The Science of The Pirates of the Caribbean

I love it when two of the things that I'm passionate about merges. It has happened a few times before, such as when it was discovered that Enrico Fermi actually used words and characters from the Winnie the Pooh (OK, so that isn't exactly Disney) to label some of his work, or the physics in Pixar's animation.

So here's another example. It appears that Western Illinois University has been organizing a science night for the public. It is usually themed, and this time, it is a presentation of the science coming out of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Thursday's event featured movie clips from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies with related experiments, such as the physics of the movie's fight scenes, mystery ships, weight distribution and even a few small explosions using simple ingredients such as Diet Coke and Mentos candy.

One student made a rocket sled propelled by a fire extinguisher, while another used an inhaled gas to deepen two students voices more to a "pirate" tone. The final event was the favorite as liquid nitrogen was mixed with heavy cream and other ingredients to make ice cream for the crowd.

I suppose you gotta try everything you can to make science entertaining to the public.

Zz.

Debye Was Not An Anti-Semite Or A Nazi

This is rather interesting, mainly because I missed the whole controversy in the first place. A news report in Science's daily news update based on a thorough investigation historian Martijn Eickhoff of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation appears to have exonerated Peter Debye of being a Nazi and an anti-Semite. The allegations were made by physicist and journalist Sybe Rispens in a book and in a magazine article titled "Nobel Laureate With Dirty Hands".

The 200-page study by historian Martijn Eickhoff of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, commissioned by the Dutch science ministry and published yesterday, concludes that Rispens's picture of Debye was a "caricature" that contains multiple errors. Eickhoff points out that Debye seemed to think that he had to do what he could to keep German physics afloat. Although he didn't actively resist the Nazi regime, there were "moments of opposition," the study notes, such as his helping two Jewish colleagues escape from Germany. To retain his position, he developed a "survival mechanism of ambiguity."

The full report in English can be found here.

Zz.

Krauss Explains His Remarks

There are two lessons here:

1. Don't read New Scientist (I don't)
2. Physicists should pay attention to what they say before saying it.

I highlighted the terrific article by Helen Quinn in Physics Today several months ago. In it, she plea for us to pay attention to the words and phrases we use, because such things can be easily misconstrued by the media and the general public. I think Lawrence Krauss should have paid attention to this relevant essay before he sat down for the interview with any New Scientist reporter.

This, of course, came about because Krauss gave an interview that caused even experts in cosmology to scratch their heads. He made headlines when the said to the effect that we somehow are hastening the demise of the universe simply by observing dark energy, and equating it to an aspect of quantum mechanics in how an observer affects a system simply by observing it. When this came out, of course all the news media picked it up.

You'll notice that I did not report it here at all, till now. Oh, I definitely read it the day it came out, but way in the beginning, I noticed that it came out of New Scientist (that has the propensity to reach for sensationalism more than accuracy), and that the statement itself is nonsense. I half-heartedly was hoping that Krauss was pulling an Alan Sokal with New Scientist. Alas, I won't be getting such pleasures.

Krauss has now clarified what he wanted to say, and what he meant. It certainly isn't what was written in New Scientist, I can tell you that.

"I was too glib," the scientist said in a phone interview. "I had just completed this paper about a subject that I found so fascinating, and I was excited to talk to another scientist about it. But I was running off to Nashville from California. And I didn't spend enough time explaining myself."
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But Krauss admitted that he had gotten caught up in his excitement about quantum mechanics and should have chosen his words more carefully. What he meant, he said, is that by observing dark energy, scientists might have pinpointed more accurately where the universe is in its evolution - and that it might be less stable than we thought.

Let this be a lesson to every scientist. I myself have learned such a lesson a while back, although on a significantly lesser scale than what Krauss is going through. The public that you're talking to does not understand science, and certainly cannot put into context the words that you are using. They will take it at face value, and you'd better have an extra pair of ears listening to what you are saying before you let it through.

Zz.

Sheep Collisions: the Good, the Bad, and the TBI

I seldom try to "advertise" a paper on arXiv that is yet to be published, but I just found this a fascinating read and an amusing one as well.

The authors of this preprint are trying to show how an analysis in Halliday and Resnick on why 2 sheep can survive a violent head-butting without suffering any brain injury is not actually correct. The subject matter is rather amusing (at least to me), but there's some rather good basic mechanics issue here being presented, especially for motion without the assumption of a constant acceleration. So I think any physics undergraduate that have had sufficient calculus can follow this.

Now, anyone willing to read it carefully enough to see if they've done the physics correctly? :)

Zz.

