Cocktail Party Physics

physics enters the octagon

[NOTE: This post originally appeared at our new home at Scientific American.]

One of the biggest movies of the fall so far is Contagion, which garnered strong reviews -- including from the science blogosphere -- and roared to a $23.1 million opening when it debuted a few weeks ago, easily beating out the other box office contenders. So it's understandable that a few hidden gems slipped under the radar. Case in point: many people missed the sleeper film, Warrior, whose cast of characters includes Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), a.k.a., the Most Badass Physics Teacher E-VAH!

When we first meet Brendan, he doesn't look too tough: his two young daughters are gleefully painting his face during a family birthday party. But he's definitely hands-on in the classroom, instructing his students on the finer points of F=ma by means of a sledgehammer and concrete blocks. And then we see him lifting weights in the garage, and learn he moonlights as a bouncer at a local strip club to help make ends meet, since his salary as a public school teacher isn't sufficient to ward off the looming threat of foreclosure on their modest Pittsburgh house.

At least that's what he tells his wife Tess (House MD's Jennifer Morrison). In reality, he has re-entered the world of amateur mixed martial arts (MMA) to earn a bit of extra cash. A former UFC fighter, he makes quick enough work of the local "weekend warriors" with delusions of being the next Matt Hughes or Randy Couture. No doubt that physics background helps, too: martial arts is all about force, energy transfer, leverage, and momentum. (Perhaps the official motto should be, "Physics can kick your ass!") But when the school board learns of his extracurricular activities, he is suspended without pay for the semester.

Principal: "We can't have one of our teachers cage-fighting in a strip club!"

Brendan: "Technically, it was in the parking lot outside the strip club...."

What's an out of work physics teacher gonna do to save his house and protect his family? He's gonna enter Sparta, the biggest, most brutal MMA competition out there, with a winner-takes-all purse of $5 million. That means coming out of retirement to take on a field of younger, powerful, highly skilled fighters like the undefeated Koba (played by real-life MMA fighter Kurt Angle). And it also pits him against another underdog, Marine Corps war hero Tommy Riordon (Tom Hardy) -- who just happens to be Brendan's estranged brother. I think we can all see where this is going, and if not, the trailer lays it all out for you:

Don't let the lackluster marketing campaign fool you: Warrior isn't just another tired retread of Rocky, despite the working-class background and underdog status of its heroes. For starters, most such films allocate a few days to film climactic fight scenes. But Warrior is so fight-intensive that director Gavin O'Connor spent an entire month filming those sequences. The pacing, cinematography, and realistic choreography of those scenes is astonishing -- it captures the beauty, not just the brutality, of this controversial sport (which, for the record, is nothing like professional wrestling, despite the cheesy trappings and scantily clad ring girls).

Those sequences took their toll on the actors, too. In an interview with Den of Geek, Edgerton revealed that he and co-star Brady trained "literally from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon. It was fighting all morning, eat a massive meal with the stunt guys and then come back to lift massive weights... Because at some point Tom and I knew we had to get our shirts off, stand in a cage... and look like we belonged there."

The film is also grittier, more thoughtful, and starts slow out of the gate, carefully building up the characters and complex, layered relationships, so that by the time the two brothers face off in the Octagon for the inevitable showdown, we understand fully what's at stake, and we're rooting for both of them. It's not a prize purse, or a thirst for macho glory. Each brother is literally fighting for his life, and for the lives of those who depend on him. You desperately want them both to win -- but there can be only one victor. Them's the rules.

So who will it be, the brute or the tactician? In one corner, you've got the pitbull ferocity and merciless efficiency of Tommy, a seething cauldron of pain and rage, who once tore the door off a tank in Iraq to save a fellow Marine, and who dispatches most of his opponents in the first round with a vicious knockout punch. (Announcer #1, musing on Tommy's chances before his first fight: "I dunno, sure, he's tough, but a tank doesn't hit back." Announcer #2: "Yeah, but.... HE TORE THE DOOR OFF A FRICKIN' TANK!".)

In the other corner, there's the steely, calm resolve of Brendan, the high school physics teacher with the big, big heart, who doesn't exactly dazzle with his technical prowess, and seems to lack the killer instinct. (Announcer #1: "Remember him from the UFC?" Announcer #2: "Yeah, I remember how unmemorable he was." He then compares Brandon to a harmless goldfish in a plastic bag.) But he's smart, and patient, and unbelievably tough. He can take a helluva beating and wait for an opening, a small mistake, that he can exploit to gain the upper hand and win -- if he doesn't get killed in the process.

Who wins? Go see the movie! Warrior deserves a bigger audience than it's managed to find so far -- which is why you should all run right out and see it while it's still in theaters. On your way home afterwards, perhaps you can take a moment to consider the plight of our woefully underpaid physics teachers, forced to engage in brutal cage-fights in the parking lots of strip clubs. Then again, is there anything more suspenseful than a physics class where the teacher might at any moment whip out a big ol' can of whup-ass to demonstrate Newtonian mechanics?

Okay, so Brandon is fictional. I know there are tons of hard-working high school physics teachers out there, laboring in the trenches to reach students who honestly can't see what possible use they could have for physics. I invite readers to nominate their favorite, most inspiring physics teacher in the comments, to be featured in a future blog post -- because they deserve the recognition! Right? And hopefully, one day, a pay raise.  

RELATED BLOG POSTS:

FYI, I earned a black belt in jujitsu in 2000, and have been a fan of MMA since the early days of the UFC, although I don't practice anymore, nor do I follow the sport religiously. But I do write about it from time to time, particularly on the underlying science. Here's some of those prior posts:

"Band of Brothers" (3 Quarks Daily)

"Fighting the Forces"

"It's Just a Flesh Wound"

"Science Hits the Streets"

 

is it cold in here?

[Originally posted at our new home at Scientific American.]

Last week, Linda Henneberg, a young science communication intern at CERN in Switzerland -- best known these days as the home of the Large Hadron Collider -- wrote a blog post about her experiences at the laboratory as both a woman and a non-PhD physicist. Haltingly, timidly, even a bit apologetically, she confessed, "I’ve never felt more constantly objectified, hit on, and creeped on than while at CERN.

She was careful to say that she has not encountered blatant sexism of the most egregious sort, although she has endured unwelcome awkward flirting: a wink and a hand on the knee, lame attempts at playing "footsie" with her under the table during meetings, and of course, tacky double entendres. Even then, she cut the guys a lot of slack; it's just social awkwardness, she rationalized, not a malicious attempt to make her feel uncomfortable -- and yet, she does feel uncomfortable. (There may also be cultural factors at play, given the international diversity at CERN.)

What she found equally bothersome is that because she's a woman in education, not physics research, she simply isn't taken seriously by her male colleagues at CERN, who apparently treat her with amiable condescension. Henneberg holds an undergraduate degree is in physics and a graduate degree in science communication, yet "[P]eople here, men especially, treat me like some sort of novelty item. Like because I am not a physicist, I have nothing substantive to contribute to CERN, but it’s cute that I try."

There's a phrase for what Linda Henneberg is experiencing: it's called a "chilly climate," and it describes not just overt sexism or sexual harassment -- which most people agree are unacceptable, at least in theory -- but the myriad unconscious diminishing behaviors that seem to proliferate in any male-dominated environment, whether it be a classroom, a boardroom, an Internet chat room, World of Warcraft, or an international physics laboratory.

The Australian band Tripod immortalized this phenomenon with their satirical tune, "Hot Girl in the Comic Shop" (video at end of post), poking fun at the social awkwardness and ridiculous over-reaction of nerdy comic book guys at the sudden appearance of a girl in their male-dominated realm.

What constitutes "chilling" behavior? A teacher calls on the boys in class more than the girls. A CEO ignores what a woman says in a meeting but listens intently when a man makes the exact same point. A conference emcee mentions a female speaker's appearance rather than (or in addition to) her accomplishments, but feels no need to comment on the appearance of male speakers. A guy at an atheist/skeptics meeting hits on a young woman in an elevator at 4 AM, ignoring the fact that she just spent the evening talking about how she hates being objectified at such gatherings.

All these sorts of things seem tiny and insignificant by themselves, but they add up, and this produces a cumulative "chilling" effect that makes women feel unwelcome, like they don't belong. That's a "chilly climate." The effect is subtle; sometimes we're not even consciously aware of it. We just have that nagging feeling of being "less than," unable to put our finger on why we feel that way.

Here's some good news for Henneberg: in the physics community, the "chilly climate" is a widely recognized concern (yes, even at CERN), with many programs in place to improve working environments for women in physics. The American Physical Society has a site visits program and maintains a "Best Practices" document for academic departments, for example, and in 2007 released a gender equity report (PDF) summarizing the progress made to date and offering recommendations for future improvements. That's not to say they've solved the problem: the number of women physicists is still less than 20%, one of the worst ratios in the sciences, along with engineering and mathematics. But it's progress, nonetheless.

With all the other trouble in the world, why should we care about this? It's because those climate issues chase many women out of the hard sciences -- and indeed, out of any male-dominated community. In March, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, conducted an NSF-funded study on the retention (or lack thereof) of women in engineering. Nearly half of the women surveyed who left engineering said they did so because of negative working conditions, lack of advancement or low salary, and one in three left because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture. Only one in four left to spend more time with family -- the usual excuse that gets trotted out when folks try to explain away the low numbers of women in such fields.

The message is clear: if you want to attract women to your community, the first step is to make sure they feel welcome.  

Chill, Baby, Chill

The term "chilly climate" was coined back in 1982 by feminist icon Bernice Sandler, now a senior scholar at the Women's Research and Education Institute in Washington, DC; an updated 2005 paper addressing the chilly climate in the classroom can be found here (PDF). For those who might not have heard of Sandler, she's known as the "godmother of Title IX," having played a pivotal role in the passage of that law prohibiting gender discrimination in education, and she filed the first charges of gender discrimination in the 1970s against more than 250 institutions -- at a time when such anti-discrimination laws simply didn't exist.

