Eponymously Yours, W. Skeffington Higgins
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| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 | | 12:40 pm |
How Will It Compare to the Original? A couple of months ago, I found myself in a room where Dave McCarty and ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) daddy_guido were enthusiastically urging a bunch of us to look at an online trailer for a summer movie. "What movie?" I asked. " Hancock!" said Dave. "What's it about?" "Will Smith plays a homeless indigent superhero," Dave explained. "Oh," I said. "Like Jesus?" | | 12:15 pm |
Amusing News from Gurnee, Illinois Here's a story about the annual Physics Day at the Great America amusement park. This is a spring custom at many other amusement parks. Students measure accelerations, angles, speeds, etc. with homemade instruments. About 10,000 elementary and high school students from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan descended on the theme park for Physics Day.
[...]
Physics teacher Jan Johnson, also known as "Dr. J," has been bringing his physics class to the event for 13 years.
"Everyone loves the amusement park and rides, and to tie in the physics lessons of gravity and g-forces is great," he said. "It's loaded with physics. We try to mix a good time and data collection," Johnson said.
The students will take their data back to school and use a lab session to analyze it. Johnson is also assigning them to write a paper about their experience just to practice writing. There's a picture of, and a quote from, Nathan Unterman, a teacher at Glenbrook North High School whom I met through marsgov. He wrote the book Amusement Park Physics, which offers easy, medium, and advanced experiments to perform for each of many common amusement park rides. As a bonus, Nate includes references to research that will help you convince your principal that students learn physics better if they are allowed a field trip on a roller coaster. (Apparently there are even special products to help with such projects: The Data Vest makes hands-free data collection at an amusement park or playground easy. The vest has a front pouch for the LabPro, CBL 2, or Wireless Dynamics Sensor System. It has two inside pockets for the sensors, and side straps to hold the vest in place. Slots in the interface pouch provide access to the interface so that data can be easily transferred to a computer, calculator or handheld after the ride.Wow.) | | Sunday, May 11th, 2008 | | 2:53 am |
Collected Wisdom of an Aircar Buff On 19 February 2001, the Aurora Beacon News published a column by Benjie Hughes consisting almost entirely of out-of-context quotes by a single person. Collected wisdom of an aircar buff
By day, Bill Higgins is an engineering physicist at Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia; by night, he is a student of
mankind's continued quest to build a car that flies like George Jetson's
did. Higgins recently gave a slide presentation at Aurora's SciTech
museum in which he tried to explain why, in this third millennium A.D.,
we still have to make do with cars with wheels on them.
Here are a few of Higgins' pearls of wisdom.
"Turning your airplane into a car is only one approach to getting
around."
"You've got to be careful not to fall off. Of course, that's true for
any aircraft."
( Read more ) | | Friday, May 9th, 2008 | | 6:13 pm |
Remarks on the Didactic Novel for Youngsters So Cory Doctorow's novel Little Brother is now on the streets, and people are discussing it. I want to reprint some (spoiler-free) remarks I posted over at Making Light, the blog of Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I responded to a comment by Lola Raincoat (warning: link may lead to spoilers), who writes: Little Brother definitely has its heart in the right place, being a young adult novel about post-9/11 restrictions on civil liberties and how much that sucks, but the story gets hijacked by gizmo-worship. It's all, hey kids! here's how to build your own surveillence-free internet on your X-Boxes! here's how to subvert the tracking functions on your bus pass! here's how to have fun with a flash mob! So it ends up being, basically, Wired Magazine Escapes from Guantanamo Bay. First, I think this is an accurate and eloquent description. Second, I am a reader who would enjoy reading Wired Magazine Escapes from Guantanamo Bay. I infer that Lola is not. There is a long tradition of novels for young people that contain an iron fist of instruction within a velvet glove of entertainment. You can write a book like The Boy Electrician and teach kids how to wind coils. And some kids will read it. And some of those will build some of the experiments. But you can also write a book where heroes who understand radio and electricity go off and have adventures finding the lost city of gold in the Andes. Where radio saves their bacon, and electrical knowledge allows them to build a gadget that helps catch the villain. The second kind of book will make some readers want to wind coils. Such readers will get hold of The Boy Electrician. After more trips to the hardware store, and more trips to the library, they get a ham license, or rig the sound and lighting for the school play. I recently read Fred Erisman's Boys’ Books, Boys’ Dreams, and the Mystique of Flight, which is all about series aviation novels for U.S. boys, published from around 1910 until around 1960.