Cocktail Party Physics

i could be mathier

There's a nice little moment in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy and her brainy sidekick, Willow, are wondering if Giles (the stuffy British librarian who also acts as Buffy's Watcher) had ever rebelled in high school. "Are you kidding?" a skeptical Buffy exclaims. "His diapers were tweed. He probably sat in math class thinking, 'You know, this could be mathier!'"

As it turns out, Giles was a bit of a hellraiser in his youth, which just goes to prove that it's never too late for someone to reform and stage an intellectual comeback -- even if you're a math-phobic English major turned science writer like me. Last night I was browsing the Website of The Teaching Company, which specializes in videotaping courses for the general public on everything from economics and history, to philosophy, literature and, yes, science and math. In a moment of temporary insanity, I ordered the DVD course on "Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear," taught by Michael Starbird, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin. He swears  I can grasp the two deep concepts underlying calculus without the usual technical jargon and rigmarole. Plus, the set was on sale at less than half the original price. Apparently there's not much demand for remedial calculus courses these days.

Okay, my motivation wasn't really an insane lapse of judgment on a par with falling victim to late-night infomercials ("Now how much would you pay?"). We all have gaps in our broad base of knowledge, and while I am far more scientifically literate than the average American, I am functionally innumerate when it comes to math. Sure, I can balance my checkbook and manage my personal finances, even figure out basic percentages, but -- at the risk of sounding like a physicist talking about algebra -- that's not "real" math, just basic arithmetic. According to the course description, calculus is "one of the greatest achievements of the human mind," and an integral part of our intellectual heritage, since it lies at the core of how we see economics, astronomy, population growth, engineering, even baseball.

So I admit it: I could be mathier. A lot mathier. What I know about calculus could fit on the head of a pin, because I skipped my senior year of high school and went straight to college, where I was enrolled in an honors program and therefore exempted from the usual general requirements. (In retrospect, I can't believe I was allowed to get away with this.) While this certainly meant I could focus almost exclusively on my fortes -- literature and writing/journalism -- it meant my mathematical skills atrophied at an alarming rate from then on.

I think scientists have a valid point when they bemoan the fact that it's okay in our culture to be ignorant of math, whereas it's not okay to be illiterate. It shouldn't be okay. We don't all need to be math whizzes, but we should have some understanding of where math (including calculus) fits into the intellectual framework-- context is everything, people! -- why it's important, what the basic underlying concepts are, and, if possible, be able to struggle through the odd simple equation in a pinch. Per Bertrand Russell: "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty... such as only the greatest art can show." (In other words: Math is pretty!) People do understand this at some level: witness the enormous success of the TV series Numb3rs, which ought not to have survived past the pilot episode if people truly didn't care about math. Most of us just don't resonate well to how the subject is traditionally taught. Our brains don't work that way.

Over the course of many years as a science writer, I've focused mostly on concepts, hands-on experiments, and the like in much of my work -- and rightly so, since this is a tried and true approach to succeeding at broader communication of science. I'm a big fan of concept-based physics courses for non-majors -- probably because I don't have unrealistic expectations about what students can and cannot gain from them. But I must confess that on the rare occasions when I've bothered to put in the effort to understand a basic equation or two -- and they must be basic, given my functional innumeracy -- it has deepened my grasp of the essential concepts in ways I don't entirely understand, yet can't deny. It's like some final piece clicked into place that I never even knew was missing.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. But just owning up to one's ignorance doesn't solve the problem. At some point, one has to confront one's weaknesses head-on. So I ordered Starbird's DVD lecture series. And to hold myself accountable, I'm going public with my little endeavor, to ensure I work through all 24 30-minute lectures. My goal is to cover two lectures per week, although I do have to work for a living, so this might be overly optimistic. I'll report on my progress every Friday, so you can all laugh and mock accordingly -- or even offer your own thoughts on the week's lecture topics.

Compared to a 24-lecture DVD course, here's something much, much easier: Declan Butler and the editors at Nature magazine have issued a call to arms regarding the "Tripoli Six," five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician who have been sentenced to death in Libya for purportedly infecting patients in their clinic with AIDS. This kind of thing has apparently been going on for years, but has been largely ignored by the scientific community. Nature thinks this needs to change. I think they're probably right, and a vast majority of the science blogosphere agrees as well. For tips on what you can do, go here.

Jen-Luc Piquant and I are off to fire off some angry letters and emails to join in the fight for justice. And UPS just delivered the DVDs from The Teaching Company. It's gonna be a busy week....