I had the honor of moderating a panel discussion back in June for the National Coalition of Girls' Schools that included Sandler. Honestly? I was expecting a stern, forceful Caped Crusader sort of person, and instead encountered a charming gray-haired soft-spoken woman who shares my penchant for rich jewel toned clothing (check out that awesome jacket in the photot -- WANT!), and who insisted I call her "Bunny." Yet, in her own quiet way, she is every bit as formidable as the Caped Crusader persona in my head -- an iron hand in a velvet glove.

Sandler told me she first encountered the chilly climate for women as a feminist activist in the 1970s, sitting in a policy meeting in which she noticed that the few token women in the room were constantly being interrupted by the men. She decided to perform her own little social experiment, carefully keeping count of the number of times both men and women in the meeting were interrupted. The results: women were interrupted (invariably by men) at least three times more often than the men.

Sandler shared her results with her male colleagues, who were predictably defensive, claiming she must have miscounted or been biased in some way because of course they would never do such a thing. But the next day, when the meeting resumed, the men were far more careful not to interrupt when the women were speaking. Their awareness of the problem altered the way they treated the women in the meeting, even though they denied the problem existed. And Sandler realized, "Oh -- this is changeable behavior." She's been working to change those behaviors ever since.

I thought of Sandler as I was preparing for The Amaz!ing Meeting (TAM9) in Las Vegas last week, where I was slated to give a light-hearted talk on how changing concepts of the universe have been reflected in popular culture. For the uninitiated, TAM is an annual conference organized by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), and has grown from humble beginnings into the biggest gathering of atheists and skeptics in the country. Science and skepticism are natural allies, so as a science writer, I am tangentially involved with that community, and I've met some great people within it. And yet -- I almost didn't go this year. Why? One word: "Elevatorgate."  

The Elevator Pitch

For the two people in the science blogosphere who missed it, here's what happened. Rebecca Watson, founder of the Skepchick website and co-host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, put up a "vlog" describing her recent trip to attend a meeting of atheists in Dublin, Ireland, where she was speaking on (of all things) gender issues in the skeptical community. (Full disclosure: I know Watson slightly, and like her, although we're not BFFs; I mean, we're not braiding each other's hair every Saturday night.)

Towards the end of the video, she casually related her discomfort at being approached in an elevator at 4 AM by an intoxicated Irish guy, who asked her back to his room "for coffee." Watson wasn't hysterical, or raving, or even angry. (You can see for yourself here. It starts at the 4:30 mark.) She simply said, "Look, guys -- don't do that. It makes me very uncomfortable," and briefly outlined the reasons why.

You'd think she'd castrated the poor guy on tape and held up his severed member as a trophy, the way some people over-reacted. I won't bother rehashing the various arguments, or my own thoughts on the matter, which have already been well expressed by John Rennie, Lindsey Beyerstein, Isis Scientist, the pseudonymous "Ryawesome" (who wins the prize for Most Colorfully Profane blog post title: "Frankly, atheists, skeptics, you're embarrassing as fuck"), and Watson herself. (Watson is also featured in this week's Point of Inquiry podcast.) Suffice to say, emotions were running high, and I waded through the ensuing comment threads with a growing sense of dismay, then anger, then outright revulsion at many of the opinions being expressed.

Watson was vilified for over-reacting, for being a diva, a "media-whore," an attention-monger, a bitch, a man-hating feminazi, and a troublemaker who was deflecting attention away from far more important issues. She was accused of being anti-sex (as if), calling all men rapists (she did not), and was threatened with sexual assault at the upcoming TAM "to give you something to complain about." (Being threatened with rape is not a new experience for Watson, alas.)

Those who spoke up and came to her defense received similar treatment -- including a couple of women who had survived sexual assaults. I was tempted to make a bingo card based on Derailing for Dummies and start checking off each hopelessly cliched argument designed to protect those with privilege from having to acknowledge the problem.

It pretty much mirrored every Internet comment thread (follow that link for a terrific comic by Gabby Schulz) that ensues whenever a woman, however diplomatically, dares to raise the issue of sexist behavior, with one crucial difference: Watson was being attacked by members of her own community, who prided themselves on their rationality and critical thinking -- in short, by the very people who should have had her back.

Here is the message being sent to the women skeptics and atheists say they want to join their ranks: "If an atheist/skeptic man behaves boorishly toward you, or refuses to respect your boundaries, whether social or sexual, and you have the gall to state firmly that this is not okay, you will be publicly pilloried, ridiculed for being hysterical, called a man-hating feminazi (or worse), and have your concerns belittled and dismissed."

Why should I, or any woman, want to be part of that community?

Let me be clear: I like men, and enjoy their company. I write about physics for a living, and earned a black belt in jujitsu by training in a mostly all-male dojo in Brooklyn back when I still lived in New York City. Plus I spent the last two years working to bridge the gap between science and Hollywood (still very much a patriarchy, especially when it comes to film). I am very comfortable in male-dominated environments, and accustomed to being the only woman in the room. And yet I have had far more negative experiences with men in the skeptic/atheist community than anywhere else.

Case in point: When I spoke two years ago at TAM7, I was flooded afterwards with friend requests on Facebook from the skeptical community. It was initially kind of gratifying, and I pretty much accepted them all, provided they weren't using obvious pseudonyms. Most of my interactions on Facebook have been positive, but there have been a dozen or so instances over the last two years where a man has become obnoxious, offensive, overbearing, overly flirtatious, or just plain creepy about personal boundaries, forcing me to defriend him. With one exception, they were all from the skeptic/atheist community. I now rarely accept Facebook friend requests from skeptic/atheist men. No, it isn't "fair." But even though 98% of them are probably very nice guys, I just don't have the time to comb through each profile, trying to ferret out clues as to who is most likely to tweak out on me unexpectedly.

So believe me when I tell you that the skeptic/atheist community has a serious problem when it comes to creating a welcoming environment for women. The APS lists causes of concern in an academic department that are indicative of a chilly climate. Guess what tops the list? "Denial that such issues do matter to people." And further down the list: "Derogatory comments about female faculty to reduce their ability to bring about change. Branding faculty as 'difficult' or 'troublemaker.'"

Manifesto for Change

It doesn't have to be this way; as Sandler discovered, this is changeable behavior. That's why I'm offering a Manifesto for Change, and I challenge those in the skeptic/atheist community to implement its principles.

(1) Ladies: even though you might not feel 100% welcome, grit your teeth and show up anyway, because there is power in numbers. Studies have shown that these chilling effects start to dissipate as communities approach 50/50 gender ratios. I showed up anyway, and I'm glad I did, because I could see firsthand how much has changed since I last attended TAM. TAM9 had markedly more women in the audience (around 40%), and half the speakers were women. I was the only woman speaker at TAM7 two years ago. That is tremendous progress in a very short time, and the willingness of Watson and her fellow "skepchicks" to show up, speak out, and endure the inevitable slings and arrows cast their way played a key role in making it happen.

(2) There are also women out there who do not believe this is an issue because they haven't personally experienced it, or have experienced things they feel are far worse. Please do not diminish the experiences and emotions of your sisters in skepticism. Remain open to the possibility that you, too, might be unconsciously influenced by cultural baggage.

A few years ago, Bernice Sandler realized that she had a bad habit of checking her watch during talks or panel discussions -- but she only checked her watch when women were speaking. That's how deeply ingrained these cultural attitudes can be: even a woman like Sandler, who has spent her career fighting for gender equality, can fall victim to the subtle assumption that men's voices are more valuable than those of women. She recognized her behavior, and actively worked to change it: "Now I only check my watch when I'm speaking." Little things matter.

(3) Foster top-down change. Leadership, especially male leadership, needs to set the tone for what is and is not acceptable in a community. The 2007 APS report quotes Virginia Tech's Patricia Hyer on this: "The voices of male heads ... can carry great weight in moving forward an institutional change agenda, especially if they use their access to institutional leaders and personal prestige to make the case for gender equity." (Richard Dawkins, are you listening?)

JREF president DJ Grothe did just that when, a few days before TAM9, he openly addressed the rift caused by "Elevatorgate" and made it clear that unwanted sexual advances or other harassing behavior were unacceptable, and grounds for being ejected from the conference. Grothe also deserves credit for making diversity a priority in his selection of speakers and topic. That's the mark of a true leader, and the JREF is lucky to have him. Kudos, also, to Big Name skeptics like Phil Plait, PZ Myers, Josh Rosenau, Greg Laden and others who spoke up eloquently in support of Watson.

(4) Foster bottom-up change. Men at the grassroots level need to reinforce the leadership position and make it clear to their peers that such behavior is unacceptable. As former APS president Judy Franz said in the 2007 APS report, "If you make all your women ... feel more valued by your speech and actions ... and if you publicly chastise those that make demeaning or snide comments, you will find the rewards are great."

Guys, why wouldn't you do this for people you claim to value and respect? These women are smart, sassy, strong, and yes, sexy. They're amazing. And they're your sisters in arms. It's time to step up and start acting like brothers. The next time you see a guy acting like a jerk around a woman at a skeptic/atheist gathering, call him out: "Dude. Not cool. She's not the hot girl in the comic shop, you know." Feel free to quote The Social Network: "You're going to go through life thinking girls don't like you cuz you're a nerd, when really it's because you're an asshole."

If a woman calls you out on your behavior, instead of getting angry and defensive, just say, "Wow, I never thought of it like that. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. It wasn't intentional." Cop to the behavior, and we can all move on. Or just be like that anonymous guy at Watson's TAM9 quiz show event; as Watson took the stage, he shouted, "WE RESPECT WOMEN'S VOICES SO HARD!"

Follow the manifesto, and you will continue to see your community change for the better as more and more women (and other under-represented groups as well, because these principles can be broadly applied) feel welcome in your midst. And who knows? Maybe at next year's TAM, Rebecca Watson will finally get the public apology she so richly deserves.

