Funny sketch by College Humor.
Siri: Did you want me to search for flower shops nearby?
(Via John Gruber)
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Fun
Who would have known that Bill Nye is a fellow Lindy Hopper!
This past weekend I attended The Ultimate Lindyhop Showdown in New Orleans. Showdown is an awesome event that features excellent dancing, amazing competitions, and mind-blowing music. I spent the entire weekend in the French Quarter listening to the street bands who seem to populate every corner. There is no shortage of good music (and dancing).
Normally I would take copious quantities of video at an event like this, but there were already dozens of people filming the dances and competitions. Instead, I decided to do something different. Some 15,000 photos later I had enough material to create a timelapse of the weekend (Watch it in HD if you can). The music is a recording I made on the Saturday night of Meschiya Lake & Her Lil' Big Horns. Meschiya is a tremendous performer. I can't recommend her album Lucky Devil enough. If you have a spare $11 sitting around, it is definitely a worthwhile investment.
A big thanks to Amy Johnson and her team. I can't wait for next years event.
This is the first in a series of posts by fellow physicist Marco Piani on the science in the television show The Big Bang Theory.
In Season 5 Episode 1, "The Skank Reflex Analysis", we see Sheldon face "certain death" during a paintball battle, standing defenseless and shouting out "Geology isn't a real science!", in this way triggering the angry reaction of the geology paintball team:
Why does Sheldon say that? We know that Sheldon has, let us say, a "mild" superiority complex when it comes to science. He is a theoretical physicist, and thinks that Physics is the discipline that deals with the fundamental laws of nature, hence the queen of sciences. All other scientific disciplines come second, and he goes as far as to consider engineers "umpa lumpas of science" in Season 1 Episode 12
But in the paintball scene Sheldon does not simply make fun of geology as a "lesser" science; he actually expresses his belief that geology is not a real science. His is a pretty harsh statement, and we understand why the geologists are so pissed off not to think twice before shooting Sheldon down!
While we do not endorse Sheldon's words, let us try to understand the possible reasons behind his verbal attack.
The question we should ask ourselves is: "what characterizes science?" It is actually a tough question, and there is an entire branch of philosophy that deals with it. It is clear that we will not even scratch the surface of the issue in this post. Nonetheless, we can at least say that one of the key concepts is that of "scientific method", that is, of how scientists proceed in establishing the body of knowledge called "scientific knowledge". What this method is or should be, and whether scientists actually adopt it in their normal practice are exactly the kind of questions addressed by philosophy of science. One widespread point of view (closely related to the ideas proposed by Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994)) is that science advances through the empirical falsification of hypotheses formulated to explain the results of observations. That is, hypotheses are made that in principle would allow to "compress" the information collected in numerous observations. For example, when we have a pen in our hand and we open the hand, the pen falls. The same happens with an apple, or a ping pong ball; thus, we may tentatively express our belief that "when we let go of any object, it always falls". Such a hypothesis can then be "tested", by letting a new object fall. If it does fall, our hypothesis—that all objects fall—is corroborated by observation, and we gain confidence in it; if it doesn't (e.g., if we let go of a string attached to a balloon full of helium, and it flies away), we have to go back to the drawing board to design a new theory that is compatible also with the new event we have experienced—the balloon and the string flying away. What is important is that we did test our hypothesis, verifying whether predictions made assuming the truth of our hypothesis actually happen. Even more importantly, we are ready to change our "theory" if its predictions turn out to be wrong. Of course, this is a simplification and an idealization of the scientific process, and real life research activity can be very different from this:
We are now in the position to better understand Sheldon's statement. For example, we can imagine that what Sheldon is pointing out is that geology does not allow for an easy implementation of the scientific method. One problem is that geology deals with processes—like the formation of mountains, or the drifting of continents—that take place in very long periods of time. So what a geologist can see is often only a snapshot of these processes (as if we could only see a picture of the object halfway between our hand and the ground, rather than the whole motion). On the other hand, a related problem is that geologists cannot set up controlled experiments that can be repeated to test their theories: we are given one Earth, and the geological processes that happen on its surface as well as in the underground are mostly out of our control. We are almost always limited just to witness them. Of course, what geologists actually do is much more than witness passively. As usual you can find more information on Wikipedia:
Actually, what might have triggered the criticism against geology of that snobby theoretical physicist of Sheldon, is the relevance of "applied geology" in the modern world, which goes from mining to environmental issues.
