=2. PHYSICS MP_________________________________________________________________________ From: shhong@chiak.kaist.ac.kr (Hong Seongho) Theoretical Physics is a science locally isomorphic to Mathematics. P__________________________________________________________________________ On the heater lies a tile. The teacher asks: "Why does the the tile warmer at the side that lies at the far side of the heater?". The student stammers :"Eh, maybe because of the heat conduction and so?" Teacher: "No, because I just turned it around." P__________________________________________________________________________ Formula: "Energy equals milk chocolate square" P__________________________________________________________________________ benker@cae.wisc.edu Two atoms were walking down the street. One turns to the other and says, "Oh, no! I think I'm an ion!" The other responds, "Are you sure?!?" "Yes, I'm positive!" P__________________________________________________________________________ A hydrogen atom came running into a police station asking for help.... Hydrogen atom: Someone just stole my electron!! Policeman: Are you sure? Hydrogen atom: Yes, I'm positive From: freya@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Smile) policeman: Oh, I thought you were just being negative again. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: dsmillie@superior.carleton.ca (David Smillie) Two sodium atoms are flying around a cyclotron. Suddenly the first atom said to the second, `Hey, I think I've just lost an electron.' `Are you sure?' asked the second atom. `Yeah,' said the first, `I'm positive.' Of course, the _real_ joke is that neither sodium atom could have been flying around the cyclotron in the first place, unless they were _already_ ionized. (collapses to the floor, gasping for breath and chuckling hysterically while everyone else in the room edges nervously away) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: harper@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (John Harper) every couple has its moment, especially P__________________________________________________________________________ From: zdxc0d@amoco.com (David Crowson) Physicists at Harwell have discovered the heaviest element known to science, named Administratum. The new element has no protons or electrons, and has an atomic number of zero. However, it does have one neutron, eight assistant neutrons, ten executive neutrons, 35 vice neutrons and 258 assistant vice neutrons. Administratum has an atomic mass of 311=, since the neutron is only detectable half of the time. Its 312 particles are held together by a force which involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles, called morons. Since it has no electrons, Administratum is completely inert. Nevertheless, its presence can be detected because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. One experiment, which should have lasted only a few days, is still running after 2= years due to the addition of just one milligramme of Administratum. It is weakly active, and has a normal half-life of approximately six months. After this time, it does not actually decay, but undergoes a metamorphosis in which assistant neutrons, executive neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. This almost invariably leads to an increase in atomic weight, hence it is self-sustaining. Although it occurs widely, Administratum tends to concentrate around large corporations, research laboratories and government departments. It can especially be found in recently re-organised sites, and there is reason to believe that it is heavily involved in the processes of deforestation and global warming. It should be remembered that Administratum is known to be toxic at all concentrations, and can easily destroy any productive reactions where it is allowed to accumulate. Numerous attempts have been made to determine how Administratum can be controlled to prevent irreversible damage, but results to date are not promising. From: tornberg@netcom.com (Neal E. Tornberg) Research at other laboratories indicates that Administratium occurs naturally in the atmosphere. It tends to concentrate at certain points such as government agencies, large corporations and universities and can usually be found in the newest, best appointed and best maintained buildings. From: Benjamin.J.Tilly@dartmouth.edu (Benjamin J. Tilly) One major problem is that proximity to this substance tends to make the process of getting anything done (such as getting grant money) more time-consuming, which makes the experiments in question extremely time-consuming. P__________________________________________________________________________ Ivan Ivanovich, great russian Scientist does an experiment. He wants to know how fast a thermometer falls down. He takes a thermometer and a light, a candle light. He drops both from the 3rd floor and recognices that they are reaching the ground at the same time. Ivan Ivanovich, great russian scientific writes in his book: A theomometer falls with the speed of light. &P_________________________________________________________________________ From: jdm@rheom.demon.co.uk (John Mitchell) Bob Pease (Nat.Semi.) records the story of the Physics student who got the following question in an exam: "You are given an accurate barometer, how would you use it to determine the height of a skyscraper ?" 