Cocktail Party Physics

the nays have it

It's a truth secretly believed, if not universally acknowledged, that "user reviews" on Amazon rarely provide much insight into the value of the work being critiqued -- although it's often a fascinating window into the mind of the would-be critic. Leaving aside "professional" Amazon reviewers, and an author's family and friends, there's some strong anecdotal evidence supporting that belief. Blogger Cynical-C has a recurring feature he calls "You Can't Please Everyone," wherein he randomly picks some great work of literature, or film, or music, what have you, and highlights the most amusing negative comments from Amazon reviewers. (Check out a few examples, just for laughs.)

Any published author could relate. Some "reviewers" are barely literate, others have an obvious personal vendetta against the author, others complain something was "boring" and "dumb" without ever specifying why they concluded this, while still others clearly harbor bitterness that their own creative greatness continues to go unrecognized and feel compelled to slam any book within their perceived "specialty" on the grounds that they could have done so much better if only someone had given them a book contract. (Hint: any user who insists on listing his/her "credentials" within said review often falls into the latter category.) And don't get me started on people who give one-star reviews because the Kindle version didn't come out fast enough. (That's an issue y'all should be taking up with the publisher, not punishing the authors.)

Is there anything more subjective than personal taste in books, music, film, art, theater, TV, you name it? That's Cynical-C's point. So while browsing the science section on Amazon this weekend, looking for new or overlooked science books, I thought it might be fun to highlight a few of the more entertaining negative reviews of some popular science books.

Newton and the Counterfeiter, by Tom Levenson. Sure, Tom's a friend, but I'm sure he won't mind my leading off with his excellent book. This is a meticulously researched, beautifully written account of a little-known period in the life of Isaac Newton. Indeed, there's only one bad review, from "Jill in California," who apparently was under the impression she was buying a mystery thriller and instead got stuck reading about boring old science:

*This book was not exciting at all! It read like a dry scientific textbook, not an exciting mystery story. For the most part, this book wasn't even about Newton's pursuit of a counterfeiter - it was about the science behind many of his philosophical discoveries. I would not recommend this book to anyone, unless you like reading boring science books. 

Newton's classic work, Principia -- nearly unparalleled in its importance to human knowledge -- doesn't fare much better with a couple of Amazon reviewers. One uses the forum to complain about the particular edition available, while the other seems to think perusing a 17th century Latin text would be an awesome introduction to calculus, and was understandably disappointed.

*I read this book prior to taking test my school offered to "pass-out" of Calculus I and II. I assumed that this would be the best source since Newton is said to have invented Calculus in this book. I never saw it. I spent three weeks trying to cram this book, and I did not come close to passing the standardized exam. The test didn't resemble this book at all. If you need to learn Calculus or Physics, stick with a recently written book. If you need to learn some archaic way of expressing simple ideas, then this is the book for you. I'm now a second year medical student and I still don't know why I had to learn all that math. Nor do I know why I ever bothered to read this book. It turns out Physics and Calculus are really really simple things, but not if taught by Newton.

I mean, there was nothing in there that was on the calculus test! Newton, Schmewton! Most worrisome: this idiot is in med school. I personally agree that Newton would have been a lousy math teacher, but anyone who bothered to read a Wikipedia entry could have figured out the Principia was never intended to teach beginning calculus, or help modern students pass their exams. (In fact, just for the record: while Newton used his snazzy new tool, calculus, in deriving the ideas contained in the Principia, he didn't formally publish anything on calculus until the publication of Opticks, many years later.)

Moving on, here's a user review for Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, by someone who doesn't seem to know the difference between a novel and a nonfiction biography:

*Don't be fooled by all these positive reviews! If sunspots and Galileo's laundry don't interest you, save your money. The title is a total misrepresentation of the novel. It is a straight biography of Galileo and very little more. I read the whole book to get to the so-called surprise ending and wish I had my time back... what a waste.

Spoiler alert! Galileo runs afoul of the Catholic Church, spends years under house arrest, and then (gasp) dies of old age. What about Sobel's bestselling and widely praised classic, Longitude? Certain science-y sorts were merciless in their condemnation (often badly spelled, with random capitalization and weird punctuation) of this lovely straightforward tale:

*This book, a disjointed ancedotal gobbelydygook [sic] of sweeping generalizations, innne [sic] ponderings and wretched science, is systematic of what happens when a layperson attempts to explain science. You could read this book 500 times and still never find out how the protogonist [sic] solved the greatest scienfic [sic] problem of his time. The author glosses over the answer to this question - which is the very thesis for this book - because she has no ability to understand the eureka moment of science.

*A mediocre book, the author clearly has no scientific knowlegde [sic] and drags the story out as if it was a Soap opera. No diagrams/drawings/patent descriptions are included , meagre technical information. NOT worth the effort of reading. this publication is an insult to the intelligence. ABSOLUTE RUBBISH.

Intrigued by all the venom-spewing, I checked out a couple of my personal favorite popular science authors. Mary Roach's Bonk, for example, was so engaging that I devoured it in a mere two days (ditto for her new book, Packing for Mars). Yet the very qualities I so admire in Roach's writing, others find "juvenile" and downright offensive. Here's what "feminist military spouse" had to say about it:

*I guess I just don't cotton to juvenile sex humor. Maybe it's because I am old (late 20s). Maybe it is because I am a scientist or really open about my sexuality and thus do not feel uncomfortable thinking or reading about, OMG! Sex! I don't know, but I found this woman's humor to be a distraction at best and outright retarded at worst. [Not doing much to counter the false 'humorless feminist" stereotype here.]

Taking a more priggish view was this reviewer:

*I had hoped for witty and informative reading on sexuality, but this book is just light pornography.

Perhaps Spook fared a bit better? Alas, it drew the ire of one of those self-styled "experts in the field" (at least s/he didn't list credentials):

*The word "Science" has no place on the cover of this irritating, utterly biased piece of fluff. Believers and disbelievers alike will find no substantive information on the subject. ... As someone who has done a fair amount of research on this subject, I found this book offensive in it's frivolity. If you are looking for a thought-provoking look at the subject of the afterlife, you will be very dissapointed.[sic]

Other one-star reviews slam the fact that Roach is not a scientist, concluding that thus she can't possibly write well about scientific topics. I call shenanigans! Bill Bryson faced similar criticisms when his marvelous A Short History of Nearly Everything was published, and also drew his share of venom on Amazon. Several humor-impaired folks helpfully pointed out that Bryson's book wasn't short, and did not, in fact, cover nearly everything. The science-minded bemoaned the popularization of their respective fields (how dare science be treated as entertainment, or as anything less than nutritious edification?):

*Don't bother with this book. Read a proper book by someone with some scientific education.

*It is too obvious that the author has not any knowledge of physics.

*I have looked at sections which are related to things I work on, or have worked on. This book has more errors than any pop science book I have seen in a long, long time.

Then we have a couple of user/reviewers with a clear chip on their shoulders ("Life of the Mind? I'll show you life of the mind"):

*If you are an intellectual snob of the highest order who likes impressing other intellectual snobs with quirky and unusual historical anecodes [sic] at university dinner parties, then by god, this book is for you.... This book is little more than a [sic] encyclopedia of what most people would consider useless information. ... Worst of all, his humor is of the sort that can ONLY appeal to snobbish intellectuals and professors.

*Call me an optimist, or a right-wing nut-job if you want if you feel that's what my belief makes me but I hold my fellow man in much higher esteem than this author does, and the self-loathing of his race is pathetic and insulting to me. ... Many of our greatest scientists were eccentric, but Bill's anecdotes of them sound like the insecure rumor mongerings of an english major who never did very well in chemistry.

I'll have my readers know I did great in chemistry. Biology, too. Fortunately, while Roach, Bryson and other like-minded sorts are yukking it up over our juvenile humor in the local pub, and having a hell of a good time, the naysayers will be slowly pickling in their own vinegar.

Roach and Bryson -- at least -- are crying all the way to the bank. But do you think the professional scientists fare any better? Think again. Brian Greene's bestselling The Elegant Universe has tons of user reviews, all over the spectrum. Several of the one-star reviews are by those who clearly have a vendetta either against Greene himself, or string theory in general. A sampling of the vitriol:

*Five stars for literature but minus four stars for science, false statements, inaccuracy, and strong manipulation of public perception! [long diatribe on how string theory is destroying the next generation of physicists follows]

*Having followed Brian Greene for years now, I really have written him off as a scientist, and reclassified him as a public relations genius. The Elegant Universe, like most of Greene's writings is chock-a-block with romantic images of an alternative reality. The only problem is, where is the axiomatic working formula? Greene is always an interesting read, but I always toss his books on my same library shelf as my sci-fi and comic book collections.

*Hawking has said string theory has been oversold in mass media and, in a recent paper, claims that string theory is an insane approach to quantum gravity. Therefore, I sincerely wait that Brian Greene and the publisher of this "best-seller" (only was in USA) explain to world why this book was published. To confuse to people about basic scientific facts is somehow irresponsible. Unfortunately for crackpots, history will be implacable.

