Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Halloween 2016: Imaginary Numbers, Multiple Infinities, and Rituals at CERN, and a near brush for the end of the Species.

Download this episode (right click and save)

Imaginary Numbers: What the heck is it really?? How can a number be imaginary?? Well friends, let me tell you, on this Halloween Night, they are real. There are INDEED numbers which are considered imaginary. They have very special properties which do not exactly line up with what one might consider the "conventional" theory of mathematics, but is now so embedded in it, that it matches theory to a T. Quantum Mechanics cannot be described without imaginary numbers. So what are they?? Well, imagine this. What is a square root? A square root is a number which, when multiplied by itself, equals another number, it's square. So, the square root of 4 is 2. 2 multiplied by 2 is 4. The square root of 16 is 4. 4x4 = 16. Numbers whose square roots are a whole number are referred to as perfect squares. Now, let's consider this. Consider negative four. -4 times -4 = 16. So, the square root of 16 can be either positive or negative four. For the most part we forget the negative, since it's usually most practical to use the positive number. However, it does lead to a complex situation, there are no square roots for negative numbers??

That's kind of a pain for lots of calculations, and actually limits the boundaries of physics and mathematics. So, they came up with a solution. It's an imaginary number, called i. i stands for imaginary. Now, if you square i, you get negative 1, the square root of -1 is i. This allows us to have the square root of a negative number, which happens from time to time in calculations. What does that mean in reality? Well, there are what are known as real numbers, any number, positive or negative with any number of decimal points, finite or infinite. Then we have imagiary numbers, which gives us literally infinitely more numbers. It's also possible to have a 2-D plot of numbers, real on the so-called x-axis, and imaginary numbers on the y-axis, which means you can now plot a combination of these numbers. So there you go for Halloween, some spooky imaginary numbers.

Next up: multiple infinities. Infinity is the biggest thing ever right? Wrong. Turns out, there are different infinities, each bigger than the next. This was in the mix for hundreds of years, but was finally set in place by Georg Cantor, in the late 1800's. So can it be? Well, all of these talks of multiple infinities starts in a field of mathematics called Set Theory. I actually took a Set Theory course in college, just to understand how this whole multiple infinities thing works. Let me tell you, while being very, very exciting, at the same time, it is very very complicated, and tedious. So tedious and literally insane that its father, the aforementioned Georg Cantor, went insane several times, spending much of his later life in insane asylums. He also had many detractors, including the incredible Henri Poincare, who said that his contributions were a disease infecting the discipline of mathematics. Unfortunately, Cantor turned out to be right. I think Cantor and Kurt Godel, with his incompleteness theorem, were like the two most famous hackers of mathematics. They just take this wonderfully, painstakingly logical structure, hack inside, and just bring it to the ground, with the implications of what they discovered using the rules of mathematics.

So let's first simply consider integers, i.e. whole numbers, no decimals, negative and positive, so in the positive direction we have 1,2,3,4.... on and on, and in the negative direction we have -1, -2, -3, -4...and on it goes. So there are an infinite number of integers, right? However, we have developed a system where theoretically, given enough time and resources, you could count them all right? We know how to order them, and how to count them. This is what is referred to countably infinite. You know that after 100,000, the next number is 100,001. And on and on. Now next, we need to consider all the numbers which have decimals. Even just 1.1, 1.2, 1.11, 1.12, numbers which are referred to as rational numbers, as in having a repeatability to their decimals, feels a whole lot bigger a whole lot faster. Now let's consider irrational numbers, like pi, and e, and any other weird number which repeats on and on in no pattern whatsoever. These are referred to uncountably infinite, meaning that there is literally no way to count them all. And, if you took each number like this, and put them inside of a bracket, like [1.2123124124124, 223.2342938414234....,43.1234124,....] this is referred to as a SET of numbers. Now, the SET of irrational numbers simply between 0 and 1, is more vast than all the countable integers, and this is how we arrive at different levels of infinity. So, every time you think you have a bead on the universe, it will throw you a curveball and send you flying out in some other direction believe me.

There is an AMAZING book which covers this in great detail, and is unbelievably readable. It's called Everything and More, A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace, my favorite author. Do yourself a favor and grab this book. You'll be better off for it. Go to the library, or click this paragraph to head over to amazon to get it. Don't worry, I'm not making anything off it, just a great recommendation.

Back in 2004, CERN received a statue of Shiva, doing his Cosmic Dance, which was given to parallel the cosmic dance of the universe, being studied at CERN. It also has a long standing history with India and its scientists, so the Indian government gave the statue as a gift. Here's a link to the article where they received the statue.

