Been telling my self for a while now that I was going to create a demo involving the collisions of balls. Finally got around to doing so. The demo gives the user the ability to add balls via space bar. Increase velocity for all balls at any time. This is done randomly for all and finally the option to enable and disable gravity. May extend this code into a pool game or something more interesting. Whos knows?

After reading this article from Reuters on that crazy massive super dupper magical tragical collider sitting between France and the Swiss, I really had to re-read it to make sure what I just read. “Even if the Higgs Boson was not revealed, it would not mean that it did not exist…” a statement made by James Gillies at CERN in this article.

Wait a few particle revolutions, Many of these same folks also seem to indicate that God does not exist. MMMMMM, So with that statement, isn’t the same statement possible about God? Yikes I thinketh a can of worms is now open.

Comments please. I really need YOUR ideas on this. Please?

I believe that anything is possible.  ANYTHING.  Why do I believe this?  Well, the main reason is because I’m somewhat of a dreamer.  I’ve also seen and heard many things which I didn’t expect to happen.  We are so often fooled and our perceptions are thrown askew, perhaps momentarily.  Nonetheless, our limited perception and perspective is taken advantage of, and we accommodate and assimilate the new information we have learned to be true.  “But what about physics theory?  Laws of the universe?”  One might say.  There is an exception to every rule.  Airplanes defy the law of gravity every day!  So, onto what I was actually wanting to say….  If anything is possible, then this would include the impossible.  This sentence could be taken two different ways:  either whatever one perceives as being impossible is actually possible, or it is possible that something is impossible.  Both would be correct.  You choose your own destiny!  Share this idea with your friends!  How you respond reveals a lot about your character, experiences, and perception!

By convention there is colour,
By convention sweetness,
By convention bitterness,
But in reality there are atoms and space.
Democritus (c. 400 BCE)

What is the World Made of? What holds it together? Why do so many things in this world share the same characteristics?

In the ancient times, people organised everything around them into four categories: earth, air, water and fire. Those were the four fundamental elements. Today, there is something more fundamental – the atom.

So bringing biology into the equation, one may ask: how did the atom evolve?… causing two to reply: Good one.

Anyway, here’s a very brief history of time:
- In 1869, Mendeleev arranged atoms into 7 groups and invented the Periodic Law.
- Electric fields were then proposed by Maxwell and the mass:charge ratio of the electron was determined by Thompson in 1897.
- A year later, Rutherford studied alpha and beta radiations emitted from Uranium and Thorium leading to Marie Curie’s to famously discover radioactivity.
- In 1900, Frederick Soddy (who received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1921) explained radioactivity and proved the existence of isotopes. It is also important, I think, that you know about the crater named for him on the far side of the Moon.

From the alpha particles scattering experiment, Rutherford concluded that the atom is mostly empty space and has a positively charged nucleus at the centre (which was repelling the approaching alpha particles). He also calculated that the nucleus had a diameter of around 10^-14 metres and electrons to have a radius of about 10^-10 metres. Then in 1922, Bohr bored himself with the underlying regularities of the periodic table only to discover that atoms had electron shells – the orbits followed by the electrons.

This disproved the plum pudding model originally proposed by J. J. Thompson (the atom is composed of electrons surrounded by a soup of positive charge to balance the negative charge).

A new widely accepted nuclear model replaced Thompson’s incorrect model – this is known as the Rutherford model.

So you’re probably thinking: what about the neutron? Well fortunately, I haven’t forgotten.

One afternoon in 1932, James Chadwick bombarded Beryllium with alpha particles when some strange neutral emission occurred. He had discovered the neutron – a particle that was slightly greater in mass than the proton and had no electric charge.

So there you have it. Wikipedia defines the atom as a basic unit of matter consisting of a dense, central nucleus which contains a mix of protons and neutrons, surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. We have almost derived this definition from first principles!

Stay tuned, the next post will be on the fundamental forces and particles.

– Nadir

Research shows that we can move more quickly if we’re under pressure, for example two gunslingers in a wild west shoot out…

Test your reaction time – I wasn’t convinced so I went to this site to test myself. I only managed a pretty poor 243 ms, which is well bellow average. Can you beat me? I’m sure you can!

Back in the real world… 4 Phy were looking at the big bang theory, test on P2 is next Tuesday; 5 Che started a unit on gas pressure, prep was to do Qs 1-4 on the sheet; 2R did some work on their global warming leaflets, to be finished for prep and 4 Che started finishing their rates of reaction work. Phew!

Nature’s hot green quantum computers revealed – life – 03 February 2010 – New Scientist

The discovery overturns some long-held beliefs about quantum mechanics, which held that quantum coherence cannot occur at anything other than cryogenic temperatures because a hot environment would destroy the effect. However, the Chroomonas algae perform their work at 21 °C.

