Cool Science

Our totally adorable son asked me what a magnet was. I have no idea. Really, I'm crazy about magnets, I have tons of them, and I use a big honking magnet in my research, and I completely got my flux lines in a twist on this one.

Here's a common definition : a magnet is a material that creates a magnetic field. Totally useless. Nobody should accept this. It's like saying a pork chop is a chop made out of pork. Yes I know it's technically correct, and there's a deeper meaning in it when you think about what a field is, but fundamentally, what is a magnet? Light is a photon or a wave depending on how you look at it. Electricity is just electrons moving around. A magnet is, ummm, uhhhh,.....

OK here's another common definition : a magnet is an object that sticks to metals. This one is kind of tempting, but has the major problem that there are certainly metals that a magnet won't stick to (ok - weakly diamagnetic, which repels the magnet anyway) such as copper I think.

With my cow-eyed three year old staring up at me, I came up with ' a magnet can stick to some metals, but not all, and it's kind of funny how it sticks to some and not others and...' and then I was totally losing him. I was thinking, how can I tell my kid that any charged particle with angular momentum has a magnetic moment? Why is this so hard?

Then Jenn saved the day. Because of course we were playing with Henry's magnadoodle at the time and she says simply that a magnet is anything that can draw on the magnadoodle. And so he starts imaging all kinds of magnets from our fridge on the magnadoodle and drawing with them too. I'm not worthy.

Posted by Dave at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

While CNN's recent scitech blog seems to think that 'twitter' is science, fortunately the rest of the web has got better ideas. I was ecstatic to see a link to a Wired article on a nice piece of pure science on self assembling magnetic particles on the yahoo front page. It immediately made me think of the linear magnetic chains found in so called magnetotactic bacteria, which are also in the category of truth being stranger than friction (some bacteria carry around what is essentially an iron needle compass inside their bodies). Whether there is ultimately a connection or not is anybody's guess.

This led me to stumble onto Wired's top 10 amazing physics videos and then Wired's top 10 amazing chemistry videos. Why do I get the strange feeling I'm the last nerd to know about these?

No doubt we will be inundated by this story shortly, but why not use science to find bin laden? The rough idea is to apply principles used to hunt for endangered species. One assesses needs in terms of natural resources, shelter, social requirements, etc... and then overlays them on satellite images and computes probable locations where all needs are maximized.

But back to Wired magazine -they'd like to give you advice on how to make a home chemistry lab , and even want to start you off with something that could melt holes in your floor. I admire them for being true to their word and NOT having the 'don't do this at home' disclaimer.

Posted by Dave at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm told that philosophers have entire journals devoted to quantum mechanics. This worries me since I'm also told these journals have no math in them, a strange situation. I suppose I should look at an issue some time. Although quantum is 'just a theory' , I haven't heard anybody complain about it or file lawsuits, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time (or is it space-time? And what does matter have to do with space-time anyway?). The thing is this : everybody out there has an opinion on quantum mechanics. While med students have a deathly fear of thermodynamics (a gorgeous theory) and the far right is cooking up ID primordial soup (blechhh), everybody loves quantum mechanics and takes joy in waxing on about its many unfathomable implications.

Thermodynamics gave us the industrial revolution. Quantum gave us the electronics/tech boom. Any decent explanation of any teenager's igadget du jour demands quantum. And quantum is just plain fun :

-->there is actually a chance that I could walk through a brick wall unharmed thanks to quantum mechanics. The probability is so infinitesimally small that all I would succeed in doing is smashing my nose against the wall an infinite number of times, but TECHNICALLY it can happen.

-->quantum mechanics puts some limits on human knowledge. I am not allowed to know both the position and velocity of an electron with high precision at a given instant in time. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Quantum mechanics makes a living out of telling us all the things we aren't allowed to know.

But this is the popular stuff. The real meat and potatoes of quantum, the rigorous physics and math, is tough and I'm in the throes of writing a difficult article in which I'm taking on somewhat deeper quantum than usual and it's a little hard on the noodle. Why am I suddenly hungry? I'm realizing that the 50's and 60's were high times for quantum. Every scientist lived, ate and breathed it and discussed it in the halls with others. It dominated all the papers, and the understanding of quantum in the 50's and 60's was perhaps the best it's ever been. I think our understanding of quantum -in the rigorous physics and chemistry sense- is fading.

We've all had to spread ourselves out thin to learn molecular biology, nanotechnology, proteomics, metabonomics, name-your-favorite-omics, etc. And it shows. Our math is suffering, our hard science backgrounds are suffering. I'm feeling a need for us all to get back to our roots a little bit, geek out and make pure quantum mechanics hip again. I think we need it.

Posted by Dave at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)