 

in memorium: athanasius kircher

There's a lot of celebration, a lot of sorrowful remembrance, a lot of analysis and political posturing, a lot of heated opinion, and far too much self-righteous judgement being tossed around today in light of last night's bombshell announcement. Emotions are running high all over, just like they did nearly ten years ago. I, too, have a lot of conflicting emotions. But mostly, I am overwhelmed with the surging onset of buried memories of one of the most truly horrifying days of my life -- a day spent weeping for hours on end as details slowly began to emerge. (I believe Method Actors refer to this phenomenon as "emotional memories." It's powerful stuff.)

I have never written about that day; it was just too painful. I write about it with great difficulty now, as snapshot memories keep replaying in my head despite my best efforts to block them. These are memories I share with countless others. There is the shock, horror, anxiety and dread over the safety of friends; the relief for those who survived -- and the grief for those who did not. There was the eerie quiet that descended on Washington DC as the entire city shut down -- a quiet broken only by the sound of military helicopters flying overhead. Then there are the memories of the aftermath: of exhausted, emotionally numbed friends pulling double (sometimes triple) shifts in the hospitals to sift through the gooey mess of mangled body parts in hopes of finding some clue to identification; of the thick cloud of smoke that hung over NYC, and the stench of decaying flesh that wafted from Manhattan deep into the outer boroughs for months after the tragedy. And of course, there was funeral after funeral after funeral. (One of my jujitsu instructors went to a funeral nearly every day for two solid months -- he had many close friends in the police and fire departments.)

So I am not feeling especially celebratory, or triumphant, nor do I feel "closure" -- although I totally understand why some people might justifiably have those feelings. Bin Laden was a symbol, the "face" of terrorism for many Americans, and fairly or not, whether we like it or not, in that respect, his death has a symbolic meaning. But as many others have said, it doesn't change the harsh reality of the last decade. It won't bring back those we lost, or wipe away the horror of that day, or undo the 10 years of war and accompanying limitations on civil rights that followed; we're still living in the same world as yesterday.

Sean very wisely writes about letting people have their moment, to react in the myriad ways they need to react, based on their own personal framework -- because naturally we can't help but view it through our own individual lens. And I agree. But I guess I'd rather put those ugly memories aside and celebrate human triumph, curiosity and exploration instead -- as much a part of our world today as terror -- because that's one of many reasons we persevere.

As it happens, today is also the birthday of Athanasius Kircher, a humble 17th century Jesuit scholar/priest who deserves to be rescued from relative obscurity. (I mentioned him in a prior post a few years ago, from which part of this has been adapted.) For awhile he had his very own eponymous society, and in 2002, New York University sponsored an entire symposium in his honor. There's also a permanent exhibit on Kircher lurking somewhere in archives of the Museum of Jurassic Technology here in Los Angeles.

Why do I love Kircher so much? His scientific reputation was a bit sketchy, in that he had a tendency to blend "traditional Biblical historicism and the emerging secular scientific theory of knowledge." While he published on magnetism, astronomy, optics, archaeology and linguistics (including Egyptian hieroglyphics), he also wrote treatises on the Tower of Babel and Noah's Ark. Sure, he conducted scientifically sound experiments, including one that essentially disproved Johannes Kepler's speculation that the sun was a giant magnet whose rotation around its axis caused the earth and planets to stay in their orbits. But he also took what he learned from that investigation and used it to invent a "magnetic oracle," a divination device that he dubbed "magnetic hydromancy."

Still, one certainly can't doubt the man's passion for scientific inquiry, nor his boundless curiosity about how the world works -- and that's where I find a kindred spirit. Even while tending to the sick when the bubonic plague hit Rome in 1656, he still took time to observe micro-organisms under a microscope in hopes of finding a cure. He didn't find one, but he did advance a germ theory of disease that was way ahead of the medical orthodoxy of his day.

Fans of Charles Babbage, take note: Kircher came up with his own machine for answering mathematical problems, although it was far from perfect, in that it required memorizing long poems in Latin in order to perform the most elementary functions, according to Michael John Gorman of Stanford University, one of the emerging scholars who are studying this fascinating personage. Fortunately there was also a cheat sheet for those with faulty memories: an 850-page instruction manual that makes the average Microsoft User's Manual seem like a model of concise clarity by comparison.

And what an adventurous life the man had -- a regular Indiana Jones of the 1600s. He skirted death on numerous occasions, beginning with a boyhood leg injury that turned gangrenous -- which, he claimed, was miraculously healed by the Virgin Mary when he visited one of her shrines while at seminary. (She also threw in healing of a herniated disc for no extra charge.) He was shipwrecked on an island while traveling to Austria, and was nearly hung by overly-ardent Protestant cavalrymen on another of his many travels. Just before Adolph, the Protestant king of Sweden, invaded Franconia and Wurzburg, Kircher fled his teaching post at a college in the latter town and eventually landed in Rome.

For his last great adventure, he traveled to southern Italy, Sicily and Malta, where he witnessed the eruption of Aetna and Stromboli, and even had himself lowered into the active crater at Vesuvius. Lowered... himself... into... an... active... volcano. The A-Man had some serious cojones. Naturally, the experience reminded him of eternal damnation: "The whole area was lit up by the fires, and the glowing sulphur and bitumen produced a intolerable vapor. It was just like hell, only lacking the demons to complete the picture."

Perhaps realizing he'd never top that experience, Kircher soon retired to a quieter life of scholarly contemplation, but he was just as prolific in his writing as his wandering, producing 11 full-length books in 20 years. Oh yes, he also established his own museum of strange artifacts (including a stuffed aardvark and an automaton) in Rome, one of the earliest recorded cabinets of curiosities. As one historian describes him:

The objects Kircher made were another sign of his ever-active curiosity and imagination; he never tired of figuring out how things worked or of designing some practical application of what he learned. One of his designs was for a projector that used candlepower to cast images from glass plates onto a wall.

He was interested in sound and music. Statues in his museum seemed to talk as he devised horns and tubing to bring street noise through the walls and out of the statues' mouths. The porter who kept the front door to the Roman College was able to speak to Kircher through tubes to let him know when visitors were waiting to see his museum. He also devised instruments that used water or wind power to create music. In one fanciful design, a keyboard extended back to a series of boxes. The keys had pins at their tips, under which were tails of cats arranged according to the pitch of their meows. Hitting a key would produce harmonized howling. There is no evidence that Kircher ever actually made such an instrument.

He died in 1680. Athanasius Kircher -- a manly man of science, and just enough of a mystic to keep things interesting. He probably endured more hardship and suffering than most of can even begin to imagine, but he let his science and his curiosity be the things that defined him.

 

and the oscar goes to....

The Oscars are coming! The Oscars are coming! And actually, the awards for technical achievement have already been made. But what about the science in the actual films? It just so happens that 2010 was a pretty decent year for slyly incorporating a smidgen of physics into the storyline. Here are Jen-Luc Piquant's picks for the 2011 Physics Oscars:

Best Depiction of Equivalence Principle: Inception.

A cognitive psychologist pal didn't care for this film because, she says, "Inception (planting an idea in someone's mind and making them think they thought of it) is actually incredibly easy." So the willing suspension of disbelief just wasn't happening for her, and probably not for lots of others with similar background. But for those of us who are keen on physics, many of the dream sequences in Inception rocked -- especially those that gave a nod to Einstein's famous equivalence principle. A quick recap: Acceleration is motion in which either an object’s speed or direction (that is, its velocity) changes. Mathematically, acceleration and gravity are equivalent, just like energy and mass. If you're riding in the elevator and someone cuts the cable, you'll go into free fall. It will feel as if you were weightless as you float inside the elevator. Since both you and the elevator are falling at the same rate, you won’t be able to feel gravity’s pull. So from your limited perspective, you might conclude (erroneously) that gravity had inexplicably disappeared. The reverse happens when you accelerate in a car: you feel a force pushing you into you seat. If you can feel gravity’s influence, you can conclude that he is accelerating. And that apparent weightlessness is what's depicted in this amazing scene -- set in an elevator, natch! -- in Inception:

Added bonus: that fight scene that takes place in a rotating hotel hallway because -- at the next level up -- the van containing the dreamers is rolling down an embankment (video embedding has been disabled but you can see the video here). That is right up there with Carrie Ann Moss trying to put out a raging fire in zero gravity in Red Planet (2000); every time she tried to use the fire extinguisher, the recoil would send her hurtling backwards until she hit the other end of the space craft. And speaking of recoil action:

Best Equal and Opposite Reaction: True Grit.

There were a couple of cool "found physics" moments in True Grit. One occurs when Rooster Cogburn makes an impressive shot from a cliff into the valley to save LeBoeuf's Texas Ranger hide: there is a slight delay from when we hear the shot (from our/Cogburn's vantage point) to when the bullet hits its mark.  And a few scenes later, Mattie gets off her own rifle shot, except she's not big enough to absorb the recoil action and gets knocked backward something fierce. Rifle recoil is a classic example of conservation of momentum, also known as Newton's Third Law of Motion. If momentum is conserved, then for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That is, if one object exerts a force on another for a given amount of time, the second object reacts by exerting an equal but opposite force for the same amount of time. (Rockets work on this principle, too.)

Best Scene with a Particle Accelerator: Iron Man 2.

Here we honor that pivotal scene in the home laboratory wherein Tony Stark constructs a homemade particle accelerator and uses it to create a new stable element to power the tiny fusion reactor in his chest. (I blogged extensively about this last summer.) Yes, it's technically possible to build one's own particle accelerator: 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. Sure, you could nitpick the science in this scene (and some folks did): there aren't enough RF cavities, the magnets are too small to steer the beam effectively, and Stark is apparently impervious to the massive amounts of radiation that would be produced doing such an experiment.

That said, this is, indeed, how new heavy elements have been 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. It's harder than it looks: those experiments produced a measly six atoms of element 117 by smashing together isotopes of calcium and a radioactive element called berkelium. And these heavy elements don't hang around very long; they decay in a matter of milliseconds. What Stark creates is something far more unique: he has 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.