And at least one user/reviewer of Greene's tome thinks he has all the answers: 

*Special Relativity is obsolete because it is unfalsifiable. General Relativity gives the right results but in a round about and convoluted way. Einstein is at his best when it comes to quantum mechanics. A much simpler approach to physics and understanding the Universe can be found in the Michelson-Gale and Brillet-Hall experiments as well as the Sagnac experiment and Hayden's exposition on star aberration. Ultimately, all paradoxes can be resolved through classical physics alone. [I'd ask him to show his work, but, well, he might take me up on it. BTW, the image to the right is provided courtesy of string theorist Jeff Harvey, who has an excellent sense of humor.]

Here's a user/reviewer for Lisa Randall's Warped Passages whose pride is still smarting at the lack of response from prominent physicists to his personal letters/emails:

*If [interested readers] want to better understand string theory and multiple universes, I fear that they will have to study them, because as far as I can tell, no popular author actually manages to explain them. I have even written a few with my questions, and they (including Randall) never bothered to write back.

And then we get this pompous pedantic ass, who in addition to being annoyed that Randall uses the "theory of general relativity" as opposed to the "general theory of relativity", clucks his tongue at those lazy sods who didn't bother becoming PhD physicists and therefore don't deserve entry into the glorious paradise of theoretical physics:

*Writing about advanced topics in modern physics for the layman is almost always an exercise in futility. Attempting to provide meaningful explanations of notions requiring sophisticated mathematics like differential geometry, topological groups and Lie algebras for someone who can't balance a chequebook is worse than ridiculous.... If you want to understand modern physics, do the work. Learn the maths first. You can't run if you can't stand. [Thanks, I'll sign right up for that Learning Annex course on differential geometry, topological groups and Lie algebras before all the slots are filled by the clamoring unwashed hordes.]

For some tunnel-vision reviewers, personal politics trumps science, even when that science has nothing whatsoever to do with, say, Al Gore and global warming:

*Lisa Randall was on with Art Bell in Feb 2006 and I thought she was fantastic (an obviously brilliant, straightfoward, [sic] sensible female physics professor from Harvard!) ... until she started gushing about Al Gore and babbling about global warming. I'm trusting the other reviewers' outstanding reviews and taking a chance buying Randall's book ... but if it's larded with any Gore-type nonsense, I will return it. [I would love to know if this reviewer returned it.]

Okay, how about the grand-daddy of them all, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time? Well, it gets some of the most amusing pans by the Dumb-And-Durned-Proud-Of-It contingent:

*I didn't read it because the cover looked stupid.

*Before I read this book my views on thermo-dynamics was clouded by bordom [sic] and the fact that I have things that arn't [sic] boring to do. They are still the same now. This book was so boring and droning that I thought I had slipped into a coma.

*This book is unclear and hard to understand. If you want to impress your friends who haven't read this book or don't understand it, certainly you can buy A Brief History of Time, put it in your bookshelf, and pretend to know what it says. [Hey, I think this guy once tried to hit on me back in 2003, inviting me up to his place to discuss black holes and show me his etchings.]

*I read it half way through and could not finished [sic], for the first time in my life. I read each page three times, and at the middle I tried to review what I learned, and I realized I did not have a clue of what the book is all about. Certainly is not about the "hitory [sic] of time". Waiste [sic] of money and, more important, a huge waste of my time.

The lesson to be gleaned from all this, for all those who've written books, or are contemplating doing so, is this: just as you can never really believe your own publicity, so, too, you should never take what reviewers -- especially of the anonymous variety on Amazon -- say to heart. You have trusted friends and colleagues who will give you a clear, honest appraisal of your work, right? Trust them for your feedback, both positive and negative. (All good writers serious about their craft have such wonderful people in their lives.) Let the naysayers howl as they will. You're not required to listen.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: singing sands

In honor of Comic-Con, here's an early post from 2006 inspired by an episode of Dr. Who, about the phenomenon of singing sands. Sand: a marvelous substance!

here's a classic story line in Dr. Who, in which the time-traveling TARDIS crew crash-lands in the middle of the Gobi Desert and conveniently bumps into famed explorer/trader Marco Polo and his caravan. They are on their way to the palace of Kublai Khan. There's a great deal of convoluted plot, including a young Chinese woman on her way to an arranged marriage with an elderly man, and a devious Mongol warlord; also, Marco Polo becomes enchanted by the TARDIS (he calls it a "magic caravan") and confiscates the key, forcing Dr. Who and his entourage to travel with him to the Kublai Khan's stately pleasure dome. Along the way, they witness a strange desert phenomenon: singing sands.

One doesn't expect a high level of historical accuracy in a campy sci-fi series, but Marco Polo did claim to have journeyed across the Gobi Desert, and said the dunes filled the air "with the sounds of all kinds of musical instruments, and also of drums and the clash of arms." It's a fairly rare phenomenon. Only about 30 dunes worldwide are musically inclined -- the rest, apparently, are tone deaf -- although astronomers and geologists suspect that the sandy hills on Mars might also be alive with the sound of music.

Marco Polo's storied adventures took place in the 13th century, but accounts of singing, or booming (and sometimes squeaking) sand dunes date as far back as 9th century China. According to an ancient manuscript, people used to climb Mount Ming-Sha-Shan (now known as the "Singing Mountain") on a special festival day, and slide down the sand, producing the sound of rolling thunder. Centuries later, Charles Darwin commented on singing sands while traveling in Chile.

Popular folklore has blamed underground rivers or even genies; Marco Polo blamed evil spirits.  Scientists have also puzzled over the phenomenon. There have been numerous hypotheses as to the cause, most centered on the notion that it comes from vibrations of the dune as a whole, not the individual grains of sand acting in concert (pun intended). For example, some surmised the effect was similar to how a violin bow moving across the strings produce a musical tone, with the sandy sounds coming from blocks of sand stick-slipping across the body of a dune. Another instrumental hypothesis likened the effect to how a flute produces a pure tone via resonating air in the hollow tube.

It turns out that neither of these hypotheses are right. A team of scientists -- hailing form the University of Paris, the CNRS Lab in Paris, Harvard University, and the Universite Ibn Zohr in Morocco -- have conducted field studies all around the world, supplemented with controlled lab experiments, and published their findings in Physical Review Letters. They found that the sounds come from the sliding motion of large-ish grains of dry sand acting together -- a very active field of study known as avalanche dynamics. (You can listen to the nifty sounds they recorded from sand dunes in China, Oman, Morocco and Chile here. And if you want to tour the globe and visit those melodic dunes yourself, check out this map.)

Apparently, the team stumbled on their insight a few years ago by accident while studying the formation of crescent-shaped sand dunes in Morocco. As they scrambled up a particularly steep dune, they set off an avalanche, producing a 100-decibel singing sound. And they found they could reproduce the sound by sliding down the dunes with their legs swung out. (Yes! Just like those 9th century Chinese!) They took recordings back to the lab in France and managed to replicate the same sound in a donut-shaped sandbox.

Specifically, they were able to measure vibrations in the sand and air, thereby detecting surface waves emanating from the avalanche. According to head researcher Stephane Douady, the face of the dune seems to serve as a kind of loudspeaker and the surface waves produce the sound in the air. The waves result from collisions between individual grains -- about 100 times per second, according to the lab measurements -- that create a kind of feedback loop of synchronized collisions at a specific frequency, and voila! The dune begins warbling a sandy song. It just so happens that if sand is packed tightly, it can't move without expanding its volume. Douady thinks that a dune avalanche serves to compress and decompress air among individual sand grains, and this causes the singing sound. In fact, the grains themselves are unique: round, with a coating of silicon, iron and manganese.

That doesn't solve all the outstanding questions about sand, which is pretty fascinating stuff, from a physics standpoint. It's a type of substance known as granular material, since it acts both like a liquid and a solid: dry sand collected in a bucket pours like a fluid, yet it can support the weight of a rock placed on top of it, like a solid, even though the rock is technically denser than the sand. So sand defies all those tidy equations describing various phases of matter, and the transition from flowing "liquid" to a rigid "solid" happens quite rapidly. It's as if the grains act as individuals in the fluid form, but are capable of suddenly banding together when solidarity is needed, achieving a weird kind of "strength in numbers" effect. (Jen-Luc finds this metaphor rather inspiring, but she's feeling a bit emotional at present.)

Nor can physicists precisely predict an avalanche. That's partly because of the sheer number of grains of sand in even a small pile, each of which will interact with several of its immediate neighboring grains simultaneously -- and those neighbors shift from one moment to the next. Not even a supercomputer can track the movements of individual grains over time, so the physics of flow in granular media remains a vital area of research. Among other agencies, NASA is funding work in this area.

