Proving the Obviously Untrue - STEM

Email Latency

nospam@example.com (Colin Turner) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:17:38 +0100

Like lots of people who are too hooked into technology for their own good, I tend to receive loads of emails a day, even after the huge quantity of spam is removed. Sometimes it's easy, and fast to respond to a given email. Once in a while I get an email from someone that I really want to respond to in some detail; usually an email from a good friend I don't often see or haven't seen in a while.

Since I'm usually up to my neck in too much stuff, it's precisely this email that I leave to the side to deal with later, "when I have more time". Yes, the people who know me well already understand the problems with that. It would help if icedove stored its tags correctly in my dovecot based IMAP server. but for some reason it often doesn't. The end result is that "later", I'm still struggling to complete a dozen tasks on a list, and the email is anonymously buried in my inbox under many more recent arrivals.

That's really not good, and I'll have to make more of an effort to keep in touch with all these friends.

Runs on mailing lists

nospam@example.com (Colin Turner) — Mon, 26 May 2008 21:31:59 +0100

Today I spent the day at the chemistry department in Edinburgh University demonstrating (at their invitation) OPUS with Ron Laird. I frequently receive these sorts of invitations, and that's nice, but it's a whole day to go there and back again.

I got home and checked my email, and saw dozens of emails about a conference in Japan. It seems the organiser thought it would be a good idea to set-up a mailing list, but hadn't configured it to be read-only. Ok, a pain, and basically spam. Now the real stupidity sets in, when several people start to mail the list to ask to be removed. Ok, more annoyance. Now we get the real fun, computer professionals sending "unsubsribe foo@bar.com" to the list (not the list server) so we all get to enjoy that.

I've noticed this cascade effect before, when people start doing this and everyone else gets fed up and starts repeating the mistake, so want off the list; a bit like a run on a bank. But, please people, email the originator of the spam, not the list and/or look in the list control lines to find out how to unsubscribe.

Battlestar Galactica near Earth

nospam@example.com (Colin Turner) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:08:09 +0100

I have to say, I've enjoyed the "re-imagining" of Battlestar Galactica immensely so far. When it first aired, I thought it was a pretty corny idea, and didn't watch it, but I watched an odd episode here and there, and I began to realise that this was probably the most slick, dramatic, special effects laden sci-fi show yet. It's very addictive, and one of the very few TV shows I feel I don't want to miss an episode of.

Tonight I just sat down to watch season 4, episode 3 (no spoilers, don't worry!), and was very gratified to see Cylon base ships moving in a background that contained Orion, absolutely no doubt about it, a nice touch to show Earth is near. Now Orion is the easiest constellation to see, and I admit I never paid attention to the background before, but it's just that kind of nice detail I like about the show. I'll keep looking for more constellations now!

Wheeler goes through the last event horizon

nospam@example.com (Colin Turner) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:52:58 +0100

This week, John Archibald Wheeler died, from pneumonia at the age of 96.

Wheeler was a spectacular physicist, who worked in the areas of General Relativity among other areas, he is the guy who popularised the words "black hole" and "wormhole", and worked with Einstein in his last years. I hadn't known that he had worked on the Manhattan project, and that unlike other scientists, didn't regret his role in the project but merely the fact that it didn't save his brother's life. I also hadn't known that he supervised one of my other great physics heros Richard Feynman, but I was impressed with his work even before that.

I met his work when I was about 15 or 16. My maths teaching at secondary school had been, well, uneven to say the least for the first few years, but I got a good teacher in 4th and 5th form, Ken Brown. I started to realise that mathematics made logical coherent sense and that if I worked a bit harder I could get on top, and then understanding the next bit took little effort. I also found that, even with this basic mathematics, I could understand a lot of Special Relativity which fascinated me, but not so much as the General theory. In our local library in Bangor I found the book Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and of course, Wheeler. Now, my memories of this book are old, and I don't have a copy, but nostalgia almost prompts me to buy one. But I can remember my impression of the book.

It's not a layman's account, although there are many good examples of that, but it is beautiful, the illustrations, the mathematics, I enjoyed poring over all of it, and I think I did come to understand the theory better for it, even if the bulk of the material was beyond me then. It inspired me to study physics, and mathematics, and although when I reached university the mathematics itself began to captivate me more than the physics, still, two of my final year modules were Quantum Mechanics and Tensor Field Theory (the mathematical basis for General Relativity). In fact, I picked these out as modules I wanted to do when I was in first year, and planned everything around them. In the end I am more of a Pure Mathematician, and though back in school I always wanted to work on GR I guess it's very unlikely I now ever will, it was an inspiration to me, and people like Einstein, Feynman and Wheeler showed the way.