Best Nod to Conservation of Mass: TRON Legacy.

The basic premise of TRON Legacy can be summed up quite succinctly: guy gets stuck in a computer and has to fight his way out. But how to address the thorny issue of how Flynn Pere et Fils get into the computer in the first place? And how do you get them back out? If you look very carefully, you'll see a flash of light as Sam Flynn gets zapped into the game, and canisters near the apparatus, containing various elements necessary to rebuild a human body. That's there because the filmmakers wanted to at least give a nod to the time-honored principle of conservation of mass: matter just doesn’t disappear into nothingness, and energy doesn’t spring out of nowhere; energy and mass change into each other.

Einstein summed up this principle in his most famous equation, E=mc². “E” is energy, balanced against “m” for mass, while “c²” is the exchange rate between them: the square of the speed of light. This is a very large number, which explains why a small amount of matter can produce a tremendous amount of energy, far more than a normal chemical reaction. The average human body contains roughly 10²⁸ atoms.  Once again, you could nitpick. Assuming Sam Flynn weighs roughly 180 pounds, converting most of her body mass into energy on such a short time scale would release the radiation equivalent of more than one thousand 1-megaton hydrogen bombs. This would pose a serious problem for anyone who happens to be in the vicinity during the transformation; it's amazing the arcade survived. But we'll just let that one slide, because it's just a movie -- not a documentary.

What about getting Sam out of the computer and back into the real world. Fortunately, Einstein’s equation works both ways. Energy can also convert into mass (cf. the creation of new elements in particle accelerators portrayed in Iron Man 2), although such a feat is much more difficult. Unlike nuclear decay, it doesn’t occur naturally, because it requires large amounts of energy at very high temperatures. The more mass an object has, the more energy that is required to produce it. It would take a huge influx of energy to reverse Sam’s transformation: roughly, enough wattage to power 150 million American homes for a year.  If we're going to quibble further, while that equation technically allows for conversion in either direction, the exchange rate favors mass-to-energy conversions, which release heat as part of the spectrum of emitted radiation. A certain amount of the heat energy produced will dissipate and be lost. If the laws of thermodynamics are strictly followed, some small portion of Sam Flynn’s original mass should be lost forever -- hopefully nothing he'll miss!

Best Sport Physics: The Black Swan.

Okay, I admit this is really just an excuse to highlight The Black Swan, one of my favorite films from last year -- although Easy A probably takes top honors. But there's a lot of basic physics involved in ballet, like conservation of angular momentum. The way a dancer holds his or her body can affect the speed of rotation. Once in the air, a dancer controls his or her rotation speed by closing or opening the body position -- similar to how ice skaters perform their jumps and spins. A closed position, with the arms and legs pulled in tight against the body, decreases resistance and increases rotation speeds. On the other hand, an open position, in which the arms and legs are allowed to swing away from the body, causes the speed of rotation to decrease. That's why dancers tighten their body positions when performing twists or jump turns.

You could almost write a book on the physics of dance, and one person did. Physics professor Kenneth Laws has spent years studying the physics of dance, and even teaches a class on the subject, covering such topics as maintaining balance, rate of turn, "generating appropriate forces against the floor for initiating traveling movements or pirouettes, controlling the timing and height of jumps, and understanding the way dancers create illusions of accomplishing the impossible, such as the "floating illusion" in the grand jete."

So those are Jen-Luc's picks for this year's Physics Oscars. Feel free to suggest more in the comments, and not just for physics either.

framing the questions

This semester, I'm teaching a class I haven't taught before: Writing Research Papers (I know: why didn't my students learn that in high school? That's another post.) I'm loving it because I've always enjoyed research and it makes me go back and think about the fundamental methods and questions of the activity. What do you look for in a fishing trip? How do you find reliable sources? How can you tell if a source is or isn't reliable? How do you formulate your questions? What makes a good hypothesis or thesis? How do you interpret data? How do you recognize your own biases? And one of the most important questions (at least I think so): how do you frame both your questions and your answer?

These questions apply to all kinds of research, whether what you're looking at is literary, historical, social, psychological, or hard science data and sources. Research, even when all you're doing is a review of the topic, ends up with some kind of focused point: here's what the trends are, here's what we know, here's what seems to be an answer to these questions, here are the caveats, here's what we don't know. Part of your answer always depends on what question(s) you ask. It's crucial to keep an open mind, no matter what you're researching. Very often, on the way to looking for one answer, you find one you didn't expect, or the answer to a question you hadn't thought to ask. This is why I've always loved poking around in libraries and the time I've spent in school and college labs, even running experiments that already had answers. It's the process as much as the product that's so enjoyable and instructive.

 I was reminded of the importance of recognizing personal and cultural biases twice this week. One of the papers my students are working on is a comparison of the lives and work of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My students are predominantly African-American and, like me, hold both figures in high esteem. I warned them that when they went fishing, they were likely to find events in both men's lives that painted them in a less-than-rosy glow. No matter what great things we might do, we're all human, and subject to human weaknesses. For some, this was a new thought, and for many it was troubling. It always is to find your heroes have clay feet. But it's an important step to take in intellectual growth. Can you still admire the accomplishments of someone, even after you discover they're not as saintly as you thought? Which matters more?

The other reminder was this article on WebMD, posted by a Facebook friend, that explains the findings of a study of the correlation between working mothers and childhood BMI. I'm not even going to go into what a crap standard BMI is as a measure of health. That's a topic for another post too. What jolted me about this article was the way the question had been framed: "Maternal Employment, Work Schedules, and Children’s Body Mass Index" [emphasis mine]. Really, I thought we were over this "blame mothers for everything that goes wrong with kids," but apparently this bias persists even in research women do. In the past, mothers have shouldered the blame for their children's schizophrenia, anorexia, and alcoholism, even adult sexual dysfunction. It's still a current motif (PDF) in autism treatment and studies.

The major problem with this idea, especially in late 20th and early 21st century developed countries is that it ignores the social changes in child rearing that have occurred with women entering the workforce. Women are no longer the sole caregivers for children or primarily responsible for such chores as cooking meals or grocery shopping, both of which figure in what children eat. Why, then, were father's activities and timetables not included in this study? Why are we not asking how having both parents working and the work schedules that regularly hinder both parents from spending more time with their children affect what children eat? Because, as a culture, we are still deeply ambivalent about women in the workforce and still see them as children's primary caregivers. Although 64-78% of mothers are in the workforce full time, the continuing lack of salary parity, number of women CEOs, dearth of trustworthy child care provisions and paid maternity leave are evidence that our society as a whole does not really value women's presence in the workforce (PDF).

  There are, of course, other reasons for these problems, but a bias against women (and their ability to raise a family and work outside the home, one that does not exist for men) is certainly the main contender, and that bias, like racism, is just as often unconscious and shared by the people who are its objects, including female researchers. In this case, there are studies that look at the involvement of both parents in their children's eating habits (in Germany) and many more on women's influence, but none that I could find that look at only the effect of paternal employment on children's eating habits and obesity. Google, in fact, kept asking me if I meant "parental" instead of "paternal." It's not that the question isn't important, but that the other side of the question, or the collective question needs to be asked too. In fact, another study from the University of Maryland discovered "that paternal employment plays a significant role as well." In the WebMD study, we have what's called a selection bias; the researcher's have chosen to study only part of the group which may be a causal factor.

But the way the study is reported—its framing—is also part of the problem; it creates a perception that women are solely responsible for children's eating habits or nutrition, which clearly isn't the case. The WebMD article says,

Bottom line: The longer a mom's employment — whether she's toiling at a regular 9-to-5 job or works irregular hours — the more likely her child is to gain more weight than is healthy.

"This is not a reason for moms to feel guilty," Morrissey tells WebMD. ''It’s not maternal employment per se that's the issue. It's an underlying environmental factor that leads to this association."

What that factor (or factors) is has yet to be uncovered, she says.

The way this is phrased, it's almost impossible for moms to not take home the message that it's their fault if their kid is fat. Until that underlying environmental factor is pinpointed, we have only the correlation of maternal employment and increasing obesity, about which we can do very little. Leaving father's out of this equation reflects and exacerbates a bias already present in the culture.

Biases exist in every research study, in every discipline. The kinds of questions we ask and how we ask them will reveal those biases if we're aware and thorough enough to examine them honestly. The best we can do is try to control for them and acknowledge them. And people communicating those results to the general public need to be careful about not perpetuating their own biases too. It's not only our heroes who have clay feet; we do too.

i like coffee, i like tea

The Spousal Unit gave a mind-bendingly good -- and incredibly persuasive -- talk on Sunday to the Caltech Skeptics Society on "Particles and People," outlining the term he coined recently to describe his intriguing new science-based worldview: dysteleological physicalism. Google it today! How persuasive was he? Let's just say Jen-Luc Piquant had a "Saul on the Road to Tarsus" experience and will be seeking to convince her fellow avatars across Cyberspace to embrace supervenience (it's akin to my recent blog post on introducing the physics concept of duality into our public discourse). And I was reminded all over again why I fell for the guy in the first place. He's smart, articulate, witty, charming, and always uses coasters to avoid staining the coffee table.

Trust me, that last one can be a deal-breaker if you're the Coaster Queen. I've amassed quite the collection of novelty coasters over the years; my current faves are tumbled marble squares imprinted with classic winery labels. And now I covet my very own set of "interactive coasters," after reading about them in Technology Review. A couple of postdocs at Newcastle University came up with the idea after attending a science conference in Germany and noticing far too many people sitting in isolated groups, not interacting. (They should have hung out with the science writing contingent. Those people know how to party.) Apparently there's been at least one attempt at designing "interactive badges" at conferences as an icebreaking strategy, but users understandably balked at entering their personal information.

