Football Physics and Deflategate

This issue doesn't seem to want to go away.

Still, anyone who has been following this (at least here in the US) have heard of the "Deflategate" controversy from last year's NFL Football playoffs.

Chad Orzel has another look at this based on a recent paper out of The Physics Teacher, this time, from the physics involved with the football receivers.

Most of the coverage of “Deflategate” has focused on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and speculation that he arranged for the balls to be deflated so as to provide a better grip. The authors of the Physics Teacher paper, Gregory DiLisi and Richard Rarick look at the other end of the problem, where the ball is caught by the receiver, thinking about it in terms of energy, an issue with major implications for the existence of atomic matter.

It certainly is another angle to the issue. I hope to get a copy of the paper soon and see what it says.

Zz.

Why Do We Put Telescope In Space?

Here's the Minute Physics explanation:



Zz.

Quantum Cognition?

A lot of researchers and experts in other fields have tried to use various principles in physics in their own field. Economics have tried to invent something called Econophysics, to varying degree of success. And certainly many aspects of biology are starting to incorporate quantum effects.

Quantum mechanics has been used notoriously in many areas, including crackpottish application by the likes of Deepak Chopra etc. without really understanding the underlying physics. I don't know if this falls under the same category, but the news report out of The Atlantic doesn't do it any favor. I'm reading this article on quantum cognition, in which human behavior, and certain unpredictability and irrationality of human behavior, may be attributed to quantum effects!

Now, the reason why I don't think this article is that good is because it makes a number of either misleading, or strange errors.

Take, for example, the classic prisoner’s dilemma. Two criminals are offered the opportunity to rat each other out. If one rats, and the other doesn’t, the snitch goes free while the other serves a three-year sentence. If they both rat, they each get two years. If neither rats, they each get one year. If players always behaved in their own self-interest, they’d always rat. But research has shown that people often choose to cooperate.

Classical probability can’t explain this. If the first player knew for sure that the second was cooperating, it would make most sense to defect. If the first knew for sure that the second was defecting, it would also make most sense to defect. Since no matter what the other player is doing, it’s best to defect, then the first player should logically defect no matter what.

A quantum explanation for why player one might cooperate anyway would be that when one player is uncertain about what the other is doing, it’s like a Schrödinger’s cat situation. The other player has the potential to be cooperating and the potential to be defecting, at the same time, in the first player’s mind. Each of these possibilities is like a thought wave, Wang says. And as waves of all kinds (light, sound, water) are wont to do, they can interfere with each other. Depending on how they line up, the can cancel each other out to make a smaller wave, or build on each other to make a bigger one. If “the other guy’s going to cooperate” thought wave gets strengthened in a player’s mind, he might choose to cooperate too.

So you tell me if that made any sense or if this person has actually understood QM beyond what he read in a pop-science book. First of all, when wave cancellation occurs, it doesn't "make a smaller wave". It makes NO wave at that instant and time. Secondly, this person is espousing the existence of some kind of a "thought wave" that hasn't been verified, and somehow, the thought waves from the two different prisoners overlap each other (this, BTW, can be described via classical wave pictures, so why quantum picture in invoked here?).

But the fallacy comes in the claim that there is no other way to explain why different people act differently here without invoking quantum effects. Unlike physics systems where we can prepare two systems identically, we can find no such thing in human beings (even  with twins!). Two different people have different backgrounds and "baggage". We have different ethics, moral standards, etc. You'll never find two identical systems to test this out. That's why we have 9 judges on the US Supreme Court, and they can have wildly differing opinions on the identical issue! So why can't they use this to explain why people react differently under this same situation? Why can't they find the answer via the human psychology rather than invoking QM?

But it gets worse...

The act of answering a question can move people from wave to particle, from uncertainty to certainty. In quantum physics, the “observer effect” refers to how measuring the state of a particle can change the very state you’re trying to measure. In a similar way, asking someone a question about the state of her mind could very well change it. For example, if I’m telling a friend about a performance review I have coming up, and I’m not sure how I feel about it, if she asks me “Are you nervous?” that might get me thinking about all the reasons I should be nervous. I might not have been nervous before she asked me, but after the question, my answer might become, “Well, I am now!”