Even if, like Sheldon, I am a theoretical physicist, I am very happy to call geologists "fellow scientists". I must add that I am also a peaceful man, but I know that my inner geek will sooner or later induce me to take part in a paintball battle. Scientist or not scientist, surrender, or be stained!
Just got back from Thailand, and I am still battling jet lag. The trip and wedding were awesome. One of the highlights was the Flight of the Gibbons–a high wire zip line through over three kilometres of rain forest. The park is part of a larger conservation effort dedicated to saving Gibbon monkeys. If you go to Thailand make sure you check out the Gibbons.
With apologies to William Blake Photon! Photon! Forming Flight, In the lab as dark as night. What nonlinear order Chi Could spring entangled Symmetry?
In what distant laser dyes Sparked thy subtle wave-like guise? What on resonance transpires? On what level lasing fires?
And what calcite, and what part? Could squeeze thy spin with such art? And when thy mode began to lock, What short pulse, and what short clock
What the Amplitude? What the Phase? Of this single-photon craze? What the particle? What dread thought In what paradox are we caught?
When the stars threw down their spears, That travelled for a million years, Did the correlations bunch? Just like Twiss and the other's hunch?
Photon! Photon! Forming Flight, In the lab as dark as night. What nonlinear order Chi Could spring entangled Symmetry?
—Krister Shalm 2010
This is the poem that I wrote for my PhD thesis. I have been meaning to post it for awhile now.
Jaime, Martha and Heather are big Body Rock fans. Last week they go together to burpee Toronto as part of the Burpee Everywhere challenge. They travelled the city executing burpees at various landmarks and videoing themselves, and then asked me to cut the footage together.
Jaime has been trying to get me to start working out with her and I might give it a shot this fall—lord knows I need to get back into shape. There is a mini fitness craze at the IQC right now with people joining Fitocracy, an online real life exercise RPG where you get to "level up" by doing exercise. I am not sure I want to join yet, but I know it has motivated many people around me to start working out regularly.
Physicists can have fun too! One of the groups I work with at the Institute for Quantum Computing took a field trip to the Erbsville Kartway here in Waterloo. We had lots of fun go karting and playing mini golf. Congrats to Evan who destroyed everyone else at mini golf.
For those of you who missed it in person, the video for the Quantum Physics & Harry Potter is now live. Dan and I had a lot of fun putting this on and are hoping to repeat the show sometime in the winter. A big thanks to Peter Kovacs for shooting and editing the video.
Jaime and a group of her friends get together once a week for a girls night. This week they used old magazines to make a collage called a dream board. I set up a camera and captured a time lapse of the event. I am beginning to like this time-lapse business.
Here is a video recap of Lindystock 2011 that I put together. At the end of July Toronto Lindy Hop put on Lindystock, a dance camp near Algonquin park about 4 hours north of Toronto. This is not a camp where you go to learn to dance, but, rather, a camp for Lindy Hoppers to hang out, relax, and bond. I had the pleasure of being involved in the organization of the previous two Lindystocks, but this time it was nice being able to take everything in without having to do any organizing. The weekend was amazing! The venue the organizers found this year was superb and much better suited to the event. There was hiking, canoeing, swimming, volleyball, frisbee, soccer, and of course dancing. I made lots of new friends and reconnected with some old ones. Next year I am definitely signing up again.
This past weekend I shot my first time-lapse video of a street festival, called Square 2 Square, that has been running this summer in Waterloo. Every few Sundays the main street through town is designated a car free zone. Local business set up booths and fun activities take place. During the last Square 2 Square festival I took some footage of a street water fight near my house. This time around a good friend of mine, David Trinh of Hep Cat Hoppers fame, set up a Lindy Hop booth. I set my camera on top of his car and set my camera to take a picture every 3 seconds. Nearly three hours and 3000 pictures later this is what happened.