The frivolous summer pastime of building sand castles might also be considered interesting physics. Everyone knows sand has to be wet to build sand castles -- just enough to cause the dampened grains of sand to stick together via surface tension. (Jen-Luc Piquant has experimented extensively and found that the perfect ratio for an optimum castle is one pail of water for every eight pails of sand.) The water forms "liquid bridges" between the contact points of the grains, and the resulting tension creates an attractive force between them.

A few years ago scientists at MIT and Clark University studied sand in a rotating drum, observing that the sand would build up into a pile and reach a steep slope before collapsing. (I believe physicists call this self-organized criticality, which I've always thought to be a pretty nifty moniker.) They did this with both dry and damp sand, and found that adding even a tiny bit of water made the grains stick to each other more effectively, so that the pile could reach steeper angles and collapse less drastically than when the sand was dry. And just like sand castles collapsing on a beach in clumps, some of the "bridges" in the experiment stayed intact.

Quicksand is another special case, since it's a mixture of fine sand, clay and saltwater. At rest, it's little more than loosely packed grains of sand resting on top of water. But if some unfortunate soul happens to fall into quicksand and start flailing about, the movement transforms that delicate balance, turning it into a dense liquid soup. This means the victim sinks deeper, at which point the the water and sand starts to separate again into water-rich and sand-rich levels. The wet sand sediment becomes densely packed, trapping the victim. Fortunately, the average density of a human body is about 62 pounds per cubic foot, much less than the 125 pounds per cubic foot of most quicksand. So the trick to survival, apparently, is not to panic.  Instead, relax, stay still and stretch out on your back to increase your surface area, and then just wait until your legs pop free.

Studying quicksand could lead to insights into the shifting of wet soil underground during earthquakes that causes buildings to sink into the ground (soil liquefaction). The water-soaked soil "liquefies" because of the vibrations of the quake. The shock waves compress the soil faster than the water can escape, raising the pressure so that the water bears more of the load than the sand. And the buildings start to sink. For safety reasons, obviously scientists would like to understand this process better, perhaps developing better building foundations to prevent liquefaction.

My point is that you think you know a substance, it's so familiar, you see it every day, but somehow it keeps surprising you with unexpected or inexplicable behavior. That's how scientists feel about their ongoing relationship with sand and other forms of granular materials, which is looking like a pretty long-term commitment, thanks to this constant element of surprise. So while you're hanging out at the beach this summer, attempting to escape the sobering news of the day, take a moment to appreciate the intricate complexity that can be found in that collection of millions of grains of sand.

pajama-, candy-, sono- and mammo-

I got that phone call every woman over age 40 dreads.  The words were somehow terribly incongruous with the Texas-accented perky voice.

"Hi there. This is Tish from the Solis Womens Health Center.  We found some things we wanted to review from your last mammogram."

The first thing that shot through my head was, "Oh great, like I don't have enough things to do and now I have to carve out time for another stupid visit to the doctor's. The perky voice continued.

"We'd like you to come back and take a few more views.  When are you available tomorrow?"

Those few words sent a stream of thoughts running through my head at about the speed of light:  Tomorrow?  Really?  Tomorrow?

It doesn't matter that I know the vast majority of callbacks reveal there is nothing to worry about and reflect medical professionals that would rather err on the side of caution.  It doesn't matter that I am fortunate to have no family history of breast cancer.  The thought invariably flashes through your head:  What if I have cancer?

I've never understood women who don't get mammograms because they complain they are uncomfortable.  They should volunteer to escort breast cancer patients to their radiation and chemo treatments.  Breast cancer is a whole lot more uncomfortable than a few seconds of boob-squash.  (Just for those of you who aren't part of the club:  Your breast -- as much of it as possible -- is squished between two clear plastic pieces to make it as thin as possible for imaging. It's more uncomfortable than drawing blood, but less painful than intramuscular steroid injections (in my opinion).

I realized during the somewhat sleepless night that followed that I didn't actually know much about mammograms.  I wanted to understand exactly what a mammogram can and can't tell you.  Being a scientist, I'm a horrible patient because I want to see the proof for anything a doctor tells me.

There are basically two types of probes used in medical imaging:  Those that go through the target and those that bounce off the target.  I realize the professionals in the audience are pulling out their hair about now, sorry for the over simplification.  

Mammograms are x-rays and belong to the first category.  X-rays are part of the electromagnetic spectrum (shown at right), which means that they are made up of perpendicular electric and magnetic fields. Electromagnetic waves come in a wide, wide range of wavelengths.  X-rays have wavelengths between 10 to 0.01 nanometers.  (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.  The average hair is about 70,000 nanometers in diameter, so we're talking really small.)

When x-rays were discovered by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895, he didn't realize they were electromagnetic radiation.  As is often the case, Roentgen was working on something else entirely.  He called them "x"-rays, since "x" stands for the unknown and no one knew the source of the x-rays.  What was most surprising is that x-rays were capable of going through material.  Not all materials, but tissues, muscles and other not-so-dense materials.  The x-ray image at right is a picture of Mrs. Roentgen's hand.  You can see the bones and her metal wedding ring, but you can't see her fingers - just a vague outline of the thickest part of her hand. 

X-rays were one of the first scientific discoveries that took to the popular press with great speed.  Roentgen submitted his scientific manuscript on December 28th, 1895, despite being initially unsure he had discovered anything worth mentioning.  The first public announcement took place on January 5, 1896.  A front-page article in Die Presse carried an extensive description of the discovery and suggested that the new kind of radiation might be useful for medical diagnoses.  The news was published in other European papers, and three weeks later in London, The Electrician (a major electrical engineering journal) published an English translation of Roentgen's original scientific manuscript, "A New Kind of Ray, A Preliminary Communication".

US newspapers were freer with exclamation points than the stolid European papers:  "NEW LIGHT SEES THROUGH FLESH TO BONES!" was a headline from mid-January 1896. Another screamed "HIDDEN SOLIDS REVEALED!!"  Within a week, demonstrations were being set up at colleges, in high schools, and in public venues.  Within the year, boys clubs were building their own x-ray sources.

X-rays captured the popular imagination.  People sat for "x-ray portraits".  Brides gave away x-ray pictures of their hands with their new wedding ring as wedding favors. In February 1896, a physics professor at Vanderbilt University persuaded the dean of the medical school to sit for an experimental radiograph of the skull.  Three weeks later the dean's hair fell out.  Now there's a way not to get tenure.

Within the first few months of 1896, researchers started realizing that the new rays were not only not understood, they perhaps needed to be treated with a little more care than they were currently being accorded.  A number of the first x-ray investigators (predominantly the assistants who did the actual work) became ill, lost limbs or eventually died from exposure to x-rays.  Although x-rays stopped being used for entertainment purposes, surprisingly, people still liked to 'play' with x-rays well into the 1950's.  My husband remembers going to the shoe store as a kid and using an x-ray machine that allowed the salesman to look at your feet inside the shoes to make sure they fit correctly.  (Apparently the thumb pressing down in search of the big toe method came later because it is hard to NIST-certify thumbs.)

Röntgen never sought honors or financial profit for his discovery.  He rejected a title that would have provided entry into the German nobility, and donated the money he received from the very first Nobel Prize in physics to his University.  At the time of his death, he was nearly bankrupt from the inflation that followed World War I.  He asked for all of his scientific communication and records to be destroyed on his death.  Sadly, they were.

Knowing where x-rays come from, we know you don't want to get exposed to more of them than you really need.  X-rays are ionizing radiation, which means the radiation can remove one or more electrons from an atom.  X-rays can convert harmless organic molecules into much-more-reactive ions (like free radicals) that wreak havoc in the body.  Low doses of radiation can damage cell DNA, mutate cells and can cause cancer.  Like any technology, x-rays can be used smartly or poorly. Used smartly, x-rays can also save your life.

Of course, the American health care system being as screwed up as it is (due in large part to people wanting magic answers and magic pills instead of doing the hard work of taking better care of themselves), Americans get much more x-ray exposure than people in the rest of the world.  If you look worldwide at all the advanced procedures that require radiation, Americans account for fully half of them.  The average American's dose keeps growing, too:  you've probably had six times as much radiation as your grandparents ever did.  Doctors order CAT scans (a type of x-ray) more than sonograms or MRI's, neither of which expose you to ionizing radiation. There's no central accounting that keeps track of your exposures.  Even if your doctor has a complete list of the x-rays you've had, he or she generally doesn't have any way to calculate your cumulative dose.

Dose - the amount of radiation absorbed by your body - is the important thing here.  The measurement unit is the mrem (millirem).  Most people typically get about 360 mrem each year from incidental sources (flying, radon exposure, cosmic radiation, etc.) 