Of course, this smacks of the crackpottery done in "The Secret". Let's get this straight first of all, especially those who do not have a formal education in QM. There is no such thing as "wave-particle duality" in QM! QM/QFT etc. describe the system via a single, consistent formulation. We don't switch gears going from "wave" to "particle" and back to "wave" to describe things things. So the system doesn't move "from wave to particle", etc. It is the nature of the outcome that most people consider to be "wave-like" or "particle-like", but these are ALL produced by the same, single, consistent description!

The problem I have with this, and many other areas that tried to incorporate QM, is that they often start with the effects, and then say something like "Oh, it looks very much like a quantum effect". This is fine if there is an underlying, rigorous mathematical description, but often, there isn't! You cannot says that an idea is "complimentary" to another idea the same way position and momentum observables are non-commuting. The latter has a very set of rigorous mathematical rules and description. To argue that "... quantum models were able to predict order effects shown in 70 different national surveys... " is not very convincing because in physics, this would be quite unconvincing. It means that there are other factors that come in that are not predictable and can't be accounted for. What is there to argue that these other factors are also responsible for the outcome?

Again, the inability to test this out using identical systems makes it very difficult to be convincing. Human behavior can be irrational and unpredictable. That is know. Rather than considering this to be the result of quantum effects, why not consider this to be the result of a chaotic behavior over time, i.e. all of the various life experiences that an individual had all conspire to trigger the decision that he/she makes at a particular time. The "butterfly effect" in an individual's time line can easily cause a particular behavior at another time. To me, this is as valid of an explanation as any.

And that explanation is purely classical!

Zz.

A Physics App To Teach Physics

A group of educational researcher has created an app for iOS, Android, PCs, and Macs, that teaches physics to 9-graders.

The app, Exploring Physics, is meant to take particular physics curriculum already being taught in a number of public school districts, including Columbia's, and make it available digitally. The Exploring Physics curriculum app is designed to replace traditional lecture-based learning with discussions and hands-on experiments.

“The idea in the app is to have students learn by doing stuff,” said Meera Chandrasekhar, the co-creator of the app and a curators' teaching professor in the MU Department of Physics and Astronomy. “Even though it’s a digital app, it actually involves using quite a lot of hands-on materials.”

I haven't look at it. If any of you have, and better still, is using it, I very much like to hear your opinion.

Zz.

12-Year Old Girl Has More Sense Than The Media

I couldn't help it. When I saw a headline on CNN that said "British 12-year-old smarter than Einstein, Hawking", I had to look at this silliness. Turns out my initial guess was right. It was based on the outcome of some "intelligent test."

Lydia Sebastian achieved the top score of 162 on Mensa's Cattell III B paper, suggesting she has a higher IQ than well-known geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Now, lets dissect this just a bit, shall we (since I obviously have nothing better to do at this moment)? First of all, it has NOT been shown that such tests actually measure anything significant, much less, someone's "intelligence".  Secondly, how does one compare something to  something else that doesn't exist? Both Einstein and Hawking never took such tests, so who knows how well they would do. The article got away with this by "suggesting" that she has a higher IQ than those two people. That bullcrap!

Finally, such measure has nothing to do with one's ability to produce the same caliber of  work at Einstein and Hawking. In fact, even the 12-year old girl said as much:

The comparison doesn't sit well with the British student, who's currently in Year 8 at Colchester County high school, a selective girl's grammar school in Essex, England.

"I don't think I can be compared to such great intellectuals such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. They've achieved so much. I don't think it's right," Lydia told CNN.

You are so right, Lydia! Something isn't right, but somehow, the media didn't get this, even after you mentioned this to them! They are claiming that you are intelligent, and yet, they didn't pay attention to you when you told them that all this brouhaha isn't right.