1: He answered: "Go to the top floor, tie a long piece of string to the barometer, let it down 'till it touches the ground and measure the length of the string". The examiner wasn't satisfied, so they decided to interview the guy: "Can you give us another method, one which demonstrates your knowledge of Physics ?" 2: "Sure, go to the top floor, drop the barometer off, and measure how long before it hits the ground......" "Not, quite what we wanted, care to try again ?" 3: "Make a pendulum of the barometer, measure its period at the bottom, then measure its period at the top......" "..another try ?...." 4: "Measure the length of the barometer, then mount it vertically on the ground on a sunny day and measure its shadow, measure the shadow of the skyscraper....." "....and again ?...." 5: "walk up the stairs and use the barometer as a ruler to measure the height of the walls in the stairwells." "...One more try ?" 6: "Find where the janitor lives, knock on his door and say 'Please, Mr Janitor, if I give you this nice Barometer, will you tell me the height of this building ?" There are many more ways, for instance: From: eaobrien@ebi.ac.uk (Emmet O'Brien) 7: To which the less polite alternative is to threaten to wallop the caretaker with the barometer unless they tell you how high the building is. From: Phil Gustafson The just-released book, "Expert C Programming (Deep C Secrets)", Peter van der Linden, SunSoft/Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-177429-8, lists twenty-one (21) more or less useful ways to measure the height of a building with a barometer. 8: Use the barometer as a paperweight while examining the building plans. From: Mike 9: Sell the barometer and buy a tape measure. From: gt4495c@prism.gatech.edu (Giannhs) 10: Use a barometer to reflect a laser beam from the top and measure the travel time. 11: Track the shadow of the building positioning a barometer on the ground every hour. 12: Create an explosion on the top and measure the time for the pressure depression indicated on the barometer. From: peter@cara.demon.co.uk (Peter Ceresole) 13: For fun, how about using sound; fire a starting pistol at the bottom, time the difference of arrival at the top. About a second for the Empire State building, and of course it'd have to be a damn great gun to carry over the howl and screech of downtown Gotham. Also, the detonation might get confused with the sounds of routine crack dealing below. From: Adam Jones 14: Here's one no-one seems to have thought of : 1) Build a sandpit (full of sand, OK?) at the bottom of the building. 2) Rake the sand flat. 3) Drop the barometer from the top of the building into the sand. 4) Measure the average diameter of the crater thus created. 5) From the answer to (4), the mass of the barometer and the properties of the sand (viscosity?) calculate its impact speed and thus the height from which it was dropped. Also has the advantage that you may get your barometer back intact if: a) The building is small. b) The sand is soft. c) The barometer is light and strong. P.S. Watch out for wind-affected drops hitting pedestrians from tall buildings... From: jjunging@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca (Yohaun) 15: 1) Borrow one of those fancy two channel digital oscilloscopes from somebody's lab when they aren't looking. 2) Connect a microphone to each channel. Place one microphone on ground level. Call it "A". 3) Place other microphone "B" at top of building, directly over the first microphone. Note that you may need a lot of cable. 4) Place barometer as close to A as possible. 5) Set scope to trigger on channel A. 6) Whack barometer once with hammer or suitable object. The purpose of this is to make a nice, sharp impulse. 7) Measure the difference in arrival time of the impulse in each channel. This is how long it took the sound to travel to the top of the building. The speed of sound is approximately 1 foot per millisecond under most conditions, so we can find the distance travelled by the pulse and thus the height of the building. Now don't even get me started about using a microphone, an oscilloscope and audible "clicks" to make an acoustical motion detector. :) Except for the trivial method (2), there are other ways to use dropping the barometer: From: nce@liverpool.ac.uk (Dr N.C. Eastmond) 16: Drop the barometer off the building onto someones head, killing them outright. Wait for the next day's papers and read the part where is says "A man (39) was killed yesterday when a scientist (26) dropped a barometer from the top of an [x] foot building". 