George Stokes on science and knowledge (1877)

Posted on June 6, 2013 by skullsinthestars

One thing I’ve learned about the great scientists in history is that they are almost all well aware of the collaborative progressive nature of science.  The most famous example of this is Isaac Newton’s quite-possibly-sarcastic “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants,” but there are other examples.  While researching my post on physicist George Gabriel Stokes‘ 1857 courtship and romance of his future wife Mary, I came across a wonderful description of Stokes’ view on the scientific process and scientific knowledge. The account is second-hand, relayed by his daughter much later in life, but is oddly more poignant because of it.  It shows both Stokes’ wisdom as a scientist as well as his kindness as a father; I present without further comment.

In the year 1877 an Irish cousin came over to spend a long visit with us. On hearing her express a wish to study Euclid my father suddenly announced that he was going to try her paces and would take her for an hour every evening when he was at home, and that I might come too. He read through the first book of Euclid with her during the month of her sojourn with us. It was apparent during the first lesson that I was keeping them back, and that it was better to withdraw; but I felt most wretched and abased at losing the chance of learning from him. That night when bidding him good-night he kept my hand in his and said he wished to talk to me. He first spoke of things not mathematical which he wished me to study. He then gave me the most beautiful account of the growth of knowledge, and said
that even the wisest people knew very little. He spoke of himself as only apprehending slightly in advance of others, as standing on the edge and looking into the unknown, and said that people were then only born who would perhaps know far more than anyone yet dreamt of. Then after speaking of human knowledge as it had been and as it was, he passed on to imagine it in an infinite degree, and from that to Divine Wisdom as the root of all things which are or can be, and yet as willing to dwell in every creature who in humility desired true wisdom.

Posted in History of science | Leave a comment

George Gabriel Stokes in love! (1857)

Posted on June 4, 2013 by skullsinthestars

Been very busy the past few weeks with work, house buying and selling, and life in general.  Catching back up on blog posts; here’s a bit of sweetness connected to a prominent physicist.

With the weather finally turning nice at last and with Spring in the air, it is natural that even a scientist’s thoughts would turn to… love!  Not being a biologist, I can’t write about the weird mating habits of the animal kingdom — besides, that role is already and masterfully taken by Dr. Bondar.

What I can do, however, is provide a revealing peek into the personal life of a famous physicist and his own efforts and insecurities in romance.  I was recently browsing the memoirs and correspondence of physicist and mathematician George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903), published in 1907, and found to my delight that the editor had included a series of personal letters of Stokes wooing the love of his life!

Why, you might ask, would I even bother to share this information?  Well, every physicist knows at least one quirky story about a famous researcher, e.g. some sort of crazy thing that Feynman, Einstein or Newton did.  These stories are great fun, but they emphasize that great scientists are different from ordinary folks.  This in turn has the unintended side effect of making scientists appear strange, unsympathetic, and unapproachable.  Because of this, I nowadays am more delighted to read anecdotes that prove that the most brilliant researchers were, in fact, also very human at heart.  Stokes’ letters actually highlight two major aspects of his personality: his loving and insecure soul as well as his remarkable mind.

Continue reading →

Posted in History of science, Silliness | Leave a comment

The Kaye effect after dark!

Posted on May 20, 2013 by skullsinthestars

I’ve talked in some detail before about the Kaye effect, in which a shear-thinning fluid such as shampoo or liquid soap can be made to “bounce.”  Well, I did one final experiment with the Kaye effect, in order to show that the shampoo can be used as a light guide, as was demonstrated in 2006 by a Dutch research group.

My video result is posted below: nearly 3 glorious minutes of a cascading stream of shampoo with light glowing from within!  I was never able to get a truly stable Kaye stream, but the effect is almost more fun with the stream erratically bouncing.

Posted in Physics | 2 Comments

The Giant’s Shoulders #59 is out!

Posted on May 16, 2013 by skullsinthestars

I hereby declare that the 59th edition of The Giant’s Shoulders, the history of science blog carnival, is up at Something by Virtue of Nothing!  This edition, centered around the theme of the Antikythera Mechanism, includes posts about:

  • Did Isaac Newton slash the portrait of Robert Hooke?
  • The Haunt of the Resurrection Men!
  • Views of the dangers of masturbation for women,
  • The weirdest weapons of history,
  • and much more!

Many thanks to the hosts for an excellent carnival!  The next edition, the five-year anniversary of the carnival (has it really been that long?), will be hosted by The Renaissance Mathematicus.  As always, submissions can be sent to me, ThonyC, or the host blog — the latter two of which are the same this time!

