the answer differs from the "exact" solution by a bit over 0.1%

At this point we can see how the rest of the problem goes. We can calculate the rain fall over 40 days and 40 nights, we can assume the earth is 75% covered by water to a depth of on average 2 km and calculate the volume of water already in the oceans. Indeed it would be a good exercise to do so, as it will work your problem solving muscles.
However, after all this is done it will be interesting to see how we can solve this problem using W|A.

Wolfram Alpha Solution

Lets answer the question above using W|A.

First, the site to go to, if you have not already found it, is: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

The current incarnation of the site as of 10-25-09 looks like the following:

Lets try a simple search term: "Volume of earth"

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+of+earth

Lo and behold we get the volume of the Earth with the assumption of a perfect sphere. Note the radius is the same we used.
What is cool to note is that there are many conversions to different units

Lets try: "height of mt everest"

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=height+of+mt+everest

This is pretty cool! We not only get the height of mount Everest, but also some other possibly useful results such as air pressure, temperature etc.

Lets go for the money shot here and calculate the volume of water needed to cover the earth to a depth of the height of Mt. Everest.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4%2F3*pi*%28radius+of+earth+%2B+mt+everest+height%29^3+-+volume+of+earth

Note the answer is in cubic feet, which for some reason W|A decided to use. That is ok because one can click on the answer and open a separate query and convert to other units. The answer given by W|A to our question is the same order of magnitude as our result, because it decided to use different radius for the various calculations. So while W|A allows you to, with a few queries, "solve" this problem, the student may not realize that different radii were used in the calculation.
This can most likely be fixed by a person who is very facile with W|A, but the average student would not get a consistent result.

The upshot of this post in my opinion is that one should go to pen and paper first, then afterwards you can explore using W|A. At some point you will develop to the point where you can go to W|A first, and be able to understand the limitations of the search queries you use.

The Great Flood (FPOTW)

2009-10-23T15:10:00.001-06:00

Recall the opening moments of the movie Water World, with Keven Costner?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114898/

At the beginning is shown a graphic of the Earth with continents and the poles while some guy whines about mankind unleashing a great flood by melting the poles and flooding the lands. Hold on... wasn't that God's fault? He (She... it... what... existence proof not needed) already did that once already, right?
I digress...
Anyhow, the graphic shows that all the land disappears under water and humanity is forced to live on the world spanning ocean, tattooing maps on kids backs and drinking their own urine rather than filtering the sea water.

Now, in the Bible, God flooded the Earth cause he was pissed or something, and gave warning to Noah to build an ark and save his critters. (I guess God can flood the Earth, but can't be bothered to save the critters herself)
It rained for 40 days and 40 nights and covered the highest mountain to a depth of 2 fathoms. Wow, this sounds a bit like the depth of the supposed water world.

Fermi problem time!

---- Start Fermi Problem ----

Estimate the change in the level of the oceans if the poles were to melt. (Watch out here, there is a standard trick question involved... think of melting ice cubes)

Estimate how much water is needed to cover the Earth such that the highest mountain was under water.

Compare this volume of water to that of the current volume of the seas.

If it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, how much water per square meter per second would have to rain down?

---- End Fermi Problem ----

God, of course, can do anything... including violating common sense.
What is Hollywood's excuse?

Balloon Boy, what have you cost us? (And who should pay?)

2009-10-19T14:05:00.000-06:00

Balloon Boy... what have you cost us? Who should pay?

I was going to post this as a Fermi problem, but decided to have fun myself.
The first question is, considering only the Thursday afternoon media frenzy, how much money in lost work did the whole balloon boy fiasco cost?

For nearly 2 hours on Thursday, October 15th 2009, "millions" of viewers across the world sat "transfixed" in front of their televisions and computer screens following the "harrowing" plight of poor little Falcon Heene. At least, according to the news.
However, it turns out that there were a significant number of people watching the TV and surfing the next on the balloon boy story who should have been working. I heard accounts by friends and family of their co-workers watching the news raptly.
So lets start:

Lets assume only the people in the US as our sample. If we assume that only 1 in 3000 Americans watching during work, and an average pay of $10/hr for a period of two hours that comes out to be 2 million dollars in direct wage costs lost to the balloon boy frenzy.
Adding 30% overhead costs in benefits and such for each employee, and that comes out to 2.6 million in direct.
Now add to the cost to other people who may be held up from completing their projects and have to sit twiddling their thumbs or working on other less pressing projects. Lets say equivalent of 10% of the number of people watching, so add another 260 thousand dollars.

