The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers team smashed its own world record for largest Rube Goldberg machine with a 300-step behemoth that flawlessly accomplished the simple task of blowing up and popping a balloon – setting the new world record for the Largest functional Rube Goldberg machine
They beat the record they set last year
One of my colleagues recently observed that, unlike voting, participating in urinalysis did not come with an accomplishment sticker. He suggested a slogan, to which I added some artwork and then made stickers. For the next time.
(Click on the image to embiggen; I made 2″ stickers but if you want to use this for noncommercial purposes, feel free, and you can go larger if you wish)
The Muppet Show pitch
Guess What’s the Fastest-Adopted Gadget of the Last 50 Years
I think there are a few criteria to look at here, beyond the price of the new toys: the level of infrastructure for the device and the maturity/level of the quality during early adoption, among other barriers to adopt a new product. CDs, for example, represented a new format for music, but the quality was as good as it was going to get, and required no new infrastructure to deliver. Same for DVDs and video cassettes. Digital cameras did not deliver the quality to challenge film for quite a while — we had our Megapixel growth boom last decade — and the early cameras had other issues that detracted from the “film is free” advantage. Cell phones needed a network, and fax machines needed someone on the other end to fax to you — mass adoption required a critical mass.
Boom boxes? We already had tapes to play, no infrastructure was required, and the quality was pretty much as good as it would get. No hurdles to adoption.
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.
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.
Stephen Colbert, Scientific Pioneer
Since it was first coined by Stephen Colbert in 2005, the term has taken on a massive life of its own–coming to mean, in its broadest sense, the problem of people making up their own reality, one just “truthy” enough that they actually believe it.
Frankly, though, most of us only have a “truthy” sense of what “truthiness” actually meant in its original formulation.
That’s why, when I went back and re-watched the original Colbert truthiness segment, I was so stunned. After a year spent researching the psychology of the right for my book The Republican Brain, Colbert’s words took on dramatic new meaning for me. Frankly, it now seems to me that in some ways, Colbert was ahead of the science on this matter–anticipating much of what we are only now coming to know.
…
What does this mean? Simply put, Colbert may have been much more right than he knew in 2005.
More right than he knew? I think Colbert would insist that he was exactly as right as he thought he was.
This tweet by @johnroderick is funny but also something I find to be antagonistic, especially when taken in the context of several tweets along the same lines. (Could be it’s the wrong time of day, I need food, or my caffeine levels are wrong, or just that the snark is strong in this one, but…)
Look, nerds, I appreciate you like Star Wars and everything, but WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT GRAVITY IS! #GoBackToDoingScience
Or maybe it’s really just the time of the season, what with all of the politics in the air, and most of it smelling rather foul to me, because of the anti-science taint to it. Science just doesn’t seem to sit well with those on the far right, but this rejection of science is without much thought or true conviction. If one were to really distrust science, one would not be using GPS, which relies on relativity. Or go get a flu shot, as the recurring danger from the flu is a product of evolution. Or get any prescription medications and its oh-so-sciency double-blind testing. Or take advantage a whole host of other improvements that science has afforded us. (The fact that @johnroderick is interested in the nature of gravity probably mean he’s not in that group, but still … Sending us nerds of to do science for him?)
So this whole “get back to doing science” kind of hits me where I live. I’ve seen budgetary fallout from recent events, and I know I’m not alone in that regard. But I also know that a tweet is not a substitute for actual action or activism. I’m a scientist. So I want to know: Do you have my back?
Are you going to fund me? That is, do you recognize the value of research so that you won’t complain that some fraction of a penny from your tax dollar goes to funding science? And that scientists — not politicians, nor religious leaders, nor fat, lying and/or bald pundits, nor even the general public — decide what constitutes good science? You won’t sulk if the results aren’t what you or your ideology want them to be? You won’t pout when the bulk of basic research doesn’t pan out, because investigating the unknown means you — by definition — don’t know what you will find?
If you really want nerds to get back to doing science, provide us with the atmosphere for doing science. Throw those bums who make it unduly difficult to do science out of office. The ones who raise decidedly non-scientific (or unscientific) objections to science. Who wouldn’t know science if it bit them on the ass and said, “I’m science!” The ones in the pocket of anti-science industries. The ones that muffle scientists whose results are inconvenient. Throw them out.
If you want us nerds to do science, you have to let us do science. Otherwise, go do it yourself.