Posted in General science, Science news | Leave a comment

A gallery of my fantasy miniatures

Posted on May 16, 2013 by skullsinthestars

Time for a little break from physics and fiction!  Though I haven’t been very active recently, for many years I was a hardcore gamer, playing both role-playing game and board games.  In fact, I credit much of my early aptitude in mathematics to the amount of time I spent crunching numbers in Dungeons & Dragons.

I’m hoping to get back into some more gaming at my local game store, but I’m also planning to get back into painting fantasy miniatures.  For those unfamiliar, role-playing games and fantasy wargames can be played on tabletop with 25mm miniatures, and there is a vast collection of high-quality unpainted minis available for purchase.  Though I haven’t played games for quite some time, I’ve been painting on and off in the interim.

I thought I would share some images of my best paint jobs, with a little bit of a description to go with each one!  I should note that, being my best work, for every miniature you see here there are at least two more that didn’t turn out quite so well.  I should also note that these miniatures were painted for display, as opposed to being painted for gaming.  This means that I spent much more time on each paint job and used light coats to allow for finer detail.  Paint jobs for actual gaming are necessarily cruder and use thicker coats.

Without further ado, here are my best fantasy miniatures!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Posted in Personal, role-playing games | 4 Comments

All about rainbows, double rainbows, circular rainbows!

Posted on May 13, 2013 by skullsinthestars

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.

-John Keats, Lamia (1820)

Poet John Keats (1795-1821) once famously — and infamously — joked that Isaac Newton had destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by “reducing it to the prismatic colors.”  This statement has been quoted often whenever someone wants to argue that scientific knowledge dulls the beauty and poetry of nature.

Keats was being an idiot, though: a true understanding of the science behind a phenomenon  only adds to its beauty.  There are so many subtle aspects to even the simple optics of a rainbow that make it a fascinating and lovely subject of contemplation.  Once you get past the basic science of a rainbow, you are well-prepared to study more sophisticated and unusual phenomena such as this double rainbow that my wife and I saw from our house last July.

Double rainbow. It was, in fact, all the way.

Double rainbow. It was, in fact, all the way.

I’ve had rainbows on my mind since I was recently asked to explain some of the optics by a journalist.  Surprisingly, standard optics textbooks such as Born and Wolf’s Principles of Optics and Hecht’s Optics have no discussion of the phenomenon.  This is likely due to the fact that most optical scientists have no need to understand rainbows in their research, but this does not mean they are not objects worthy of study.

So let me endeavor to explain all about rainbows: how they form, how double rainbows form, when fully circular rainbows form, and anything else I can think of.  This isn’t just trivia: a lack of knowledge of rainbows can lead to truly humiliating consequences.

Continue reading →

Posted in Optics | 15 Comments

Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers

Posted on May 6, 2013 by skullsinthestars

This post continues a long-neglected series of posts about classic novels of science fiction and horror that were adapted into movies of the 1950s and 1960s.  Years past, I talked about John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos and The Day of the Triffids, as well as John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There?  In this post I consider an equally iconic novel that was adapted into four movies so far, and likely more to follow!

The 1950s and 1960s must have been a wonderful time to be a science fiction writer.  Not only was the genre at the height of its popularity, but its novels were readily tapped for screen adaptations.  Growing up, I was completely unaware that many of the films I watched on Sunday afternoon “Creature Features” were based on novels, but now I find it fascinating to go back and see how the movies compare to their original inspirations.

One of these that I believe almost everyone on the planet must have heard of at one point or another is Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers (1955), later revised to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

First edition cover via Wikipedia, which actually accurately depicts a scene in the book.

First edition cover via Wikipedia, which actually accurately depicts a scene in the book.

Finney’s book was an immediate sensation, and was quickly turned into the instant classic 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Three other adaptations followed, in 1978, 1993 and 2007.  But what of the original novel, and how does it compare to the films?  Let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

Posted in Horror, Science fiction | 2 Comments

Physics demonstrations: Chladni patterns

Posted on May 2, 2013 by skullsinthestars

A good demonstration of a physical phenomenon should be both insightful and exciting.  Sometimes, a demonstration succeeds at both so well that it is practically awe-inspiring.  Such is the case, for me, with the demonstration of Chladni patterns, exotic and beautiful vibration figures that can be displayed with the help of just a little sand.