We have at least shown one thing here. 12-year old Lydia has more intelligence and common sense than the media.

Zz.

Another Discovery of Weyl Fermions

We had an earlier report out of Science by the Princeton group on the discovery of the Weyl fermions in TaAs. This looks like another confirmation of that discovery on the same material using the same technique, out of a group in China.

In their experiments, Hasan and colleagues and Ding and colleagues used angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to detect the Fermi arcs, characteristic of Weyl nodes, on the surface of TaAs. ARPES is an ideal tool for such a purpose. The technique involves shining light on a surface and measuring the energy and momentum of ejected electrons. This allows for the explicit determination of both bulk nodes and the Fermi-arc surface states. Ding’s team used an interesting strategy to identify a Fermi arc and distinguish it from a more conventional closed Fermi surface (Fig. 1). They defined a closed contour in the momentum space spanned by their measurements and investigated how many times surface states at the Fermi energy crossed this contour. Such a contour will intersect a regular Fermi surface an even number of times. But it will intersect a Fermi arc an odd number of times if the arc encloses the projection of a Weyl point, thus providing a clean signature.

Click the link to get a copy of the actual paper.

Zz.

The Physics of BB-8 Star Wars Toy

Did you get caught up with the release of the new Star Wars toys and merchandise this past week?

It turns out that one of the toys, the BB-8, is quite astonishing. Rhett Allain has an interesting article on how this toy works.

The last part on inductive charging shouldn't be a puzzle anymore, should it? I've had a tea kettle for at least 6 years that used inductive heating. So inductive charging shouldn't be unusual anymore, I would think.

Still, like he said, this might be a toy that could be a very good physics class demo.

Zz.

Higgs Mass Refined

The combined data from ATLAS and CMS from LHC Run 1 has produced a Higgs mass with greater accuracy.

ATLAS reported the mass of this new boson to be in the mass region of 126 billion electronvolts, and CMS found it to be in the region of 125. In May 2015, the two experiments combined their measurements, refining the Higgs mass closer to 125.09 GeV.

But what is important is the report on the measurement of the coupling strength in the Higgs interactions.

This particular analysis focused on the interaction of the Higgs boson with other particles, known as coupling strength. The combined measurements are more precise than each experiment could accomplish alone, and results establish that the Higgs mechanism grants mass to both the matter and force-carrying particles as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.
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In the Standard Model, how strongly the Higgs boson couples to another particle determines that particle’s mass and the rate at which a Higgs boson decays into other particles.
For instance, the Higgs boson couples strongly with the bottom quark and very weakly with the electron; therefore, the bottom quark has a much greater mass than the electron and the Higgs will commonly decay into a bottom quark and its antiquark.

This is why there is still a lot more to be measured and refined in Run 2.

Zz.

The History of Antiprotons

Antiprotons, the one-half of the particle used in the collision at the departed Tevatron at Fermilab, have had a long and distinguished history in the development of elementary particle physics. This CERN Courier article traces its history and all the important milestones in our knowledge due to the discovery of this particle.

Over the decades, antiprotons have become a standard tool for studies in particle physics; the word "antimatter" has entered into mainstream language; and antihydrogen is fast becoming a laboratory for investigations in fundamental physics. At CERN, the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) is now an important facility for studies in fundamental physics at low energies, which complement the investigations at the LHC’s high-energy frontier. This article looks back at some of the highlights in the studies of the antiworld at CERN, and takes a glimpse at what lies in store at the AD. 

Zz.

She's Still Radioactive!

She, as in Marie Curie.

This article examines what has happened to the personal effects of Marie Curie, the "Mother of Modern Physics".

Still, after more than 100 years, much of Curie's personal effects including her clothes, furniture, cookbooks, and laboratory notes remain contaminated by radiation, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Regarded as national and scientific treasures, Curie's laboratory notebooks are stored in lead-lined boxes at France's national library in Paris.