Source	Annual Dose
Incidental	360 mrem
Dental x-ray	10 mrem
Round trip NYC-LAX	5 mrem
Mammogram	45 mrem
Electron-Beam CT scan for coronary angiography	85-105 mrem

All atoms have their electrons arranged in shells (remember atomic counting: 2s1 2s2 2p6...?)  Inner shells (ones numbered 1 or 2, for example) have lower energy than outer shells.  Electrons in the inner shells have less energy than electrons in the outer shells.  X-rays are generated by shooting electrons at a metal like copper.  The electrons hit the metal atoms and can knock out inner-shell electrons.  Since all electrons like being in their lowest possible energy state (don't we all), an electron from a higher energy level will drop into the vacant spot in the low-energy shell.  The energy that electron sheds comes off as an electromagnetic wave -- an x-ray.

The x-rays in my diffractometer are generated from a copper target and have a wavelength of about 0.15 nanometers.  They are pretty high energy because I don't use x-rays for imaging, but for diffraction.  Most medical x-rays are used for imaging and are generated using a tungsten target, so they have a bigger wavelength and smaller energy.  Mammograms, which only have to pass through tissue, most often use a molybdenum source with a wavelength of 0.709 nm (Angstroms - thank you Michael!), so mammograms are even lower energy than regular x-rays. 

X-rays are the "shooting something through" type of probe, so the images they produce are essentially shadows. Dense areas block more x-rays, which is why you can see Mrs. Roetgen's ring and bones in the x-ray, but not the tendons and muscles in her hand. The less dense material blocks fewer x-rays, allowing some of the film to be exposed.  You've probably all see x-rays where the bones are white and the rest is black - that's a negative, which is why it's inverted.  The absolute color isn't the most important thing:  the contrast is.

The mammogram image at right shows a typical breast.  Breast tissue isn't homogeneous - you can see the milk ducts (near the nipple), and the fibrous tissue that makes up most of the breast.  The red arrow on the x-ray shows the type of thing a doctor "reading" a mammogram would tag for follow-up.  Notice how the tumor is so much whiter - it is much denser than the fibrous breast tissue that surrounds it. (And no, this is not mine.)

A white spot on a mammogram isn't an automatic indication of cancer.  A lot of normal (and abnormal) processes can produce questionable features in a mammogram.  For example, microcalcifications occur when cells in breast tissue start dividing rapidly. Most cells contain calcium and the cell growth can produce small residual calcium deposits.  Certain patterns of microcalcifications, like a series of nodes clumped together or in a line as opposed to randomly scattered, may be a sign of breast cancer.

Or not, because calcium deposits are very common (especially after menopause).  They can be caused by fluid from a benign cyst, prior injuries to the breast or even dermatitis.  You are instructed not to use deodorant or talcum powder or anything else the day of a mammogram because residue from these types of products can show up looking just like microcalcifications.

If you're in the Plano area, I highly recommend Solis for mammography because they have a great set up: current machines, very nice surroundings and -- most importantly -- they take the time to answer your questions.  In my case, that's not a trivial task.  When I went for the followup mammogram, they did indeed confirm some abnormal looking spots that might be microcalcifications - or cysts, or remnants of cysts.  Or cancer.  I was surprised when they took me into another room for a sonogram.  To me, a sonogram seems rather low tech compared to a mammogram.  Mammograms are high resolution (especially with digital detection).  Sonograms bring to mind those fuzzy pictures people show me that I have to pretend look like cute babies.

A sonogram uses sound waves.  Sound waves are fundamentally different than electromagnetic waves.  Sound waves cause the molecules in a solid, liquid or gas to move back and forth.  When I speak, the molecules closest to my mouth start oscillating back and forth, in the direction the wave is traveling.  That causes the molecules next to them to start moving, and the molecules next to them, etc.  Finally, the molecules next to your ear start to oscillate, which starts your eardrum oscillating and you hear what I said.  Sound waves are pressure waves, alternating regions of dense and not-so-dense regions, as shown to the right.

Sound waves can travel through liquids, solids and gases, being fastest in solids because the atoms in solids are connected together much more strongly.  When you bump one atom, it affects the atoms around it much more immediately than in a gas, where the atoms are more spread out.  In a gas, it takes a little while for the motion to be transmitted.  (And this is why, in space, no one can hear you scream.  No molecules means no sound.)  That's also why they spread jelly over the area they are going to image:  the jelly couples the sound waves better to the tissue to be imaged than air would, which gives a stronger signal.

Unlike x-rays, sound waves don't have the energy to pass through bone or tissue.  Sound waves are part of the 'bouncing back' class of imaging techniques, working much like radar, where you send out a wave, it bounces into things that change its wavelength and/or speed, and then returns to be detected.  The soundwaves used in medical imaging are silent - they are normally in the range of 2-20 MHz (MegaHertz).  A typical hearing range goes up to about 0.02 MHz (20 kiloHertz).

A mammogram is a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional object, so it doesn't tell you anything about the inside of an object.  When you focus sound waves into something heterogeneous, like tissue, the sound waves are partially reflected when there is a density change. It's similar to how light is partially reflected from a plate of glass. That means a sonogram can distinguish between a solid object (like a tumor) and a hollow or fluid-filled object of the same shape (like a cyst).  Higher frequencies have smaller wavelengths, which means better resolution. Sonography on breasts generally uses 7-18 MHz sound waves.  There is a trade-off in that higher frequencies don't penetrate as deeply into the body as lower-frequency sound waves.  If you're after something deeper in the body, you have to use lower-frequency sound.

I should also not that the resolution is not as good when the subject talks during the measurement. (Another benefit of working with Gadolinium.)  The features that had raised concern in the mammogram didn't look like they were solid, so after the sonogram (which the technician was kind enough to let me watch while it was being taken), I was told that, although the chances were that they were harmless mineralizations or cysts, I should return in six months to monitor for any changes that might indicate they were growing.  Just in case.

I started writing this blog in January, the day after the followup confirmed that I needed more than the usual yearly or every-other-year mammogram schedule.  In February, my Mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  She died in April.  She hadn't had a pelvic exam in at least five years:  she said they were "uncomfortable" and couldn't even remember when the last one was.

While we still don't know what causes cancer and we still don't know how to cure it, we do know that the earlier we catch it, the higher the likelihood of beating it.  Even with my recent experience with my Mom, I was still a month late on my six-month follow up.  My excuse:  I got busy.  I meant to get to it.  Really.  I had a few moments between appointments the other day, found myself in the neighborhood and stopped in to make my appointment.  Finally.

You know those stickers they give you when you vote - the ones that proclaim "I VOTED!"?  They're designed to remind people who see it that they need to vote, too.  That gave me an idea.

Every woman should do a monthly breast self-exam.  If nothing else, it keeps the idea of your own health in your mind.  I've designed an image to be printed out - you can print it on adhesive address labels, or a piece of paper or whatever.  (I'm a crappy artist, so maybe someone out there can design something better and we'll make something easy to print.)

The day of the month you do your breast self exam, wear a sticker.  It's a pink ribbon - everyone knows what that means.  When other women ask what the sticker is for, ask them what day of the month they do their breast self-exam.  If they can't tell you, suggest they pick TODAY to start.

Medicine seems to scare people.  I know some people make a big difference between medicine and science, but to me, so much of medicine involves really interesting (and useful!) physics and chemistry.  The more science you know, the better position you're in to stand up for yourself, your sisters, your mothers and your friends.

I just got back from that "6-month" followup.  Another benefit to modern mammography: They know the results right away.  The suspicious features they had been watching are essentially gone, which means they probably were microcalcifications or cysts.  I promised myself as I saw in the car getting ready to head back to work that I was going to be better about my health this year.  Y'all should too:  We want all of you to be around for our Cocktail Parties.

father of fizz

In honor of "Pepsipocalypse," and my own inordinate fondness for Diet Coke (which I share with Bora!, as evidenced by the photo at the end of this post, although he's partial to the sugared variety), it seems appropriate to pay tribute to the grand-daddy of fizzy drinks: British scientist Joseph Priestley. He didn't actually invent carbonation, which is a natural process: at high pressures underground, spring water can absorb carbon dioxide and become "effervescent." "Seltzer" originally referred to the mineral water naturally produced in springs near a German town called Niederseltsers, although today, it's pretty much just filtered tap water that's been artificially carbonated. No, Priestley is responsible for the artificial carbonation process, along with "discovering" oxygen (more on that, and the caveats, later) and eight other gases, including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide (laughing gas).

Born in 1733 in a small town near Leeds, Priestley was the eldest of six children born to Jonas Priestley, a "dresser and finisher of cloth," and Mary, the daughter of a local farmer. So fecund was his mother, that the brood grew rapidly, and Joseph was sent to live with his grandfather at an early age. His mother died when he was nine, and when his father remarried, he was adopted by his father's sister. In her household, he was exposed to the theological and political discussions of so-called "Dissenters," a group of believers who did not strictly adhere to the doctrines of the official Church of England, and were often discriminated against, if not outright persecuted, for their supposedly heretical beliefs. He was extremely precocious, mastering (via recitation) his catechism by age 4 (!). (Overachiever. Sheesh. I could barely read at 4.)