The coaster scheme invented by Tom Bartindale and Jack Weeden involves a partially transparent "smart bar" surface, with an infrared light source, a camera and a projector just underneath. So the bar surface can detect when one of the special coasters is placed on the bar, and automatically assigns that coaster a gender and sexual preference. Now the coaster has been activated -- evidenced by a halo around it created by the projector that displays lines of text -- and it will try to "chat up" any nearby coasters with a series of very bad pick up lines. ("Are you a parking ticket? Because you've got 'fine' written all over you.") Apparently Bartindale and Weeden Googled "bad chat-up lines" for material. They have a sense of humor. (Why yes, there's a list of bad physics pickup lines, many of which are very bad indeed: "What's your resonance frequency?") The receiving coaster then rates the pick-up line; if the sending coaster scores badly, the receiving coaster will refuse to talk to it anymore. Nice to see these guys programmed rejection into their science experiment. At least the rejected coaster doesn't get a drink tossed in its face.

Why am I such a fan of coasters? Probably because a tiny part of me dies inside whenever I see a nice tabletop permanently stained with wine rings -- or, for that matter, coffee rings. (Image at right by Michael Naples, from his A Painting a Day blog.) On the upside, turns out there's some interesting physics going on with the latter.

I wrote a couple of blog posts back in November about nifty papers presented at the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting, but never got around to blogging about one of the coolest: three physicists who have been studying the physics of coffee ring formation (a.k.a. "the coffee ring effect") with an eye towards developing useful tools for "microphysics" -- a rather vague term that seems to incorporate such areas as industrial coatings, electronic fabrication, and drug development.

Fundamentally these are all deposition processes. So it all comes down to being able to control particles suspended in fluids at tiny size scales to ensure -- if we're talking about coatings, for example -- that they are deposited uniformly across a given surface. And as any physicist working in this area can tell you, that's easier said than done. I mean, how complicated can coffee rings be, really? The answer is, not very, if all you care about is not staining the table.

But if you're trying to understand what's going on at the micro-level so well that you can make the micro-droplets do whatever you want -- well, then it gets complicated, because you're dealing with a complex system. To figure out what causes those coffee stains, you need (a) a scanning electron microscope, and (b) high-performance computers capable of doing some pretty advanced mathematical modeling (or you've got to be pretty fast with a pencil and paper). Those were the tools of Shreyas Mandre (Brown University), Ning Wu (Colorado School of Mines), and L. Mahadevan and Joanna Aizenberg, both from Harvard. They used an SEM to study microscopic glass particles in a solution in the lab, and combined those findings with mathematical models to describe characteristics of the ring patterns that formed. What did they find?

The team found that during ring deposition, a particle layer of uniform thickness is deposited if the concentration is above a certain threshold. Below that threshold the deposits form non-uniform bands. The threshold is formed because evaporation at the solid-liquid interface of the rim occurs faster than a replenishing flow of water from the center of the droplet can replace the evaporating rim fluid. This leaves the particles on the rim high, dry -- and deposited.

Having trouble visualizing it? Go on, you folks who don't use coasters: pick up your coffee mug and check the inevitable ring pattern left behind. Now wait until the liquid has evaporated and note the darker ring around the perimeter. It's darker because the particles in that ring are much more concentrated than those in the center.

The effect occurs with other liquids too, which means it might be possible to use that telltale ring as a disease marker in biosensing, using blood, salive or other bodily fluids -- which contain microscale and nanoscale molecules or particles that can be indicators of disease (or lack thereof). Being able to control the effect at such small scales would mean being able to pack thousands of biosensors on a single lab-on-a-chip, possibly even testing for multiple diseases at once. And since the technique relies on the natural process of evaporation, there's fewer complicating factors to deal with, like electrical power sources or moving parts.

Six months before the DFD meeting (that would be May 2010), PhysOrg.com ran a story about a UCLA team studying the coffee ring effect with an eye towards applying it to biosensing. Lead researcher Chih-Ming Ho told PhysOrg.com that "Before we can engineer biosensing devices to do these applications, we need to know the definitive limits of this phenomenon. So our research turned to physical chemistry to find the lowest limits of coffee-ring formation." The idea here is that particles move to the perimeter of a droplet as the water evaporates, resulting in a ring pattern, but if the droplet is small enough, the water evaporates so fast that the particles don't have time to move to the perimeter, and you end up with a concentrated center stain.

Ho's team conducted an experiment with latex particles of various (small) sizes suspended in water and poured it on a specially designed surface with checkerboard squares of alternating water-loving and water-repellant squares. They found that the threshold for 100-nanometer particles is a droplet measuring around 10 micrometers (10 times smaller than a human hair, to use the classic science writing analogy). That's the point where the water evaporated so quickly that the particles didn't have time to drift to the perimeter. (Check out the image above for a visual representation of their results.) The whole coffee ring effect fascination has been around since 1997, incidentally, when graduate students in Sid Nagel's lab at the University of Chicago started investigating after Nagel broached the topic to them over lunch one day. (I'm guessing Nagel doesn't use a coaster.)

There's tons of science involved in brewing coffee, too. Until quite recently, the Spousal Unit had a rather inelegant approach to making his morning cup of coffee. Let's just say that while he always ground the coffee beans fresh each morning -- a must for anyone who cares about good coffee -- the rest of the process involved placing the grounds into a loose coffee filter inside a plastic funnel and positioning it over a mug, then pouring hot water into it.

It worked fine, but the Spousal Unit also loves fancy gadgets, and started scouring the Internet for the perfect coffee making machine, combining aesthetic form with function at a reasonable price. That's when he came across syphon coffee makers, quite possibly the most labor-intensive, gadgetry-obsessed, snobbish approach to making coffee ever invented. But the gadget in question is oh-so-pretty, so very scientific in its operating principles, and -- by all accounts -- results in one hell of a brew.

The syphon method (also known as a vacuum brewer, vac pot, siphon, or syphon coffee maker) has been around since the 1930s, when (Wikipedia tells me, without providing further details) someone named Loeff of Berlin invented it. Its use was a bit too complicated for the average household coffee drinker, but hipster coffee enthusiasts were around even then; siphon coffee has always had its fans, usually of the well-heeled variety. Listen to the folks at Coffee Geek rhapsodize about it:

"Almost everything about using a vacuum coffee maker is sensory involved: aromas, fragrance, motion, touch, action. Grind the coffee, add it to the top vessel. Add cold (or hot) water to the bottom. Put the bottom on a heat source. Add the top vessel with its attached siphon. Watch. Liquids defy gravity. The brew gurgles, but it's not boiling. Remove from the heat source. Watch the coffee move back down, or "south." Watch the bottom vessel's brewed coffee gurgle as air is drawn through the spent grounds to release the built up vacuum. Remove top vessel. Smell. Ahhhh. Pour. Taste. More ahhh."

As the name implies, the method relies on vapor pressure and creating a vacuum to brew the coffee; it exploits the expansion and contraction of gases. There are two chambers: a bottom container where you put the plain water, and where the final brew will come to rest, and a top container with a siphon tube attached, where the actual brewing will take place. You also need something like a rubber gasket to act as a seal so you can create a partial vacuum, a filter, and a heating source (usually a cloth-wick alcohol burner, gas or electric stovetop, or, if you're a true purist, a specialty butane burner).

As the water in the bottom container heats up, it starts converting to a vapor -- a phase transition -- which expands and starts to compress. Since it can only compress so much, it needs to relieve that pressure, and the only route available is through the siphon tube -- but there's a bunch of water in the way. So the gas pushes the water through the tube into the top chamber, where the coffee grounds live, and starts brewing. At some point the water level in the bottom container will be lower than the siphon tube, and vapor pours into the top chamber, creating ideal brewing temperatures of around 90-95 degrees Celsius (185-204 degrees F). When the coffee is done brewing, just remove the heat source, so that the water vapor starts to contract. This creates negative pressure in the bottom container and the brewed coffee travels back down the siphon tube the bottom container, through the filter.

Voila! You have what many consider to be the perfect cup of coffee. Needless to say, while admiring the artistry and gadgetry involved in the syphon coffee process, the Spousal Unit also is not a morning person. He needed something a bit simpler for his morning cup of joe. So instead we have a sleek, shiny, stainless steel contraption that is "Morning-Person Proof." It's still a vast improvement over a coffee filter stuffed inside a plastic funnel, and should the Spousal Unit have a craving for siphon-brewed coffee, well, there's an Intelligentsia coffee house a mile or so away.

 

Syphon, Intelligentsia from The D4D on Vimeo.

And just in case tea drinkers are feeling left out, there's science to the art of brewing the perfect cup of tea, too. Christopher Hitchens has weighed in on this recently, citing no less an authority than George Orwell, who published "A Nice Cup of Tea" in The Evening Standard on January  12, 1946 outlining 11 "golden rules" to follow. But Hitchens can reduce those to one: make sure the water is boiling.

Ground [coffee] beans are heaver and denser, and in any case many good coffees require water that is just fractionally off the boi. Whereas tea is a herb (or an herb if you insist) that has been thoroughly dried. In order for it to release its innate qualities, it requires to be infused. And an infusion, by definition, needs the water to be boiling when it hits the tea. Grasp only this, and you hold the root of the matter."

Lest you question how much Orwell or Hitchens knows about the science of brewing tea, let me point you to an excellent PDF paper by a young grad student in mechanical engineering named Daniel Ives, describing an experiment he conducted as part of a flow visualization class.

He placed a clear glass of hot water against a white paper background, and then sprinkled a teaspoon of hibiscus tea leaves onto the surface. Hitchens would object right here: the tea should already be in the cup (or teapot), and the water should be boiling at contact. But Ives needed to take "before", "during" and "after" pictures to document the diffusion process (as dictated by Fick's laws of diffusion). He's doing science, not making the perfect cuppa -- although an interesting follow-up experiment might be a multiple "taste test" of various brewed teas to test Hitchens' hypothesis about how the water must be boiling.