Another reason I love Waterloo: during the three hours I was out on the street I ran into seven other physicists.
Yesterday a huge water fight broke out in Uptown Waterloo near my house. The water fight was part of the Square2Square festival that shut down King street for pedestrian traffic to link the Waterloo and Kitchener city centers.
I grabbed my Panasonic GH1 and filmed the chaos; it was the perfect opportunity to try out my new Light Craft Workshop Fader ND Mark II filter on the camera. In a few weeks I plan to do a full review of the Fader ND. Edited on Final Cut Pro X.
A big thanks to everyone who turned out for the opening of the Quantum Physics and Harry Potter show last night. The show was a lot of fun. It is the first time I have seen people eating popcorn in a physics lecture! Dan and I are looking forward to the repeat performance tonight. I would also like to thank all of the IQC volunteers who helped make the show extra special, as well as Katharin, Colin, Martin, Jasmine, and Kim for all of the behind the scenes work. Here are some pictures that the IQC photographer Peter Kovacs took of the event.
The very talented Gillian Street of Urban Jungle Theatre is directing a play, i Spy, at this year's Fringe Festival in Toronto. Gillian is one of my favourite playwrights; I remember being blown away when I saw one of her pieces a couple of years ago. Definitely check out i Spy —it is sure to be one of the highlights of the Fringe this year. The show runs from July 6-17 (excluding the 11th). Here is a trailer for the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ_FrRpn_b4
I was wondering how long it would take someone to turn Mitch Benn's Double-slit rap about our experiment into a Youtube video. Apparently not long at all. Here it is below. Maybe I'll take a crack at turning it into a Youtube video someday.
Throughout history nerds have loved the number Pi. They have written poems, songs, and made movies about the number. Pi even has its own day. Google has one-upped every nerd in history by bidding $3.14159 billion for a series of telecommunications patents. Along the way, they also bid $1.902160540 billion (Brun's constant) and $2.614972128 billion (Meissel-Mertens constant). Ultimately they lost the bidding war, but I, for one, welcome our new nerd overlords.
Seriously. This is something I can see Dr. Evil doing in the next (hopefully never to be made) Austin Powers. I bid Pi BILLION dollars!
(Via John Gruber.)
It seems that June is the month of the double slit with all of the media attention. Last week IQC participated in the awesome Steel Rail Sessions, sponsoring an art installation modelled on a human scale double-slit experiment. Darin and David White from Makebright are the artists behind this cool project. The installation consists of two "slits" (paths) through which participants can pass. A webcam embedded in each slit takes the person's picture as they walk through, and the picture shows up on a distant projected screen. If two people walk through each slit simultaneously then the pictures "interfere" and are smeared out as they are projected—wavelike behaviour. A neat piece sitting at the intersection of art and science.
Evan, Colin, and myself were on hand to explain the physics behind the original double-slit experiment to the participants on the train. David has posted a great write up about the behind the scenes set up of the project. The Quantum Factory (IQC's blog) also has an interesting overview of the installation and the double slit.
I love living in Waterloo. There is a young, vibrant, arts community that is interested in Science, and a constant stream of awesome events. This past weekend I participated in the Steel Rail Sessions, a series of art exhibits and installations located on a train! There were even snakes. Between this and the cardboard fort project it has been an amazing weekend. Here is a video I shot of the event:
The Institute for Quantum Computing sponsored an exhibit on the double slit experiment. I also have a video of this that will be going up shortly. Throughout the evening a group of us talked physics with the train participants.
The train ride was incredible, but what really took the cake was the live jazz band (Dinny and the Allstars) that greeted us as we got back to the station with cotton candy and donuts. The band then led us in a second line to the art gallery for an awesome after party. The Waterloo Record has a good write up on the event as well.
Big shout out to Hilary Abel and the other organizers for pulling this together. I hope to be back next year.