Initially Priestley attended local schools, but a bout with tuberculosis in his teenage years forced him to drop out. He had learned Greek, Latin and a bit of Hebrew while at school, and subsequently taught himself French, Italian, German, Chaldean, Syrian and Arabic), as well as the basics of geometry and algebra. He enrolled at Daventry Academy with the aim of becoming a minister, and it was here he first became interested in what was then known as natural and experimental philosophy. But he became a minister, nonetheless, despite suffering from a speech impediment (the result of his childhood illness) and alienating some members of his first rural congregation in Needham Market, Suffolk, with his strong Unitarian leanings. He was much happier in his second post at Nantwich, Cheshire, where he helped establish a school and trained his students in natural philosophy, among other subjects.

Technically, Priestley was a Rational Dissenter: one who "emphasized the rational analysis of the natural world and the Bible," according to Wikipedia. He loathed strict dogma and eschewed mysticism. Priestley was probably relieved when, in 1761, he was transferred to the far more urbane Warrington (known as "the Athens of North") to become a tutor of modern languages and rhetoric at the local Dissenting Academy. He married in 1762 -- to one Mary Wilkinson, whom he described as "a woman of excellent understanding much improved by reading, of great fortitude and strength of mind, and of a temper in the highest degree affectionate and generous; feeling strongly for others, and little for herself" -- and became acquainted with scientific society during annual visits to London.

Warrington was an excellent environment for Priestley's growing interest in scientific experimentation. He met Benjamin Franklin in London, who encouraged him to investigate electricity. Priestley initially focused on reproducing known experiments, but soon found himself designing his own experiments to answer some of the questions raised. He published A History and Present State of Electricity, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1766 as a result of this work. He even published a popularized version of the book, teaching himself perspective drawing so he could illustrate the concepts adequately. His description of "a current of real air" between two electrified points" would later influence both Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell in their pioneering studies of electromagnetism. But his interests soon turned to chemistry.

By 1767, Priestley was living next to a brewery in Leeds and started experimenting with the brewery gas (carbon dioxide) using candles and burning pieces of wood. In one such experiment, he placed a bowl of water above the surface of a liquor in the process of fermenting, and found it quickly took on a sweetly acidic taste akin to the famed mineral water of Niederseltsers. The end result was the 1772 publication of Impregnating Water with Fixed Air, which included very simple instructions:

"If water be only in contact with fixed air, it will begin to imbibe it, but the mixture is greatly accelerated by agitation, which is continually bringing fresh particles of air and water into contact. All that is necessary, therefore, to make this process expeditious and effectual, is first to procure a sufficient quantity of this fixed air, and then to contrive a method by which the air and water may be strongly agitated in the same vessel, without any danger of admitting the common air to them; and this is easily done by first filling any vessel with water, and introducing the fixed air to it, while it stands inverted in another vessel of water."

The Royal Society awarded him the prestigious Copley Medal for his work in carbonation. Priestley's carbonation process was further refined, and bottled "seltzer water" officially hit the commercial market in 1807, thanks to a Yale University chemistry professor named Benjamin Silliman. The first soda fountain appeared in Philadelphia in 1838, featuring sweetened and flavored carbonated drinks, and by 1891 there were more soda fountains in New York City than bars. Just a few years earlier, in 1886, Atlanta druggist John S. Pemberton sought a remedy for headaches and hangovers, and devised the bright idea of adding kola nut extract to coca extract. The result: Coca-Cola. A century later, the diet version of Pemberton's concoction would get me through many a college all-nighter, and remains the pause that refreshes even today. Thank you, Mr. Pemberton. 

And then he discovered oxygen -- or, more precisely, he became the first to isolate "dephlogisticated air," along with seven other kinds of gases. (Both Carl Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier also can stake a claim to oxygen's discovery.) This was a huge achievement. Remember that Priestley was working in a pre-modern chemistry environment,  at a time when most scientists still adhered to the principles of Aristotle -- namely that there was only one kind of "air." This was also an era dominated by the so-called "phlogiston theory," in which burning or oxidizing a given substance corresponded to the release of another material substance. It was used to explain things like combustion, smelting, calcination and similar chemical processes.

Basically, he isolated oxygen in its gaseous state by using a pneumatic trough apparatus (see illustration) for "gathering gases over water," or in Priestley's early experiments, mercury.

In an experiment conducted in August 1, 1774, he focused sunlight through a lens, thereby heating a sample of mercuric oxide, resulting in a gas that allowed a candle to burn brightly, and also enabled a mouse to live for a good long while under glass. "I have discovered an air five or six times as good as common air," he wrote. Over the next 12 years, he compiled Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, replacing Aristotle's outdated theory of four elements with Priestley's own variation of phlogiston theory. He called his discovery "dephlogisticated air." (Priestley was surprisingly frank when writing about his experiments, both successes and failures. One of his early biographers noted, "Whatever he knows or thinks, he tells: doubts, perplexities, blunders are set down with the most refreshing candour.")

While traveling in Paris later that year, Priestley met Lavoisier and replicated his experiment for the French chemist. It was Lavoisier who figured out that what Priestley had really discovered was purified air ("without alteration"), leading to the abandonment of phlogiston theory by the scientific community. Instead, the new chemistry embraced the concepts of elements and compounds, and the notion of conservation of mass (mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions). Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Priestley rejected the Lavoisier school of thought, insisting that there were only three types of "air": "fixed," "alkaline" and "acid." He rejected conservation of mass, and still insisted on focusing on "changes in the sensible properties" of gases, and even though he successfully isolated carbon monoxide, he never realized it was a different kind of "air. So he never embraced the modern chemistry for which his work paved the way. French naturalist George Cuvier, writing in the 19th century with the benefit of hindsight, lamented Priestley's uncharacteristic stubbornness in clinging to the phylogiston theory, describing him as "the father of modern chemistry [who] never acknowledged his daughter."

Priestley's religious convictions cost him dearly, both personally and professionally. While serving as a minister in Birmingham, he earned considerable public enmity for some of his pamphlets, particularly those attacking the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. He was branded an agent of the devil and denounced in the House of Commons. Technically, being a dissenter and disagreeing with the Church of England meant you could be stripped of of the rights of citizenship, and members of the sect were routinely persecuted. Small wonder that when the French Revolution broke out across the English Channel, dissenters tended to side with the revolutionaries and against privileged tyranny, having suffered at the hands of a state-sponsored religion.

On July 14, 1791, there was a dinner at a local hotel to celebrate Bastille Day, which went off peacefully enough, despite a large crowd gathered outside in protest. The violence came later that night, after said crowd had been drinking heavily: they sacked and burned both meeting houses where Priestley preached, even though he hadn't even attended the dinner. Warned that a mob was after him, Priestley fled the house with his family, "with nothing more than the clothes we happened to have on." He suffered the sight of his home going up in flames, destroying his laboratory and many unpublished manuscripts. The riot raged for three whole days, and many other homes were destroyed.

The family fled to London, but the hostility followed them. Poor Priestley was burned in effigy, once again denounced in the House of Commons, as well as from Church of England pulpits, and was even forced to resign his membership in the Royal Society by scientific colleagues (who one would think should have been more tolerant of dissenting views). On the upside, France made him an honorary citizen, although since France was then at war with England, this didn't help Priestley's standing back home.

Realizing he would never have peace again, Priestley and his family emigrated to America in 1794, when he was 61. He was offered a chair in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, but opted instead to follow his elder son, Joseph, and a friend, Thomas Cooper, 150 miles north of the City of Brotherly Love, in the town of Northumberland. It was intended to be a colony for English dissenters, but within a year Priestley's youngest son had died. Priestley kept up with his experiments in a brand new laboratory, but found himself spending winters in Philadelphia to stave off the isolation. He also founded the first Unitarian church in the US, and both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson attended his sermons.

Unfortunately, Priestley's physical health wasn't as robust as his mind. He nearly died in 1801 during a trip to Philadelphia (Jefferson by then was US President), and never fully recovered. By February 1804, he could no longer shave or dress himself, and was bedridden. There's a touching account of his death here. Apparently, after bidding farewell to his children, he reviewed some manuscripts he'd been working on with the help of Thomas Cooper, finally nodding and saying, "That is right. I have now done." He died 30 minutes later, mindful of his family to the end: he put his hand to his face as he expired so his wife and son wouldn't see it happen.

For all the animosity Priestley faced as a result of his religious beliefs, by the time he died he was among the world's most respected scientists, and a member of almost every scientific society in the Western World. (No doubt it helped that he spoke so many different languages.) In 1833, on the 100th anniversary of Priestley's birth, Michael Faraday -- arguably an intellectual descendant of this reluctant father of modern chemistry --  praised his forebear's "freedom of mind" and "independence of dogma and of preconceived notions, by which men are so often bowed down and carried forward from fallacy to fallacy." Faraday exhorted his listeners to follow Priestley's example, fostering "a mind which could be easily moved from what it had held to the reception of new thoughts and notions." That, indeed, is the mark of an excellent scientist.