Anyway, Ives' photos capture both the aesthetics and the fluid flows of a brewing cup of tea quite nicely. His anaylsis invokes the Archimedes Principle describing buoyancy:

The hibiscus flowers, like tea leaves, contain various water- soluble particles. When placed in contact with water, the hibiscus flowers become hydrated and swell. The absorbed water acts as a solvent, pulling various solutes from the flowers into the water. the water that closely surrounds the flowers becomes saturated with a high concentration of solutes compared to the rest of the water in the glass.... As the streams of water containing a high concentration of solute particles flow downward, they mix with the bulk water. Over time, the solutes will diffuse throughout the glass until there is an equilibrium concentration of solutes in the water.

Here's where Archimedes comes in. The tea leaves have a higher density than water at 85 °C, so they will have an upward buoyancy force equal to the weight of water they displace. This is countered by a downward gravitational force for each particle in the tea leaves, and that gravitational force is greater than the buoyancy force. So the water saturated with "leached solutes" sinks in the glass. Ives concludes: "However, because the volume of each particle is so small, the net downward force is very small, leading to a very small downward acceleration of each particle by Newton’s Second Law of Physics."

Eureka! There you have it: the science behind the perfect cup of tea. Why not brew yourself a nice cuppa this evening? Don't forget to use a coaster.

 

two magesteria In the courtroom

Three years before he died, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, one of my favorite popularizers of science, published a book called Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, basically consigning the two subjects to different realms of thought and influence. Gould maintained that the two areas of inquiry asked and answered different questions that need not impinge on each other. The reaction was, well, reactionary and not all of it truly thoughtful. I thought at the time that many of the reviewers were hell-bent on developing their own Theory of Everything that reconciled all areas of human thought. Many scientists, skeptics, and atheists (sometimes embodied in one person) roundly denounced the work (and Gould, in the kind of low-blow ad hominem attacks they decry in others, I might add) for daring to try to "legitimize" religion or spirituality in the same breath as science.

This post is not about that.

I mention it because, as was inevitable, the question of whether a scientist can have any kind of religious faith or even just entertain the idea separately from his or her own professional work has now reached the courtroom stage in the case of Dr. C. Martin Gaskell, a  University of Nebraska astronomer who was turned down for a post by the University of Kentucky because an internet search of his name revealed he was an evangelical Christian who wasn't shy about writing about astronomy and the Bible. Gaskell has taken pains to point out that he is not a creationist and he does not have any problems with the theory of evolution. A department staff member, Sally A. Shafer,

found links to his notes for a lecture that explores, among other topics, how the Bible could relate to contemporary astronomy. “Clearly this man is complex and likely fascinating to talk with,” Ms. Shafer wrote, “but potentially evangelical.” . . . Francis J. Manion, Dr. Gaskell’s lawyer, said: “I couldn’t have made up a better quote. ‘We like this guy, but he is potentially Jewish’? ‘Potentially Muslim’?”

Put in those terms, this becomes not just an issue of scientific accuracy and honesty, but of censorship and, yes, plain ole bigotry.

The job Gaskell applied for was running the new UKentucky student observatory, which also involves lecturing publicly about science. Keep in mind that UKentucky is not far from the Creation Museum in the heart of the Bible Belt, which may have contributed to their jitters about hiring someone they perceive as working for the other side. But it may be that it's that perception that's the problem. One of the basic rules of discrimination and bigotry as that it lumps large numbers of people together in a single group without regard for individual differences. The terrorists who took down the Twin Towers in 2001 were Muslim; hence all Muslims are terrorists. Stated so baldly, bigotry is laughably simplistic to anyone with the ability to analyze and think for themselves—a trait I would hope scientists and education leaders would possess in abundance.

Now, bear with me for a moment and imagine you are a practicing Christian—not an unquestioning, blindly faithful zombie Christian, but a thoughtful, questioning, testing-your-faith kinda Christian—living near the University of Kentucky where Dr. Gaskell has just been hired, and you see an advertisement for this talk by Dr. Gaskell: "Modern Astronomy, the Bible and Creation." Back in the day, when I was a Jehovah's Witness, I had a really healthy curiosity about Life, the Universe, and Everything and a talk like this would have more than piqued my interest. Quite likely, I'd have trundled off to hear it, possibly dragging one or two others of my equally curious JW friends with me. Here's what I would have heard (PDF) according to his own summary:

I give my responses to some of the questions I am most frequently asked on the subject of the Bible and modern astronomy. I start out by emphasizing that many scientists and philosophers have strong religious beliefs and I give some quotes from famous scientists and philosophers. I list, and briefly discuss, some of the main theological interpretational viewpoints of the creation stories in Genesis. It is explained that there are more than just two extreme views on the origin of the universe and that the majority of scientists who are Christians adhere neither to the view that the Bible is irrelevant to the earth's origin (which exponents of atheistic evolution claim) nor the view that God made the earth essentially as it now is in six 24-hour periods about 6000 years ago (the “young earth creationist” position.) [emphasis mine] The origin of Bishop Ussher's date of creation is explained and the question of “days” in Genesis 1 is discussed. Examples of where modern astronomy is supporting the details of Genesis 1 are described. A list of suggested readings for those who wish to read more about Christianity, the Bible, and some of the scientific issues is appended.

Gaskell goes on to say that, "The main controversy has been between people at the two extremes (young earth creationists and humanistic evolutionists). 'Creationists' attack the science of 'evolutionists.' I believe that this sort of attack is very bad both scientifically and theologically. The 'scientific' explanations offered by 'creationists' are mostly very poor science." "Mostly very poor science," huh? Hmmm. And that would have piqued my interest too. Why is it poor science, I would have wondered? Further investigation would have followed—and did, in a similar situation, leading me to where I am now: skeptic in fact if not by affiliation, and Buddhist fellow-traveller.

Honestly, none of Gaskell's talk sounds Creationist to me. What Gaskell is actually doing is finding common ground with his audience, in this case the Bible, to talk about science, without distorting either. This is something Jennifer does with just about every post she writes, but her common ground is pop culture. And as a former fundy science nerd, I can testify that science history this reasonably presented would have been greeted with interest by any but the most fundamentalist of Christians, who are probably already a write-off. But that's not what happened in Kentucky. There was nothing reasonable about the response in Kentucky. Oh, no. There was, instead, a "rush to judgment."

In recent years there's been more than a hint of the hysterical witch hunt in the voices of some skeptics and scientists crusading (and yes, I use that word intentionally) against creationism and Intelligent Design. Phil Plait, the favorite Bad Astronomer of Cocktail Party Physics, addressed this at a recent TAM meeting in his inimitable way, in a talk called "Don't be a Dick":

Part II

Part III

Rather than seeing someone like Gaskell as a possible bridge between the reasonable, questioning, curious Christian community (and there is one; I've been part of it), UKentucky freaked out about a possible PR nightmare in hiring someone perceived as a narrow-minded pseudo-scientist. One thing I don't think you can accuse Dr. Gaskell of is being a pseudo-scientist. If you skim his publication lists (he's now at the University of Texas), you'll see he's co-authoring with legitimate scientists in his field, and publishing in all the usual places that "real" astronomers publish in. Not the Discovery Institute, but the American Astronomical Society's journal, and other well-known scientific journals.

Now, call me crazy, but I always thought the purpose of a university was to offer education. It's hard to educate people if you don't speak at least some of their language. Most Christians—most religious people of any stripe—feel that scientists not only don't speak their language, but are only interested in belittling them, not in having a reasonable conversation with them. So even if you have questions, as a religious or spiritually inclined person, who are you supposed to ask, when the scientists will just mock you? As Phil says in his talk, we should be "relying on the merits of the arguments, which is what critical thinking is all about, what evidence-based reasoning is about." Not vitriol. Not bigotry. Not prejudice.

The truth about the history of scientific thought that many modern scientists would like to shove under the rug is that it sprang out of the only educated community in the middle ages and Renaissance: church clerics. Before the Age of Enlightenment was the Age of Enlightenment, it was the Age of Faith, and you can take the boy outta the church, but you can't take the church outta the boy. References to God and creation are everywhere in the history of scientific inquiry, even if only used metaphorically. Why not use them, as Gaskell does, as a lever to open the doors of blind faith just a crack, to slip in some scientific fact? It accomplishes more than just telling people they are fools and morons. Skepticism isn't teaching people what to think; it's teaching people how to think. You don't accomplish that by telling them that everything they know is wrong.

I'm glad Gaskell is bringing this issue to court, because it's something the scientific community needs to confront about itself. By tarring all spiritual seekers with the same brush of ignorance, extremists in the the secular world in general and the skeptical community in particular reveal their own fear of the Other, the same kind of cheap, petty, ignorant fear that white supremacists, jihadists, and homophobes display. Not nice company to be lumped into, is it? Fear isn't rational, though. And that alone should wake you up, if you're one of those frothing at the mouth skeptic/atheists. Use the rational mind that God gave you, for Pete's sake.

batty for sam

Occasional co-blogger Allyson is being far too modest about some very big news: she's the proud author of a new, scienc-y children's book from Conservatory Press, The Amazing Adventures of Sam the Bat. It relates the inspiring tail of a young free-tail bat who gets separated from his home colony and must find his way home -- a journey that takes him from South American rain forests, to a five-star hotel in London, and even to Notre Dame in Paris. (This is actually Allyson's second book, but her first stab at fiction. Her first was a collection of essays ruminating on the online culture of fandom with her trademark caustic wit: Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?)