There have always been occultish rumors going on at CERN. Everyone is of course afraid of them creating black holes "accidentally", or searching for the Higgs Boson, aka. the "God Particle". So, some of the people there performed some sort of "Satanic Ritual" which involved the alleged human sacrifice of a woman, all caught on tape for your viewing pleasure. It was actually a big scandal for CERN, but, un(?)fortunately, most likely fake. Up to you to decide. Scientists can sometimes have a morbid sense of humor, and probably don't mind feeding into the spooky rumors surrounding CERN in general. However, as of right now, noone knows who did it, or why, or if it was a hoax or what. It's probably fake though guys...or is it?? Here's the full video of the "ritualistic sacrifice" at CERN.

So we almost went extinct...AGAIN. GOD DAMMIT when is this going to be a priority!??

So another asteroid came uncomfortably close to Earth, didn't hit, and was known to be passing by, by SCOUT, our current method of detecting as many near earth objects as possible. One day guys...really, shouldn't this be the priority for our species? No? This and electric cars? Getting off gas and MAKING SURE SOMETHING DOESN'T CRASH INTO THE EARTH!?

Speaking of which, I had the opportunity to fly to Mexico this October, and had the opportunity to fly over an ENORMOUS crater from an asteroid impact with Earth, well before human civilzation. This was not the Chicxulub crater, you know the one which was the size of Staten Island which was allegedly responsible for the extinction event which killed the Dinosaurs 66 million years ago. It was an incredible thing to see, and also that it looks like it might have slid after it hit, and how the people in this region just built right up to the crater and then no more, leaving it untouched.

I also ventured out to the Vanderbilt Museum out here in Centerport on marvelous Long Island, NY, to check out a Halloween Planetarium laser show, and was able to touch and check out an asteroid chunk which was allegedly 4.6 billion years old. Wait I thought the earth was only 5000 years old.......Happy Halloween friends.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Physics Retweets 09/20/16

Sunday, September 11, 2016

PWN E093: Brookhaven National Labs Summer Sundays Week #4- Atom-Smashing Fun, and the RHIC



Download this episode (right click and save)








So this is the third in a three part series about my excursion to Brookhaven National Labs to tour their facilities for 4 "Summer Sundays" Sessions that took place during the month of July. If you're just tuning in, I encourage you to go back to PWN E091, just two episodes before, and start there, to get up to speed. We'll be here when you get back.

It's kind of weird, but there was definitely something that kept me coming back to BNL this summer. Again, this time, the kids were in tow, so the main attraction, the tour of the RHIC, or the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, was off the table, but I didn't care. There's just something about the atmosphere and attitude of this place that I had to get my fill while I could.

So what was available, you ask? Well, first on the docket was a trip to the cafeteria. It was at this point that I passed a table where, apparently, if you attended 3 of the 4 weeks, you were able to collect either a coffee mug or a shirt. I had attended 3 of the 4, but with no evidence to prove it, and the lady there being a stickler for the rules, I emerged empty handed. (An insider, however, did hook me up with their coffee mug, which I now proudly display on my desk!)

So, what was left for 2 kids and a physics junkie who can't tour the RHIC? Well, of course, a trip to the demos of grad students. These were seriously cool, although the grad students were too high level for the attendees, IMHO. One showed me an electromagnet, and explained it to me in very high level terms, which I was able to follow, but was probably lost on the rest of the audience. He was able to, though, create a magnet with 4 poles, and could then change the poles at will by swapping the direction of the current, which he did via various switches. Putting a compass in the middle showed that it was swapping every which way, a very cool effect.

My final Summer Sundays experience was the theater show, this time by a man with grey hair, maybe in his late 50's, mustache, and beard. He looked like one of the quintessential tough guys out of the fifties, one that maybe you would expect to ride a motorcycle. What he did instead was present, extremely effectively, basic physical concepts to the audience in a way which was riveting to someone even my age.

These are the three things which I remember the most from the presentation: 1) He threw the 3 and 4 pronged boomerangs made out of styrofoam around the stage and explained that if you threw them at a slight angle, they would always come back. He then explained that if you made an X shape out of a pizza box, with small trapezoidal shapes at the end of each "arm", you can make your own boomerang. He then proceeded to do it in front of us, making a boomerang out of corrugated cardboard. Fantastic.

The next part of the show which I remember was him using an actual bullwhip, and explaining that the crack of a whip is actually a sonic boom, and he then proceeded to make somewhere in the area of 30-50 of them. It is truly marvelous to hear such a thing in real life. He then took some matches and held them in his hand, and proceeded to use the whip to actually generate the force to break them. And did so several times until they were broken all the way down to his finger tips.

The last presentation he did was with bubbles, which seemed sort of childish to start, but may have been the most fascinating. He made huge bubbles the way one would expect, with the large hoop, but was able to make bubbles within bubbles, and finally, used a small straw to make hundreds and hundreds of small bubbles, something I had never seen before. He then made a normal size bubble, took the straw and was able to puncture the bubble, and blow bubbles inside if it. Visually fantastic and a great closer to the show.