 

bait and switch

We have received a couple of tongue-in-cheek complaints in the comments section accusing us of misleading our readers with our attempts at clever titles for posts. Specifically, Matt was expecting to see photos of a scantily clad Annette Funicello in yesterday's post entitled "Beach Blanket Bingo," and instead found nasty details about human feces and marauding hordes of jellyfish. (The use of the Jen-Luc "icky" avatar should have been his first clue.) He still fared better than poor Krig, who clicked on a post entitled "Fashionably Late to the Dating Game" and found a newsy item about scientific methods for dating archaeological artifacts, when he had hoped to receive dating advice of some sort. The implication in both cases is that we deliberately lure our readers hither with titillating titles, and then BAM! Just like that, we turn the tables and force them to read something edifying instead. Could these accusations be true? Can we really be that evil?

Yes. We can. We're all about the crafty bait and switch here at Cocktail Party Physics, and damned proud of it, too. Well, not so much me, but that Jen-Luc Piquant, she's got quite the mischievous streak and is a master of the Titular Tease. (It's a Faux-French thing.) She's not sorry, either, and has been chortling gleefully all evening at so successfully dashing her audience's expectations. But I feel some twinges of remorse, especially for the hapless Krig, who is apparently in such dire need of romantic advice that he is consulting the scientific blogosphere. Think about it, Krig: if science bloggers spent all their time dating, when would they have time to blog?

Okay, technically, I'm not a scientist, or even a hard-core GeekGrrl, despite my professional affiliations. (I cannot, at a moment's notice, rattle off my hard drive specifications, and would never dare replace my own hard drive, as it would require actually opening up my computer.) So maybe Krig figured I was one of those Beautiful People who lead charmed romantic lives. If so, I am sorry to disappoint. I was the designated nerdy "Brain" in high school: shy, awkward, two years in braces, no fashion sense, unstyled hair -- you get the picture. Boys never paid attention to me unless there was a scheduled exam, at which point I suddenly had several suitors vying to copy off my paper. When I opted to leave high school after my junior year and head straight to college, the advisor urged me to reconsider: "You'll miss senior prom!" I looked at her like she'd lost her marbles: couldn't she see that nobody would ever, in a million years, ask me to a mixer?

Despite such inauspicious beginnings, we have managed to date from time to time over the course of our misspent youth (and how thrilled we were when we finally had the chance to mis-spend it!), and even establish the occasional Stable Relationship as our early shyness waned and our latent social skills finally came to the fore. Eventually we developed a certain amount of stylish savoir faire, thanks to timely interventions by more fashion-conscious friends. We have emerged from our early gawky cocoon that much more confident, stronger and wiser. Perhaps, after all, we do have some enlightening thoughts for those of our readers who are also floundering in the unpredictable, turbulent waters of modern romance. So fear not, good Krig, today, Jen-Luc the Love Doctor is "In." Bear in mind, however, that the following dashed-off ruminations are based on our own peculiar, admittedly quirky tastes; your results may vary, depending on the Object of Your Desire.

We'll assume that Krig's got the basics covered: things like personal hygiene, mental stability, and the good sense to eschew polyester and plaid clothing (or, for Left Coasters, the dreaded white socks with Birkenstocks -- Aieee!). We'll also assume that Krig is (a) male, and (b) is seeking advice on male/female relationships, since it's the only area in which I can claim to have any firsthand expertise. (Although really, the same basic tips should apply, with just a bit of tweaking here and there to accommodate other sexual preferences.)

1. Improve Your Nonverbal Awareness. One of my favorite physics buttons/bumper stickers reads, "Flirt Harder -- I'm a Physicist." There's a certain degree of truth to this stereotype, although it must be said, most physicists, computer geeks, etc., seem to end up married or in relationships at some point, so they can't be as clueless as they're generally believed to be. Nonetheless, I've certainly seen this phenomenon firsthand. Case in point: A good, geek-friend of mine was at a party, chatting up an attractive young woman, who seemed, shall we say, "receptive" -- until he began arguing with her about the faulty logic of a random opinion she'd expressed. He pressed his point repeatedly, failing to recognize her growing frustration, until she finally stomped off to find someone less argumentative, leaving him to nurse his beer in solitude, comforting himself with the certainty that at least he'd been Right. (He was right; but he also went home alone. Hmm. Food for thought.) This type of behavior seems to stem from an inability to pick up nonverbal cues, which is fortunately a learned, rather than innate, skill, so there's hope for all us social inepts, past and present. Pay attention to the other person's reactions, both verbal language and body language, and respond accordingly.