* They vary a lot, of course, but a common urge found in them is to inspire excitement about aviation and "air-mindedness" in the reader. Or, in the words of a later era, making aviation seem cool. One of Hugo Gernsback's goals, in publishing fiction for his audience of electrical hobbyists, and later in creating the first science fiction magazine, was to get readers involved in science and technology by seducing them through entertainment. Another goal was to teach science in the stories themselves, at which he was perhaps less successful. Nevertheless science fiction became a shared literature of the technoculture, right up through the Internet age. In the early Forties, the Manhattan Project was a dark secret, but the staff at Astounding noticed that they had somehow acquired more subscribers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee than in Boston, Massachusetts. Poke around in the autobiographies of scientists, engineers, and programmers, and you'll find that a lot of them really did read juvenile gadget fiction, and really did wind the coils. Tom Swift, the fictional boy inventor, was on Robert Heinlein's mind when he wrote a proposal for a series of juvenile novels in 1946. Series books of that sort, many of them filled with gadgets, were everywhere in Heinlein's youth. He had just spent a frustrating year writing crusading articles to warn Americans about the dangers of atomic war and the unpleasant alternatives, urging that an international agency be formed to take control of nuclear weapons and technology. He couldn't sell them. He turned to books for kids. He called the series The Young Atomic Engineers, and the first one would involve a group of technically-skillful teenage boys in building and flying a nuclear-powered rocket to the Moon. This became Rocket Ship Galileo. He gave up the idea of a Tom Swift-style series, but he kept writing for teenagers. His next novel was Space Cadet, about a young man who works for an international agency formed to take control of nuclear weapons... Again and again in Heinlein's juvenile novels, understanding how stuff works is shown to be admirable and desirable. Circumscribed within the notions editors and teachers and librarians have about books that will sell to kids, Heinlein says: Study your math. Learn about the atom. Here's how relativity works. Smart engineers can improvise a solution. The solar system is your home. Science fiction offers a huge number of other examples we could point to, but Heinlein is the leader here. He is certainly a role model for Cory Doctorow in writing Little Brother. Now I could imagine "a young adult novel about post-9/11 restrictions on civil liberties and how much that sucks" which does not descend into "gizmo-worship." But that novel couldn't be written by Cory Doctorow, who is a gadget-happy, let-me-explain-it-to-you kind of guy. I liked the book very much. I did read with one eye on its didactic purposes and its infodumps. Obviously its success hinges (as with so many other stories aimed at piquing the interest of the techie reader) on how skillfully it balances storytelling with here's-how instruction. It seems to me to work. I am a guy who has read every single issue of Wired, though. So YMMV. *It's quite good, but I don't expect very many Making Light readers to be interested in this topic at book length. Also, Erisman limits himself to series novels, so no standalones; U.S. only, so no Biggles; boys only, so none of the relatively few girl-aviatrix series. | | Monday, May 5th, 2008 | | 6:32 pm |
Press Notices Mister Paleo-Future Hey! There 's an article about Matt Novak and his blog in the TwinCities.com. Matt is the guy who coined the word paleofuture. If you haven't visited his site, home of monorails, kitchen robots, aircars, and picturephones, take a look. Minicon should invite this gent for a panel or two next year. | | Thursday, May 1st, 2008 | | 9:01 am |
I said yesterday: (Like the vocalists in the clip, I, too, remember the almost-not-animated 1966 Grantray-Lawrence Iron Man series. Reading up on it today, I learned that it featured both stories and artwork lifted directly from the comics. These cartoons (along with Captain America, Prince Namor, the Incredible Hulk, and the Mighty Thor in the same syndication package airing on CKLW) were my first glimpse of the Marvel characters. They seemed darker but more intriguing than Superman and his friends. I wonder whether the new movie will make such a big deal out of Tony Stark's artificial heart being "transistorized.") Later, I found the opening theme from the 1966 Iron Man. | | Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 | | 6:17 pm |
You'll Believe a Hunk of Iron Can Fly Yesterday I failed to note that the Scientific American presentation is actually in three parts. " The Trouble with Rocket Packs," in which I am briefly quoted, saying something fairly obvious. " Will the Personal Jet Pack Ever Get off the Ground?," a look at the future of these devices. The slide show, in which the last picture is of special interest. Speaking of rocket belts, for a sneak preview in Austin, Texas the other day, Eric Scott of Jetpack International was persuaded to don an Iron Man costume.