17: If it's a _tall_ building, one could drop the barometer, measure how much its length had changed when it reached the bottom, work out the speed from the relativistic dilation, and form that nd knwon gravitational acceleration calculate the height.. From: Gabriel Krabbe 18: Actually, you don't have to drop it to use relativity.just hold it parallel to your speed vector (as you rotate with the world) and measure the length. do this at the top and at the bottom of the building; at the top, being further from the centre of the world, the speed is greater and can be determined by the dilatation of the length of the baro- meter. from there, it's easy to find out just how much further from the centre you are; this figure being the height of the building. From: Sebastian_Vielhauer@public.uni-hamburg.de (Sebastian Vielhauer) 19: 1) Make sure your barometer contains alcohol[1]. 2) Spill the alcohol over a heap of wood, paper and other inflammable stuff in the cellar of the building in question. 3) Ignite. 4) Get out. 5) Listen to a local station on your radio. 6) If all works fine, you will hear a message like "A fire broke out in the feet tall in ..." 7) There you are. 8) "And now the police asks for your cooperation in connection with the fire in the today: A young man carrying a broken barometer has been seen leaving the building right before the fire was detected. Description as follows:..." DISCLAIMER: Don't try this at home. It's far too obvious. From: thweatt@prairie.NoDak.edu (Superdave the Wonderchemist) 20: 1) Measure the length of the barometer. 2) Borrow the scaffolding from the window washers. 3) Place the bottom of the barometer on the ground and make a pencil mark on the building at the top of the barometer. 4) Raise the scaffolding a bit to facilitate barometer and pencil manipulation. 5) Place the bottom of the barometer at the pencil mark on the building from step 3 and make a mark on the building at the top of the barometer. 6) Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you reach the top of the building. Be sure to count the pencil marks as you go. If at the top of the building, you end up with the barometer sticking up above the building then you must follow the special steps noted later and add that to your answer. 7) Multiply the number of barometer lengths by the length of the barometer to get the building height. *****SPECIAL STEPS NOTED HERE***** s1) Holding the end of the barometer at the top of the last full barometer length mark, rotate the other end of the barometer until it is in line with the top of the building. s2) Measure the angle between verticle and the barometer. s3) Take the cosine of that angle. s4) Take the answer to s4 and add that to the number of full barometer lengths measured and multiply by the length of the barometer. ********************************** Note: For best results, always hold the barometer vertically. 21: (Aneroid barometers only) Lie the barometer on its back on the ground. Bounce a laser off the glass front and time how long that takes. Subtract the thickness of the barometer. 22: (Mercury barometers only) Drain the mercury out and put it in a bowl. Bounce a laser off the surface of the mercury, etc. etc. etc. Again, subtract the height of the surface. From: jjhyvone@cc.hut.fi (Jorkki Hyvonen) 23: 1. Take the glass tube out of the barometer. 2. Attach one end of the glass tube to the top of the building, so that the other end points directly downwards. 3. Measure the time difference between step 2. and the other end of the glass tube touching the ground with a high-precision timing device. 4. Calculate the height of the building using the known viscosity of glass. From: mike@econym.demon.co.uk (Mike Williams) 24: Run a transparent tube up the side of the building. Fill it with water, seal the top and open the bottom inside a reservoir of water. I.e. effectively make a water barometer - just like a mercury barometer, but with water instead of the mercury. Wait for a day when the water level matches the height of the building, and read off the atmospheric pressure on your original barometer. Calculate the height of water that this atmospheric pressure can support. Unless your building is pretty close to 30 meters high, you may have to wait a long time. From: a.s.haines@davav.demon.co.uk (Tony Haines) 25 :Alternatively you could use fluids with different densities until you found one which was the height of the building. Remember you have to seal the top of the tube, and remove all air from it for an accurate reading. From: Adam Price 26: 1) Beat on the foundation o the building, using the barometer, until the building comes crashing down. 2) Any sizeable pieces should be pulverized into pebbles and dust. 3) The height of the building should be zero. If not, repeat step 2. This method may require more than one barometer. Make sure that you buy the same kind, for a more scientific study. From: a.s.haines@davav.demon.co.uk (Tony Haines) 27: Remove the glass pipe from the barometer. Attach one end to an arrow and the other to the top of the building. Evenly heat up the middle of the tube to red heat and fire the arrow at the ground with a bow. Measure the width of the extended glass tube at several points and average. Knowing the original width, work out the distance travelled by the arrow. Measure the distance of the arrow from the base of the building. Use trigonometry to calculate the height of the building. 