So, rounding up we can estimate at least 3 million dollars were directly lost because of the balloon boy fiasco! Take ~10% of that in taxes, and the government will sure be pissed!

That is just for those two hours during the whole "harrowing" ordeal.
How can we start on the hours spent online by people reading the news for the latest information of balloon boy, reading and writing blogs over the last 5 days?

Oh my.

Who should pay for this mess?

Here are some candidates:

Richard Heene:
They guy has already paid in getting the short end of the stick genetically. Jail time for him will suffice. And blood from a turnip after all.

The Media:
Hands down this is who should pay. They were the fear mongering exploitative people who made this hoax into a much bigger deal than it needed to be. Hello, and average cable tv show costs 3-5 million an episode to produce. I doubt too many people will miss an episode wife swap. Hey, the producers of wife swap should pay as well.

Of course, that is my opinion! ;)

Falcon Heene, Balloon Boy

2009-10-17T13:22:00.001-06:00

I have got to learn to keep a pen handy with me at all times.

There are many times where I need to do a quick calculation, usually at a restaurant for some reason, and when I ask the server to borrow a pen they give me a wary look and act like I am going to steal their prized pen. Heaven help me if I ask for a piece of paper!

Thursday afternoon I was coming back home after a doctors appointment, and being hungry I decided to stop at one of my favorite restaurants, Pho 78 in Westminster near my home. I walk in,place my usual takeout order of Pho Tai, Chin, Nam, Gan and Sach (special characters omitted) with a yummy mango boba, and sit down to wait.

At this point I notice that everybody in the place is staring raptly at the wide screen TV mounted to the wall, on which an image of a silvery, flying saucer looking Mylar balloon is tumbling and spinning.
Captioned below is the usual "breaking news" and I saw that the event was taking place in Colorado. I assume this is a local news story, and curious, I start paying attention to the voice over:
"The boy may have fallen from the balloon... mumble mumble"

"Huh?" I eloquently think to myself.

I turn and ask an older woman sitting at the next table what is going on, and she responds: "What, you haven't heard? There is a little boy trapped in that balloon! Poor boy has been in there for hours and hours and must be scared to death!"

First thing I think to myself is "Shit! Poor kid... I hope he does not hit any power lines!"

Over the next 5 min I hear a constant babble about how old the kid is, how long he has been trapped, perhaps that he fell, and other sometimes contradictory statements. All this time I become more and more skeptical. Something was bothering me.

First, the balloon was acting very strange as it was tumbling, it looked like it had way to little inertia to have a 60 lb 6yo kid inside. Second, the balloon looked a bit too flimsy and small to hold the weight of the child.
Finally the news anchor gave the dimensions of the balloon, at which time I turned and asked the person behind the counter if I could borrow a pen.

I was scrutinized closely, and was handed a pen that was 10 inches long, an inch thick, and had a flower glued to the end.

Oh brother.

I grabbed a paper takeout menu and began a quick and dirty estimation of the lifting capacity of a helium filled balloon.

------- Calculation section ---------

Density of air in Colorado ~ 1 kg/m^3

Density of Helium ~ 0.2 kg/m^3

So lifting capacity of Helium in Colorado is about 0.8 kg/m^3

The weight of a 6yo boy I estimated to be about 60 lb, and the weight of the Mylar and frame to be about 10 lb to be conservative. So a total weight of about 70 lb, or 32 kg.

~~~~ Short digression

At this time my pen ran out of ink. When I asked for another one the person behind the counter said: "What you do that pen? No more pen!"
I saw another one behind the counter top and after a while spent asking for it, she capitulated and loaned me the other pen, and I got back to work.

~~~~ End Short digression

Therefore the volume of the balloon needed to lift 32 kg was 40 m^3.