This blog post brought to you by Coke (TM) and Diet Coke (TM). And, indirectly, Joseph Priestley.

growing pains

A few months after I started Cocktail Party Physics in 2006, I was asked to join the then-relatively-new SEED Science Blogs. It was tremendously flattering to a spanking new science blogger, and very tempting: who wouldn't want to join a vibrant community of science bloggers and -- not coincidentally -- get a nice boost in traffic as a result? In the end, I reluctantly declined the invitation, mostly because my blog was new, I was pleased with the design, and said design would have been lost by moving to SEED. I also, to be honest, just liked the idea of having a space that was mine, and mine alone, with no pressure (real or imagined) about traffic stats and frequency of blogging. There's a lot to be said for creative independence, and while I can and do blog professionally (i.e., for pay) for both commercial and nonprofit outlets when called upon, Cocktail Party Physics remains special to me for that reason. It's my haven, as I hope it is for my co-bloggers (we went "group" in 2008). But I actively follow and participate in the Science Blogs community, nonetheless, and consider many of the Sciblings to be friends.

The point is, I'm emotionally invested. So this was a painful week for me, as "Pepsigate" erupted over at Science Blogs, and many of my bloggy buddies were forced to grapple with the ethical subtleties inherent in the tension between integrity and pragmatism in publishing (and yes, blogs are part of the publishing enterprise). Several Sciblings left the fold in protest -- who could blame them? -- while those who remain are asking themselves some tough questions about where to go from here. And Science Blogs' credibility has been badly damaged. No need to rehash the whole mess one more time; Ed Yong has a great list of the best commentary from the firestorm that broke out in the science blogosphere over this, and Carl Zimmer and Dr. SkySkull are both keeping track of where the orphaned bloggers end up.

Suffice to say, I come down 100% on the side of those who strenuously objected to the decision by SEED Media Group to "sell" a blog to Pepsi -- whether they ultimately chose to leave or stay. This, this and this nicely summarize my own thinking on the matter. I have no problem with advertising on blogs, provided it's clearly labeled as such. (We don't have ads at the Cocktail Party, nor do we plan to, but who knows? We might change our minds one day.) Media outlets have to make money, and this is a necessary part of the business model as it currently exists. And as several folks have pointed out, we all have inherent self-interests (see sidebar, "We Have No Shame"). But it's disingenuous to claim that therefore it's perfectly okay to sell editorial space (a blog) to a corporation as if it were not advertising, mewling about "inviting industrial scientists into the conversation." Industrial/corporate scientists have never been excluded from Science Blogs; they've just been invited as individuals, on the basis of merit, not by buying their way in.

So kudos to those who left in protest. And for the record, I also support those Sciblings who are troubled but adopting a wait and see attitude, because they played a courageous role, too. Everyone has a different situation, different concerns, and what's right for, say, David Dobbs, Rebecca Skloot, and Brian Switek, might not be right for Orac or Abel Pharmboy -- who first raised the alarm. (Indeed, poor Deborah Blum missed the whole damn thing and now finds herself caught in a much murkier gray area.) Make no mistake: had the outcry not been raised, had prominent Sciblings not opted to leave, had those who remained not demanded action by going on indefinite hiatus, the Pepsi blog would still be in place. And that would have been a bad day for science blogging. 

Understandably, the strongest objections came from bloggers who specialize in health, nutrition and medicine, and from professional writers like myself, for whom this was a clear violation of journalistic principles. Several research scientists (and commenters) didn't really understand the objections, or felt the protesting Sciblings were over-reacting. Chad at Uncertain Principles, for instance, apparently could care less about such issues, since the blog is a hobby for him and he views Science Blogs as nothing more than a technology platform, like Blogger or Wordpress or Typepad, except he gets paid a tiny amount for his efforts.

With respect and affection for Chad, I must disagree (while supporting his decision to stay). I pay Typepad to host Cocktail Party Physics; it's a standard business transaction, and I've been very happy with the service. But it's no Science Blogs. Science Blogs has always been much more than that. It's an impressively diverse community of individuals -- smart, opinionated, often boisterous and loud, occasionally rude, but always interesting. They fight with each other, and support each other, and they supported SEED Media; "good soldiers," every one. But they are not, and never will be, patsies for the Overlords. That's why the community has slowly built up a strong public identity, a loyal following, and considerable credibility in the science communications realm. I'm proud of the Sciblings for pushing back -- hard! -- and succeeding in setting some much-needed boundaries between editorial content and advertising/"advertorials."

The bad news is that it seems this might not have been an isolated incident. Gaia Vance wrote in the Guardian about having a column pulled by a former SEED editor because it was potentially offensive to an advertiser they were courting. Apparently said editor is no longer there, but it's disturbing, nonetheless. And I was surprised to learn of prior "corporate sponsored blogs," albeit written by independent scientists, not the PR flaks or employees of the sponsoring corporation. I did note the World Science Fair and US Science & Engineering blogs when they appeared, and felt a twinge of dismay at the recent inclusion of blogs by specific research institutions rather than individuals. I just assumed this was part of an education and outreach effort on the part of SEED Media. Now, in the wake of Pepsipocalypse, I'm not so sure. I, personally, would really like to know which blogs are paying to be there -- and thanks to Kendra Snyder of the new Brookhaven blog for making it crystal clear that Brookhaven is not paying for the blog space. That's the real, lasting damage that has come out of this. I shouldn't have to wonder, and folks like Kendra shouldn't need to explicitly clarify.

Since the Pepsi blog has now been removed, many remaining Sciblings are waiting to see if there will be any significant changes in response to their concerns -- and it's a promising sign that SEED Media CEO Adam Bly now has his own blog and is entering the fray for a more direct discourse with the Sciblings. The rest of us will be watching with interest as this unfolds, not because we're salivating voyeurs, but because this is something many other media outlets are likely to struggle with as we hammer out new models for blogging and the media in the 21st century. We're in the midst of a major sea change (just can't bring myself to use "paradigm shift"), where blogs are transforming the mainstream media, and as blogging moves into professional circles, the MSM is starting to transform blogs, as bloggers (and the outlets that support them) find themselves facing the same kinds of pressures that the MSM must face on a daily basis. It isn't pretty. But it's necessary. And as others have said as well, sometimes "old media" does have something to teach "new media" -- in this case, about the importance of maintaining that critical wall between editorial and advertisement.

Pepsigate is further proof (as if any were needed) that blogging is coming of age, with all the growing pains that come with it. At Science Online 2008, I gave a keynote address about how I viewed blogging and where I saw it going in the future. Granted, I'm no psychic octopus, but here's what I wrote after that conference:

I've never viewed blogs as a threat to mainstream media. The two feed off each other; for all the contentious antagonism, it's a pretty symbiotic relationship. Among other benefits, science bloggers can hold each other and the science media accountable in ways that are kind of unprecedented in recent history, because now everyone who wants one, has a platform to express their ideas. Sure, it's loud, crowded and occasionally confusing -- and the same freedoms extend to utter crackpots -- but people find ways to sift through the noise to latch onto what they like and/or need. I'd like to see that natural synergism enhanced and developed in the coming years. ... [P]erhaps blogs associated with major media outlets could benefit from a layer of light oversight and quality control. ... The trick is giving just enough oversight not to kill the very qualities that people love about blogs in the first place: personal, subjective, highly opinionated, with the opportunity for an interactive free-for-all with readers in the comment threads. Traditional letters to the editor are such a yawn-fest in comparison.

As blogs become more professional, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to be paid a reasonable wage/fee, depending on whether they're full-time staff or freelancers. Media outlets are already doing this: journalism school graduates of the future are definitely going to be doing some blogging in their future positions, in addition to straight reporting or feature writing (which is why, when asked, I advise instructors to start up class blogs for their students, or encourage students to start their own).

I said something along these lines during my wrap-up presentation, and someone in the audience expressed concern that if blogging becomes profitable or (god forbid) lucrative, people would start blogging for the "wrong reasons." I didn't realize there were "right" or "wrong" reasons; the concept strikes me as absurd. Peoples' motivations for blogging are as varied as the individuals themselves. And frankly, the comment smacks of a bizarre elitism, even a high school clique-ishness: "If EVERYONE starts blogging, we won't be as cool and special!" I think that rather misses the point of the source of blogging's power to effect change: giving a voice to everyone who wants one.

There's also the inference that blogging is this pure, noble selfless endeavor that should only be done for pleasure. Um, okay, it can definitely be that, but since when is it antithetical to love what you do and also make a living wage? The whole point of my talk is that blogging is moving out of the quirky little hobby category and into the professional sphere, and if someone wants to take their blogging to a professional level -- which would mean doubling (at least) the degree of effort, editing, fact-checking, etc. one would normally do with a blog post -- there should be a mechanism in place to ensure they can be adequately compensated. In no way do I think that everyone should be a professional blogger; it will just become another job option. There will always be a place for the idealistic amateur in the blogosphere.

