Anyone else nervous that they quote “miles per hour”, worried perhaps there’s a metric conversion they missed? I kid, JPL, I kid. I kid because I love.
Along those lines, nobody I talked to at JPL (way back when) thought this was funny
Category Archives: Physics
Shut Your Pot Hole!
So we were putzing around with different ideas and things we wanted to work with—and we were like, what’s a common, everyday problem all around the world that everybody hates?” explains 21-year-old team member Curtis Obert. “And we landed on potholes.” He and four other students decided on a non-Newtonian fluid as a solution because of its unusual physical properties. “When there’s no force being applied to it, it flows like a liquid does and fills in the holes,” says Obert, “but when it gets run over, it acts like a solid.”
To Understand the Helicopter, You Must Understand the Gyroscope
Find Your Center III
Canadian version (At least they look like toonies to me; not the right width ratio for 2 euro coins)
Local Weakly-Interacting Fermion Makes Good
So it is important to balance the OPERA mini-fiasco with another hot-off-the-presses neutrino story that illustrates why, even though mistakes in individual scientific experiments are common, collective mistakes in science are rare. A discipline such as physics has intrinsic checks and balances that significantly reduce the probability of errors going unrecognized for long.
The eagerness with which scientists will say “Whoa, hold on a moment” is a major reason I find the conspiracy theories about science — e.g. how we’re suppressing alternatives to relativity and quantum mechanics (mainly, through my filter of being a physicist) — so funny.
But this article is about more than the process: there’s some neutrino physics in there as well.
Where You Can't Toss One Down
Space station used for Ardbeg distillery experiments
Experiments using malt from the Ardbeg distillery on Islay are being carried out on the International Space Station to see how it matures without gravity.
Compounds of unmatured malt were sent to the station in an unmanned cargo spacecraft in October last year, along with particles of charred oak.
Scientists want to understand how they interact at close to zero gravity.
So That's Where it Came From
… But You Can Derive Everything Else
I was thinking about the bit in the Grace Hopper video I linked to the other day, in which she complains about the mental challenge when she did her initial navy training: she had forgotten how to memorize, and there was a lot of memorization involved. As she put it, you can’t derive the organization of the navy.
In physics, however, you can derive a lot of things. I don’t recall exactly when I realized it, but somewhere along the way I realized that I didn’t have to waste time memorizing page after page of equations, because from a few basic ones, many others can be derived. This is clear right off the bat in physics, because the first topic taught is usually kinematics, and all of the equations derive from the mathematical definitions of acceleration and velocity being derivatives. Doing the proper integral recreates a whole bunch of equations. Applying them properly (i.e. adding in some trig and algebra) yield a whole host more that many students memorize (like several related to projectile motion).
I had trouble convincing most students of this when I was teaching. Invariably, they would blanch in horror at the suggestion that they derive equations, but these were typically not the physics majors who were resisting me, so perhaps that’s one of the kinds of thought processes that separate us from other other kinds of students, even within STEM topics. (though even physics majors are not totally immune to the “you’re not going to actually make me apply the math I learned in math class” attitude.) So it was nice to hear RDML Hopper say that.
Fun With Auntie Bubbles
You Can't Derive the Organization of the Navy
Grace Hopper on Letterman! This is a nice little view of the Great Lady after retiring from the Navy.
There’s a good bit on nanoseconds and, later on in the interview, picoseconds, to go with the the rest.