2. Ditch the "List." We all have preconceived notions about what we think we want in a partner, and sometimes these can serve as useful guidelines. Certain constraints are needed, just like in a scientific experiment (or theory). But this can also impose overly-limiting biases and blind us to that perfect something, or someone, that might be right in front of us. Consider ditching the "list-making" approach to finding a romantic partner and try "looking outside the box" once in awhile.

3. Forget the "Rules". While you're ditching that list of preconceived notions, ditch that copy of GQ as well, along with any other publication that specializes in purveying advice that amounts to the male equivalent of "the Rules." You hate the Rules; you know you do. Why inflict their equivalent on any woman you're interested in dating? I've always said to female friends that the Rules might work, but only on "Rules" kinds of men. If you're a woman and all you care about is manipulating some poor schlub into marrying you, and you're not overly particular about which schlub you entrap, so long as he's halfway decent, then you're probably a "Rules Girl." The same is true for the male equivalent, although there the primary objective isn't so much marriage, as racking up as many random sexual encounters as possible. You'll probably get the caliber of companion you deserve in either case. And if you're a "Rules Sort," you probably won't mind.

Maybe this sounds like a pretty decent short-term tradeoff for frustrated folks like Krig, but consider this: If you're a physicist, or in any other similar high-tech field, chances are you follow the beat of your own drum in your professional life -- otherwise you would have long ago bowed to peer pressure and gone into business management or something a little less esoteric (and a bit more financially lucrative). You wouldn't compromise on what you really wanted in your research. Why wouldn't you take the same tack in your personal life (bearing in mind Point #2 about being willing to dispense with preconceived notions on occasion)? Jen-Luc warns that we are skirting dangerously close to Polonius' trite cliche in Hamlet, "To thine own self be true," but there's a lot to be said for being genuine and not apologizing for who you are. Along the same lines:

4. Don't Be Afraid of Romantic Gestures. There's nothing sexier than a man who's confident and comfortable in his own skin, and therefore isn't afraid to show a little affection and emotion at opportune moments. To paraphrase a famous line in the classic film, Say Anything: don't be a Guy. The world is full of Guys. Be a Man. Come to think of it, rent Say Anything for your date, and chances are you'll win major points. Most women of my era consider Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack's character in the film) to be the archetypal Romantic Ideal; we still get teary remembering that scene where he holds up the boombox outside his true love's bedroom window, playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" in order to win her back. *sniff*

One caveat: Romantic gestures work -- but only if they're sincere; anything that smacks of manipulation is likely to backfire. Another common mistake is to be unimaginative or uncreative. You don't need to hire a sky-writing plane or anything over-the-top like that. The traditional roses are just fine, as long as you include a few lines of a love poem by Donne (or your fave romantic poet of choice) to give it that personal, individualized touch. A possible exception is the physics grad student whose  notion of an initial romantic overture is to present his target with an equation scribbled on a napkin ("Here: I made this for you!"). This will probably only work if said target is also in the sciences -- and if so, that equation better be a good one, with or without accompanying roses.

So there you go, Krig; hope it helps. If you're in need of further insight from the male perspective, Brad Hoc has been known to dispense advice from time to time when not indulging in the delights of virtual bubble wrap, and it's usually pretty entertaining stuff. We invite other readers -- and other science bloggers -- to weigh in as well, because let's face it, you can never have too many Geek Love Doctors in the clinic.

As for Matt -- remember Matt, the frustrated Funicello fan? -- we can redress his grievance quite easily, courtesy of a handy dandy Google image search on the original 1965 flick Beach Blanket Bingo. Okay, so Annette isn't clad in a bikini; neither is Frankie Avalon. But there's nary a stinging jellyfish or bit of fecal matter to be found (beaches were cleaner in those innocent days). Enjoy!

fear of flying

I was a voracious reader as a child (I still am, whenever my frenetic schedule permits). I'd read anything you put in front of me, including cereal boxes, appliance manuals, and Monopoly instructions. One of my earliest memories is sitting on my father's lap, all of four years old, trying to read his latest issue of Time, although it must be said that my comprehension of the weighty matters contained therein left a lot to be desired. I also plowed through a children's encyclopedia collection that my parents kept in the house for our edification. My favorite was the volume on mythology; I had a particular affinity for the tragic figure of Icarus.

You remember the tale: he and his father, Daedalus, were exiled onto a deserted island. Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings, affixed to the shoulders with wax, so they could escape their island prison by flying into the air like birds. But Icarus became so exhilarated mid-flight about defying gravity that he ignored his father's warnings about flying too high. He flew too close to the sun. The heat melted the wax, the wings came loose, and poor Icarus plunged to his death in the waters below.

