Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

It's official. The 14th season of The Mythbusters will be the last.

I am so glad we got to see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman back in April (DW) (LJ) on the Jamie Hyneman Fairwell Tour.

Of course, the handwriting was on the wall, when in August 2014 Discovery Channel unceremoniously fired the B-team (DW) (LJ).

And you could feel the footsteps approaching, as they made the 13th season airings erratic. Fastest way to kill a show is not let it run in its timeslot unimpeded. Firefly, anyone?


Entertainment Weekly has an excellent web article and interview about The End of Mythbusters, Adam and Jamie.

One of the comments both of them make is regarding reality shows. I consider Mythbusters one of the highlights of reality shows, but it is NOT reality television. It's about Real Things, but not the scripted artifice of the so-called reality television shows and competitions. From Survivor to Top Chef to Project Runway to Naked and Afraid to The Real Housewives of Alpha Centauri -- there is nothing "real" about them. It's either competition or semi-scripted opportunities for fighting and backstabbing. That was not Mythbusters. They actually tried some spin off shows of competitions, either among teams (Unchained Reaction) or between Adam and Jamie (Dangerous Toys) -- and while they were fun, they died quick and certain deaths after a couple of episodes. Though Jamie's army of attack teddy bears (DW) (LJ) was definitely a highlight for me.

There are those in both science and science education who pooh-poohed Mythbusters. True, they were neither of them scientists. But they had a very broad practical education and openly pointed out that the scientific method, however crudely applied in some cases, is not restricted only to scientists. Sure, they had a preference to blowing things up. A great deal of my Physics "stories" I include in my lectures involve various extreme conditions, including blowing stuff up, crashing it, and general mayhem and death. I point out to my students that these stories are memorable for a reason. So is blowing up a cement truck with AMFO. (evil-grin) There are always some in the scientific community who oppose any attempt to do popular science. But trying to maintain a stranglehold over science in the name of absolute rigor, makes science unapproachable, incomprehensible and liable to create a priesthood of anointed scientists -- we have enough problems with people who don't understand, misuse or don't care about science. And in 2015, this is simply unacceptable.

Frankly it's telling that these two came out of the SF special effects arena. Because Hollywood is both a great booster of Dayom Sensawunder and the greatest sinner in creating ridiculous violations of science and science literacy.

I will miss the Mythbusters. I hope I get to see all the new episodes. I wish all of the A- and B-Team great and wise futures. I fear it will be a long time before we get such a thought provoking "Do NOT Try This At Home" show on television.

On the other hand, I have to agree with Adam and Jamie -- to know the end is coming and be able to prepare for. To "go out with a bang", so to speak. Well, a lot of TV shows never get that chance.


Take a bow, gentlemen. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Dr. Phil

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Numerology.

As a species, we are very good at finding patterns in things, even when they aren't really there. We take solace in patterns of numbers -- your mother's phone number, a friend's birthday, an old house number -- and recognize when we see them elsewhere. Back in the early 70s, when Wendy and I both went and applied for Social Security Numbers -- she needed one for a part-time job as a grocery store checker and I was sent along, too -- I was able to remember my number because it was associated with three Santa Fe railroad locomotive numbers. Yeah, I was always a geek.

And as a night owl I go to bed late, and I often amused by the digital clock displaying "magic times" -- 12:34, 1:23, 2:34, 3:45 -- and of course Pi Time, 3:14am. Not only are these numbers memorable in some way, but I also notice them because my schedules are such that I often actually make it to the side of the bed at the same clock times. We notice patterns and are creatures of habit.

Of course this is all because of Pi Day. And not just any Pi Day, but the most amazing Pi Day ever! Or at least to hear about it, or the makers of about ten different Pi Day t-shirts that have been showing up in my Facebook feed for months.

Okay, we get it. π = 3.14, March 14th is 3/14. And it's 2015, so π = 3.1415926, so March 14, 2015 becomes 3/14/15 9:26 am/pm. Amazing! Incredible!

Well, not really. Remember, this is in the United States, and despite the usual American narcissism towards the rest of the 95% of the world, most of the world doesn't use 3/14 for March 14th. The European model is 14.3 or 14.3.2015 for 14 March 2015. That would make Pi Day as 3.1 (3 January) or 3.1415 (3 January at 4:15) or 3.14 (3 January 2004) or 3.141 (3 January 2041). In other words, 14.3.2015 at 9:26 just isn't a big deal.

But we see patterns -- and then insist that everyone else see them, too.

Of course, as a number, π is pretty amazing. Much more than just the ratio of the Circumference to the diameter. π shows up all over the place. And π is an irrational number -- the symbol π represents the number, but it cannot be written down completely, as it is a non-terminating, non-repeating number.