I've watched Allyson sweat over this book for over a year: researching bat science and trying to convey those details accurately, while still telling a gripping story that will fire kids' imaginations. It's not an easy feat. Sure, I'm biased, but I think she's succeeded with flying colors. And Those Who Blurbed agree with me:

"Sam the Bat is a delightful book that manages at once to teach children about a fascinating and greatly misunderstood species, while holding them under the spell of a touching -- and often very funny -- story with an appealing hero. I'm sorry I didn't get to read it to my own children." -- Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn and Mirror Kingdoms

"Sam's story is a great introduction to the lives of bats around the world, and is a thrilling read. It's a great challenge to imagine life through the eyes of a bat (I've tried), and Allyson Beatrice does so beautifully. Through Sam, Beatrice explores the kindness of strangers, the importance of friends, and the value of family. I would recommend this book to any young person curious about the world and the animals living in it." -- Daniel K. Riskin, assistant professor of biology at the City University of New York, and from Animal Planet's Monsters Inside Me and Discovery Channel's Curiosity

So, in honor of this momentous occasion, I'd like to offer a few batty links for your reading pleasure. Allyson's not the only Batgirl at the cocktail party, in fact --I've blogged about the acoustics of echolocation, and how that basic science can feed into helping develop prosthetic devices for restoring some semblance of sight to the blind. (I also follow @God_Damn_Batman on Twitter, just for laughs.) Know who else loves bats? Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science. Here's a sampling:

Ninja Bat Whispers To Sneak Up on Moths. "Holger Goerlitz from the University of Bristol has found that the barbastelle bat is a stealth killer that specialises in eating moths with ears. Its echolocation calls are 10 to 100 times quieter than those of other moth-hunting bats and these whispers allow it to sneak up on its prey."

Bats, Compasses, Tongues, and Memories. "If you were a biologist looking for astounding innovations in nature, you could do much worse than to study bats. They are like showcases of nature’s ingenuity, possessing a massive variety of incredible adaptations that allow them to exploit the skies of the night."

Then there's today's hot bat-related news in the blogosphere: How Bats Find Water and Why Metal Confuses Them. "Waves of sound that hit the surface of still water would generally bounce away, except for those aimed straight downwards. Stefan Greif and Björn Siemers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology have found that bats are instinctively tuned to find water using this unique feature." (I love the Max Planck Institute for devoting an entire institute to the study of bats.)

And who could forget this classic news story (with exciting NSFW bat porn video footage!) about certain batty practices that would appall Chrisine O'Donnell: Holy Fellatio, Batman! Fruit Bats Use Oral Sex To Prolong Actual Sex (no need for an excerpt, it's self-explanatory). We're sure Allyson's innocent little bat friend, Sam, would never, ever, engage in such behavior. *cough* He's a free-tail bat, not one of those pervy fruit bats!

Ed has also written about how caribbean fruitbats are kind of a mash-up of three different bat species; how wind turbines pose a threat to bats;, and their evolutionary common ground with whales when it comes to echolocation. Really, if you Google "science of bats," you can't help but come across something written by Ed on the topic. (Let's start a rumor! Ed Yong: Bat Fetishist.)

But he's not the only one. Here's a lovely rumination on the bat as "Life In Motion" from The Loom's Carl Zimmer. The Featured Creature recently posted OMG-Adorbz! pix of fluffy Honduran baby white bats. Over at PLOS Blogs, Brandon Keim warns about what would happen in a world without bats. And even the San Francisco Chronicle got into the game with a recent article, "Dispelling Flights of Fancy About Bats." So celebrate the release of The Amazing Adventures of Sam The Bat by boning up on a litlte bat science! (And feel free to order Allyson's book when you're done!)

myths are bustin' out all over

Exciting news broke earlier this week, at least for fans of Discovery Channel's Mythbusters (and oh yes, Jen-Luc Piquant is a mega-fan!). President Obama will make a special appearance on the December 8 episode of the series -- part of ongoing efforts of the administration to promote science, technology and engineering (STEM) education, starting with the Educate to Innovate campaign launched in 2009. In fact, he made the announcement during the first ever White House Science Fair. We are currently taking bets on how quickly Faux News and its noisy acolytes will start braying about how all this "promoting science to a broader audience" is really just a commie/Socialist plot to forcibly redistribute the wealth knowledge to the undeserving Ignorant. Or Muslims.

No doubt adding fuel to the fire, the episode in question will revisit the "myth" of the Archimedes "death ray." For those who don't recall the story, the brilliant Greek mathematician, Archimedes of Syracuse, was also known for building ingenious weapons of war to defend Syracuse from the invading Roman army. There was, for instance, a giant crane capable of capsizing ships, known as the Claw of Archimedes. Another such invention, legend has it, was a large curved parabola-shaped array of mirrors capable of collecting and focusing the sun's rays onto the Roman ships moored in the harbor, laying siege to the city. The heat caused the ships to catch fire and burn, and Syracuse was saved -- for awhile, at least. (Eventually the Romans overcame the city's defenses, and Archimedes was killed in the ensuing chaos. Set mathematics in Western Europe back a good 700 years, at least.)

Long before the Mythbusters appeared on TV, folks were trying to ascertain the validity of that legend. Skulls in the Stars has a classic post detailing the history of such attempts to test similar devices, usually with mixed results. Back in the 18th century, the noted naturalist, he Comte de Buffon (who also devised the "Buffon's Needle" puzzle) assembled an array of ordinary mirrors (40 in all) and managed to set a log pf tarred beechwood on fire from a distance of 66 feet. The more mirrors he used, the more effective the technique was at setting fires from a distance. With 128, he could set fire to a plank of tarred fir from a distance of 150 feet.

Thre was also an article by one John Scott in the late 19th century assessing the evidence for and against the effecitveness of an Archimedes "death ray." It appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Scott was more skeptical than Buffon, noting that historical accounts closer to the time of Archimedes say nothing of burning mirrors, Livy and Plutarch among them. But it's a fun story, and I used it to talk about parabolas and finding the area under a curve in the first chapter of The Calculus Diaries. Some legends are worth repeating, whether or not they turn out to be true.

The Mythbusters have already tackled this challenge twice already: once on their own, and the second time with the help of team of scientists from MIT. Conclusion: it's most likely a myth, although in principle it's feasible. The MIT experiment managed to start a small fire on a wooden ship, although it quickly burned out. Considering the time it would take to set fire to a ship using such a technique -- think of how long it took when you, as a kid, tried to set a piece of paper on fire with a magnifying glass on a hot summer day -- flaming arrows would probably be more efficient. But I guess President Obama asked them to revisit the challenge. Why? Who knows? Maybe he's keen on getting a nifty death ray for the White House. (Cue mass hysteria from the paranoid fringe!)

Personally, I'd like to see the Mythbusters tackle a related challenge: the purported "death ray" that strikes poolside at the newly built Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas. It's part of the City Center complex, and the building has a distinctive parabola-like shape. Therein lies the problem. According to recent news reports, a vacationing lawyer was relaxing poolside at the Vdara, when he started to feel very warm, and then smelled something burning. It was... his HAIR! HIS HAIR WAS SMOKING! He jumped up from his seat and doused his head in the pool, then repaired to the bar for a stiff drink. The bartender nodded knowingly when he descibed his plight: "Yeah, we call that the Death Ray." The Las Vegas Review Journal published this helpful schematic to illustrate the principles at work:

I guess there was a reason no one was sitting in what would otherwise be a prime poolside seat. When the lawyer went back to retrieve his newspaper, he found the plastic in which it was wrapped had melted.

But I'm just a tad bit skeptical. I mean, check out this photo of the alleged newspaper:

It clearly spells out the word "VDARA." I smell a hoax. How did the sun's rays manage to carve out just those letters? Was there a "stencil effect" at work, i.e., over one of the curved windows? Inquiring minds need to know! And the Mythbusters are known for their inquiring minds and ingenious experiments. We eagerly await their findings.

UPDATE: Several commenters -- thanks, guys! Knew I could count on you! -- pointed out that the plastic bag itself was stenciled with black letters,the black absorbs the sun's heat faster, and hence the bag melted in just that pattern. Science! Also? We have been called "fluffy" in the comments section. We consider this a compliment. Jen-Luc Piquant humbly suggests that if you're looking for a detailed explication of this effect, with fancy diagrams and equations and all, a blog that proudly calls itself Cocktail Party Physics probaby isn't your best bet. Do that sort of thing at a cocktail party and you'll soon find yourself alone in a corner, doodling on a napkin and talking to the catering staff (who are paid to be there and already bored), while the other guests avoid you like the plague. Just sayin'. (Except if it's a cocktail party with physicists, in which case it's good form to provide a white board.) However, you can find just that sort of thing over at the most excellent blog, Dot Physics (formerly of SEED Science Blogs, now housed at Wired), and we thank said commenter for the link. Check it out!

 

GUEST POST (#PDEx): the scientist and the anarchist (part I)

NOTE: Among those who left the SEED Science Blogs fold in the wake of PepsiGate is Eric Michael Johnson, proprietor of the excellent Primate Diaries blog. While he's casting about for a new home, he hit upon a novel idea: a Primate Diaries in Exile blog tour! We at the cocktail party are delighted to serve as one of many stops on the tour, and that Eric has written a fantastic historic account about Huxley, science and anarchy. Good times! You can follow other stops on this tour through his RSS feed or at the #PDEx hashtag on Twitter. In the meantime, welcome to Cocktail Party Physics, Eric! And if this is someone's first time visiting, feel free to browse our archives.

How East London defined "Darwin's Bulldog" and brought him into conflict with the world's most dangerous anarchist.