Nice flight. (Like the vocalists in the clip, I, too, remember the almost-not-animated 1966 Grantray-Lawrence Iron Man series. Reading up on it today, I learned that it featured both stories and artwork lifted directly from the comics. These cartoons (along with Captain America, Prince Namor, the Incredible Hulk, and the Mighty Thor in the same syndication package airing on CKLW) were my first glimpse of the Marvel characters. They seemed darker but more intriguing than Superman and his friends. I wonder whether the new movie will make such a big deal out of Tony Stark's artificial heart being " transistorized.") | | Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 | | 3:17 pm |
| | 12:26 pm |
California's Punster Judge Rules Against Headless Roboticist  Spotted at Boingboing: As previously discussed here, the android head of Philip K. Dick is still missing. David Hanson, who left the head of the $750,000 robot on an airliner, sued the airline. The case has now been dismissed. Judge Andrew Guilford is having fun at the plaintiff's expense: At best, Plaintiff’s theory is that, since the Head did not arrive at its destination, Defendants must have done something wrong. This is not evidence of a breach or material deviation. Defendant may have done everything as promised, only to fall victim to a headhunting thief or other skullduggery. See the full text of the decision for further puns. | | Thursday, April 24th, 2008 | | 12:05 pm |
Origin of the Leaping Chinese Earthquake Doomsday Weapon Having addressed a classic urban legend, in comments on the blogs of several other people, for the third time in two years, I think I should write something about it here. Next time it comes up, I'll just point to this. The original source of the Leaping Chinese Earthquake Doomsday Weapon was a whimsical proposal in Geotimes in 1969 by David Stone, now Professor Emeritus of Geophysics at the University of Alaska. It reached a much wider audience when it was reported in Time. I remember reading it as a teenager. The 19 December 1969 issue says: If at a given moment, says Stone, all 750 million Chinese obeyed a command to jump from 6½-ft. platforms, they could constitute a "geophysical weapon." How? Assuming that the average Chinese weighs 110 lbs., he calculates, the energy released by this great leap downward would be equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 4.5 on the Richter scale, causing extensive damage in China. But if the Chinese were organized to jump roughly every 54 minutes—just when the peak of a barely perceptible natural ripple that continually sweeps around the earth's surface passes through China—they might set up a world-girdling resonant ground wave that would cause even greater damage in distant lands. By properly aligning their millions and carefully timing the jump, for example, Peking could aim a ground wave along the Pacific-rim earthquake belt and possibly set off quakes in California far more devastating than the original shocks in China.
Would there be any defense? Certainly, says Stone. By having its population jump between the peaks of the ground waves stirred up by China, a threatened nation could damp them out before they grew intense enough to cause damage. There is one catch: the target nation would, of course, be less populous than China. Thus, to effectively counteract the massive Chinese geophysical aggression, its people would have to jump from higher platforms.It has since been processed through the machinery of folklore, and turns up every now and then in various guises. Sometimes it's said to cause earthquakes, sometimes it's said to change the Earth's orbit, or the direction of its axis. I wrote to Prof. Stone about this in 2006; he is amused to see the changes rung, like echoing seismic waves, on his idea: "My favorite response to the great leap downward was in the London Economist where I was hailed as the saviour of the economy of SE Asia - who else could build 600 million step ladders?" I have a paper copy of Stone's note, but if it's online, I'm not aware of it. I think I drove to the Wheaton College library, looked up Stone in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, and photocopied the right issue of Geotimes. Here's Phil Plait attempting to put out one of the folkloric fires. Here's Cecil Adams putting out another. (He doesn't seem to be aware of Stone's original letter, nor of the concept of building up a resonant seismic wave through periodic jumps.) In 2007, a form of Stone's idea was tested, Mythbusters style, for a German TV show.Earlier notes from me: Making Light, August 2007. Autopope, April 2008. | | Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 | | 8:59 pm |
| | Monday, April 21st, 2008 | | 7:23 pm |
Behold the Physicists! Something I had up on my office wall for a while.  | | Saturday, April 19th, 2008 | | 8:45 pm |
Lightning Does Strike Twice—at Penguicon mrs_sweetpeach, who was on the scene, informs us that the Zeusaphones of Steve Ward and Jeff Larson performed another duet last night at Penguicon. bloggerchick captured the magical night on video.
Update: bloggerchick has posted yet further videos. | | Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | | 1:20 pm |
For some time, I've been looking for a copy of Manned Spacecraft Operations, edited by Paul Purser, Maxime A. Faget, and Norman F. Smith. Abebooks often lists copies for $150 or more, but I was looking for an inexpensive one. Last week, I found one for about forty bucks, and ordered it.  This book is a compendium of spacecraft engineering as understood by the leaders of Project Apollo in the early Sixties. As the effort moved to Houston and got a lot bigger, they briefed new arrivals in a series of technical lectures. An alternate title might be "How We Plan to Build a Moonship." Lots and lots of wonderful detail, not only on Apollo, but also on Mercury and Gemini. Mission planning. Launch vehicles. Electrical power. Envionmental controls. You can see why I wanted a copy. The bookseller described this as an ex-library copy, with usual markings. When it arrived, I saw that the markings had been eradicated with a black marker. On front and back inside covers, and the reverse of the title page, there had been rubber-stamped notices:
 Peering closely at the not-quite-eradicated markings, I can just make out what they said. I can see a bit more with my eye, but here's a contrast-stretch which might give you an inkling: 
That's right. This copy formerly belonged to
U. S. AIR FORCE
TECHNICAL LIBRARY
AIR FORCE FLIGHT TEST CENTER
EDWARDS AFB CALIFORNIA
I am happy with my purchase. ( Paul Purser on the making of this book: ) | | 12:47 pm |
Pair Production in Physics In its January 2008 issue, the British magazine Physics World ran a short item about Merva and Tamar Arieli, identical twin sisters who are both graduate students in physics. It said " Physics World knows of only one other pair of identical-twin physicists-- the particle-physicist brothers Fayyazuddin and Riazuddin from Pakistan." Well, I knew of another pair. My letter has now appeared in the April 2008 issue, on page 18: Regarding "Twin paradox" in your January 2008 issue, another notable pair of physicists, who are also identical twins, comes to mind: James and Gregory Benford.