Much folklore holds that the digits "must" represent all the writing ever written -- sort of like the million monkeys on a million typewriters for a million years theory of randomness. There was a guy on NPR's Here and Now on Friday mentioning that in the first million digits of π, it isn't even an even frequency of the numbers 0-9. It's like the most common number is 5, with 0, 6 and 9 in shorter supplies -- or something like that.

My good friend from ISP at Northwestern, the late Steve Houdek, spent most of freshman year refining a program that could calculate thousands of digits of pi. It didn't NEED to be done, having been done before, but it provided a really great programming and research project, running from BASIC to FORTRAN to Pascal and later C, I believe.

Here's the first 41 digits of π, or 40 decimal places:

π = 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41972

This is more π than you'll ever need for doing Physics problems.

Those million or more digits of π? That's not irrelevant, but it is mathematics and not Physics. Just saying. And I, for one, am all for purely intellectual pursuits, so I'm not knocking mathematics theory.

The Significance of Numbers

Those of you who have ever taken a Dr. Phil Physics course, know that I spend a lot of time talking about Significant Figures. Because in an introductory Physics class, the equations and numbers represent real things which are either measured or calculated.

But, as I tell my students, most scientific calculators are set up to display up to 10 digits and calculate to 12. That doesn't mean you need to use all of them. In fact, whenever I see a student dumping all ten digits in an answer, I know this is an attempt to snow me with numbers, because the student clearly doesn't know what they're doing.

v = d / t = 2.31 meters / 5.34 seconds = 0.4325842697 m/s ?

Nope. Can't justify all those digits.

Most of our typical measurements have three significant figures -- 3 sig. fig. -- which is how many numbers are there, not decimal places, and not counting zeroes which are merely placeholders. So 123 and 1.23 and 0.123 and 123,000 and 0.00000123 are all 3 sig. fig. numbers. Multiply or divide 3 sig. fig. numbers together, and you can only justify 3 sig. figs. in your answer -- though I typically keep an extra "fuzzy" digit to help with the decimal representation of a fraction, or what I would call 3+1 sig. figs.

2.31 meters / 5.34 seconds = 0.433 m/s or 0.4326 m/s. That's it.

The carpenter is told to "measure twice, cut once". In class I hold up a meter stick. It is divided into 100 centimeters and each centimeter is divided into ten millimeters -- or 1 meter = 1000 mm. A millimeter is comparable to the width of a saw blade, so cutting a meter stick to a length of 31.7 cm is reasonable.

I like to point out that I don't know how to make any 10 sig. fig. measurement that costs less than a million dollars to make, so the carpenter building your house is not going to do it.

To get a 10 sig. fig. measurement, we'd need to take that one meter stick and divide it into 10¹⁰ or 10 billion pieces. 1 x 10^-10 meters is an Angstrom (1 Å = 0.1 nm = 0.1 nanometers). 1 Å is about the size of a hydrogen atom. So... if you want to measure your cut to 10 sig. figs., you have to measure from the last atoms of the last molecule of lignon or cellulose poking out on either ends of the wood. AND have it not move during the course of the repeat measurements or cuts.

Uh-uh. Not going to happen.

Why does the calculator give you 10 digits and calculate to 12 if you can't use them all? Because calculators are intrinsically stupid machines and have no idea what you are doing. So it gives you what it can best do, and expects you -- the person with the brain -- to figure out how much or what part you really need. Because let's face it. Four people sharing a pizza for $18.29 plus 6% sales tax and a 1/6th tip totals $22.6186333 or $5.65465833 per person. And you can't make change from a penny for 0.465833¢.

Why do some people get it when splitting a check -- and not in a Physics problem? (evil-grin)

The universe is some 14 billion light years across. A light year is 1 LY = 9.429 x 10¹⁵ meters or 9.429 quadrillion meters. An atom is 1 Å wide, 1 x 10^-10 meters. The nucleus of an atom is about 1 femtometer = 1 fm wide, 1 x 10^-15 meters. If we were to divide a nucleus into a thousand parts, like we did with the meter stick, they'd be 1 attometer = 1 am wide, 1 x 10^-18 meters. That's the smallest SI metric prefix I've seen used.

That makes a light year, 1 LY = 9.429 x 10³⁰ femtometers. So to calculate the circumference of the universe, 132 billion x 10³⁰ femtometers wide, using C = πD = 2πr, or the area, A = πr² = πD²/4 we would need to know π to 41 digits.

Usually less. Far less. Really, far less.

