Required Reading

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Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time

As a general rule, meetings make individuals perform below their capacity and skill levels.

The most common meeting in my experience is the status meeting, where everyone gets together and reports on what they’ve accomplished. If it’s a small group, these are usually fine because you already have familiarity with the tasks. But when you get a large group together, which has diverse tasks and goals, there is impending disaster. Bad meetings I’ve attended often involve people discussing details that nobody else at the table understands or possibly cares about — the sort of thing that should happen one-on-one or in a small group, as everyone else sits there, trying not to fall asleep.

Go Back and Change This

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The best & worst movie time machines

I agree with the Back to the Future flux-capacitor-tricked-out-DeLorean being at the top of the ones shown. But The Harry Potter Timer Turner doesn’t count because it’s not a machine — it’s magic. And they are missing other, like the Terminator franchise time machine, which is so cool that they don’t even show it to us. But given where the terminators sit on the cyborg totem pole, the time machine has to be pretty cool.

Judy Collins Science

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I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now*

The cloud with no name: Meteorologists campaign to classify unique ‘Asperatus’ clouds seen across the world

Experts at the Royal Meteorological Society are now attempting to make it official by naming it ‘Asperatus’ after the Latin word for ‘rough’.

If they are successful, it would be the first variety of cloud formation to be given a new label in over half a century

Also being pushed by the Charades Society to fill the empty “sounds like asparagus” clue niche.

*(written by Joni Mitchell, covered by many.)

Anniversaries Not Involving China

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Today is Frank and Helga’s 100th anniversary. Frank and Helga are my great, great grandparents. A toast to them. Skol.

Also, 20 years ago last week I got out of the navy and went west (you know, the way of Horatio Alger, Davy Crockett, the Donner Party…) to go to grad school.

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That Giant Sucking Sound

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Is coming from sciencegeekgirl’s Hands on Science Sunday: Feeling pressured?

All you need is a big trash bag and an industrial strength vacuum cleaner, and a willing victim (er, “faithful subject of science.”) The victim (aka “subject) gets inside the bag, and once you suck all the air out of the bag with the vacuum cleaner, they’ll feel an intense pressure. SAFETY FIRST! Read this PDF writeup of the activity (from the Exploratorium’s Eric Muller) for all the ins-and-outs and safety factors in doing this with your kids. (Words to the wise — don’t put your head inside the bag!) It’s stunning — try it if you can.

Going UP (Very Precisely)

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Via gg I see that there is a new vertex on the bologohedron, The X-Change Files

The X-Change Files explores the intersections of science and entertainment, regularly taking a look at the ways in which science is portrayed in film and television. Given that science is often the basis for provocative and compelling storylines, we’ll also highlight the latest scientific discoveries. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll examine the ways in which public opinion is shaped and behavior is changed by what people see on their television sets and in the movie theaters.

And it comes with an impressive list of contributors.

So I will welcome them, followed by picking some nits in the analysis of Pixar’s new movie, UP which they point out in the post Going UP! . They link to a WIRED story about the movie, which estimates the weight of the house needing to be lifted by helium-filled balloons as being 100,000 lbs.

One more simple calculation — 100,000 pounds divided by 0.067 pounds per cubic foot — and you’ve got that it would take 1,492,537 cubic feet of helium to lift the house.

Ignoring that we’re working in English units, which scientists don’t really do very much, the big thing that pops out to the budding, fully-bloomed, or dying scientist is the misuse of significant digits. Do we really believe the estimate of the house’s weight is exact? No, it’s probably good to 2 digits, at best — the house could easily weigh several thousand pounds more or less than the estimated value. So the answer is that it takes 1,500,000 cubic feet of Helium to fill the balloons. You can’t specify it any better than that. The same mistake propagates through the calculation of the number of balloons.

Now, let’s assume you’ve got a bunch of spherical balloons three feet in diameter. They’ve got a volume in 14.1 cubic feet, so you’d need 105,854 of them filled with helium to lift the house.

Same deal. Not only is the volume not precise, but the balloon diameter is an estimate as well. There is no way to make an exact count to the last balloon you would need. So while Pixar got the science right in estimating the number of balloons needed, and it’s great to be enthusiastic about that, it’s also important not to drop the ball when discussing how well they did.

(The most consistently egregious abuse of significant digits in the media (though not necessarily entertainment media) is when there is a conversion from one unit system to another. An approximation of “30 meters high” is converted using 3.28 feet per meter, so that this rough estimation is then given as 98.4 feet high, instead of 100 feet high, as it should be given.)

And, getting on to some more physics, I see that zapperz has taken a pass at analyzing the physics in this movie as well. The Physics in Disney/Pixar’s “Up” takes another look at the buoyancy issue, and points to what might be a little problem among the rest of the decent physics treatment of the buoyancy. Rhett also looks at this issue, as well as some other analysis.