My Old UFO sighting

nospam@example.com (Colin Turner) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:10:01 +0000

I promised previously, when talking about UFO sightings over Bangor, that I would record my own here.

As I mentioned then, this doesn't imply alien craft, but an unidentified flying object, and I'll pretty certain this wasn't such a craft, or if so, the pilot probably needs an extensive driving ban. Anyway, here's my record from my log book at the time.

Date: 26th September 1991, Observers: Myself, Dad, Tom Nelson
Seen: Saturn at 117x, Seeing: II, Transparency: Very Good

Saturn seemed exceptionally clear but broke up at 166x. It is descending further into the south of the sky. A 17 day old moon foiled another attempt at M31.

I noted a series of about 6-10 flashes from 10:00 pm to 10:25 pm. I was one of the "objects" at about 10:20 pm. About 3-4 Hours Right Ascension, 60 - 80 degrees Declination. It looked like a wobbly meteor with a flash easily magnitude, say, -2 or brighter. Saw another at 10:30 pm. No further flashes. Could have been an astronomical event or some domestic problem.

My sketch from the night

I'm glad I recorded this carefully. The then president of the Irish Astronomical Association (of which I was a member then) was from Bangor, and was laughed at for his similar report, so it was helpful to have some more evidence. I still don't know what I saw, it was very bright for a meteor, and of course, they should go in a straight line. I have speculated that there was a rupture in the side of the object from which gas was venting, perhaps causing it to travel in a helical path which would have looked "wobbly" from my perspective on the ground. You can click on the thumbnail of my sketch at the time to see my sensational artistic talent.

A* on A levels

nospam@example.com (ct) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 16:22:26 +0100

With apologies to Spinal tap...

P1. The A level is a great qualification, and it's going to get even better, they are going to introduce the scale up to A*.
P2. A*?
P1. Yes, how cool is that? All other qualification only go up to A.
P2. Hmm, but wouldn't it be easier to just call the A* an A and use the scale that way?
P1. [blank look] but it goes all the way up to A*

etc.

UFO does NOT mean flying saucer

nospam@example.com (ct) — Mon, 14 May 2007 18:25:44 +0100

Ok, it's another pet peeve posting. The BBC have just posted a story about strange lights seen over Bangor. The summary reads "Residents in County Down have raised the possibility of a UFO sighting above the skies of Bangor." It's not a possibility, it was a UFO sighting. That is, they were Unidentified Flying Objects. It irritates me when people use UFO to mean "bizarre alien craft about to abduct me", because that would clearly be a well identified flying object. On another note, I lived in Bangor for many years and I also had a UFO sighting when I was there. I was in the back garden with my telescope watching Saturn, and was vaguely aware (I had one eye shut, the other to the eyepiece of my 8" telescope (SCT)) that there odd lightning like flashes going on. I was watching the sky for a while then, and was lucky enough to see one right in the centre of my vision. It was a very bright corkscrew like motion that lasted about a second. I shouldn't rely on memory, if I remember I will dig the details from my observation notebook.

"Anyone can teach maths"

nospam@example.com (ct) — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:08:38 +0000

How many times I have heard this quote. I beg to differ. I was on my way home from work yesterday, listening to BBC radio 2. A woman was on making a music request.

The presenter (Stuart Maconie) asked her what she did for a living.

Woman: "I'm a teacher"
SM: "What do you teach?"
Woman: "Maths"
SM: "What were you teaching today?"
Woman: "Maths" (Duh)
SM: "No, I mean, was it quadratic equations or something?"
Woman: "Yes, actually..."

More chatter...

SM: "What's the volume of a cone?"
Woman:

More chatter...

SM: "What's the volume of a sphere?"
Woman:
SM: "They can't both be that"

Yes, that's right, they can't both be that. That would be because both answers are totally wrong. Not only are they wrong, they are not even dimensionally correct. In other words, any formula that represents a volume has to essentially be a distance times a distance times a distance. Count them, three distances multiplied together. This idiot gave the formula for an area; so it's not just the incorrect formulae that bothered me, or the fact that this was a maths teacher, but the fact that the formulae couldn't possibly be correct. Anyone with some insight into mathematics would know that. I would have known better when I was 18. Now there are some excellent maths school teachers, doing the job for the love of it, because it's certainly not for the pay, but there are some awful ones too, I know because:

I had one of them;
my daily job largely consists of undoing the damage they have wreaked on my students.

Of course, she was probably caught off guard, as if that's an excuse for not knowing these formulae if you're a professional mathematician, but in that case the correct answer was "I don't remember". Argh! Ok, I feel a bit better now. Oh, the correct formulae are of course for a cone (note, , three distances) and (note, , three distances).