Next I assumed the balloon could be modeled as a disk of volume
Of course this assumption is not perfectly valid, as the balloon was not a perfect disk, and there was considerable uncertainty to the exact dimensions. Also, I did not consider leakage rate, or air resistance, or temperature rate with altitude etc. Assuming a disk is the best case scenario, and would over-estimate the volume, and was good enough for a quick and dirty

According to the news, the balloon was 20 feet in diameter, and 5 feet high. Turning the crank:

V ~ 3*(5 ft)*(10 ft)^2 = 1500 ft^3 ~ 42 m^3

--------- End Calculation ---------

At this point I was done. This was a best case model of the balloon, being conservative on the weight of the child, the balloon frame and materials, and the volume as I knew it at the time. I was pretty darned convinced that the kid never was in the balloon as it could not have take off, and either the whole thing was a hoax, or the kid was scared and hiding for letting his daddy's balloon fly away.

I said as much to the older lady at the next table, and her reply?

"That is not what the news people say!"

Oh well.

At this time my order was ready, and I returned my pen (much to the relief of the owner I am sure) and went home to gorge on pho!

I say people should think over things critically, and they should. But I also can see why this is easier said than done.
People are protective of their young, and are concerned on the safety of other young people.
The media knows this, and knows they can sell papers, or draw viewers to advertisements if they concentrate on taking advantage of this tendency.

You see, even after I had left and gone home, I had been thinking this was a local news story. I do not watch broadcast TV, but instead I watch my shows online. I was tired, and coming down with the flu and went to bed after the pho, and it was not until the next morning on the drive to work that I found out that this had been an international story!

Thus is the power of media, and a prime example of why one should try and think critically of such news stories.
I cringe to think of the hours of productive work that were wasted by people watching this program. (Hey! I feel a Fermi problem coming on!)

Yes, remained concerned, but try not to get caught up in the hysteria pushed by the news. What the "news people say" has a high probability of not being correct.

A Snowballs Chance (FPOTW)

2009-10-16T14:03:00.003-06:00

I love snow! There is so much physics involved with snow. You can study thermodynamics, kinetics, optics, fluid dynamics, crystallography, solid state physics and statistical mechanics and still not know enough about snow. Quantum mechanics, chemistry…

There are some quick Fermi problem associated with snow:

--- Start Fermi Problem ---

Estimate how much snow falls over the Earth each year.
About how many snow flakes is this?
How many protons are in this amount of snow?
Estimate how much energy it would take to melt all that snow.
Estimate how much energy it would take to vaporize all that snow.
How many snow men could be made with all that snow?
If all that snow was turned into snowballs, and a great world war with snowballs were launched involving the entire planets human population, about how much energy would the people throwing the snowballs expend (neglect throwing each snowball more than once).
How long would the war last (assuming the snow does not melt first) ?

--- End Fermi Problem ---

War is hell, so what are the snowball’s chances?

Cool as Hell! (Or hot?)

2009-10-13T10:29:00.000-06:00

Back in May I came across a wonderful picture of the transit of the Shuttle Atlantis and the HST across the sun, as captured by astrophotographer Thierry Legault.

The little dot you see in quadrant III is the space shuttle and the HST.

I wanted to post a quick little Fermi problem, even though it is not Friday yet:

Determine from the image the rough dimensions of the space shuttle.

Like any good Fermi problem, there seems to be too little information.
And perhaps there is.
So, you are allowed to use your Google-fu to determine how far away the sun is (about 8 light min) or the diameter of the sun. You can also use distance of the moon and recall that its angular diameter in the sky is about that of the sun (that is why we get such nice eclipses).
Perhaps you can look up some basic trig formulas?

There is not "right" way to do a Fermi problem, just way's that make sense.

Penny Lane (FPOTW)

2009-10-10T13:04:00.001-06:00

Here in the peoples republic of Boulder, Colorado, there used to be a coffee house called Penny Lane. All the flakes and nuts hung out there to write bad poetry, sing lousy music, play chess and perhaps buy some coffee.
It was a great place!

Note: If you want to practice critical thinking skills, spend some time in a college town coffee shop. ;)

Ahh... Penny Lane the Beatles song, released in 1967. Great song. A nice history of it can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Lane

And, for all the Rolling Stones people who will complain about what band is better... FOAD.

In any event, while driving home the other night I listened to the radio and heard, you guessed it, Penny Lane! Well, I had a flash back to that morning on the way to school when I was listening to the radio, and guess what... Penny Lane was playing then as well!

Humm... I wonder how many times the Beatles version of Penny Lane has been played. Not just over the radio, but on personal CD, tapes, records, 8-tracks, reel to reel, and MP3's. How about on TV and other visual media? How many times was Penny Lane in our ears and in our eyes?