Schrodinger's Kittens Enter The Classical World

This is a rather fascinating angle on the quantum to classical transition. The traditional explanation on the cause of the difference between quantum world and the classical world is the onset of decoherence, where the system interacts with its environment. That interaction with the large degree of freedom causes the emergence of our familiar classical world. We have seen several experiments that showed that the onset of such decoherence gave us back the familiar classical description. In fact, it has been shown that even with just ONE interaction, a single-particle system can quickly lose its quantum coherence.

However, a new theoretical research has taken a different angle. Two physicists in Austria has published a paper[1] showing that the emergence of classical observation can be also be obtained without having any decoherence effect, but rather due to the "coarse-grained" measurement that we make. A review of this work was reported in Nature Daily News (the link may be available for a limited time and may require registration and/or subscription).

Johannes Kofler and Časlav Brukner of the University of Vienna and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, also in Vienna, say that the emergence of the 'classical' laws of physics, deduced by the likes of Galileo and Newton, from quantum rules happens not as objects get bigger, but because of the ways we measure these objects. If we could make every measurement with as much precision as we liked, there would be no classical world at all, they say.

We know that "size" isn't the issue here, especially with the recent SQUID experiments of Delft and Stony Brook. However, the conventional thinking is that the larger the size, the more difficult it is to maintain coherence of all the parts of the system. What the new approach here has tried to explain is that with the larger size, the precision of our measurement also tends to get worse. Unfortunately, their proposal to measure and detect the quantum effects on large system appears to be rather daunting, if not almost-impossible.

Kofler says that we should be able to see this transition between classical and quantum behaviour. The transition would be curious: classical behaviour would be punctuated by occasional quantum jumps, so that, say, the compass needle would mostly rotate smoothly, but sometimes jump instantaneously.

But watching such quantum jumps between life and death for Schrödinger’s cat would require that we be able to measure precisely an impractically large number of quantum states. For a 'cat' containing 1020 quantum particles, say, we would need to be able to tell the difference between 1010 states – too many to be feasible.

Still, I wouldn't put it past some experimentalists coming up with an ingenious way to test this.

Zz.

[1] J. Kofler and C. Brukner, Phys. Rev. Lett. v.99, p.180403 (2007).

More Tests of Leggett Inequality

Earlier, I highlighted the paper by the Zeilinger's group that rules out a class of realism model via the violation of the Leggett inequality. Now comes two more papers in last week's Phys. Rev. Lett. that made further tests of such violation.

The first one is more of a refinement of their earlier work from the Zeilinger's group. This one supposedly rules out a larger class of local realism model without the assumed rotational symmetry of the earlier tests.

T. Paterek et al. "Experimental Test of Non-Local Realistic Theories Without The Rotational Symmetry Assumption", Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 210406 (2007).

The second paper in the same issue also tests the Leggett inequality and finds a clear violation of it.

Cyril Branciard et al. " Experimental Falsification of Leggett's Nonlocal Variable Model", Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 210407 (2007).

It is amazing that tests after tests all produce a consistent result that are in full agreement with quantum mechanics. At some point, this will become a very convincing body of evidence.

Zz.

A Teacher In Perpetual Motion

So why can't we all get teachers like Micheal Lampert when we were in high school?

The demonstrations highlight Lampert's skill at bringing science to life and his ability to tailor lessons to different learning levels.

"He's just a master to watch in the classroom as he instills in students a real interest in science," principal Ed John says.

The most profound part of this whole article is what he himself believe to be the most effective means of teaching:

"The only thing that's successful with these kids is to be one-on-one with them and talk to them. That's the secret to bringing out learning," he says.

It is unfortunate that many schools cannot only afford such luxury, but also the luxury of having a physics teacher with a great physics training and background.

Still, I think I've discovered the most effective means of making students interested in physics!

Lampert has made a big impression on microelectronics student Ian Love, 15. "Once, he used a high-voltage transformer that took wall current, stuck both electrodes into a hot dog and fried the hot dog," Ian says. "It was like an electrocution of the hot dog. I can't wait to take his physics class next year."

Electrocute a hot dog! That's all you need! They'll be eating out of your hands after that, figuratively and literally! :)

Zz.

Fake Photos Alter Real Memories

Our minds can play tricks on us. That is why anecdotal evidence is not the same as scientific evidence. The process of science tries to ensure that the evidence is valid and not simply something fleeting that fools our mind.

Over the years, there have been many evidence on how our mind can play tricks on us, to the extent that we truly believe something actually happened, when in effect, it did not. At the very least, our view of "facts" can actually be altered simply by external stimuli. This is what has been shown to occur in this latest research. A number of subjects have been shown faked photos of famous public events, and these photos can actually alter the perception of the subjects who viewed them.