Applicants For Admission To A Casual Ward by Luke Fildes (1857) shows a crowd of East London poor waiting in the snow, trying to gain access to a homeless shelter. Source

The first thing you noticed was the smell. It was an oppressive, suffocating odor. It assaulted your senses day and night, at work, at rest, preparing a meal, or enjoying children’s games. It pervaded every aspect of your life and soiled the very experience of living, and dying. It was the birth of modern civilization. East London in 1841 was a society on the brink of collapse. Charles Dickens used the words “pestiferous and obscene” to describe what he experienced. However, a poor resident of Soho put it much more elegantly, "We live in muck and filth . . . all great and powerfool men, take no notice wasomedever of our complaints." Open sewers, garbage littered streets, contaminated water, and overflowing cemeteries had transformed the detritus of overpopulation into a veritable miasma and the result was simply repugnant. [1]

Ignored by politicians and abandoned by those able to escape its slums, East London during the latter half of the 19th century represents one of the most profound failures of urban planning the world has ever seen. Starting in the late 1700s, modern industry and agrarian capitalism had made the open-field farming system of feudal lords and their laboring peasants obsolete. Over six million acres, or a quarter of the country’s cultivated area, were enclosed under parliamentary acts between 1750 and 1850 (and most occurred during the Napoleonic war years from 1793 to 1815). What had previously been communal lands were now off limits. Without a means of subsistence people migrated to the cities en masse, nearly tripling the size of London in a single generation (from 675,000 to 1,945,000). [2]

This was a social reengineering project of massive proportions. In much the same way that privatization of land today (backed by free trade policies) has pushed the landless poor of Latin America into the great northern cities, so the Industrial Revolution sent millions of English tenant farmers flooding to urban centers at the ushering in of the 19th. Most of them ended up in the slums of East London. Steven Johnson cites one report from the time that estimated a densely packed 432 people per acre (even with our modern skyscrapers Manhattan only houses about 110 per acre). In many slum tenements large families or groups of laborers would crowd into a single room. Without any resources for public health or sanitation – aspects of social life that had yet to be invented – and with wages depressed from the legions of poor workers, these slum dwellers were forced to survive in any way they could. In this way, London in the mid-19th century parallels many parts of our world today: teeming cities of the impoverished, lacking resources and meaningful employment, left to suffocate in their own filth. [3] It was into this environment that Thomas Henry Huxley emerged. If the city is an ecosystem, Huxley embodies the phrase “survival of the fittest.” Lanky and high-strung, estranged from his father at an early age, and the youngest of six children, Huxley was primed from birth to view life as a struggle. Born on May 4, 1825 above a butcher’s shop on London’s outskirts, Huxley was the son of a poor schoolteacher and a member of England’s newly emerging middle class (in culture though not in wealth). As such he was determined to separate himself from the ranks of the working poor. In the years to come he would claw his way out of obscurity and establish himself as a celebrated anatomist, President of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and evolutionary theorist widely hailed as “Darwin’s bulldog.” He would forge a path of his own and create a revolution in the way science was practiced. As his biographer, Adrian Desmond, would later put it:

The young hothead scrambled to the top of his profession; indeed he made a profession of science. With him the ‘scientist’ was born. [4]

An important theme that is found throughout Huxley’s life and work is one that can only be understood from his early experiences in East London: the brutal conditions of the poor. At the age of sixteen Huxley was apprenticed to a "lowlife doctor" named Thomas Chandler whose patients lived exclusively in the East London slums. In later years Huxley would describe in vivid detail the depravity he experienced:

Men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished and the most ordinary conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to bestiality and drunkenness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest, in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave.

In one incident during a house call Huxley encountered a deformed girl nursing her ill sister. There was little he or his mentor could do for her and, out of compassion, Huxley suggested that the sick child needed a better diet than simply "bread and bad tea." In response, according to Huxley:

[The girl] turned upon me with a kind of choking passion. Pulling out of her pocket a few pence and halfpence, and holding them out, "That is all I get for six-and-thirty hours’ work, and you talk about giving her proper food."

Surrounded by such crushing poverty, Huxley anguished over the conditions that seemed to afflict both good people and bad without remorse. “I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself,” he wrote at the time, quoting Goethe. Already moved towards religious skepticism because of his voracious appetite for knowledge and his pursuit of science, Huxley now moved closer to the agnosticism that would define his life. After all, what sort of loving God could allow such horrors to persist? Where was the justice in a divine plan that forced more righteous men than he to a life of squalor, "I confess to my shame," he wrote, "that few men have drunk deeper of all kinds of sin than I." Late at night, cackles emanated from the busy pubs along Paradise Street where Chandler's slum-row surgery was located. Prostitutes offered their wares to the drunken and downtrodden while knife-wielding gangs clashed in the dark alleys, sometimes leaving a fresh corpse for the “bone-pickers” to scavenge a few pennies worth of clothing from.

With so many of his days and nights spent in the ramshackle surgery, just a hundred paces from the festering Thames, Huxley experienced “gloom with every breath” and felt his ambitions stifled. He had only one hope of advancement: a university degree. However, with only two years of formal education he was greatly outclassed by his social betters. And so, by the thin light of his lantern the young man sat grinding drugs late into the night, and reading. Humes’ History of Great Britain, Müller’s Elements of Physiology, Hutton’s Theory of the Earth. Whenever he could fit in time for personal study, Huxley maintained a punishing schedule. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he studied physiology, other days of the week he focused on “a chronological abstract of reigns”, he spent evenings devoted to mathematics, Saturday’s were for chemistry and physics with an hour of German daily. “I must get on faster than this”, he chided himself, “and let me remember this – that it is better to read a little & thoroughly than cram a crude undigested mass into my head.” He studied Latin and Greek and wrote his mother to ask for a copy of Euclid’s Geometry. The university entrance exams required a solid background in the classics and he had a great deal of catching up to do.

Interestingly, there is one title on Huxley’s reading list during this time that doesn’t seem necessary for college admission: Thomas Carlyle’s Chartism. Published a year earlier in 1840, the book was a passionate manifesto of the struggles that the poor experienced, explaining the backdrop of what would became the first major labor struggle of the Industrial Revolution. “To me,” Huxley reflected, “this advocacy of the cause of the poor appealed very strongly.” That August as Huxley ground drugs and studied anatomy, factory workers took to the streets outside demanding the right to vote, for decent wages, and a ten-hour workday. By 1841 the Chartist movement was already several years old but was still a profound mystery and a source of great anxiety to Victorian England. In 1837 six sympathetic members of Parliament and six working men wrote the first draft of The People’s Charter, a document that advocated universal male suffrage, annual elections, and an end to property qualifications for membership in Parliament. The Charter was then taken around the country to eventually be signed by 1.3 million people (nearly twice the number of propertied voters) before being presented to the House of Commons in 1848.

The Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, April 10, 1848, photograph taken by William Kilburn. Crowd estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people. Source

The aristocracy viewed this movement as dangerous, if not outright seditious. In the year prior to Carlyle’s book, Lord John Russell (a liberal Whig in the House of Commons who would later serve as Prime Minister) had a letter sent to The Times of London requesting that reporters report on “any meeting convened by persons calling themselves Chartists” so that their “illegal transaction” could be prosecuted. Carlyle, however, referred to the democracy movement among the poor as, "the bitter discontent grown fierce and mad . . . of the Working Classes of England. It is a new name for a thing which has had many names, which will yet have many." [5] For young Huxley this struggle, and the conditions which gave rise to it, became pivotal in his development and can be seen to have influenced his thinking as well as his scientific theories many years later. “I had had the opportunity of seeing for myself,” he wrote of the time, “something of the way the poor live. Not much, indeed, but still enough to give a terrible foundation of real knowledge to my speculations.” However, while it’s clear that Huxley sympathized with the plight of the poor and found the conditions of East London both shocking and unacceptable, he was already developing a distinctly middle-class sensibility. The destitute of East London were as strange to him as “the savages of Australia,” he would later write. Even so, no Aborigine was “half so savage, so unclean, so irreclaimable as the tenant of a tenement in an East London slum.” He went on to write:

I used to wonder sometimes why these people did not sally forth in mass and get a few hours’ eating and drinking and plunder to their hearts’ content, before the police could stop and hang a few of them. But the poor wretches had not the heart even for that. As a slight, wiry Liverpool detective once said to me when I asked him how it was he managed to deal with such hulking ruffians as we were among, "Lord bless you, sir, drink and disease leave nothing in them."

Morally offended by many of the vices that people turned to in an environment that offered little hope of social betterment, Huxley found inspiration in Carlyle’s missionary solutions. As Carlyle wrote in Chartism:

Light has come into the world, but to this poor peasant it has come in vain. . . Education is not only an eternal duty, but has at length become even a temporary and ephemeral one, which the necessities of the hour will oblige us to look after.

To teach the moral qualities that he viewed as central to his own future success, Huxley would emulate Carlyle in his own policy recommendations for the poor:

[W]hat dweller in the slough of want, dwarfed in body and soul, demoralized, hopeless, can reasonably be expected to possess these qualities?...[I]n a densely populated manufacturing country, struggling for existence with competitors, every ignorant person tends to become a burden upon, and, so far, an infringer of the liberty of, his fellows, and an obstacle to their success. Under such circumstances an education rate is, in fact, a war tax, levied for purposes of defence.

For Huxley then, as it was for Carlyle, the crisis of poverty was one of proper training. The reality of their economic condition may make them poor in material goods, but it was their poverty of mind that made them truly destitute and unable to rise in the world. It was only through proper education that the poor would be able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. The call from the radicals for economic and political change were ultimately addressing the wrong problem. As Huxley read and dreamed of escape into university life and upper-class respectability, Carlyle's sermon brought a glean to the young agnostic's eye.

Intellect is like light; the Chaos becomes a World under it, the discernment of order in disorder; it is the discovery of the will of nature, of God’s will.

Huxley had no use for God, but what did nature say on the question of order and disorder? It was something he would spend much of his life contemplating and his final years obsessing over. It would also bring him into direct conflict with one of the most influential political radicals in the world, a fugitive already wanted in three countries who was now intent on bringing anarchy to the UK. The Scientist and the Anarchist - Part II will be published next week at Skulls in the Stars.

References:

[1] Roy Porter (2006). London: A Social History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995; Liza Picard (2006). Victorian London: The Life of a City, 1840-1870. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

[2] John E. Archer (2000). Social Unrest and Popular Protest in England, 1780-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Steven Johnson (2006). The Ghost Map, New York: Riverhead Books.

[4] Adrian Desmond (1997). Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest. Massachusettes: Addison-Wesley.

[5] The Times, Tuesday, Mar 26, 1839; pg. 6; Issue 16999; col E