Category : Science and Math

Meme of the Month

For all the bashing it takes, Facebook is often the source of clever and intelligent memes.* Here’s one of my favorites.

You don’t have to be a scientist to “get” each one, though I confess to having to look up Borlaug. You may already know that Norman Borlaug (1914-2009) was a biologist and humanitarian, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, and author of “Feeding a World of 10 Billion People.” He’s credited with extensive contributions to the Green Revolution, thus the stalk of wheat. So, FB can be educational.

I have a particular fondness for

• the apple/o falling from Newton’s name

• the magnet in Faraday’s y

• the Feynman diagram as his y

• the Bohr atom in his o

Each LOGO is a bit of science history. What’s not to like?

* Confirming the meaning and new usage —  meme: of Greek origin, meaning a humorous image, video, or piece of text that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.

The Physics of Santa

It’s time to drag out the old physics-of-Christmas essays. In case you missed it in my newsletter, here’s my favorite version about how it’s impossible for Santa to get his job done:

There are about 2 billion children in the world and even at one toy each, we have something like 400,000 tons of sleigh, toys, and a hefty old man traveling at 650 miles per second to get around world in one night.

A simple calculation shows that Santa has 1/1000th of a second to

• pull up on a roof

• hop out

• climb down the chimney

• figure out who’s nice

• distribute the presents

• eat a snack

• say Ho, Ho, Ho

• go back up the chimney

• dust off his suit, and move on.

Not just exhausting, but physically impossible.

Or, he could just hail a cab.

Even though there’s not a lot of sleigh traffic up there, it’s not a feasible trip.

But now, I’m about to offer a rebuttal.

All we have to do is call on worm holes, those tricky features of space-time that allow a shortcut through the universe.

Imagine you’re standing in a long line at the post office. You’re at one end of the room and the clerk is at the other, lots of people-mass in between. Now imagine a piece of paper with a stick figure representing you at one corner, and a figure at the diagonally opposite corner to represent the clerk. Fold the paper so that your stick figure is on top of the clerk’s.

See? You’ve just taken a shortcut to the head of the line.

That’s what Santa can do. With a little math and a dash of relativity theory we can show that, in fact, with every stop, Santa can come out of the chimney before he gets in!

No problem making all those stops.

So, yes, Virginia, relatively speaking, Santa can do it!

Now if only I could find the right wormhole to get me through Bay Area freeways.

Every couple of years, I bring out the Fermi problem. Since today, 9/29, is his actual birthday (1901), I can’t resist posting it here. It’s my own favorite aspect of Fermi’s contribution to science—his problem solving technique.

The problem:

How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?

This is the legendary problem presented to his classes by the Nobel Prize winning Italian-American physicist. It’s the original of a category of problems called “Fermi problems,” meant to be solved by putting together reasonable estimates for each step of the solution.

At first glance, Fermi problems seem to be impossible to solve without research. The technique is to break them down into manageable parts, and answer each part with logic and common sense, rather than reference books or, these days, the Internet. By doing this systematically, we arrive at an answer that comes remarkably close to the exact answer. By the end of this calculation, we also see what advantages it has over looking up the answer on Google.

Here’s the way Fermi taught his students to solve the piano tuner problem:

1) Assume that Chicago doesn’t have more piano tuners than it can keep busy tuning pianos.

2) Estimate the total population of Chicago.

At that time, there were about 3,000,000 people in Chicago.

3) Estimate how many families that population represents.

The average family consisted of four members, so the number of families was approximately 750,000.

4) Assume that about one third of all families owns a piano.

That gives us 250,000 pianos in Chicago.

5) Assume that each piano should be tuned about every 10 years.

That gives us about 25,000 tunings per year in the city.

6) Assume that each piano tuner can service four pianos per day, and works about 250 days a year.

Each piano tuner would perform 1,000 tunings per year.

Summary: In any given year, pianos in Chicago need 25,000 tunings; each tuner can do 1,000 tunings, therefore we need 25 piano tuners.

The answer was within a few of being the number in the yellow pages of the time.

Why not just count the listings in the yellow pages in the first place? A good idea, until we remember that “solving a problem” is an exciting, challenging word to people like Fermi and to scientists in general. Difficult problems are even better opportunities to test their minds and their ability to calculate.

Another of Fermi’s motivations in giving this problem was to illustrate properties of statistics and the law of probabilities. He used the lesson to teach something about errors made in estimating, and how they tend to cancel each other out.

If you assumed that pianos are tuned every five years, for example, you might also have assumed that every sixth family owns a piano instead of every third. Your errors would then balance and cancel each other out. It’s statistically improbable that all your errors would be in the same direction (either all overestimates or all underestimates), so the final results will always lean towards the right number.

Fermi, present at the time, was able to get a preliminary estimate of the amount of energy released by the atomic bomb—he sprinkled small pieces of paper in the air and observed what happened when the shock wave reached them.

A whole cult has been built up around “Fermi questions:”

• how much popcorn would it take to fill your family room?