While the library allows visitors to view Curie's manuscripts, all guests are expected to sign a liability waiver and wear protective gear as the items are contaminated with radium 226, which has a half-life of about 1,600 years, according to Christian Science Monitor.

What they didn't report, and this is where the devil-is-in-the-details part is missing, is what level of radioactivity is given off by these objects. You just don't want to sign something and not know the level you will be exposed to (which, btw, if you work in the US or at a US National Lab, a RWP (radiation work permit) must be posted at the door detailing the type of radiation and the level of radiation at a certain distance).

I suspect that this level is just slightly above background, and that's why they are isolated, but not large enough for concern. Still, the nit-picker in me would like to know such details!

Zz.

Quantum Teleportation Versus Star Trek's "Transporter".

Chad Orzel has an article on Forbes explaining a bit more on what quantum teleportation is, and how it is different than those transporters in Star Trek. You might think that this is rather well-known since this has been covered many times, even on this blog. But the ignorance of what quantum teleportation is still pops up frequently, and I see people on public forums still think that we can transport objects from one location to another because "quantum teleportation" has been verified.

So, if you are still cloudy on this topic, you might want to read that article.

Zz.

The Apparent Pentaquark Discovery - More Explanation

Recall the report on the apparent observation of a pentaquark made by LHCb a few weeks back. Fermilab's Don Lincoln had a video that explains a bit of what a quark is, what a pentaquark is, and how physics will proceed in verifying this.



Zz.

The Physics Of Air Conditioners

Ah, the convenience of having air conditioning. How many of us have thanked the technology that gave so much comfort during the hot, muggy day.

This CNET article covers the basic physics of air conditioners. Any undergraduate student who had taken intro Physics course should know the basic physics of this device when studying thermodynamics and the Carnot cycle. This is essentially a heat pump, where heat is transferred from a cooler reservoir to a warmer reservoir.

But, if you have forgotten about this, or if you are not aware of the physics behind that thing that gives you such comfort, then you might want to read it.

Zz.

Stnky Superconductor Breaks Record

No, I wasn't being deragoratory by calling it "stinky".

It turns out that hydrogen sulfide, the same compound that smells like rotten eggs, becomes a superconductor when solidified under pressure. And not only that, but it has recently be shown that it becomes a superconductor at a record highest transition temperature of 203.5 K.

Still, there are two points here that may make this not as "exciting" as one wold hope for. Earlier theoretical studies have predicted this to occur, and this material is expected to be a conventional superconductor mediated by phonons.

But the other issue, as in the practical aspect of this, may be even less enticing. This is because this material becomes a superconductor only under very high pressures.

The result may revive visions of superconductors that work at room temperature and magnetically levitated trains. But there's a catch: Hydrogen sulfide works its magic only when squeezed to more than 100 million times atmospheric pressure, roughly one-third as high as the pressure in Earth’s core. This condition makes it impractical for most applications. “Where does it go from here?” asks Igor Mazin, a theorist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. “Probably nowhere.” Even so, the discovery is already altering the course of research in superconductivity.

So, while I think this is an exciting discovery, I'm not sure how much it will add to the physics and to applications..... yet.

Zz.

Record Number of Authors In Physics Paper - Follow Up

Remember just barely a couple of months ago, I mentioned about the brouhaha regarding the record number of authors in a combined CMS/ATLAS paper out of the LHC/CERN? In a Physics Today article, there's a bit more on this, especially on the possibly "light-hearted" nature of the Wall Street Journal article that first mentioned this.

As I've mentioned in the earlier entry, I don't quite know why this is such a freaking big deal. The experiments are getting to be more and more difficult, it requires a more complex instrument, and thus, require a lot more people. The fact that this paper actually combined the results from two HUGE collaboration should, as expected, results in a lengthy authors list. What is the big issue here?

Unfortunately, it gives the wrong impression to the rest of the public. The fact that areas such as condensed matter physics, which produces way, WAY more papers than high energy physics and usually tend to have a significantly small number of authors, somehow has been ignored (Phys. Rev. B, for example, which publishes papers in condensed matter/material  science, is produced TWICE a month, and each edition contains TWO volumes!). And yet, the exception here has been used as a rule for the entire field of physics! Where is the logic in that?

