Analyzing Dr. Seuss

Physicists can geek anything up. Analyzing the sizes of the cats in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back

The Cat in the Hat comes back and gets small

Ok, so Cat A is a little different (I will assume that is close before – or close enough). Cat B, however, doesn’t fit the pattern I used before. So maybe each successive Cat is not just 0.37 times smaller than the previous. I could explore this further if only I had more data. I do! Here is the next picture from the book.

The conclusion:

Don’t trust the Cat in the Hat.

The Casimir Effect

The Casimir Effect and Nanomachines

In London’s terminology, the van der Waals/London/Casimir-Polder/Lifshitz interaction is a dispersion force, but it sounds far more exciting and mysterious when called “the Casimir effect” and described in terms of zero-point energy and quantum-mechanical vacuum fluctuations. Cranks find it fascinating and hucksters profit.