Monthly Archives: September 2008

Physics: Don't Wine About It

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You can use NMR to tell you if it’s still good, and now you can tell how old the bottles are by hitting them with an ion beam.

Nuclear Physicists Fight Wine Fraud

The beams, which are directed at the glass, not the wine, can distinguish how old the bottles are and where they might originate.
[…]
To prevent counterfeiters from filling authentic old bottles with ordinary wine, Williams intends to combine the ion beam test with another established method that checks for levels of a radioactive isotope, Caesium 137, in the wine itself.
This technique, however, is only effective in identifying wines made in the era of heavy atomic weapons testing in the latter half of the 20th century.

Mmmmm. Cs-137. I know that’s what gave last year’s Beaujolais Nouveau such a perky flavor.

Update: Jennifer Ouellette has a rather extensive post about wine fraud over at Cocktail Party Physics (though this is wine, and technically not a cocktail. But it’s some interesting history and more information. The New Yorker article she mentions is quite interesting)

Trivia of Use to Fibonacci … or MacGyver

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From Futility Closet

Since the ratio of kilometers to miles is very close to the Golden Ratio, consecutive terms later in the Fibonacci series (once you get to 3) are approximate conversions of those distances.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, …

3 miles is 5 km, 5 miles is 8 km, etc.

This knowledge, along with some bubble gum and a paper clip, should be sufficient to thwart the bad guys in at least three ways. Get on with it!

Polarized, Non-politically

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I’ve inadvertently (and advertently) been doing some experimentation with polarized light lately. Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) typically emit linearly polarized light, and most decent sunglasses act as polarizing filters. This can cause some problems, if you happen to have some gadget whose display is inconveniently set to emit light with horizontal polarization — since reflected light tends to become polarized parallel to the surface from which it reflects, sunglasses are made to filter that light. But it also makes it tough to read any LCD that is oriented to emit that polarization.

There are ways around this, though. I’ve noticed that my iPod screen (unlike my GPS receiver and watch) doesn’t go black at any orientation of my sunglasses, though I do get some shifting rainbows on the screen. Here are two orthogonal orientations of a linear polarizer:

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Nobelmetrics

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Can you predict Nobel Prize winners by counting citations?

Short version: Previously, Yes. Currently, no. Like sports.

In some sense this is like the “parity” many sports fans talk about. Making good predictions in an NCAA tournament bracket or fantasy football league can be pretty difficult, because there has been an increase in the number of high-quality players and teams. Further, the teams now must be compared across conferences or leagues. While Gonzaga might have won its conference tournament, it may not be strong compared to teams from the ACC, and the fifth-place team in the English Premier league might still win the European Cup.

Sports has better merchandising, too. (Can’t find an “I’m a Hänsch-man” (2005) hoodie anywhere)

I Beg to Differ

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OK — beg? No, not so much.

Dell deceived customers, judge says

I have no complaint about any alleged bait-and-switch. It’s this:

“Our goal has been, and continues to be, to provide the best customer experience possible,” spokesman Jess Blackburn said in a written statement to CNN.

Cough, splurt. Get on it, please.

I had the misfortune and displeasure of buying from Dell recently. I was buying a computer for someone else, and they had gone to the trouble of configuring and customizing it, and saving an e-quote. Which I could not retrieve — I apparently can only retrieve quotes for some predefined work group. So if you aren’t set up in the system, I can’t buy from the quote. My colleague didn’t create an account, so going back and even accessing the quote on his computer was problematic. At that point, if this had been any other purchase, I would have been shopping elsewhere, but approval had been obtained for this particular machine. Eventually — it took about an hour — we prevailed. I don’t see the business advantage in making it hard to buy something.

But the story doesn’t end there, since I had to get a replacement keyboard a few weeks later. Except there’s no actual part number on the invoice, and searching on Dell’s website led me to a dead-end. I had to pretend to buy a new computer to figure out what to order.

And even that is fraught with danger. I tried to replace a video card for an older machine last year, and found a list of compatible parts, but the Dell site wanted to charge me tax (government purchases are normally tax-exempt) so I ordered the part elsewhere. And it didn’t fit. An AGP vs PCI problem. When I contacted Dell to tell them their information was bad, I was assured that the card did fit my computer — it says so on the website!

Contrast those experiences with Amazon. I bought a new pocket-camera last week (SLRs don’t always travel well), and after taking a few pictures I noticed a spot in the same location on each. It became sharper when I zoomed in, and didn’t go away when I cleaned the lens. So it was inside somewhere. Went to their website, clicked on the “exchange this” option, and they overnighted a new camera to me (works great!).

I Don't Like Cell Phones

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But it has nothing to do with radiation safety concerns.

Fraud Charges Cast Doubt on Claims of DNA Damage From Cell Phone Fields

The only two peer-reviewed scientific papers showing that electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from cell phones can cause DNA breakage are at the center of a misconduct controversy at the Medical University of Vienna (MUV). Critics had argued that the data looked too good to be real, and in May a university investigation agreed, concluding that data in both studies had been fabricated and that the papers should be retracted.

Worth its Weight in Printer Ink

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The monetary density of things

People have been saying that the new industrial grade swimsuits like the LZR Racer are worth their weight in gold. As you can see, this is clearly inaccurate. But such a suit is worth its weight in marijuana or industrial diamonds.

At the high end of this graph is gold (the only thing worth exactly its own weight in gold!), right next to the cost of launching a pound of stuff to low earth orbit on the ISS. Putting that into perspective here: You might as well build your whole spaceship out of $20 bills– it still would cost less than putting it up there. It could almost be made of solid gold for that price.

At the end there’s a table with a whole bunch of stuff, all with its weight per pound. Printer ink? More expensive than silver, pound-for-pound.

Juno

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Sept 1, 1804 – One of the largest main belt asteroids, 3 Juno, was discovered by German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding. In addition to Juno, he discovered three comets and published the Atlas Novus Coelestis in 1822, which catalogued 120,000 stars.

Bless His/Her Heart

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Back to School, Nifty Sayings & Bless Your Heart

Richie’s Nifty List of 5 Sayings You Can Probably Use Without Getting Fired

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At a recent summer workshop, we decided that you can say just about anything as long as you end your statement with “Bless her heart” or “Bless his heart.” Now before you go off being a naysaying unbeliever just try saying these little ditties aloud and you’ll see what I mean…

“Oh my, she’s dumber than a bag of cat hair, bless her heart.”

“Oh my goodness, his classroom management skills are absolutely horrible, bless his heart.”

“She certainly gained quite a bit of weight over the summer, bless her heart.”