---- Start Fermi Problem ----

Estimate the total number of times Penny Lane has been played since it came out in Feb 1967.

How many minutes of time does this represent?

(Time for some physics)

How much energy was expended as sound to play Penny Lane?

If you were to raise the temperature of a body of water by 1 C using this "Total Penny Lane energy", what volume would this body of water be?

Post your solution in the comments if you wish. =)

---- End Fermi Problem ----

"Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes.
A four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back..."

AutoTuning Carl Sagan

2009-10-08T05:37:00.003-06:00

I remember as a child watching Cosmos on PBS. The show, written and hosted by Carl Sagan, was one of the very few television shows my parents would let me watch. Cosmos also had the honor of being one of only three TV shows I could always watch if I asked to, a distinction shared with the Muppet Show and 60 min. (Well, on occasion there was MASH)

But Cosmos did not affect me very deeply at the time.

Ultimately however, Carl Sagan was to have a huge impact on the direction my life was to take.

I remember quite clearly the day I was rummaging through the garbage at a swap meet in Tuscon Arizona, and I came across a book. This day was back in 1986, and I was a young teenager living in a converted school bus with my family.
Long past were the days of my aborted formal education, replaced by lessons of life in making a living selling items at swap meets, scrounging for food in dumpsters, and in some cases learning how to swindle people of their cash for some crappy trinket we were selling.

Any education I received that was not directly related to survival I obtained via the books and magazines discarded by others. This day, my prize was a hardbound copy of Carl Sagan's Contact.
The book was missing its dust cover, but was otherwise in great shape... what a find! Carl Sagan, the guy from TV! Knowing that as soon as my parents saw the book, they would force me to give it up to be sold, I hid the book as best as I could under my grubby shirt and smuggled it past their watchful eyes.

Over the next week I stole off every chance I could to read the book. 15 minutes here, 20 there I would wander off to read, and was pulled deeper into the story of Ellie Arroway's discovery and decoding of an alien signal. Her work as a scientist grabbed my imagination. In one scene I was charmed that she made her own jewelry from synthetic ruby she grew for her detectors, something I resolved to do someday. (Mine turned out to be synthetic opal!) Her explorations of Pi sparked in me a great interest in mathematics, which later I pursued via more discarded books.

Some have said the writing was pedantic, turgid etc. But for me it set the course of my life. I resolved to become a scientist.

One day my parents found the book while I was out getting water for our dishes. They put the book for sale and immediately a customer bought it for $2.00. I was walking back to the bus carrying two 5 gallon water jugs full of water, and from a distance of over 100 feet I recognized the book as it exchanged hands! The water jugs went crashing to the earth as I dashed towards my parents and the customer.

I went straight up to the customer and forthrightly pleaded for him to return the book. When he hesitated I offered to give back the money plus the $2.50 I had saved and stashed.
My parents were, in their embarrassment, pulling me by the arm to leave the guy alone, but I would not budge. The kind gentleman relinquished the book, saying that one who wanted a book that badly should keep it, and I gave him the refund from my own money.
My battle was only started as I had to beg and plead that my parents let me keep the book, to at least be able to finish it.

The outcome? Well... I still own that very same book, which has a prominent place in my large science fiction collection!

I never had the chance to meet Carl Sagan. He was younger than my Grandmother, whom to me was a picture of health! I thought there would be time. Alas time ran out for Carl, who passed away in 1996.

I cried.

Yesterday I came across this YouTube video where Carl was Auto-Tuned to original music.
Chills went up my spine, and I remembered.

For your enjoyment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc#watch-main-area

Google-Fu: Winnowing the Chaff! (Tools of the Trade # 2)

2009-10-05T21:58:00.001-06:00

Today I teach you your first Kata in Google-Fu. Winnowing the chaff.

The first Kata, known as winnowing the chaff, makes use of linear forms which denotes power and directness, and circular forms which represent the inward spiral to focus and truth.

The linear form basics are denoted by the symbols " ", and are the "Oyo" which is loosely translated as the "how"
The circular form represents the flow and has no symbol, but is a way and why of doing your kata. This is known as Bunkai, or the reason or loosely translated as "why".