“Scholes’s work is fantastic,” says Gregory Engel at the University of Chicago. “The difficulty of this experiment is extraordinary.” Engel demonstrated the same principle in 2007 at the University of California, Berkeley, though at a frigid -196 °C. His team examined a bacteriochlorophyll complex found in green sulphur bacteria and discovered that the pigment molecules were similarly wired together in a quantum mechanical network. His experiment showed that the quantum superposition allows the energy to explore all possible routes and settle on the most efficient one (DOI: 10.1038/nature05678). In a sense, he says, the antenna performs a quantum computation to determine the best way to transfer energy.

Warning: For those who haven’t seen this episode, spoiler alert!

This is the first, and hopefully won’t be the last, of a series of short reviews I’ll try doing each week for ‘The Big Bang Theory’.

This week The Big Bang Theory (TBBT) episode ‘The Einstein Approximation’ came out,  and is the 14th episode of the show’s 3rd season.
Let me just start this quick and short review of the episode by further stating what the guys there and I have in common, apart from the quite obvious facts that we’re all geeks/nerds by heart.
Even before TBBT, I’ve admired and idolized Einstein myself, because of his great mental feats (which were of course, backed up by other physical theories and experiments at his time). Great because by just the power of his mind Einstein was able to revolutionize our lives and the 20th century, paving ways for faster transportation, not to mention telecommunication and computing, which drove and is still driving the information revolution today. And of course, so much more benefits which we more or less take for granted in our daily lives. In fact, Einstein is oftentimes synonymous with the word ‘genius’.
Einstein was also very much interested in philosophy and politics, not just physics theory. He’s written several books, articles, letters to people outside the scientific community. He also has a quirky sense of humor, as seen from this  picture of him. At first I thought this photo of Einstein was edited. But as it turns out it was really him, tongue hanging out and all. It was at the time he was making fun of people taking pictures of him. Great stuff.

Of course Einstein is not without criticisms. Great and accomplished a scientist he maybe, history tells us he left much to be desired when it came to being a father or a husband.

Now, back to the episode review of TBBT. At this point I shall establish a partially objective, partially subjective point system of each episode based on the earlier 2 seasons (which I have watched at least 2 times…).
Let me just start off by saying this is a classic Sheldon episode, which is great in itself. Again we expected lots of ‘weird’ humor: Sheldon’s ability to complicate relatively simple things, as well as him belittling his friends, most noticeably Penny. Hilarious stuff once again. Bravo to TBBT production team.
Not a lot of scifi or comic book references were made though. But lines such as:

Howard: How long has he been stuck? (referring to Sheldon)
Leonard: Umm…intellectually about 30 hours, emotionally about 29 years.

And

Howard: Have you tried rebooting him? (referring to Sheldon)
Leonard: No I think it’s a firmware problem.

Are classics.

The part where Leonard and Sheldon were arguing inside the ‘ball play room’, with Sheldon going ‘bazinga’ everytime, was also hilarious.

Sheldon, and of course the rest of ‘the guys’ are fans of Einstein no doubt. Sheldon of course thinks he’s at the same level with Einstein so he tries to do what Einstein did in order to come at the epiphany that is the special theory of relativity: to work for a menial job so he can occupy his basal ganglia with a routine task so he can apparently free his pre-frontal cortex to solve his physics theory problem.

Another classic moment in this episode is the guest starring of Yeardley Smith, the not so well known voice actor behind the famous cartoon character Lisa Simpson (yes, in The Simpsons fame). Absolutely entertaining piece of the episode.

Another classic dialog is again with Sheldon and Penny:

Penny: What are you doing here?
Sheldon: A reasonable question. I asked myself, what is the most mind-numbing, pedestrian job conceivable? And 3 answers came to mind: toll booth attendant, an Apple Store “Genius”, and “What Penny does”. Now, since I don’t like touching other people’s coins, and I refuse to contribute to the devaluation of the word “genius”, here I am (meaning at the cheesecake factory).

Lines like these make me think of the real meaning and application of LOL.

I suppose myself and those guys, as well as the show’s production team, can’t help cracking jokes at Apple.

Overall I’d give this episode the following scores:

* reference to sci-fi, comic books, and other geek/nerd pop culture: 6/10

* reference to physics theory and other fields of science: 9/10

* dialog humor factor: 9/10

* techie/technology factor: 8/10

which gives an overall score of: 8/10

This is part of Bob McDonnell’s overall vision for improving Virginia’s flagging economy: raise the speed limit on rural interstates from 65 mph to 70 mph.  Both the House and Senate have approved the measure.  McDonnell’s position is that the faster speed limit will help diminish traffic congestion.  I’m not sure how that translates into increased revenue for the state, but I have also met no one who favors lower speed limits.