28: As a quick check, using the mercury you removed from the barometer: Measure the temperature of the mercury at the top of the building, and put it in a perfectly insulating container. Drop it off the building and measure the temperature of the mercury after it has landed. Calculate the energy gained and therefore the height of the building. From: Frank_Hollis-1@sbphrd.com (Triple Quadrophenic) 29: Sellotape a tuning fork to the barometer and whack it just before you throw the barometer off the building. Measure the doppler shift at the moment of impact to get its velocity and, hence, the height of the building. From: borism@interlog.com (Boris Mohar) 30: Wait untill Hell freezes over. Extrude the mercury into a wire. Use wire to measure the building. From: Michael Warner 31: 1) Set the barometer a measured distance from the building, ensuring a clear line-of-sight exists between it and both the top and base of the building. 2) Buy, borrow or steal a theodolite. 3) Measure the angles (from horizontal) from the base and the top of the building to the barometer. 4) Diagram the distances and angles at a 1:1 scale on a really big piece of paper. 5) Lay out the diagram on a convenient empty parking lot. 6) Pace off the distance in question. From: Tracy Sweat 32: Tie a copper barometer to a copper wire of known diameter. Lower barometer from roof until it just rests on the ground. Apply a known voltage between the barometer and the end of the wire at root level. Measure current flowing between these two points and divide this number into the voltage, giving you the resistance of the barometer/wire combination. Subtract the barometer's resistance and use the resistance of the wire to determine its length. Add back in the height of the barometer. Also, I'd like to see some answers formulated using a bungee jumping barometer. Possibly using the thickness of the bungee cord with the barometer at ground level, maybe using the barometer weight necessary to stretch the bungee cord all the way to the ground, etc... Every meteorological observation site should have at least one bungee jumping barometer. At least. From: spb@sv1.smb.man.ac.uk (Stephen Bates) 33: Read the inscription on the plaque on the back of the barometer, which says, "This barometer is the property of the metres high building. Please do not remove." [1] From: theise@netins.net (Ted Heise) 34: Okay, one more idea which was given to me by my graduate research advisor. Suspend the barometer from the top of the building with a wire. Remove the barometer and measure the change in length of the wire. With the weight of the barometer and Young's modulus for the wire, one can calculate the length. From: fc3a501@AMRISC04.math.uni-hamburg.de (Hauke Reddmann) 35: 1. Look for Godzilla. 2. Wait until he stand before the building. 3. Poke him with the barometer in the,eh,backside. 4. YEOWCH!SLAM!PLOFF! 5. Now that the house is overturned (I think you call it a "flat" :-) , the task has turned into measuring the length, which is much more convenient. From: dehall@hellcat.ecn.uoknor.edu (David Hall) And then there is trigonometry, gravity force differentials, laser rangefinding.....and the list goes on. From: zara.baxter@jcu.edu.au (Silky) 36: Heres my silly [1] attempt at answering the question of how tall a building is, using a barometer. One can easily find the height of a building, simply by finding its top, and working from there. Find a person with vertigo. (fear of heights) Give them the barometer. Tell them to put it on top of the building. we have several measurements, which can then be cross referenced to determine the height of the building. 1. Measure the volume of the sound caused by the persons knees knocking together. The taller the building, the louder the knocking. This should be standardised first, by testing the sound produced for buildings of known height. 2. attach electrodes to your subject. measure the EEG reading at the moment immediately after placing the barometer on top of the building. (ie, the moment they look down) amplitude of waves indicates anxiety. Again, standardisation should be done to ensure accuracy. [2] 3. Measure the depth of the crater created when they land, after having seen how high they were when they put the barometer on top of the building. Silky...in an attempt to be as perverse as possible. [3] [1] well everyone else has. [2] a flat line is the exception to the rule here. [3] no, not pervert. Of course, you could use the barometer to measure the pressure at the top and the bottom of the building and use the air density... From: "Chester, Justin" 37: Take the barometer to the top of the building. At the base of the building put a trigger that when the barometer is dropped onto it, it emits a loud, high frequency noise. Start stopwatch once the trigger is activated. Put an audiometer at the top of the building to stop the stopwatch when the audiometer is activated (at least activated higher than the backround noise already present). Determine from there the speed of sound (for that particular day) and therefore determine the top of the building. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: c1prasad@watson.ibm.com (prasad) Entropy isn't what it used to be... P__________________________________________________________________________ Why did the cat fall off the roof? Because he lost his mu. (mew=sound cats make, mu=coeff of friction) P__________________________________________________________________________ Brownian motion = Jogging girl scout *P_________________________________________________________________________ Bob Terry's sigline urges us to "Join the Brownian Movement!" At the time (in Los Angeles) I had a magnetic sign on my car saying REPEAL OHM'S LAW with my telephone number, I got a call from someone urging me to join the Brownian Movement. When I asked him what folks did in the Brownian Movement, he told me they just got together to mill around. - Allan Hjer3pe *P_________________________________________________________________________ Years ago, when I lived in Topanga, California (near LA) I had a magnetic sign on my car saying REPEAL OHM'S LAW with my phone number. As a result I received a number of interesting calls. One was from a physics professor at UCLA. He said he was all in favor of repealing Ohm's Law, but requested that I wait until the end of the quarter so he wouldn't have to rewrite his lecture notes. Allan wrote that he was "on the committee to revoke Ohm's Law". Let me guess: Ohm's Law: is that the one about sitting crosslegged and chanting "Ohm! Ohm! Ohm!" ? Watt is Ohm's law and who volted it into existence? Has it met with any resistance in its application? Please respond quickly because my hair is on end and my emotional life has become static while awaiting an answer. Gus Seligmann Ohm's Law was good enough in its time, but that time is past. It is a rankly discriminatory piece of legislation and should be repealed or severely amended. Current should be directly proportional to BOTH voltage and resistance, or inversely proportional to both, or proportional to neither. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: mstueben@tjhsst.vak12ed.edu (Michael A. Stueben) Question: What is more useful: the sun or the moon? Answer: The moon, because the moon shines at night when you want the light, whereas the sun shines during the day when you don't need it. P__________________________________________________________________________ Philosophers have long wondered why socks have this habit of getting lost, and why humans always end up with large collections of unmatched odd socks. One school of thought says that socks are very antisocial creatures, and have a deep sense of rivalry. In particular, two socks of the same design have feelings of loathing towards each other and hence it is nearly impossible to pair them (e.g. a blue sock will usually be found nestling up to a black one, rather than its fellow blue sock). On the other hand, quantum theorists explain it all by a generalised exclusion principle --- it is impossible for two socks to be in the same eigen-state, and when it's in danger of happening, one of the socks has to vanish. Indeed the Uncertainty Principle also comes in --- the only time you know where a sock is, is when you're wearing it, and hence unable to be sure exactly how fast it's moving. The moment you stop moving and look at your sock, it then starts falling to pieces, changing colour, or otherwise becoming indeterminate. Either way, socks may possess Colour and Strangeness, but they seem to lack Charm. From: eridani@scn.org (Martha K. Koester) Theories about disappearing socks--the two you cited are wrong. It has long been known that the sock is the larval form of the coat hanger. P__________________________________________________________________________ The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center was known as SLAC, until the big earthquake, when it became known as SPLAC. SPLAC? Stanford Piecewise Linear Accelerator. P__________________________________________________________________________ THE SEX LIFE OF AN ELECTRON (with unhappy ending) One night when his charge was at full capacity, Micro Farad decided to get a cute little coil to discharge him. He picked up Millie Amp and took her for a ride on his megacycle. They rode across the wheat stone bridge, around the sine wave, and into the magnetic field next to the flowing current. Micro Farad, attracted by Millie's characteristic curve, soon had her field fully excited. He laid her on the ground potential, raised her frequency, lowered her resistance, and pulled out his high voltage probe. He inserted it in parallel and began to short circuit her shunt. Fully excited, Millie cried out, "ohm, ohm, give me mho". With his tube at maximum output and her coil vibrating from the current flow, her shunt soon reached maximum heat. The excessive current had shorted her shunt, and Micro's capacity was rapidly discharged, and every electron was drained off. They fluxed all night, tried various connections and hookings until his bar magnet had lost all of its strength, and he could no longer generate enough voltage to sustain his collapsing field. With his battery fully discharged, Micro was unable to excite his tickler, so they ended up reversing polarity and blowing each other's fuses. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Marcel Melters THE SEX LIFE OF AN ELECTRON ( with happy ending) One night when his charge was pretty high, Micro Farad went to see if he could find a cute little coil to let him discharge. He picked up Milli Amp, and took her for a ride on his Megacycle. They rode accross the wheatstone bridge, along the sine wave and stopped at a magnetic field flowing with current. Micro Farad soon had her resistance at a minimum level. They laid against ground level. Micro Farad then inserted his probe in Milli Amps socket. Mho, Mho, give me Mho, she said. They fluxed all night, trying out various connections. Afterwards Milli Amp tried self-induction and damaged her probe. After this, they went home and oscillated happily ever after. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: schmid@isi.ee.ethz.ch (Hanspeter Schmid) At the physics exam: 'Describe the universe (max. 200 words) and give three examples.' From: garyg@warren.mentorg.com (Gary Gendel) Sometimes real life is stranger than fiction. My physics final came at the time when there was a debate whether to allow calculators in the exams. The Physics department was the first to decide in favor of allowing them, the 3 hour exam had one question: Describe the universe, if Planck's constant were equal to 1. P__________________________________________________________________________ Three Laws of Thermodynamics (paraphrased): First Law: You can't get anything without working for it. Second Law: The most you can accomplish by work is to break even. Third Law: You can't break even. From: John Vinson <74222.2372@CompuServe.COM> Ginsberg's Theorem (The modern statement of the three laws of thermodynamics) 1. You can't win. 2. You can't even break even. 3. You can't get out of the game. 4. THE LAW OF ENTROPY: The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum. "Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's Theorem: "Every majoy philosophy that attempts to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's Theorem. To wit: "1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win. "2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even. "3. Mysticism is based on the assmuption that you can quit the game." >From R.J.ABBOTT@dundee.ac.uk Since using the paraphrased laws of thermodynamics in my .sig the following additions have been sent to me From: potweed@calvados.apana.org.au (Bernard Booth) First Law: You can't bet unless you play. Second Law: The most you can hope for is to break even. Third Law: You can't break even. Fourth Law: Once you're born, you can't even get out of the game! From: N.P.Whittington (N.P.Whittington@spps.hull.ac.uk) Parodies of the laws of thermodynamics, in a science text book. 1. You can't win, you can only break even. 2. You can only break even at absolute zero. 3. You can never reach absolute zero. P__________________________________________________________________________ A promising PhD candidate was presenting his thesis at his final examination. He proceeded with a derivation and ended up with something like: F = -MA He was embarrassed, his supervising professor was embarrassed, and the rest of the committee was embarrassed. The student coughed nervously and said "I seem to have made a slight error back there somewhere." One of the mathematicians on the committee replied dryly, "Either that or an odd number of them!" P__________________________________________________________________________ From: nbuchana@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca (Norm) A probability is a desperate attempt of chaos to become stable. P__________________________________________________________________________ Heisenberg might have slept here. P__________________________________________________________________________ A Physicist is explaining a picture: "Of course, these are false colours, the red is really yellow, the green is really blue and the white is really brown." P__________________________________________________________________________ Donald Nichols (DoN.): --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero --- P__________________________________________________________________________ HEAVEN IS HOTTER THAN HELL The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972 P__________________________________________________________________________ From: sirius@wam.umd.edu (The Human Neutrino = Linda Harden) IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? (Spy Magazine, January 1990) 1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen. 