To my shy and rather timid young self, the lesson was obvious: it's far preferable to keep one's head down and lie low, rather than try to fly and risk crashing ignominiously to earth. It was a very long time before I overcame my innate "fear of flying" and realized that life is all about taking risks. What's that catchphrase from the film, Strictly Ballroom? "A life lived in fear is a life half lived." At some point in my adult life, I decided that half lives are for radioactive materials, not for me. That's one reason I was able to assume the risk of becoming a science writer and rising above a long-standing irrational fear of physics.

I was reminded of Icarus over the past few days. On Sunday, NPR's Weekend Edition aired a short five-minute interview with me about my book, Black Bodies and Quantum Cats. As a result, I spent the day fielding calls and emails from friends -- and a few long-lost acquaintances, one of whom expressed surprise that I'd ever amounted to anything -- and watching my book skyrocket up Amazon's mysterious ranking system, a phenomenon that is actually known at NPR headquarters as "the NPR Effect." (Physicists should get right on that bit of research.) By the end of the day, the story was the top emailed article on NPR's Web site, so clearly it struck a responsive chord with the listeners. But even awash in the glow of such modest success, I couldn't help feeling anxious and apprehensive about flying too close to the sun; Icarus lurked at the back of mind.

The inevitable crash was not long in coming. The linked page also includes a short excerpt from the book, on roller coasters and the infamous 1999 incident where male model Fabio was hit in the face by a wayward goose mid-ride. It includes an abridged explanation of the various forces at work on a roller coaster ride, including the so-called "g forces." Unfortunately, as one alert reader/listener (whom I shall call "Z") pointed out via email that evening, my summation is not quite right.

Here's the gist of his -- and it's always a "he," for some reason -- points: First, mass is not related to the number of atoms (although I've seen it described as such in more than one place, so clearly a broader correction is needed beyond my book): it's a measure of the inertia of a given object, that is, its tendency to stay at rest or move uniformly in a straight line, which also determines how much force is required to get said object moving. And g is not the "force of gravity," but rather, the acceleration due to gravity. A roller coaster rider at 4 g's does indeed experience a force equal to four times his weight, but it's his "apparent weight" that increases during acceleration, not his "actual" weight.

Oops. That sound you hear is the unmistakable "thud" of me crash-landing to earth. Seriously, color me embarrassed by the gaffe. One of the hardest things about writing on physics for the general public is deciding how much to simplify the intricate details. Physicists always seem to want to include too much information, and thereby lose the interest of their intended audience far too soon. I'm good at holding a reader's attention, but sometimes -- as in the present case -- I play a little too fast and loose with the details, particularly when it comes to how physicists vs. the public use specific terminology. Who ya gonna please, when you can't please both? That's the eternal question

Now, Jen-Luc Piquant is a bit proud and hates to have her shortcomings so baldly exposed; she believes there is a special place in hell for nitpickers like this -- perhaps even Dante's dreaded Ninth Circle. But I've said before that I have no problem being corrected, so long as the people are nice about it, and Z. was as polite as they come; he even emailed back with a correction to his correction. I think folks like Z. should all volunteer as fact checkers at publishing houses, newspapers and magazines, where they can fully indulge their need to make corrections in the work of others, and thereby serve a useful purpose to society by ensuring such mistakes don't see print. Because I happen to agree with Z's statement: "Though physics terms like force, work, power, etc. may have loose meanings in everyday language, they have very precise definitions in physics." I actually take these distinctions quite seriously, and worked very hard to verify accuracy before the book was published. Despite my best efforts, tiny errors crept in, as they inevitably do; it's an inescapable reality of publishing.

Alas, there's not much I can do about it for the moment. Online stories can be corrected almost immediately. Newspapers and magazines can print corrections and retractions. Books are much more permanent. Unless there's a second edition (which is distinct from second or even third print runs), the errors must stay in place, for now. But I do have a blog, and in the interests of accuracy, let the record show that I hereby make the correction.

It's rather fitting that gravity proved to be my downfall, considering my affinity for the legend of Icarus. It might be weak compared to the other fundamental forces, but gravity is an inescapable reality of our human existence. Scientists have to come up with all kinds of ingenious ways to work around the limitations it imposes. Take the "Prometheus Project," a research team made up entirely of undergraduate students who will be exploring how sound waves might be used to extinguish fires in low-gravity environments like the space station. They've already managed to repeatedly extinguish small flames in a controlled laboratory environment using sound, but it's not clearly exactly why it works. The working hypothesis is that sound causes pressure to drop at the site of the flame, which might also involve a drop in temperature at said site, (chilling the flame) or a decrease in the concentration of oxygen (starving the flame).