Like I said, 41 decimal places of π:

π = 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41972

More π than you'll ever need for doing Physics problems.

Something to think about on this made up Pi Day...


http://mail.colonial.net/~hkaiter/aa_newest_images/happy-pi-day1.jpg

So... what kind of pie are you going to have on Pi Day? We're going to have a Key lime pie... mmm.

What? You thought I wasn't going to celebrate Pie Day with some π?

Are you crazy?

Looking for another way to "celebrate" the Once In A Lifetime Most Epic Pi Day Of All Time (or at least this century, for certain values of Once In A Lifetime and Epic)? Do a Google search on "pi day" and click on the Images tab. Scroll and scroll and scroll. There's a lot of fun out there...

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

The More I Read The Madder I Get

After reviewing Prometheus over the weekend (DW) with a minimum of spoilers, I am now reading a number of things from pre- and post-release. Seems that some of the bad science I noted wasn't just a case of Hollywood being sloppy, it appears that some of this trash was actually designed. Ridley Scott, say it ain't so!

At some point I will collect a number of links for you to peruse.

But in the mean time, I urge you to read this awesome captan's log. Larry Correia, who I'll admit is a New York Times bestselling author I've never heard of, absolutely nails Prometheus. He starts:

I quit reviewing movies here on the blog when I started selling stuff to Hollywood. The last thing I wanted to do was insult somebody that could potentially give me money for a book. However, I’ve just got to comment on Prometheus.

I really wanted to love this movie. I really did. It is gorgeous. This is one of the best looking movies ever. The acting from the main characters is remarkable. Michael Fassbender turns in an amazing performance. Idris Elba can do no wrong. Charlize Theron was great (especially the way she emoted in the flamethrower scene)… Noomi Rapace did a great job. The cast was awesome.

But despite all that good, Prometheus made my head hurt. I’ve heard some people try to say that it is a “thinking” movie for “grown ups”… No. And quit being a pretentious wannabe English professor. The problem with Prometheus being a Thinking movie is that the more you think about it, the less it makes sense. The more I think about it, the more things I have a hard time with. (you’ll notice that you never hear anybody complaining about the plot holes of the Avengers, because it didn’t try to be a Thinking movie. It just says shut up and enjoy your awesome).

Instead Prometheus was written in such a way that it required the cast of supposedly intelligent characters to make decisions like unto the cast of a low budget B horror movie. It was one step above “hey, we’re in the haunted murder mansion with a serial killer, let’s split up and wander around in the dark!” “Great idea. Let’s have sex and smoke pot so the slasher can murder us faster while we’re distracted!” I expect that kind of cheap cop-out writing from movies that cost $100 and the actors were paid in beer, not $200,000,000 gorgeous movies starring a bunch of great actors.

Yea, thar be spoilers in his piece. But it's funny as all get out. The man can write and it's spot on target.

Notice we both are still saying to go see it. But damn, it could have been a great movie. I mean really great. I mean 25-30 years later and we're still talking about Alien and Aliens -- about the timing, the scariness, the action, the questions, the awesome ensemble cast, the special effects AND the realistic settings. The list for Prometheus is much shorter. MAD Magazine could do parodies of Alien because it was great. Parodies of Prometheus will focus on how stupid the film team were.

Such an opportunity wasted.

Dr. Phil

The Other Science Story Of The Week

Everyone is talking about the possible faster-than-light neutrinos from CERN. But there's a lot of science still to do -- and I'm skeptical of trying to measure the distance/time calculations depending on the GPS system. Not sure the 60 nanoseconds are really outside the error bars. We'll see.

But the story about the "end of the world" isn't about killer particles from CERN. Rather I want to reference Wim Wender's Until the End of the World from 1999.

This is one of my favorite films of all time -- and I've only seen the "short" 158 minute version. One of the plots in the movie involves a brain scanning device that shows images being "seen" inside the human brain.

Well, it may not be SF any more. According to the news story, researchers at Berkeley have used functional MRI to analyze the brains of people being shown a video.

Here's what they showed and what they got:


And here's one of the images generated for Until the End of the World:


Seems to me that life may be imitating art.

Now -- don't get addicted to your dreams. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics, 3rd edition (1999)

In my advanced E&M course, PHYS-4400, we've run into one of the great walls of Physics teaching. The textbook which had been ordered for the course before I was assigned to teach it, is really more of a graduate level book. Which is a shame, since Brau tries to incorporate relativity into E&M, which I very much approve of. So we've sort of punted back down to Griffiths, which had been the previous textbook.