2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each. 3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west(which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour. 4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth. 5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim)would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now. From: hjiwa@nor.chevron.com Canonical List Of Holiday Humor Rebuttal: (Jim Mantle, Waterloo Maple Software) Come on, ya gotta believe! I mean, if you can handle flying furry animals, then it's only a small step to the rest. For example; 1) As admitted, it is possible that a flying reindeer can be found. I would agree that it would be quite an unusual find, but they might exist. 2) You've relied on cascading assumptions. For example, you have assumed a uniform distribution of children across homes. Toronto/Yorkville, or Toronto/Cabbagetown, or other yuppie neighbourhoods, have probably less than the average (and don't forget the DINK and SINK homes (Double Income No Kids, Single Income No Kids)), while the families with 748 starving children that they keep showing on Vision TV while trying to pick my pocket would skew that 15% of homes down a few percent. 3) You've also assumed that each home that has kids would have at least one good kid. What if anti-selection applies, and homes with good kids tend to have more than their share of good kids, and other homes have nothing except terrorists in diapers? Let's drop that number of homes down a few more percent. 4) Santa would have to Fedex a number of packages ahead of time, since he would not be able to fly into Air Force Bases, or into tower-controlled areas near airports. He's get shot at over certain sections of the Middle East, and the no-fly zones in Iraq, so he'd probably use DHL there. Subtract some more homes. 5) I just barely passed Physics and only read Stephen Hawking's book once, but I recall that there is some Einsteinian Theory that says time does strange things as you move faster. In fact, when you go faster than the speed of light time runs backward, if you do a straight line projection, connect the dots and just ignore any singularity you might find right at the speed of light. And don't say you can't go faster than the speed of light because I've seen it done on TV. Jean-Luc doesn't have reindeer but he does have matter-antimatter warp engines and a holodeck and that's good enough for me. So Santa could go faster than light, visit all the good children which are not uniformly distributed by either concentration in each home or by number of children per household, and get home before he left so he can digest all those stale cookies and warm milk yech. 6) Aha, you say, Jean-Luc has matter-antimatter warp engines, Santa only has reindeer, where does he get the power to move that fast! You calculated the answer! The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. This is an ample supply of energy for the maneuvering, acceleration, etc, that would be required of the loaded sleigh. The reindeer don't evaporate or incinerate because of this energy, they accelerate. What do you think they have antlers for, fighting over females? Think of antlers as furry solar array panels. 7) If that's not enough, watch the news on the 24th at 11 o'clock. NORAD (which may be one of the few government agencies with more than 3 initials in it's name and therefore it must be more trustworthy than the rest) tracks Santa every year and I've seen the radar shots of him approaching my house from the direction of the North Pole. They haven't bombarded him yet, so they must believe too, right? Yet another rebuttal to the rebuttal: Several key points are overlooked by this callous, amateurish "study." 1) Flying reindeer: As is widely known (due to the excellent historical documentary "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the flying reindeer are not a previously unknown species of reindeer, but were in fact given the power of flight due to eating magic acorns. As is conclusively proven in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (a no punches pulled look at life in Santa's village), this ability has bred true in subsequent generations of reindeer, obviously the magic acorns imprinted their power on a dominant gene sequence within the reindeer DNA strand. 