Presumably raising the speed limit will increase gasoline consumption and traffic accidents, but I don’t know if anyone has studied this.  I’m aware of a study in the late 80s that the national 55 mph speed limit, enforced by withholding federal highway money from states that did not comply, had a minuscule effect on national gasoline consumption.  Writing for U.S. News and World Report, James Baxter argues that a national 55 mph speed limit is “unenforceable and counterproductive.”  On fuel economy, he writes:

But what about fuel utilization? Cars going 55 mph get noticeably better mileage than cars going 75 mph. With arbitrary, low, speed limits, that advantage is reduced by interrupted traffic flow, darting, weaving, braking, and accelerating as faster traffic beats its way through slower traffic scattered across all lanes of the highway. Compare this with a highway with a more reasonable and accommodating speed limit where the traffic moves more in sync and there is less braking and accelerating and the slower traffic stays out of the left-most passing lane . . . The main reason a lower speed limit cannot have a material effect on fuel consumption, besides being ignored by motorists, is that the preponderance of motor fuels is consumed on streets, roads, and highways that already have lower speed limits and, more importantly, lower speeds.

But Drive55.org argues a different point:

But the latest case for driving the posted speed limit, and lowering that speed limit altogether, is not about safety (though even a rudimentary understanding of physics theory would support that argument). Rather, it’s about saving money and reducing carbon emissions. A car’s gas mileage peaks at speeds around 40 miles per hour (depending on the car), and then decreases rapidly. This is because air resistance increases exponentially as a car goes faster. At high speeds, a car’s engine is using the majority of its energy simply to overcome that resistance—rather than accelerating—which wastes fuel.

Now, you might think that since I’m a physicist I would have some good advice on this issue.  But the most important lesson one learns in graduate school, regardless of your discipline, is to not speak until you are absolutely sure you’re know what you’re talking about.  If this article were about bicycles and air resistance, I could offer some helpful tips.  But cars are complicated machines, and a lot of the resistance is inside the engine where air resistance is simply not part of the equation.  But with all that, I can recommend that you limit use of the A.C. as much as possible.  Of all the accessories on your vehicle, it has the biggest impact on fuel economy.

An interesting side note is that Virginia’s cap on reckless driving remains at 80 mph, giving drivers on a 70-mph highway only 10 mph to work with.  The law states that any driver caught traveling 20 mph over the posted speed limit can be jailed and hit with a huge fine—but putting the cap at 80 mph means the 20 mph rule only really applies to roads where the speed limit is 60 mph or lower.  Decision Virginia has more on this.

There is a running joke in our business that electrical engineers don’t know anything about energy efficiency.  It is only a joke.  One of the sharpest energy guys I have interviewed was a physics theory major who started on the ground floor of an energy efficiency consulting firm filling orders of equipment they also happened to sell.  In 10 years he worked his way up to really understanding how buildings and their complex systems work and he became a manager of a team of energy engineers teaching his group how buildings work and how to model them.

This article made laugh out loud.  MBAs developing energy management plans and reducing businesses’ carbon footprint.  Maybe I need an MBA to consult with my doctor prior to my next gallbladder surgery.  I can see it now.  Replace lighting in a half million square foot manufacturing plant (nothing wrong with that) and install 100 kW of photovoltaic and dedicate a focus group to reduce energy consumption.  Meanwhile there are what we call piles of cash ablaze scattered about the plant in the form of process, system, and controls waste, on both the supply and demand ends of energy consuming systems.

Beyond shutting things off and installing equipment that is more efficient than option A, energy efficiency is domain of the physical sciences.  The root of energy efficiency expertise is calculus, followed by physics theory, and core courses in thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics.  If job candidates have anything less than Bs in any of these courses we discard them as candidates.

Arm an engineering graduate with an MBA and you may have a powerful weapon to put out these fires.  An MBA could make a rousing case to embrace energy efficiency as a profit enhancer, risk reducer, and marketing tool – much better than I can.  But there are already enough engineers in our business who don’t know what they are doing.  We evaluate their work all the time.  We don’t need political scientist MBAs cluttering up our market.  I might as well look up a culinary chef to do a wheel alignment on my car.  Jacque Pepin, are you available?

written by Jeffrey L. Ihnen, P.E., LEED AP

Tools ‹ Shake dreams from your hair… — WordPress.

Scheduled Stop @ LHC:

scientists claim they’ll be able to extract data from the low-energy collisions that could lend us more information on aspects of string theory, extra dimensions, and supersymmetry. Doesn’t all this sound like nerds trying to avoid getting real jobs?