• how many pencils would you use up if you drew a line around the earth at the equator?

• how many rejection letters would it take to wallpaper a writer’s office? (oops, too personal?)

For Fermi, there was great reward in independent discoveries and inventions.

Many contemporary scientists and engineers respond the same way. Looking up an answer or letting someone else find it impoverishes them, robbing them of a creative experience that boosts self-confidence and enhances their mental life.

Could this also be why they don’t ask for directions when they’re lost?

How much science is too much?

I always enjoy participating on panels, and the annual ThrillerFest panel I join every year is especially interesting.

Boyd Morrison (far left) moderates

The official title: Ghost Particles, Nanotechnology, or Bill Nye: Introducing science in thrillers. Panelists (l. to r.) Amy Rogers, Mark Alpert, Bev Irwin, Kent Lester, Kira Peikoff, Camille Minichino, Grand Hyatt, NYC, July 8, 2016.

You might call the panel a lovefest, in that most of us have been on this panel for several years and are in complete agreement as to what to offer readers: engaging characters and plots, free of technical information dumps. Only the slightest bump in the smooth interaction came when one panelist suggested no more than 2 pages in one shot for a scientific explanation. “2 paragraphs” said another; “2 lines” another.

I’m on the side of less is more, when it comes to technical information. While not strictly thrillers (global consequences), two of my series deal with STEM topics — the Periodic Table mysteries and the Professor Sophie Knowles series. I’ve tried to avoid the cliche device of dialogue between a lay person and a scientist:

Jill, Scientist: I’m going to charge up the laser, Bob.

Bob: What’s a laser, Jill?

Jill: Well, Bob, the word “laser” is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The first one was built in 1960 by . . .

Reader: <snore>

What’s you threshold between interesting/informative and TMI?

One question, many answers

I just finished “teaching” a writing class.

The ” ” here are to indicate that a good teacher, which I hope I am, does as much learning as teaching. Sometimes teachers aren’t interested in learning, but in simply transferring information. Sad, I think. Students answers to questions can be more interesting and enlightening than what the teacher expects.

There’s a famous example of this in the annals of physics teaching. As the story goes, a physics teacher posed this question on an exam and got surprising results.

Show how it’s possible to determine the height of a tall building using a barometer.

One student answered this way:

“Take the barometer to the top of the building and attach a long piece of rope to it. Lower the barometer until it hits the sidewalk, then pull it up and measure the length of the rope, which will give you the height of the building.”

What? The teacher expected a different answer, using the standard equation involving the difference in pressure at the top and bottom of the building.

When challenged to come up with “the right answer,” the student gave several. Among them:

1. Take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building. Using simple proportion, determine the height of the building.

2. Take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units.

And so on. If you’d like more than a dozen more methods, click here.

My favorite remains this one:

“Take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent’s door. When the superintendent answers, say: ‘Mr. Superintendent, if you will tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer.'”

Thus, using a barometer (as a bartering tool) to determine the height of a building.

How would you grade this student?

** Legend has it that the student was Niels Bohr (1885-1962, Nobel Prize in physics, 1922), but then there might be other answers to this question.

The Voice of Gloria

Link from the Past
A few years ago, Valley Free Radio host Alan Vogel read my short story The Fluorine Murder, the 9th periodic table story, on his show.  How interesting, if a little strange, to hear a male voice reading as Gloria Lamerino.

Back to School

Heavy-duty text!

At the end of this month, my class for Golden Gate U, SF, begins. That is, the payroll office and the Help Desk are in San Francisco; I’m at home in a suburb thirty miles away and my students are all over the world.

The syllabus states: This course examines the impact of scientific thought and technological innovation on major cultures of the modern world. It includes analysis of the acquisition, application, and adaptation of technology in pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial societies.

Okay, it’s a bit academic, but that’s to be expected in a university catalog. Really, what the course allows me to do is discuss key events in the history of science that have changed cultural patterns and beliefs. Topics include breakthroughs from the printing press (the Church at the time condemned it as an instrument for spreading the devil’s work) to stem cell research and cloning (now being condemned by some).

It’s challenging and exciting to explore these issues with my students. Advances in science and technology have given every age more conveniences and life-saving medical procedures as well as new problems and new moral issues.

Remember the divorcing couple who were arguing over who would get her frozen eggs? Not a problem in my grandmother’s time. And all the cases of how long to sustain life with technology? Not a problem in the Old West, for example.

With an international student body working in cyberspace, I often don’t know the gender of some of my students. At first this was disconcerting. How could I know how to respond to a posting if I didn’t know whether it came from a man or a woman? I’ve had first names such as Jigme, Myint-San, Widya, Lieu, and many more that are unpronounceable. I longed to have a photo, an audio file, or some indication of the student’s gender. Maybe he or she would refer to a wife or husband. Of course, in 2015, that still wouldn’t be a clue.

Even some “American” names are gender-neutral. Was the Sean I had last term a girl, like the actress Sean Young, or a guy, like the actor Sean Penn? How about Jordan? Lee? Alex? Casey?