The basic Google search is done by typing in a few search terms into the Google search field, and hitting enter. Depending on the choice of search terms, the number of results can be overwhelming!
Sometimes adding more search terms helps, and sometimes it hinders.

In comes the linear basic denoted by " ". Note the double short vertical lines? This denotes power, and directness in your search term.
This, quite simply, is the technique of enclosing a group of search terms in double quotation marks, and is known as a phrase search.

In Google Fu, this forces the search to look for the exact set of search terms, in order.
You see, when you do a basic Google search, Google looks at your choice of search terms, and in an order known only to itself (not really, but no sense in going into a green belt level discussion here) narrows its search results based on which term it searches first.

Using the double quotation marks, you can greatly narrow the search!

Let's move to an example:

Suppose you had read my blog last Monday, but for some reason forgot to bookmark the URL. You recall a few things about the blog, like the introduction to using Google to search the web, but not the specific blog name. (Although it is on the tip of your tongue and you would recognize it when you see it.)
What to do?

You may recall that the blog had 'tools of the trade' in the title, so you use that as your first search term:

http://www.google.com/search?q=tools+of+the+trade

Yikes! Over 128 million hits!
You go through a few pages and do not see anything familiar. You may stumble across some interesting links, which is half the fun of the web, but you are looking for this particular blog.

Time to winnow the chaff by enclosing tools of the trade in double quotes:

http://www.google.com/search?q="tools+of+the+trade"

Humm, well, that did knock it down to a bit under a million hits.

You think about it a bit and you remember that there was something in the blog about doing something to chaff... so you add the word 'chaff' to the search field. This is the "Bunkai" and is a circle of focus.

http://www.google.com/search?q="tools+of+the+trade"+chaff

Well that knocks the number of results down to 1350, which although is not that manageable, is still better than 128 million!

Actually, if you scroll down the page, you will come accross the link to my blog, what you were looking for!

But lets narrow it down a bit. You may remember the blog was talking about Google searches. Entering this final term and you get your result:

http://www.google.com/search?q="tools+of+the+trade"+chaff+google

There is the blog, at number one in the search results!

This is a rather trivial example, and there are other paths that will lead to this results, including not using the double quotes at all. But the point is that 90% of what you are looking for can be quickly found just by using the Oyo of the double quotes. The phrase search is one of the most powerful moves in your Google-Fu.

Play around with it a bit and you will see. For instance if you only remember a few words to a song, but that is all, use the search term:

www.google.com "insert the lyrics here" lyrics

Next time we will learn a powerful block in Google-Fu, and how to "move inside" your opponent.

Fermi Problem Rules of Thumb Part # 1

2009-10-02T12:36:00.001-06:00

In order to do Fermi problems, and other back of the envelope calculations with confidence, one must have an few tricks and rules of thumb that can be brought out quickly.

In this entry into Fermi problem rules of thumb, I will introduce a few tricks.

Numbers:

Sqrt(20) ~ 4.5
Sqrt(10) ~ pi
Sqrt(3) ~ 1.7
Sqrt(2) ~ 1.4

2^5 = 32

2^10 ~ 1000

Exp(3) ~ 20
Exp(1) ~ 2.7

Example: (Taken from Back of the Envelope Physics, Clifford Swartz)

Exp(40)= e(e^3)^13 ~ e(20)^13 ~ e(2)^13 *10^13 ~ 2*10^17

Exp(40) = 2.35x10^17 Close enough.

Some Conversions:

1 mi/h ~ 1.5 ft/s ~ 1.6 km/h ~ 0.5 m/s
1km/h ~ 0.3 m/s ~ 0.6 mi/h
1 ft/s ~ 0.3 m/s ~ 1km/h ~ 0.7 mi/h
1 m/s ~ 3.3 ft/s ~ 2.2 mi/h
1 day ~ 8x10^4 sec
1 year ~ pix10^7 sec
1 story (in a high rise) ~ 10 feet

Some "things to know"

Population of planet ~ 7 billion
Population of the USA ~ 3x10^8 people
Population of NYC ~ 8 million
Density of water 1000 kg/m^3
Density of Air ~ 1.3 kg/m^3

Average energy output of resting human ~ 100 Watt
Time light takes to get to the Moon from the Earth ~ 1.3 seconds
Time light gets to Earth from Sun ~ 8.3 min.

That is good for now. =)