The original Tiananmen Square image was altered to show a crowd watching at the sidelines as a lone man stands in front of a row of tanks. The Rome anti-war protest photograph was altered to show riot police and a menacing, masked protester among the crowd of demonstrators.

When answering questions about the events, the participants had differing recollections of what happened. Those who viewed the altered images of the Rome protest recalled the demonstration as violent and negative and recollected more physical confrontation and property damage than actually occurred.

Participants who viewed the doctored photos also said they were less inclined to take part in future protests....

Scientific methodology is designed to ensure that we're not seeing something that is influenced by how our mind can play tricks on us, or how things can influence on the evidence itself. That is why a scientific evidence is more RIGOROUS than an anecdotal one.

The full reference for this work is listed below:

Dario L. M. Sacchi et al., Applied Cognitive Psychology v.21, p.1005 (2007).

Zz.

Researchers End Debate Over Fractal Analysis Of Authentication Of Pollock's Art

I mentioned the controversy surrounding this fractal authentication of Jackson Pollock's paintings about a year ago. And now, a year later, it appears that this issue has been resolved. The fractal method isn't reliable and has failed.

The university's physicists recently "put the nail in the coffin" in the debate about using fractal analysis in authenticating art as they completed a second study related to fractal analysis and Jackson Pollock's drip paintings.
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"No information about artistic authenticity can be gleaned from fractal analysis," said Katherine Jones-Smith, lead author of the study.

This should put an end to this saga. Too bad that there are still paintings that are still under dispute.

The preprint for this work can be found here.

Zz.

The Physics of Shamu

Hey, if you have gone to Seaworld parks, and have seen the Shamu show, this article on the physics of Shamu might interest you.

I need to time my jumps perfectly in order to get the greatest amount of lift. Right before Shamu’s forward and upward momentum peaks, I flex my knees a bit and spring forward. Flying through the air feels free and effortless. Heading toward the water’s surface, my inertia is about to be halted rather abruptly. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, with the same speed and direction, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. I aspire to a perfect arch before plunging into the water. That isn’t always the case, however. Belly flops, windmills (picture arms flailing) and back slaps are part of any Shamu trainer’s experience. The law of inertia is all too evident as I hit the water. Shamu, it seems, does not experience the same phenomenon.

The laws of physics are very evident in killer whales, to be sure.
Energy. Force. Magnitude.

I just wish that the author didn't write about Newton being "the father of modern physics". That's a bit misleading since "modern physics" is normally associated with quantum physics and special/general relativity.

Zz.

'Cooper Pairs' Can Be Found In Insulators As Well Superconductors

This is a rather fascinating report. A team from Brown University has found evidence that Cooper Pairs can exist not just in a superconductor, but also in an insulator.

“Our finding is quite counterintuitive,” said James Valles, a Brown professor of physics who led the research. “Cooper pairing is not only responsible for conducting electricity with zero resis-tance, but it can also be responsible for blocking the flow of electricity altogether.”

However, unlike a superconductor, these Cooper pairs do not condense into a coherent state and, therefore, do not conductor electricity. It is interesting to note that this is similar to the behavior of the high-Tc cuprates in the pseudogap state. This is where one obtains a paring of the charge carriers ABOVE Tc. Here, no long-range coherence occurs even though pairing has occurred. Whether these paired carriers are precursor to superconductivity as the material goes below Tc, or are competing with superconductivity, is still a question yet to be answered.

Also interesting to note that this isn't the only situation where paring, and even superconductivity, can occur in an insulator. When an insulator shares a common surface with a superconductor, there is something call the proximity effect, whereby the superconducting wavefunction "leaks" into the insulator over some length (of the order of the the coherence length). What is different in this new work is that this pairing occurs on stand-alone insulator.

The exact citation to this work is:

M. D. Stewart, Jr. et al., Science v.318, p.1273 (2007).

Zz.

Educators Tout Benefits of 'Physics First' Program

I've always of the opinion that physics should be the first science subject that is taught to students. Nobel laureate Leon Lederman is a major advocate for this effort with his Project Arise. There are a lot more things around us that are clear example of physics in action.

It seems that this policy has been implemented in several schools, where physics is being taught at the high school freshman level. From all indication, this seems to have a rather positive effect in the students as they progressed through their education.

Zz.

Hollywood Comes to CERN

.. which isn't unexpected if you're filming the movie version of Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons". After all, the book's setting in the beginning is at CERN.

They have the same cast as "The Da Vinci Code", i.e. Tom Hanks will return as the same character. But interestingly enough, the "Angels and Demons" book came out first before "The Da Vinci Code". I suppose there isn't anything from one that significantly influence the other in terms of character and story line.

Zz.