The demonstration of a couple of Chladni patterns are shown in the video below.  A metal plate, supported by a post in its center, is vibrated at a single frequency by use of a mechanical driver.  For most frequencies, nothing at all happens; when certain special frequencies are hit, however, standing waves appear on the plate, driving the sand away from the points of large vibration to the points of no vibration.  By varying the frequency of oscillation, we can find a large number of the so-called resonance frequencies and their accompanying patterns, which become increasingly complex and beautiful as we up the rate of oscillation.

Chladni figures are a lovely examples of resonance, an important concept in almost all branches of physics, including vibration.  Rigid and semi-rigid bodies possess an (in principle) infinite number of natural frequencies of vibration at which the object “wants” to move.  In this post we look at resonance, as illustrated by Chladni’s demonstration, and the role it plays in numerous phenomena.

Continue reading →

Posted in Physics, Physics demos | 4 Comments

Physics demonstrations: cloaking device?

Posted on April 25, 2013 by skullsinthestars

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about the optics of invisibility, both hypothetical and actual.  Though a number of forms of invisibility have been considered in both science and fiction for over a hundred years, the study of the subject really exploded in 2006 with the publication of two theoretical papers introducing designs for “invisibility cloaks.”

The principle behind one of these cloaks is illustrated below, taken from the original paper by Pendry, Schurig and Smith.   The cloak guides light around the central region and sending it along its original path, like water flowing around a boulder in a stream.  The lines in the illustration represent rays of light being deflected and returned to their original trajectories.

originalcloak

The device is passive; it “works its magic” by virtue of the materials it is built out of, and guides light around the hidden region by what amounts to refraction.

It is fun to talk about the unusual implications of optical invisibility, but it is hard to show it!  Cloaks are complicated, and there are relatively few experimental realizations to date — and those that do exist are not easily reproducible without a lot of resources.

Fortunately, there exists a simple trick, suggested by my colleagues*, that can be used to demonstrate the principle of cloaking in a striking way!  I assembled a version of this trick myself for use in a recent popular talk on invisibility physics that I gave; a short video of it is shown below.

A finger placed behind the device is readily visible, but a finger placed within the cloak vanishes!

For about $50, you too can make your own “cloaking device”, albeit an oversimplified and crude one!  Let’s take a look at how it is done.

Continue reading →

Posted in Invisibility, Optics, Physics demos | 7 Comments

John Blackburn’s The Face of the Lion

Posted on April 23, 2013 by skullsinthestars

I won’t have many more of these to announce in the future (I swear!), but I wanted to point out that another book by John Blackburn has been released recently that contains an introduction by me — The Face of the Lion!

face_of_the_lion

 

Written in 1976, The Face of the Lion is a rather unusual novel — it can be considered an early novel that contemplates the possibility of a “zombie apocalypse,” so popular in horror fiction today.

When a remote region of the Scottish Highlands is cordoned off by mercenaries working for the laird James Frasier Clyde, the British government suspects that Clyde is planning to test a home-made atomic bomb in a bid for Scottish independence.  It becomes quickly clear, however, that Clyde is not seeking to keep people out as much as keep something in: a horrible disease is spreading among the people of the area, turning them into mindless raging beasts that can spread their contagion with a touch.  As the infection spreads beyond the restricted region, bacteriologist Sir Marcus Levin and Colonel Lawrence of the Internal Security Service race to understand and contain it before the entire country, if not the world, is devastated.

The Face of the Lion is very much a classic style of Blackburn novel: part horror and part mystery.  There is a sinister and complicated force behind the plague, and discovering its origin is just as much a part of the plot as is stopping it.  True to all of Blackburn’s fiction, the story contains many twists and turns, all the way up to its final shocking revelations.

This is not one of Blackburn’s strongest novels: by 1976, he had been writing horror — and about plagues in particular — for nearly 20 years, and the story doesn’t “click” as much as his earlier works.  In fact, the story is reminiscent of even his first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, in which a sinister disease threatens to wipe out the world.  Nevertheless, The Face of the Lion is well-crafted and works well as an introduction to Blackburn’s work, which was hugely popular in his time and had a significant influence on later British horror authors.

I had a lot of fun with the introduction to this book, trying to fit it into the broader genre of “zombie apocalypse” novels.  This gave me the opportunity to present a short history of such novels, stretching back hundreds of years to the first “last man” story in 1805.  The Face of the Lion was very much ahead of its time and I think readers will be fascinated to see how much Blackburn anticipated future developments in the genre.

It’s also worth noting that I had a small part in the design of the cover of this edition!  I provided the basic structure of the lion and biohazard sign and Valancourt crafted it into the excellent cover that is pictured above.  Hopefully it gives the right feeling of sophisticated menace that John Blackburn’s books so rightly deserve.

Posted in Horror | Leave a comment