And for the record, I had published a paper in PRL, on an experimental work, no less, and the paper only had THREE authors. Count em'!

Zz.

The US's Silly Metric Phobia

There are certain things that make me just shake my head in disbelief. This is one such example.

I was reading this CNN article on why the United States is still one of the remaining 3 nations who have not adopted the SI units for everyday lives. The other two being Liberia and Myanmar (what does it say about the company you keep?). If there is such a thing about irrational beliefs and excuses, this would be front and center. In fact, I would even call them very stupid reasons.

The rest of the world calls Americans pennywise and pound foolish for still using a system that on its face makes little sense. And Americans, in turn, shun the metric system as a foreign creation. Never mind that Americans use the thermometer invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a foreigner of Dutch-German-Polish extract.

I want to know who are these airheads who are shunning something just because it is a "foreign creation". They say this, of course, while using devices made in China, and without realizing that "lbs, feet, inches, etc..." are British units of measure, the same people that the Americans chased out for their independence.

But I also want to talk to author Tom Wolfe (is he still alive?) and am curious if he still thinks this way:

In 1981, The New York Times reporter attended an anti-metric party at which Wolfe, in his customary white linen, judged a "Most Beautiful Foot" contest. 

''I hear that the meter is based on a rod somewhere outside of Paris,'' Wolfe said, according to the Times story. ''To use that as a basis for measurement is completely arbitrary and intellectual. I should say I have tremendous admiration for the French, but a matter of this importance should not be left to them. I like the idea of the foot - as a measurement in relation to the human body.'' 

This is utterly silly and irrational for two reasons:

1. He liked the idea that it is a measurement in relation to part of a body? Why? This is purely a personal preference, like having a favorite color. It is an example  of a ".. measurement that is completely arbitrary". There's no rational  reason to choose something JUST because it had a body-part connection. This is stupid!

2. Now that the "meter"  is now defined based on a physical constant and no longer that stick in Paris, is this sitting better now with him?

When the Nazi was in power, there was a concerted effort to discredit Einstein's theory of relativity (both  Special and General). In fact, there was even an effort to label it as "Jewish theory". So the argument was not based on any form of merit, but rather simply because of who same up with it. I'm surprised people  are not seeing similar parallel with the arguments above. How could these people, whom I presumed are intelligent people, made that kind of arguments and reasoning with a straight face?

Maybe this is another important factor of science education, since we tend to use SI units in science classes.

Zz.

Is There A Fundamental Difference In The Teaching of Physics and Chemistry/Biology?

I read in utter fascination of this opinion piece by Micheal McCracken. As you read this, pay attention not only to the fact that there appears to be a difference between how he perceived physics is taught at the undergraduate level, but also how the differences between the pedagogy of physics and chemistry/biology translates itself into how science is perceived by the public.

Abstract: During recent collaboration with colleagues to revise our institution's general-education curriculum, I encountered many perceptions of what we mean by the Natural Sciences. I was surprised to find that perceptions of scientific pedagogy varied significantly among the scientific disciplines, especially concerning issues of philosophy of science and epistemology, manifested in the approaches to teaching theoretical concepts and their development. These realizations suggest that Physics occupies a singular role in college curricula, introducing students, even at the introductory level, to the acquisition of knowledge by theoretical means and the assessment of theory based on experimental evidence.

His idea that fulfilling a student's requirement on learning Natural Science without taking physics and either chemistry or biology will be a serious deprivation on how science is done.

I tend to agree.

Zz.

Neutrino Week, In Summary

I mentioned the "Lost In Translation" problem of the Fermilab press release on the NOvA result. Jon Butterworth has a better article that describes clearly the NOvA result, and also includes the detection by IceCube of the highest energy neutrino ever recorded.