We're navigating uncharted waters, people, but that doesn't mean we can't draw on the lessons of the past for guidance. And like the Sciblings, we must be willing to raise a stink and push back occasionally when a line is crossed: this far, but no farther. It is only through constant vigilance that the trust between blogger and reader can be maintained.

support your local science writers (and bloggers!)

I see that Not Exactly Rocket Science guru Ed Yong is resurrecting his meme from a year or so ago, asking regular readers to introduce themselves in the comments. All the cool kids are doing it! This seems an awesome idea, and we missed the meme the first time around, so we hereby invite our readers -- especially the lurkers! -- to say howdy and tell us about themselves. And I invite my co-bloggers -- yoo-hoo! -- to engage in the comment thread as well. (Exceptions include GPS Tracking Systems, Cellulite Creams, Athens Greece Hotels, and the countless other Affirmation SPAMMERS -- you know who you are! -- peddling Viagra and designer shoes at discount prices, who leave fake comments just to snag a few free links. (Gollum voice) We hates them, precioussss, oh yesss, we do. They only pretend to like usss to flog their products, and waste our time by forcing usss to delete their inane fake observations. (/Gollum voice)

Speaking of flogging products: While you're all figuring out what to say, might as well indulge in a bit more shameless self-promotion. (Don't worry, we do very little of that around here.) Regular readers know posting has been a lot more sporadic at the cocktail party over the last year and a half. My main excuse is a demanding job as director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange. But writers compulsively write. So I juggle that with blogging at Discovery News, penning the odd book review, and have I mentioned lately that I wrote a book in my spare time? (Bora! mentioned it for me last month, along with a fantastic list of other books past, present and future from science writers/bloggers.)

The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse comes out August 31, and I revamped my author Website in honor of the occasion -- it's now vaguely steam-punky and much easier to navigate (there are still a few minor errors because I did the html coding of the main text myself; will fix them soon). So that's what I've been up to, for those who think we're just slackers. As I said at one of my panels at Skepchickon this weekend: I am very tired. I've stayed active on Twitter and Facebook, though -- and for the latest breaking book-related news, you can always become a fan of The Calculus Diaries on Facebook.

Brian Switek of Laelaps knows my pain. He wrote his first book, Written in Stone, in his spare time, too. I think I'm almost as excited for Brian's book as I am about The Calculus Diaries, because I've watched him struggle, persevere and succeed in achieving his dream. He's a promising young science writer and I'm proud to know him, in the blogosphere and IRL. He recently posted advance praise ("blurbs") for Written in Stone, and an impressive array it is, too. That's something every author I know is grateful for: the support of colleagues when it comes time to publish a book. So this seems a good time to thank the amazing folks who lavished advance praise on The Calculus Diaries. It takes a huge amount of effort and discipline to bring an entire book to the publication stage, and it can be pretty darned lonely at times, because everyone's off having a life except you. It warms a writer's heart when such esteemed colleagues find merit in his/her work, and take time out of their own busy schedules to say so. Publicly. So thank you! Publicly! Your support means the world to me. 

"The Calculus Diaries is a great primer for anyone who needs to get over their heebie-jeebies about an upcoming calculus class, or for anyone who’s ever wondered how calculus fits into everyday life and wants to be entertained, too!”
--Danica McKellar, New York Times bestselling author of Math Doesn’t Suck and Hot X: Algebra Exposed

"Zombies? Surfing? Gambling? Nobody told me calculus could be like this. To my twelfth-grade math teacher: I demand a do-over!" --Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution

"Back in the day, when I was close to flunking out of calculus class because I couldn't understand why it was worth my valuable time to actually understand it, I needed someone like Jennifer Ouellette to gently explain how I wrong I was.  She's like every English major's dream math teacher: funny, smart, infected with communicable enthusiasm, and she can rock a Buffy reference.  In this book, she hastens the day when more people are familiar with an integral function than with Justin Bieber." -- Peter Sagal, host, NPR's "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," and author of The Book of Vice.

"In this wonderful and compulsively readable book, Jennifer Ouellette finds the signature of  mathematics -- and especially calculus, of course -- in the most unexpected places, the gorgeously lunatic architecture of Spain's Antonin Gaudi, the shimmering arc of waves on a beach. Just following her on the journey is the half the fun. But the other half is learning about the natural beauty and elegance of calculations. Ouellette's ever clear and always stimulating voice is a perfect match to the subject - and The Calculus Diaries is a tour-de-force." -- Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.

"As amusing as it is enlightening, The Calculus Diaries is no dry survey of abstractions. It’s a guide to everyday life—to car trips and roller-coaster rides, diet and exercise, mortgages and the housing bubble, even social networking. As Ouellette modestly recounts her own learning curve, she and her husband become characters alongside eccentrics such as Newton and Gaudi and William the Conqueror. Like a great dance teacher, Ouellette steers us so gently we think we’re gliding along on our own." —Michael Sims, author of Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form and Apollo’s Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination.

"Jennifer Ouellette's calculus confessional is a delight, and an example of the finest kind of science writing.  Her book reveals to its readers the gritty inner workings of the most important idea humans have ever thought.  (Yes, calculus is that big:  it's all about understanding how things change in space and time, and there just isn't much more important than that.)  Ouellette's wit, her elegant wielding of metaphor, and her passion for both math and funky culture produce this crucial insight:  every equation tells a story, she says, and she's right, and the tales she tells here will captivate even the most math-phobic." -- Tom Levenson, author of Newton and the Counterfeiter; Head of the Program on Writing and Humanistic Studies and Director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT

"If you ever thought that math was useless, read this book. Want to survive a zombie attack? Win at craps? Beat a zombie at craps? Well, listen to Jennifer Ouellette. The math she describes might just be your best hope if you don't want your brains to be gobbled by the undead." -- Charles Seife, author of Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea.

"Like the movies Batman Begins, Spider-Man, or Superman, The Calculus Diaries is the story of how an insightful, creative, and hard-working young person acquires superpowers and uses them for the benefit of society. Only this tale is true: Jennifer Ouellette can't fly or spin a web, but she can spin a yarn. The Calculus Diaries documents the author's seduction by mathematics and her conquering of it--Eureka!--to see the world with sharper vision. For too many people math, calculus in particular, is an albatross. But Ouellette reveals math for what it is, a powerful tool for solving problems and the exquisite language we use to describe nature. Reading this book will make you smarter. And more powerful." -- Eric Roston, author of The Carbon Age

"A charming and gentle introduction to important mathematical concepts and their relevance to everyday life." -- Leonard Mlodinow, author of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

of alchemy and iron man

I have just returned from Minneapolis, or more accurately, nearby Bloomington, host to the annual CONvergence science fiction and fantasy convention. Technically I was there for Skepchickon 2010, one of the many "tracks" featured in the CONvergence program. We got to hang with the sassy-n-saucy Skepchicks, and I downed my first Buzzed Aldrin, which we will be adding to our sidebar of physics cocktails just as soon as I can strong-arm Rebecca Watson into forking over the secret recipe. The rest of the time, Jen-Luc Piquant and I thrilled to the sight of geeks reveling in their element: outlandish costumes, original fan art on exhibit, and panels featuring earnest discussions on the nature of evil as illustrated by Voldemort, Darth Vader, or Watchmen’s Rorschach. (An audience member brought up Buffy’s Spike during the discussion on evil, only to have a panelist snipe, “Sometimes it’s not about whether you’re evil, but whether you’re a douchebag.” Ouch! Spike will totally bite you for that one, dude.)

And of course, there were the LARP-ers (Live Action Role Play), whaling away with their plastic light sabers as if their very lives depended on the outcome of the “fight.” Conventions are all about letting your inner child out to play; it’s the stuff daydreams are made of, which is why I have such a soft spot for them. Who doesn't occasionally long for simpler days, when plastic light saber duels became real through the power of imagination? We tend to lose this ability, this childlike enthusiasm, in adulthood all too easily. Anyway, my personal favorite costume was the tall guy dressed in a sharp business suit, with a crumpled piece of paper taped to his back: “I’m the TV executive who canceled Firefly.” Brave man! “Kick me” was sort of implied. I found out later that he had a counterpart: someone with a piece of paper taped to his back, reading, “I’m looking for the jerk who canceled Firefly." It's quite possible that there was a matter/antimatter annihilation when those two people finally found each other -- or a heckuva fake fist fight.

By a stroke of luck, one of the CONvergence panels ties into a topic that's been gathering dust for a couple of months now in my blog fodder file: Iron Man 2, or, as the panel description put it, "You know you saw it. What did you think?" Quite a bit of commentary appeared back in May when the film was released regarding the science in this latest installment of the Tony Stark saga, much of it focusing on that pivotal scene in the home laboratory wherein Stark constructs a homemade particle accelerator and uses it to create a new stable element to power the tiny fusion reactor in his chest. The nerdgassers had a field day with that one. But I think the film did a credible job on that score, especially given the tough narrative and run-time constraints it had to contend with. 

