I Feeeel Good

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I knew that I would.

[T]he placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.
[…]
Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.

Hmmm. Blogging = bitching = placebo

And what of those who blog while listening to music, looking at art and running, all at the same time? Bring on that dopamine!

Heh. So much for blogging being bad

via EvolutionBlog

It's a Guy Thing

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The song of the humpback

Only the males sing, which has led many scientists to theorize that they croon to attract females. The hole in this argument, though, is that no one has ever seen a female whale show any interest in a male’s song.

Just because women show no interest doesn’t mean a guy isn’t doing it in the hopes of getting laid*. We just assume they’re playing hard-to-get.

*according to the Michael-from-The-Big-Chill hypothesis

Vive La Difference

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Electrons and photons in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer show differences in their behavior

The output signal hit a minimum every time the two electron waves cancelled and a maximum when the waves maximally reinforced one another. But as they increased the current, the interference pattern waxed and waned in amplitude in an unexpected way, disappearing altogether at certain points. Researchers in France found similar results the following year.

That Would Be the Rhodium Card

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(Rhodium being a very expensive metal)

Nigerian phishing email

This is to officialy inform you that we have verified your CONTRACT/INHERITANCE payment of US$450,000,00and we the Senate committee on appropriation and finance have arranged your payment to be paid with an atm card in regard to an order from MR. President Alhaja Musa Yara’dua (GCFR) Federan Republic of Nigeria, an ATM card which you will use to withdraw your money from any ATM Machine in any part of the world have been approved for you. to receive your ATM card of $450,000,00 us dollars contact Mr.Famous Itsemhe on this email: [blah, blah, blah]

An ATM card to withdraw 450 thousand smackers? Yeah, right. I can fantasize (ubergeek fantasy, admittedly) that there’s a phishing database that measures the gullibility coefficient, and phishologists meticulously changing one variable at a time and measuring the response rates, with confidence intervals from their population sampling statistics. Because if it wasn’t for the ATM bit, I was ready to believe.

Besides, at $300 a day, it’ll take more than four years to get all the money. I want it now!

Still Better Than "A Burns for All Seasons"

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More video that doesn’t have George C. Scott saying, “My Groin!” The Science Of Ball To Groin at glumbert. (Some annoying ads — and nothing else — tend to pop up on the video) This time, tennis balls (the projectile, not the target), while last time it was a baseball, but with a cup. Very different goals (though the same target), very different results.

via Uncertain Principles

Toys in the Office: Special Blasphemy Unit

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It’s a hand-held catapult-like device to chuck things, and yes, those projectiles are small nun figurines. So, it’s a NUN-CHUCK, just like it says.

nunchuck.jpg

I don’t show this off to just anyone at the office; I wait until I know them and use my judgement. But this is the internet. Caveat emptor.

I really should round out my collection and become an equal-opportunity offender, so if anyone has a line on a protestant-o-pult, or an atheist arbalest (arbalatheist?) or even a Buddhistic ballista, let me know. I got the above at American Science & Surplus, though they’re also available at Archie McPhee (and perhaps elsewhere)

The Long and Winding Coil

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One project over the last several weeks has been winding coils for the atomic fountains. There are two different requirements, one is the so-called “C-field” coils and the second is the MOT (magneto-optic trap) coil pair.

The “C-field” is the bias field in an atomic clock that essentially tells the atoms which way is up, i.e. it defines the quantization axis. It also shifts the frequency of the transition, so in a frequency standard you need to know what the field is. In a clock (there is a subtle difference) you care about the stability, i.e. you don’t want it to change, so it’s enough to feed this with a precision current source to give a bias field of a milligauss or so. Two layers, up and back, so the pitch on each layer should tend to cancel and leave you with a vertical field, and about 600 turns per layer. There are also extra shim windings at each end to better simulate an infinite solenoid — a real solenoid’s field drops off at the ends, so we boost it back up a little. The drift region, where the atoms oscillate between the two hyperfine states (the “tick” of an atomic clock), sees a very stable field.

Pretty easy, but time-consuming (as it were); the basic winding took more than four hours. What you see is the jig I used, which has a stepper motor and a home-built feed system that wets the wire with alcohol to activate the bonding material. Square wire is used so it doesn’t have any gaps.

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How Does That Work, Again?

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I just read that the Chicago Bulls won the NBA draft lottery, meaning that the team with the worst record did not gain the first overall pick in the draft. Color me shocked. It was termed a “surprise” in some stories. Maybe it was a surprise that they won it, but not that the Heat — who, with the worst record had a 25% chance of winning the lottery —didn’t. Before the 1994 draft, the weighting was adjusted to give the team with the worst record a 25% of drafting first. Since that time, the team with a 25% probability has won exactly once: the Orlando Magic in the 2004 draft. (The Cavs in 2003 had a 22.5% chance, by virtue of being tied with Denver for the worst record.)

Whoever ends up in the cellar this year had better be praying for some regression to the mean.

Please Pass the Lamb Dip

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Zapperz, back from vacation, notes that Willis Lamb passed away recently. The Lamb shift, the energy splitting of the 2s and 2p states of the hydrogen atom, was a huge confirmation of quantum electrodynamics and garnered him the Nobel prize, and you can read more about that here. But that’s not the only effect named after him. Another artifact is the Lamb dip.

The Lamb dip is not a sauce, nor is it related to sheep dip. It arises in a certain geometry of spectroscopy: if you pass a near-resonant laser through an atomic vapor, some of the light will be absorbed. If the laser’s frequency is scanned, you will map out an absorption profile of the atoms, but because they are moving, the absorption depends not only on the transition frequency, but also on the motion of the atoms, which causes a Doppler shift. So your absorption profile is really a representation of the thermal motion of the atoms. At any one frequency the light will be absorbed by those atoms whose motion places them in resonance with the light.

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