Now I know of Griffiths reputation as a textbook. And from my work with it the last few weeks, I am pretty pleased with quite a number of the ways he does things, as well as the sometimes grumpy commentaries and footnotes. (grin) Of course when I took this level of course at Northwestern back in the late 70s, we used Lorrain & Corson, I believe, and at Michigan Tech in the mid-80s, they used Ruth, Milford & Christy. Everyone, it seems, uses Jackson at the graduate level -- one of the great textbooks of all times, despite the ridiculously hard problems and the sometimes obscure and dense writing.

The problems, as you can imagine in this Internet world, of having "industry standard" textbooks used by many, many institutions, is that problems, solutions, hints and even the publisher's solution manuals for Griffiths and Jackson have leaked onto the web. Now you or I know that just copying over someone else's answers to a problem is wrought with dangers -- if you don't know what you're doing then you rarely write things / copy them over exactly as they were sitting before you and/or you miss crucial steps which, if called upon, you will be totally unable to explain. Plus you're not helping your studying for exams. And you're cheating. And it's unfair to those who've slogged through a solution to be competing with cheaters. Etc., etc., etc.

The Single Source Problem

But it's kind of worse than that. Recently we were talking about the bar electret, an interesting sort of polarized material with a permanent charge of ±q on the ends -- essentially the electric equivalent of a bar magnet. Barium titanate, BaTiO₃, was listed as one such material. I thought I'd look up on this to find out what sort of uses one has for a bar electret.¹ But if you try to look up "bar electret" in Wikipedia, one of the articles you'll get is about the Electric Displacement vector, D, where you find that the citation is Griffiths, Intro to Electrodynamics, 3rd edition. (grin)

Then a student came to me today and said that they had to show me this web page, because it'd left them uncomfortable. To work a problem sketching the electric field of a bar electret, they'd gone searching on the web -- and found someone's online lecture notes. Except that instead of talking about bar electrets, they just gave the solution to that particular problem in Griffiths.

If I wasn't already aware of the problem, I'd be upset. As it is, I just sigh. And regret that, at least in terms of high rankings in Google searches, no one else besides Griffiths is talking about bar electrets. Eventually you can get into a circular argument sort of situation, if you aren't careful, in which any confirmation you try to find on a subject ends up being cited back to the original source. And that's not good.

This is why we have to have more than one textbook. This is why we need faculty to write more textbooks, even though there are ones which "everyone uses". Because you shouldn't have just a single source on intellectual information. You need to have other references. You need to see how other people work the same material and types of problems differently. You need to have more than one source for preparing lecture materials.

Even if few people end up using these others texts in their courses, because after all, Griffiths at the advanced undergraduate level and Jackson at the grad level are the industry standard textbooks, and "everyone" is using them.

Dr. Phil

¹ The best use I can come up with, and I don't even know if it'd work, since I don't know anything about the strength of this charges, would be to electrically ruffle the fur of my cat without touching them. (grin)

Just A Small Planet In A Big, Big Universe

Thanks to jaylake, here's a link to a remarkable fisheye + wide angle sky image of the Parkes radio observatory in Australia, from APOD -- the Astronomy Photo of the Day. I should go to that site every day, and do when I'm teaching an Astronomy course, but I fear filling my hard drives with all the great and wonderful high res pictures they have. (grin) But this is the current wallpaper on my home computer:



Already A Star

Parkes Observatory, you may remember, was the location of the lovely 2000 Australian film The Dish, about Parkes' role in receiving the signals from the Apollo 11 moon landing. Among other things, it's a nice movie about how scientists work.

Dr. Phil

Blue Sky, As Blue As... Blue Skies

Glorious ride into Kalamazoo today. Bright blue sky with just a few high hazy clouds to remind you how big the sky really is. Too bad tomorrow's weather is not going to be quite as sunny, as I head off after noon to Chicago for Dr. Phil at WindyCon.

Saturday 6pm CST - Willow Room

Finished my story "Z.P.D. (Zeppelin Police Department)" Version 1.01 late last night. It came in at 6900 words by Microsoft Word's count, or about 7900 words in 32 pages by the 250 words/page method. I was shooting for about six thousand, so it is properly long by Dr. Phil's standards. (grin)

This morning I read it aloud -- amazing how useful that is for catching word errors -- and it clocked in at about 32 minutes. I've been told that a good reading is about 20 minutes, but I'd like to be able to read the whole story to whomever shows up. And if no one does, I'll still read it. It's good practice. (grin)

I'd finished Version 1.00 just before dinner last night, printed it out as a 2-up on the LaserJet and did a quick read-and-edit. Then worked on Version 1.01 with the edits and a bit more. One thing that's funny is that it was only in finishing it up, in like the last three paragraphs of Version 1.01, I suddenly revealed an interesting side to a main character that I hadn't seen before. And after reading it this morning, I emphasized that twist a bit more, so I am pretty pleased with this story.