Think building a particle accelerator sounds incredible? Bitch, please! This might have been unusual when physicist Michio Kaku, as a teenager, first built a 2.3-million-electron-volt accelerator (called a betatron) in his parents' garage for his high school science fair project because he "wanted to play about with antimatter." Nowadays every aspiring Evil Mad Genius has beams of particles colliding in his or her secret basement lab. Really, all you need is a beam tube with a large vacuum, a bunch of charged particles, powerful magnets to bend the beam, and radio frequency oscillators, or RF cavities, to accelerate the particles.

In one of the best analyses of the science of Iron Man 2, Tony (yes, another Tony!) Saratoga told Popular Mechanics that, based solely on what's depicted on screen, Stark seems to be missing RF cavities (although they could be off-screen), and his magnets don't appear to be large enough for maximum steerage. He took issue with the fact that Stark wouldn't be stupid enough to be in the same room during particle collisions, thereby exposing himself to massive amounts of radiation. And the steerage problem is pretty critical:

"When two cars crash into each other, do all the parts fly off to one side, or do they fly off to both sides?" He asks. "If stuff crashes head on, generally all the stuff that comes out does not all go off to one side. And in that scene, he had two beams colliding head on, where was all the beam coming out? One side. Conservation of momentum was violated. That's a big one. We've been comfortable with that for, oh, 400 years. If you had extra magnets around that beam to focus it, then I could believe it. But just a wrench ain't gonna do it. Sorry."

We are eagerly awaiting the DVD release -- hopefully in time for Christmas! -- just to check out the deleted scenes to see if perhaps there are additional details that didn't make it into the final cut. In the meantime, lots of people pointed to the nagging question of where he's getting the juice to run his homemade accelerator: we're talking output on the order of 10 to 15 megawatts, enough to run over 10,000 homes. "For Stark to run his accelerator, he's gotta make a deal with his power company or he's gotta have some sort of serious power plant in his backyard," Saratoga opines. I beg to differ, and humbly suggest that if Stark can build a tiny fusion reactor to operate his suit, finding the energy to run an accelerator isn't his biggest problem. As I wrote in my own commentary over at Discovery News:

Stark's biggest problem is creating that fictional new element. There have been several new heavy elements created in particle accelerators around the world in the last couple of decades, most recently the discovery of element 117 by a team of American and Russian scientists. But that team managed to synthesize just six atoms of element 117 by smashing together isotopes of calcium and a radioactive element called berkelium (equally rare) -- hardly enough to power Stark's mini fusion reactor.

Furthermore, these heavy elements don't hang around very long; they decay in a matter of milliseconds. What Stark creates is something far more unique than just another new heavy element: he has apparently discovered an element that lies within the so-called "island of stability" in the periodic table. In general the heavier the element created, the shorter its lifetime, because artificially synthesized elements are unstable and decay immediately. But with the most recent discoveries, those lifetimes appear to be lengthening once again, tantalizing physicists with the notion that perhaps there is an as-yet-undiscovered element that is both heavy and stable. And who knows what wondrous properties such an element might possess, and what exciting new applications we might find for it?

Here's where the willing suspension of disbelief comes in. Sure, we don't yet have the capability of producing such an amazing element, and the secret eludes our best scientists. But our best scientists aren't Tony Stark. He's a superhero, and his super power is his big, big brain, which enables him to achieve the kinds of technological advances real-world scientists (to date) can only dream about. It's good to dream. Tony Stark's new element is loosely comparable to the alchemical quest to turn base metals into gold, back when alchemy was considered a legitimate science. He is a modern-day alchemist, and he's in some very good scientific company: Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Tycho Brahe, Thomas Browne, and the forefather of modern physics, Isaac Newton, all dabbled to various extents with alchemy.

Sure, there was a lot of mysticism surrounding the practice of alchemy: it wasn't just about turning base metals like lead into gold. Alchemists throughout the ages also yearned to discover the secret of eternal life via an elixir that cured all diseases. (On a less exalted note, they also searched for a universal solvent.)

The mythical "philosopher's stone" (more of a substance, really) supposedly aided in achieving both objectives. But for all its mystical trappings, alchemy nonetheless served as something of a forerunner to modern-day chemistry: we owe things like ore testing and refining, metalworking, leather tanning, gunpowder, inks and pigments, paints and dyes, ceramics, glass, distillation of liquors and extracts, and much, much more to those early alchemists.

In that historical context, it shouldn't be all that surprising that Isaac Newton also dabbled in alchemical pursuits. The man had an insatiable curiously about how the world works, and an astonishing broad range of scientific interests. There is speculation that Newton's nervous breakdown during this period may have been due to a type of chemical poisoning as a result of his alchemy research. But he didn't broadcast this interest: there were severe penalties invoked for alchemy, including public hanging on a gilded scaffold -- but not for heresy, or witchcraft, as one might expect. Apparently the English Crown was concerned that gold would be horrendously devalued if any geek with a home lab could turn base metal into gold. (The Crown may have had a point.)

Much of Newton's papers relating to this work have been lost, but some notes survived and came to light in 1936 when the collection was auctioned off by Sotheby's, eventually purchased by famed economist John Maynard Keynes. The whole thrilling saga of this unsuspected extracurricular pursuit of one of the greatest minds of science is told in a NOVA special, "Newton's Dark Secrets", with extensive online material publicly available, so I won't recount the whole story here. Interested parties can also peruse the archives of the Chymstry of Isaac Newton Project, including cool videos of elements transmuting into another. And yes, it is possible these days to get gold from lead ores. Certain minerals (galena, cerussite, and anglesite, for example) contain metals like zinc, gold and silver, and all you need to do is pulverize the ore and then use chemical techniques to separate the gold from the lead. But to someone from Newton's day, it would be eerily similar to alchemy.

What does it really take to turn one element into another beyond standard chemical means? Well, if all you change is the number of neutrons, you're just switching isotopes, not changing one element into another. To get a new element, you need to add or subtract protons, thereby changing the atomic number. This can't really be done chemically. But at the turn of the last century, scientists discovered the process of nuclear transmutation: "the conversion of one chemical element or isotope into another, which occurs through nuclear reactions." Usually this occurs naturally in radioactive elements: they emit radiation and gradually decay over time, eventually settling down as a more stable element.

Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy discovered that the radioactive thorium they'd been keeping around the lab was spontaneously turning into radium through the process of nuclear decay. Soddy excitedly proclaimed they'd achieved transmutation, to which Rutherford snapped back, "For christ's sake, Soddy, don't call it transmutation. They'll have our heads off as alchemists." He was speaking figuratively: by 1901, alchemists were no longer summarily executed for heresy, but the field had been so completely discredited that the two men might have lost their scientific reputations -- their metaphorical heads.

It was a kind of transmutation, nonetheless, albeit a slow one. By 1919, Rutherford had succeeded in artificially converting nitrogen into oxygen through a process of nuclear "disintegration" (he still couldn't use the term "transmutation and be taken seriously). And 50 years later (1957, to be exact, in a paper entitled, "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars"), a group of four scientists published a seminal paper detailing how the varying amounts of elements scattered throughout the universe had their origin in stars: specifically, the nucleosynthesis (fusion process) that makes the stars shine. (The heavier elements, we now know, were born in the final throes of massive dying stars known as supernovae: basically anything heavier than iron, which has an atomic number of 26.)The scientists were William Fowler, Margaret Burbidge, Geoffrey Burbidge, and Fred Hoyle, all of whom were immortalized in a bit of waggish verse penned by author Ken Croswell: "Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, Hoyle/ Took the stars and made them toil: /Carbon, copper, gold and lead/ Formed in stars, is what they said."

The modern era of particle accelerators means that scientists can now achieve nuclear transmutation artificially -- in fact, it's considered a promising means of reducing the amount of nuclear waste produced by nuclear power and other industries. And hey, when your old accelerator gets left in the dust by more technologically advanced machines, it's a simple enough matter to convert it into a powerful x-ray laser source, and hire it out to various high-tech industries.

Here's irony for you: it's actually possible, in these accelerators and nuclear reactors, to turn lead (atomic number: 82), for example, into gold (atomic number: 79), although it costs so much to produce the huge amounts of energy required to achieve this, that it's just not worth the effort and expense. Glenn Seaborg did this in 1980, with a slight detour through bismuth, and there have been reports that a team of Soviet physicists at a nuclear facility in Siberia succeeded in doing the same in 1972. Because lead is the more stable element of the two, gold turns into lead much more easily: just leave the stuff unattended in a nuclear reactor for a really long time, and let neutron capture and beta decay do the heavy lifting.

See? Particle physicists really are the modern-day alchemists -- and they achieve these amazing transmutation feats without a hint of mysticism or "magic." Tony Stark is a worthy fictional successor.