Wish I could have seen the RHIC, but I'm guessing that each year the items are roughly similar since the nanotech, RHIC & light source are the 3 major items on campus, so I'm excited as all get out to catch them next year. And that does it for my trip up to BNL! Hope you enjoyed!

Featured App of the Week: Exploring Physics: Powers of Ten. For those of us just starting out, knowing the powers of ten is indispensable. This free app is available from the app store, so if you need to learn from scratch, or simply brush up, check it out today, for FREE!

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

PWN E092- Brookhaven National Labs Summer Sundays Week #3- Brilliant Light, Dazzling Discoveries, The National Synchrotron Light Source



Download this episode (right click and save)








So this is the second in a three part series about my excursion to Brookhaven National Labs to tour their facilities for 4 "Summer Sundays" Sessions that took place during the month of July. If you're just tuning in, I encourage you to go back to PWN E091, just one episode before, and start there, to get up to speed. We'll be here when you get back.

So, this time, when I went, I brought my mom and my friend who were visiting, and my 2 little kids. Because of this lineup, I didn't hit the lecture. When we got there, first thing we did was go to the cafeteria and hang out over there. Lovely nice open space, with a very friendly staff. Everything at this place is so laid back I love it. And the prices are very reasonable as well. I guess this is where the employees go to eat, so they try and keep the prices down.

From there, the purpose of this week was to feature their synchrotron light source. This system creates light by creating a beam of highly accelerated electrons, which emit light. This has applications in medical imaging, as well as a variety of other, one would imagine classified, applications. With this crew we didn't get to see the light source, but rather went back to the theater where I saw the magic show last time, and we caught the laser show. There was a guy there who was hired, i.e. not BNL personnel, and he was showing us laser light, and how if you shine normal light on a balloon nothing happens, but laser light is so focused, that if you shine the laser light from the laser show on a balloon for more than 2 seconds, it can actually pop it because of the heat generated.

He also explained how the lasers in a laser light show work: there is a single dot formed by the laser, much like one would imagine in a laser pointer. If you move a laser pointer around quickly with your hand, as I'd imagine many of the listers have, you can make a line, or a circle. This laser show moves so fast it can create complex designs such as people, and actually even animate them because it moves so fast. They have three colors for the lasers, red green and blue, which when they all shine on the same point become white light.

He then went into the laser show, where they showed popular songs and did neat laser animations for each. I'm posting the pictures for the laser show on twitter as well as on this blog.

After the show, we pretty much bailed out. I wanted to see the sychrotron, but again, the lineup did not permit, so we rolled out. What I did catch, which I would say is probably the lowest level in terms of the science, is still very engaging. I highly recommend catching this if you're in town on a Sunday in July.

Featured App of the Week: Exploring Mathematics: Sine and Cosine. Because light is a wave, in order to understand this, you need to understand Sines and Cosines. Check out the app as well as the podcast episodes on Sine and Cosine! Also a critical review for the coming school year!

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

PWN E091: Brookhaven National Labs Summer Sundays Week #2- Nanomaterials, The Science of the Very Small, and the Science of Self-Assembly.



Download this episode (right click and save)








So this is the first in a three part series about my excursion to Brookhaven National Labs to tour their facilities for 4 "Summer Sundays" Sessions that took place during the month of July. So, one thing that I found out last year is that you are not allowed to go onto the BNL campus without authorization. I stopped by and asked if I could drive around, and I got a very stiff "no" from the security guard. I did not realize the gravity, no pun intended, of this facility.

BNL is a very serious science research facility. They do classified level research, have a particle accelerator, and at any given time are trying to be hacked by someone. Security is paramount, and so for obvious reasons they don't want me driving around in my minivan to see the sights. However, for 4 glorious Sundays a year, you can visit and tour parts of this magical place and see what the scientists are up to, in very broad strokes. The first weekend is called "Family Fun" which I was unable to attend. The second week, which will be our focus today, was called "Exploring the Ultra Small", the science of nanomaterials. This particular weekend was different for me, because I attended it with adults, which I did not do for weeks #3 and 4. Because I was with adults, I attended a talk which gave broad strokes about nanomaterials.

So, upon entering BNL, you realize just how huge it is. It's a 5200 acre campus. Just huge. After the security check, you get your visitors stickers, and proceed through to the visiting center, where they have some very nice demos setup. They also have a cafeteria, gift shop, and a table full of my favorites, freebees. I got several postcards, stickers, and a ruler, since the topic of the week was measuring nanomaterials.

I didn't get very much time to explore this, since the talk was starting shortly and we had to hustle over to another building. Upon entering the room where the talk was given, I was nostalgically thrown back into my college days. It was essentially a college lecture room, complete with an overhead projector(!). The guy giving the talk was the director of the Nanoscience division. I hadn't been to a scientific lecture in some time, so I was ready to roll. However, I was mildly disappointed because just when I thought we were going to get into the meat of the talk, it was over. It was at this point that I realized that the bulk of the attendees of this were high-school level teens. They were gripped with his introduction, but that's probably all they were going to be able to handle.