In what will no doubt be the highlight of their young lives so far, the students get to test their hypothesis this summer aboard NASA's "Weightless Wonder" C-9 aircraft, a.k.a. the "Vomit Comet" -- a moniker that really bugs NASA officials, so I feel compelled to repeat it here, just to yank their chain. (Jen-Luc Piquant is seething with jealousy, since NASA rejected her proposal to study the effects of microgravity on the cellulite of aging celebrities as a possible alternative to liposuction. The anonymous peer reviewer opined that celebrities already defy gravity.) An earlier KC-135 aircraft, retired in 2000, was used to film many of the zero gravity scenes in the blockbuster film, Apollo 13.  The current Weightless Wonder produces 25 seconds or so of weightlessness by flying in a roller-coaster-like path of steep climbs and free falls. (Roller coasters again -- behold the tenuous connection!) Except in this case, the coaster is about 10,000 feet high. The aircraft's dramatic, parabolic flight patterns temporarily counteract earth's gravity, creating "weightlessness," and sometimes leading to motion sickness -- hence the "vomit comet" nickname.

Cool factor aside, the students do have a scientifically valid reason for performing their experiment in such an anti-gravity environment. Conventional fire extinguishers, it turns out, don't work properly aboard spacecraft; the foam tends to spread out in a low-g environment rather than smother the flames. It might be a good idea to figure out how best to extinguish fires in space. Although there are more terrestrial potential applications, too: the knowledge might be useful for fighting fires in computer rooms, where expensive hardware can be damaged by normal chemical extinguishers.

This past February, NASA's microgravity school program also benefited teachers from two southern California schools. One project was called the Rotational Artificial Gravity Experiment, designed to help students determine how fast a space station would have to rotate to create artificial gravity on board. The other was the Bubble Project, aimed at achieving a better understanding of how soap bubbles behave in a microgravity environment: specifically, how long it lasts, its size and its direction of travel in reduced gravity.

It just so happens that the study of bubbles and foam is pretty cutting-edge science, and the Bubble Project isn't the only research venture that seeks to study foam's properties in the absence of gravity. In that infamous, riddled-with-nitpicky-errors book of mine, there's a chapter on foam and bubbles, in which I discuss the work of Boston University researcher Glynn Holt. (It's based in part on an article on the physics of foam I wrote for Discover back in 2002.) It's actually rather difficult for sudsy scientists to create predictive models of foam's rheology -- that is, how it deforms and flows over time -- because anything you use as a container inevitably changes its shape and behavior. Holt got around this problem by using sound waves to float individual drops of foam in mid air using a technique called acoustic levitation. He can even manipulate the suspended drop by altering the acoustic field, changing its position, or squeezing it to cause the bubbles that make up the drop to vibrate.

Sometimes it can seem as if gravity "disappears," even on earth, as with the notorious "Gravity Hill, part of a remote local road located in south central Pennsylvania. For no cost whatsoever, the low-budget tourist can marvel as water seems to flow the wrong way, and cars seem to roll uphill. It's just an optical illusion but it's fun, nonetheless. The news that University of Oregon researchers have made water "climb stairs" in the laboratory isn't an illusion -- but it's a damned clever trick, basically exploiting the same phenomenon that causes water droplets to bead up and dart around a really hot frying pan. The Oregon researchers just turned the frying pan into a very hot ratcheted staircase. (You can see a helpful diagram of the experiment here.)

For most of us, though, there are no clever tricks or illusions to offset gravity. Still, I take comfort in the fact that all the sturm und drang is by its very nature transitory. The NPR link is no longer the top emailed story on the site; it's disappeared into the archives altogether. And after peaking at #14 on Amazon Sunday evening, my book has begun a slow, prolonged descent back into the online reader's abyss from whence it sprang. See? No matter how high you soar, gravity always wins out in the end and brings you crashing down to earth. Icarus learned this the hard way and paid for his error with his life. I escaped with a few scratches to my ego, having learned some very useful things about the finer points of gravity and acceleration in the process. I think that's a fair trade.

After all, one shouldn't let one's fear of flying keep one from strapping on a metaphorical pair of wings and testing the limits -- just to see if it can be done. Far worse than having the odd error in my book, would have been not writing it at all because I was too afraid of making mistakes. So I applaud those students and teachers who brave the Vomit Comet for their daring. It's only by pushing the limits that any kind of growth or progress can be made. Why bother with a life half lived?