Short of asking outright, which I don’t want to do, I have no way of knowing the gender of these students. Every year that I’ve taught this class on line, there is at least one student whose gender I never learn, not even as I assign the final grade.

Eventually, I realized that it shouldn’t matter whether I’m reading the views of a man or a woman. Does it help to know the gender perspective of a person if the issue is end-of-life technology or gene therapy? Or does it hinder our ability to listen objectively?

Boy or Girl. Should it matter?

Women’s History Month

MARCH – Women’s History Month.

I have mixed feelings about women’s anything, unless it’s the feminine care aisle in the supermarket or the OB/GYN specialist.

I remember being in Washington DC during the opening of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the self-proclaimed “gender specific” museum. I saw a wonderful exhibit of the works of French sculptor, Camille Claudel, as well as works by Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot.

Who thought we needed to build a special museum for the work of these and other female artists? Didn’t they deserve to be shown at the National Gallery of Art, only 20 minutes away by foot.

I almost regretted buying a ticket, seeing it as supporting continuing sexism in art and culture.

Yes, this is another of my rants against separating women’s achievements, singling them out, as if they can’t compete in the real, co-ed world.

Years ago, I was part of a program I’ll call XYZ, to give girls an extra push by having a day of science, for girls only, taught by female scientists. Sounds good, right?

Wrong.

First, there was the giggle factor—boys, young and old, giggling over the fact that girls had to be taken aside and given special attention to learn science. They obviously weren’t good enough to be taught science with the boys.

The guys were right—that’s exactly how it looked.

That should have been enough to kill the program, but it didn’t. I tried several times to change the course of the program, simply by inviting boys to the classes. Let the boys experience female science teachers, too (see above for why that’s important!) I continued to volunteer in the program, constantly petitioning for a change of philosophy and was shot down each time, until I finally quit. I realized that sexism was still rampant, and the powers that be would always consider that girls need special TLC to learn the hard stuff.

The program, started in the 1970’s, is alive and running, and still girls only. I know personally two of the Board members, and I know they “mean well.” But — When I ask, “Why is there still such a thing as the XYZ program?” the answer I get is “Because girls and women are still underrepresented in science and technology fields.”

If after 40 years of XYZ, that’s still true, here’s another possibility:

Girls and women are still underrepresented in science and technology fields because programs like XYZ exist, and encourage people to think girls can’t cut it in the normal learning environment. Because boys who are left out will still go on to be the CEOs and Research Directors and giggle as they look at women applicants and remember those special girls who got together to play scientist.

Laser-sharp memories

The death this week of Charles Townes brought me back to my grad school days. It doesn’t take much, since my time in a basement lab at Fordham was one of the richest periods in my life. Gotta love those Jesuits—a mental challenge a minute!

Townes and Schawlow were household names at the time, and breakthroughs in lasers were important to those of us involved in spectroscopy.

The one I used in the early 1960s was a 200-cm tube filled with a mixture of helium and neon, with highly polished mirrors to sustain the laser action. Every morning we had to clean the mirrors to coax the long glass tube into action.

We lived for a while with only the He-Ne and the ruby laser—I know exactly where I was when news came in 1964 that an argon laser had come on line!

It was the people as much as the technology that marked my time at Fordham. I remember them all, keep in touch with many, and miss those who are gone.

Ho Ho Hole

December 11—time to drag out the old physics-of-Christmas stories.

My favorite explains how it’s impossible for Santa to get his job done:

There are about 2 billion children in the world and even at one toy each, we have something like 400,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second to get around world in one night.

A simple calculation shows that Santa has 1/1000th of a second to pull up on a roof, park his sleigh, hop out, climb down the chimney, figure out who’s naughty and nice, distribute the presents, eat a snack, and say Ho, Ho, Ho, all without waking the household. Then he goes back up the chimney, gets back into the sleigh, dusts off his suit, and moves on to the next house.

Even though there’s not a lot of sleigh traffic up there, it’s not a feasible trip. Not just exhausting, but physically impossible.

But wait!

The naysayers are way behind the times. Have they never heard of worm holes? Wormholes are features of space-time that allow a shortcut through the universe.

Imagine you’re standing in a long line at the post office. You’re at one end of the room and the clerk is at the other. Now imagine a piece of paper with a stick figure representing you at one corner, and a figure at the diagonally opposite corner to represent the clerk. Fold the paper so that your stick figure is on top of the clerk’s.

See? You’ve just taken a shortcut to the head of the line.

In another version of worm hole demonstration, dots are placed at opposite corners of a piece of paper, the paper is folded, having the dots touch, and the same effect is seen.

That’s what Santa does. With a little math and a dash of relativity theory we can show that, in fact, with every stop, Santa can come out of the chimney before he gets in!

No problem making all those stops.

So, yes, Virginia, relatively speaking, Santa can do it!

Now if only I could find the right wormhole to get me through Bay Area freeways.