Infrared Laser Can Be Fine-Tuned To Selectively Target And destroy Lethal Microorganisms

Here's another physics research work that one can use whenever someone claims that the study of physics has no practical application.

Physicists at Arizona State University, Johns Hopkins, and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute can now selectively zap microorganisms without harming the surrounding cells.

In their paper titled 'Selective inactivation of microorganisms by near-IR femtosecond laser pulses', physicists from Arizona State University detail how their new laser technique can destroy viruses and bacteria such as AIDS without damaging human cells. Also interesting to note is its potential to help reduce the spread of hospital infections such as MRSA — more commonly referred to in the media as the "superbug" or staph infection. MRSA is called the superbug because of its resilience and its ability to survive most treatment regimens including penicillin and methicillin.

The exact reference to this work is:

K T Tsen et al., J. Phys.: Condens. Matter v.19, p.472201 (2007).

Zz.

Don't Throw Your Physics Experiment Out In The Trash!

Here's a hint: don't simply throw out your physics experiment out in the trash can! You could cause a lot of problems, such as the one that happened at the University of San Diego.

The “device” – six glass root beer bottles with rubber stoppers linked by wires – alarmed a security guard, who called authorities just before noon, fire department spokesman Maurice Luque said.

Luque said bomb investigators with the Metro Arson Strike Team took photographs of the contraption and showed them to a physics professor on campus, who confirmed it was a student experiment.

Never a dull moment... :)

Zz.

Erykah Badu Dabbling In Quantum Physics?

I'm not making this up!

Erykah Badu, for those of you who are not up-to-speed with contemporary music, is a well-respected, grammy-winning, hip-hop artist. So she isn't Britney Spears, thankyouverymuch! Still, I'm taken aback a little bit when I read in this interview that she has been dabbling in "studying" quantum physics, and that has somehow influenced her in her upcoming album.

This album is special to me because I went deep into my Hip-Hop purse to pull out some of the most creative, scientific, mathematical producers that I could find, because that’s what I was feelin’ at the time. I had been starting to dabble in the studying of quantum physics and wanting to really, I don’t know, participate in the changing of frequencies in different areas of music. And I said, “Okay, the most likely candidate would be Dilla.” So I’m searching through my Jay Dilla mixtapes and pulling things out. [Other producers include] Madlib, Kareem Riggins, 9th Wonder, Sa-Ra, my comrade Jah Born, who did “On and On,” Frequency, my production crew - that’s Rashad Smith, James Poyser, ?uestlove. Am I leaving anybody out?

I'm guessing by what she meant as studying is that she's reading pop-science books on quantum physics. That wouldn't be so bad. I just hope that she's NOT learning about it by reading books such as "The Secret" or something worse than that.

Next, I fully expect to hear that Mariah Carey is studying Special Relativity.

:)

Zz.

Physics Phun Night

I highlighted Purdue's yearly Physics Open House event earlier. Not to be left out is the yearly University of Arizona Physics Phun Night.

Held in the Physics and Atmospheric Sciences building, the event was sponsored by the physics department and was geared toward children and families, said physics lab coordinator Larry Hoffman.

Sounds like the visitors had a lot of fun at some of the demos they were showing.

Zz.

The Physics of Turkey

Hey, why not? :)

This Thursday is a major holiday here in the US - Thanksgiving. The traditional meal involves a turkey, usually a whole turkey roasted in the oven (although deep-fried turkey is catching up there). So just in time for the holidays, we have the physics of turkey-cooking. It's your opportunity to learn or brush up on your thermodynamics.

:)

Zz.

Purdue's Physics Open House

Purdue University Physics Dept. threw another of these Physics fest this year (I reported the one from last year).

I'll say it again here. This is such a good idea. Major universities should do this often. Not only are you introducing the general public to science, you are also opening your school up to the neighborhood so that they learn what exactly it is that you do. Often, universities and the surrounding communities don't talk often, and that can create tension between the school and people who live there. Having events like this opens up the school for local visitors, especially if it is a state school that is funded by taxpayers.

Zz.

The Emergence of Science Cafe

I didn't know that this is getting to be as popular as being reported here. It seems that throughout the country, small cafes and bars are having "meetings" on science that are getting to be quite an event.

Science groups for young professionals who don’t wear white coats, like the year-old Secret Science Club at Union Hall, are cropping up in bars and bookstores all over the country, from Massachusetts to Montana.

“If you have a certain type of job, after a while that part of your brain starts to deteriorate,” said Amy Lee, 25, who works at an Internet startup and was attending her second Secret Science Club meeting. “You want to use it again. Plus, there’s alcohol.”

Ah!!! So that's the secret! :)

It does make sense, and it's different.

Zz.