Posted by Sunny Kalara | 1 Comment
John Updike’s poem on Neutrinos – Cosmic Gall
Neutrinos they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed: you call It wonderful; I call it crass.
John Updike (1932-2009)
via Cosmic Variance
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Thursday Threads : Physics sentiments
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 10 Comments
Gamers are taking over the word “Physics” and I hate it – last warning to Gamers
Gamers (video game coders and players) are taking over the word “Physics” and I absolutely hate it!
I did a simple search for “car physics” on Google and 25% of the links on the first page are for coding the games and how to render the cars within the game!
For gamers to claim that what they are doing is physics is like the Italian plumber Mario to claim that he is the smartest cosmologist or most experienced astronaut ever because in Super Mario Galaxy , he traveled to seven different galaxies.
For gamers to claim that what they are doing is physics is like Salvador Dali to claim that his painting of warped clocks is same as warped space time of general relativity!
I know, some of you are going to point me to the definition of physics “the science of matter and energy and their interactions” and argue that “hey, the gamers are doing the same thing – they are implementing the relationship between the matter and energy and their interaction”; and of course you will be completely wrong.
Read the definition of Physics again – it is the science of matter and energy and their interactions. To decipher this definition, you need to understand what “science” is; and science is “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.” So Physics is “The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of matter and energy and their interactions”. Now tell me, if you think gamers are using the word physics in the same way.
Gamers take the crib sheet that physicists gave them and try to code it on the silicon chip or in the software. They might be doing the science of computer programming, but they are not doing science of matter and energy and their interactions!
I have a great deal of respect for their skill – I enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto, and Spores and Sims and Mario on Wii – and more power to them -but it is not the same as doing “physics”!
Major hardware developers are on the band wagon too: nVIDIA – Physics Graphic Cards; and cute ones like PhysX graphic cards – as if we wouldn’t notice. Reminds me of the Microsoft’s “The Intenet” on a disc; compare that to the nVidia or ATI “physics cards”.
Wow, all of Physics, on a chip with a little fan! how nice!
So call it something else – call it gPhysics, Gasics, Ghysics, iZysics, McPhysics, or something. Leave the word Physics alone.
I am warning you… if you continue to use the word Physics for some silly graphic tricks, we will have no choice but to withhold the laws of physics from you guys, like we do with cartoonists and for fine folks that draw anime.
Trust me, you don’t want a mob of angry physicists on your tail… we have black holes and all your bases are belong to us.
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Power of the thesis advisor – Power of a graduate student
Scene: It’s a fine sunny day in the forest, and a rabbit is sitting outside his burrow, tippy-tapping on his laptop.
Along comes a fox, out for a walk.
Fox “What are you working on?”
Rabbit “My thesis.”
Fox “Hmmm. What’s it about?”
Rabbit “Oh, I’m writing about how rabbits eat foxes.” (incredulous pause)
Fox “That’s ridiculous! Any fool knows that rabbits don’t eat foxes.”
Rabbit “Sure they do, and I can prove it. Come with me.”
They both disappear into the rabbit’s burrow. After a few minutes, the rabbit returns, alone, to his laptop and resumes typing.
Soon, a wolf comes along and stops to watch the hardworking rabbit.
Wolf “What’s that you’re writing?”
Rabbit “I’m doing a thesis on how rabbits eat wolves.” (loud guffaws)
Wolf “You don’t expect to get such rubbish published, do you?”
Rabbit “No problem. Do you want to see why?”
The rabbit and the wolf go into the burrow, and again the rabbit returns by himself, after a few minutes, and goes back to typing.
Scene: inside the rabbit’s burrow. In one corner, there is a pile of fox bones. In another corner, a pile of wolf bones. On the other side of the room, a huge lion is belching and picking his teeth.
Moral: It doesn’t matter what you choose for a thesis subject. It doesn’t matter what you use for data. What does matter is who you have for a thesis advisor.
Lion’s Watch Repair Business
Scene: It’s a crisp, sunny fall day. Lion is strolling through the forest enjoying the fall foliage, when he sees Fox walking towards him down the path, head drooping down.
Lion
“Hello, Fox. Why are you looking so gloomy?”
Fox
“It’s been like this all week. First my cub got sick, then the car started making a funny noise, and last night I accident put my watch through the washing machine and it quit working.”
Lion
“Well, I can’t do much about the child or the car, but I can fix your watch for you.”
Fox
“That’ll be the day. You with your big claws? You would have trouble picking up the watch, let alone fixing the insides. You’ll just break it even worse than it already is. I’d better take it into town.”
Lion
“Let me take it into my den for a couple minutes. You’ll be surprised.”
So he disappears into his den with the watch. A few minutes later he returns: the watch is fixed.
Later in the week, Lion is sitting in the warm sun by the river, when Wolf comes running by, looking flustered.
Lion
“Wolf, why are you headed into town? I thought you wanted to work on your grant proposal?”
Wolf
“The hard-drive on my laptop crashed last night, so I can’t get anything done until I get it fixed.”
Lion
“I can fix that for you real quick: there’s no need to walk all the way into town.”
Wolf
“What? You? The lion whose paws are too big to even type on my keyboard? The one who left great blue smears on the trees when he tried to paint his front door? I don’t think so.”
Lion
“You’d be surprised: just let me give it a try.”
So the Lion takes the laptop into his den. In a few minutes, he returns with the laptop, now working fine.
Scene: inside the lion’s den
In one corner, next to the coffee machine, is a smug-looking lion lying on a couch cleaning his fur. In a second corner, there are piles of IEEE Computer, Byte Magazines, and Viz Comics reaching up to the ceiling. In the final corner, there are seven industrious rabbits surrounded by tiny parts and precision tools.
Moral: It doesn’t matter whether you can write working programs or prove theorems. It doesn’t matter whether you can do a slick demo or generate pretty pictures. What really matters is whether your graduate students can.
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 3 Comments
Pure Pi and e Tattoo
Steve Vallis explains:
The symbol on the left of the image is pi and the symbol on the right is the chinese character for chaos. The dots signify the values of pi and e respectively with each row of dots equating to one digit of each number. I plan to have it extended another 3 or 4 lines lower in the future with the lines fading out to reinforce the infinite nature of the two numbers.
The whole tattoo represents three things to me mainly: infinity, chaos theory (sensitive dependence) and mathematics & patterns in nature. The symbol on the right of my body is Pi.
Talk Like a Physicist