James Benford is the CEO of Microwave Sciences and co-author of the book High Power Microwaves.
Gregory Benford is professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, with research interests in plasma physics and astrophysics. He is also an award-winning science fiction novelist, with Timescape, The Martian Race, In the Ocean of Night, and The Sunborn among his works. He has also written nonfiction books and articles, even one for Physics World (in February 1991).
They were born in Mobile, Alabama in 1941. As teenagers, the brothers distinguished themselves in the world of science fiction fans in co-editing on the fanzine Void. Both embarked upon careers in physics, and they have continued to collaborate occasionally. | | Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 | | 1:03 pm |
Einstein and Vaudeville: The Path Not Taken I was reading a discussion about musicians who went into astronomy and physics over at "Bad Astronomy." I've always been impressed by a small thing I once read in Ronald W. Clark's Einstein: The Life and Times. Albert Einstein, and relativity, became famous rather suddenly in 1919 when Eddington's solar-eclipse observations confirmed the predicted bending of light by the Sun's gravitation. There was great public interest in relativity, and listeners flocked to hear physicists and astronomers lecture about it. Clark writes: If all this was explicable in terms of an important new scientific theory which had become the common coin of intelligent conversation, Einstein was also raised to the far less comprehensible position of a popular celebrity. From London the Palladium music hall asked whether he would appear, virtually at his own figure, for a three-week "performance." If a physicist of Einstein's stature had agreed to appear for three weeks at a music hall, the course of science might have changed. In my daydreams, Einstein offers a little relativity, a couple of violin tunes, a little more relativity. Vaudeville venues begin to book other scientists, who mix entertainment with education. Choral chemists. Piano-pounding paleontologists. Jitterbugging geologists. Tumbling taxonomists. Eventually, it's commonly expected that a scientist will be able to present science to wide audiences. Large subsets of the public are well-versed in various disciplines, and scientific controversies are kicked around by taverngoers and subway-riders. No ivory towers here... | | Thursday, April 10th, 2008 | | 5:27 pm |
Sure Hope Baen's Copy Editors Are Better Than Baen's Adsense Copywriters I was examining my gmail.com account when I noticed the following "sponsored link" on my page: Robert Heinlein fans - www.baens-universe.com - You like Robert Heinlein's storys you'll love Jim Baen's UniverseI didn't succumb to the temptation to click through, but I've included the link just in case you want to do so. | | Saturday, April 5th, 2008 | | 11:20 pm |
Epigram, or Epitaph? (Why Not Choose Both?) One could make a parlor game, and play all evening, out of inventing possible epitaphs for james_nicoll. * But the man himself uttered one today, and it's priceless: "I needed at least one more contingency plan than I had."* If you want to know why, Cally Soukup's primer is a good starting point. | | 10:34 am |
Hardware Review: Johnny von Neumann Goes Shopping Once upon a time, the physicists who were attempting to create an atomic bomb were trying to solve some very hard mathematical problems. So they sent a genius out to shop for a computer. In the files of Los Alamos National Laboratory, I've learned, is a 1944 memo from the great mathematician John von Neumann to J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, reviewing the features, performance, and price of the machine. (It's a PDF.) This may not be the first computer review ever. But it's certainly the earliest one I've ever read. (It was classified, of course.) The device in question was the Bell Labs Relay Computer, also known as the Complex Number Calculator George Stibitz and Samuel Williams. Operating on numbers of 7 significant digits, it could add, subtract, multiply, divide, or extract square roots. A multiplication took 800 milliseconds. Von Neumann writes: An instruction on the control-tape therefore looks like this: "Take the contents of register a, also the contents of register b, add (or subtract, or multiply, etc.) and put the result into register c." At the same time it must be specified, whether the content of a (or b) must be held or cleared after this step. If it is to be cleared, then c may coincide with a (or b).
Stibitz states that a cube rooting device could be added with relative ease. Von Neumann was involved with multiple computer projectsin the 1940s. With colleagues in Philadelphia, he came up with the " von Neumann architecture" used in the machine on which you are reading this. Had he lived in another age, he might have written hardware reviews for a computer magazine... | | Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 | | 9:37 pm |
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