Of course none of the markets I would send "Z.P.D." to first are available to me for submissions at the moment -- either closed or they have a story from me right now -- but this will be sent out as soon as I can.

But if you are at WindyCon and can come to my reading on Saturday evening for "Steakpunk", you can be the first to hear "Z.P.D." And maybe hang around for a good dinner, too.

Dr. Phil

While My Friends Go Off And Play

Quite a number of my real and online friends are off to World Fantasy in San Jose CA -- have fun, kids!

An Upcoming Appearance

Chicagoland's WindyCon 36 will be held at the Westin Hotel in Lombard IL (same as last year), starting on The Friday The Thirteenth Of November Two Thousand and Nine. Why yes, the con's theme is Steampunk -- whatever gave you that idea? (grin)

2004 Clarion classmate and fellow WOTF XXIV'er albogdan Al Bogdan and I will share a room once again -- hell, we'll share the drive from West Michigan to West Chicagoland. (grin)

I had suggested some panels and volunteered to be on them quite early -- a change from my usual last minute queries -- but alas, my early emails got lost somewhere. So I've only two events: one panel and a reading.

   Saturday 6:00pm

          Dr. Phil will be reading from his current work, "Z.P.D. 
          (Zeppelin Police Department)", in honor of the Steampunk theme.
          Note: This isn't in the preliminary schedule online yet. 
          Possibly Walnut room?  Afterwards I'll be heading to dinner at the 
          marvelous Harry Carey's Steakhouse in the Westin -- I'm sure 
          they'd be happy to seat a larger table if you want to join me. (grin)

    Sunday 12:00 Noon-1:00 p.m.

           Junior Ballroom B:  Alternative Technology
           What assumptions are made about steampunk technology?  What is 
           possible from a materials engineering standpoint and what breaks 
           the rules of physics?
           E. Hunt, P.E. Kaldon, H. Spencer, M.Z. Williamson

Fiddlesticks

My panel is the same time as Jim C. Hines' reading. (sigh) Guess I'll just have to go to Jim's book signing and reading tonight at Schuler's Books and Music on Alpine at 7pm. (grin)

This will be my third WindyCon -- 2007 was the last year before they outgrew the Wyndham O'Hare (with its odd divided basement level due to an underground river) and 2008 was the first year at the Westin Lombard (who puts a hotel in the middle of a shopping mall parking lot?). Fun to be in a Chicago crowd instead of a Michigan or Wisconsin crowd. Not better, mind you, just different. (double-edged-grin)

Dr. Phil

Second Century B.C.?

You simply have to see this. Thanks to 14theditch Jeff Ford for the link!

The Antikythera mechanism is a gearworks computer showing the phases of the moon and the location of the planets in a geocentric universe. They used to think it was 1st century B.C., but now they're thinking 2nd century B.C. Either way, it's a thousand years ahead of its time, even if they are thinking it was more of a rich guy's toy than an astronomical tool.

Impressive, young Jedis.

Now For The Speculative Twist

If the Antikythera mechanism is considered to be a thousand years ahead of its time, what piece of tech -- or tech hiding as a toy -- would be something a thousand years ahead of its time today?

For me, it's easy. In my 29th century SF universe we have interstellar travel, accidentally discovered in the 2200s. But even that isn't really a neat little clockwork simulated universe box... (grin)

Dr. Phil

That Fabulous 60s Show

Mercury

. Gemini

. . Apollo 1 (RIP)

. . . Apollo 7

. . . . Apollo 8

. . . . .Apollo 9

. . . . . . Apollo 10

Apollo 11

Forty years ago tonight, raise a glass to commemorate Michael Collins -- the loneliest man in the universe. Riding Columbia, the Apollo 11 Command Module, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the Lunar Module Eagle to Tranquility Base and history. Charlie Duke***, surrounded by Mission Control, sitting as CapCom -- the only voice allowed to talk to the crew a quarter of a million miles away...

I was there. I was ten at the time. I was there, Walter Cronkite was there. Everyone I knew was there.

Watching Moonshot on History Channel -- a mix of actual footage and re-enactments. And some speculation, as they said, for when the cameras were not rolling.

We came in peace, for all mankind.

Dr. Phil

Odd thought I've had for a long time -- does anyone else think that Neil Armstrong looked like Dave Bowman?

*** Charlie Duke handled the landing. After a shift change, just before the moonwalk, Bruce McCandless took over as CapCom.