That aside, he touched on some very interesting topics, such as what nanomaterials are. They exist on scales which are 10^-9 meters (check out Episode 005 of this podcast if you're interested in units of measure) The really cool thing to take from this section of the talk is that apparently what they're able to do is form nanomaterials "naturally", i.e. not using a small pointer to move around atoms. Take the sand on the beach for instance. As the waves wash over the sand, it forms specific shapes and there's nothing that we as humans have to do in order to get the sand to look that way. So, by the same token, is it possible to have a process like this which will assemble molecules in a desirable way that can be useful to humans and scientists for research? Apparently the answer is yes, but that's where the talk ended. This process is known as "self-assembly" and is evidently a cutting edge technology right now. I would love to learn more about this, and I think a lot from this talk will wind up as words of the day on PWN Physics 365.

From there we headed back to the visitors center where a Magic Show was starting. We headed in, and they did some really cool magic tricks, which were essentially science experiments which were disguised as magic tricks. The lady doing the magic was very engaged with the high school students, and the students impressively knew the answers to most of the tricks. One that stood out to me was that the lady had a balloon, allegedly empty but when she placed it on top of a tube, it self inflated and then popped. As the kids guessed, the balloon contained baking soda and the tube vinegar, which reacted causing the production of gas which "magically" inflated the balloon. Obviously, I was not the intended audience for this show, but it was fairly interesting nevertheless.

One last thing. I couldn't help but notice how many parents with Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds had brought their children to this event, and how few "American" looking folks had turned out. I don't mean this as a slight towards them, but rather a compliment. It's very easy to see where these cultures place their value. They place it in education and learning, and when they take their children out, they don't take them to be entertained, but rather state-of-the-art science facilities which expose their kids to the latest scientific discoveries. As America continues to place it's value on being entertained rather than contributing, it's no wonder we're falling by the wayside to countries whose cultures have a ravenous desire to learn and discover. I certainly will be following in their footsteps. Their children were very bright, and very inquisitive and curious, and took every opportunity to interact with demos, ask questions, and answer questions when asked. You can tell they have very bright futures ahead of them.

I left feeling very inspired. The atmosphere at BNL makes you want to learn, and to work towards discovering new features of our universe. It also makes you never want to leave, which makes it not so easy when we had to take off. There was a tour of the nano-material facility which we missed due to time, but something that I will certainly check out next year.

Lastly, if you're still new to physics, and are interested in nanomaterials, I encourage you to start by checking out my FREE Units of Measure app from the iTunes store. It gives you a great review on all SI units, and if you're interested in learning prefixes like nano, giga, micro, and pico, check out the free powers of ten review app. Flash card review of critical knowledge to empower you on your journey through science.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Welcome Back My Friends....



Download this episode (right click and save)








To the show that never ends...we're so glad you could attend, come inside come inside.

So, what the heck happened? Did your reckless host succumb to the phenomenon known as Podfade? It was really weird. I was moving with a lot of momentum and then I got really tired. I didn't want to do PWN Physics 365. I was becoming seriously unable to keep up with it, which I thought was very unlike me because I was really enjoying it when I was doing it. So it started to lag. Fine. I'll take a break, and post them only when I'm interested. PWN Physics is a labor of love for me. I like physics and I like podcasting, and it's not a job, so I do it only when I want to. So I stopped that, to focus on PWN Physics, which I thought I could manage. We were on the brink of doing parabolas, so OK, I started making a few episodes for that, then boom, didn't even have the energy for this.

So what the heck was going on? I thought maybe I was just burning out, and so I let it ride. Turns out I got really sick. I got bitten by a tick, and I had Lyme Disease, of which one of the symptoms is that you get really tired, which is what I got. Anyways, after a few months, you get better, which is where I am now. So what's to become of the podcasts, and the apps and everything?

I'm going to pick up where I left off. I spent the last couple of weeks going to Brookhaven National Labs' Summer Sundays, and so I'm going to start with reporting on those experiences. From there, we'll go back into parabolas and that'll be that. Off we go. So, long story short, essentially the summer off, and let's get back into gear! If you're listening, thanks for sticking with me, and I hope you have some fun as we resume normal functionality. This show will go off as much as I can. I'm hoping for every week but we'll see how I'm doing health wise. The plan for PWN Physics 365 is going to be as follows. Since it is an every day of the year podcast, I'm going to run through every day of the year. Then that podcast will become archived and I will release it in some fashion, whether it be bandcamp or youtube or something else.

That being said, I should be back with you soon for my first report on the second week (?) of Summer Sundays from BNL soon.