But I hate to say that I was more fascinated by his footnote:

¹Fermilab is in the Chicago suburb of Batavia. The neighbouring suburb is Geneva, Illinois. The means that the current and previous high-energy record-holding machines were built next to a Geneva. Rumours that part of China is to be renamed have just started.

Geneva, China?

Still, I wouldn't be surprise if China does go ahead on its own and build its own collider.

Zz.

NOvA Neutrinos - A Slight Lost In Translation

OK, this post is making two different points, and try not to miss both of them, because one of them reinforces my stand that what you say may not exactly be what they understood.

This press release out of Fermilab announced the observation of neutrino oscillation by the NOvA detectors. This is crucial for NOvA to show that they can detect what has already been shown to exist, because it is their mission to study this more carefully and to make specific measurements on this phenomenon.

That's my first point, and that's the main news. Now comes the second point. Another "news"  article took that Fermilab press release, and reported it. But read how it has been presented in the beginning.

Scientists have witnessed their first evidence of oscillating neutrinos, taking a huge step forward in particle physics. The new findings confirm that the extraordinary detector built for the project not only functions as planned but is also making great progress toward its goal of a major leap in our understanding of these particles.

Now this is important, because it comes in at the very beginning of the news article and it sets the tone for the entire report. But read it carefully. If you don't know any better, reading the first sentence will give you the impression that this is the first ever sighting of oscillating neutrinos! 
Since they got this from Fermilab's press release, did the press release itself made the same mistake? Let's take a look. The Fermilab's press release wrote this:

Scientists on the NOvA experiment saw their first evidence of oscillating neutrinos, confirming that the extraordinary detector built for the project not only functions as planned but is also making great progress toward its goal of a major leap in our understanding of these ghostly particles.

Notice the subtle but important difference. Fermilab's press release indicated that this is the first observation of neutrino oscilation by NOvA scientists! Of course, those of us in the know are aware that this statement is indicating that the new NOvA detector has detected what it SHOULD detect, and this is a major milestone in the commissioning of any new instrument, i.e. it should detect what have already been detected to make sure everything is working as it should. It doesn't mean that this neutrino oscillation is the first detection anywhere!

But this is what frequently happens. I don't know the quality of news reporting on "Science World Report", but that is irrelevant because this time of "mistranslation" happens regularly when non-experts tries to interpret or understand scientific reporting. It is why what you write needs to be looked at in several different angles and from background of people who are ignorant of not  only the subject matter, but also the progress in that area. A person reading the news report will think that this is the first ever evidence of neutrino oscillation, when that is clearly false.

The Fermilab news release should look at this type  of misreporting, and see if they need to make their press releases even more "simplified" so that people aren't mislead into thinking the same way as the news report. We must always be vigilant of the fact that what we wrote and what we meant may not be exactly what they understand.

Zz.

What Has Nuclear Physics Given Us?

I suppose I don't need to preach to the choir, but this is a nice, easy-to-read article if you ever encounter another person who is ignorant about how we have benefited from the study of nuclear physics.

A century is a long time in science, and things move quickly. It wasn’t long ago that we all had particle accelerators in our homes – the cathode ray tubes in our televisions. These have been superseded by LCD, LED and plasma displays, which are founded on our development of quantum technologies.

Perhaps the most prevalent application of particle accelerators today is in hospitals in the form of radiotherapy machines for the treatment of cancer.

In addition, Nuclear physics is the key to more or less all diagnostic imaging such as such X-ray, PET, CT, MRI, NMR, SPECT and other techniques that allow us to look inside the body without resorting to the knife.

If you’ve ever benefitted from one of these, thanks are due to many people, not least the nuclear physics pioneers who just wondered “what is this stuff?” and “what if…?”.

Certainly many aspects of nuclear physics overlaps with high-energy/particle physics, especially in the development of particle accelerators. But it is still worth noting that what started off as an area of study that had no obvious practical application has produced many indispensable necessities that are a part of our lives. This needs to be repeated many times for people  who simply do not see the value of basic, fundamental research.

Zz.