2) Number of households: This figure overlooks two key facts. First of all, the first major schism in the Church split the Eastern Churches, centered in Byzantium, from the Western, which remained centered in Rome. This occurred prior to the Gregorian correction to the Julian calendar. The Eastern churches (currently called Orthodox Churches) do not recognize the Gregorian correction for liturgical events, and their Christmas is as a result several days after the Western Churches'. Santa gets two shots at delivering toys. Secondly, the figure of 3.5 children per household is based on the gross demographic average, which includes households with no children at all. The number of children per household, when figured as an average for households with children, would therefore have to be adjusted upward. Also, the largest single Christian denomination is Roman Catholic, who, as we all know, breed like rabbits. If you don't believe me, ask my four brothers and two sisters, they'll back me up. Due to the predominance of Catholics within Christian households, the total number of households containing Christian children would have to be adjusted downward to reflect the overloading of Catholics beyond a standard deviation from the median. Also, the assertion that each home would contain at least one good child would be reasonable enough if there were in fact an even 3.5 children per household. However, since the number of children per household is distributed integrally, there are a significant number (on the order of several million) of one child Christian households. Even though only children are notoriously spoiled and therefore disproportionately inclined towards being naughty, since it's the holidays we'll be generous and give them a fifty-fifty chance of being nice. This removes one half of the single child households from Santa's delivery schedule, which has already been reduced by the removal of the Orthodox households from the first delivery run. 3) Santa's delivery run (speed, payload, etc.): These all suffer from the dubious supposition that there is only one Santa Claus. The name "Santa" is obviously either Spanish or Italian, two ethnic groups which are both overwhelmingly Catholic. The last name Claus suggests a joint German/Italian background. His beginnings, battling the Burgermeister Meisterburger, suggest he grew up in Bavaria (also predominantly Catholic). The Kaiser style helmets of the Burgermeister's guards, coupled with the relative isolation of the village, suggest that his youth was at the very beginning of Prussian influence in Germany. Thus, Santa and Mrs. Claus have been together for well over one hundred years. If you think that after a hundred years of living at the North Pole with nights six months long that they remain childless, you either don't know Catholics or are unaware of the failure rate of the rhythm method. There have therefore been over five generations of Clauses, breeding like Catholics for over one hundred years. Since they are Catholic, their exponential population increase would obviously have a gain higher than the world population as a whole. There have therefore been more than enough new Santas to overcome the population increase of the world. So in fact, Santa has an easier time of it now than he did when he first started out. Santa dead, indeed; some people will twist any statistic to "prove" their cynical theory. Yet another rebuttal: From: egreen@nyc.pipeline.com (Edward Green) 5) That's nonsense. I repeated the calculation, and the correct figure is 17,500.03 times gravity. How can we place belief when such an implausibly high figure is accepted! The entire concept is obviously deeply flawed and arises from incorrect method! Besides, Santa simply realizes all of his alternate quantum states at once. Everybody knows that. P__________________________________________________________________________ Q: How does Santa deliver presents all over the world on Christmas Eve? A: With Rudolf the red-shift reindeer. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: billyfish@aol.com (BillyFish) One day in class, Richard Feynman was talking about angular momentum. He described rotation matrices and mentioned that they did not commute. He said that Sir William Hamilton discovered noncommutivity one night when he was taking a walk in his garden with Lady Hamilton. As they sat down on a bench, there was a moment of passion. It was then that he discovered that AB did not equal BA. P__________________________________________________________________________ There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible. -- Richard Davisson P__________________________________________________________________________ From: ekstrom@pacificrim.net (Philip A. Ekstrom) Whatever the temperature of hell, I can prove that it is isothermal. We must begin by assuming that there is at least one physicist in hell. Most of us can think of a particular example. Now assume that some portion of hell is out of equilibrium, a bit hotter or colder than the rest. If so, then that physicist would build a heat engine and extract some energy, and use that energy to run a refrigerator. He would cool some other part of hell down until it was comfortable. But it is contrary to the definition of hell that any part of it should be comfortable. QED. P__________________________________________________________________________ The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant biology. P__________________________________________________________________________ Anything that doesn't matter has no mass. P__________________________________________________________________________ >From tellen@mtg.mt.com Thu Nov 24 15:19:01 1994 From: "Jean-Maurice Tellenbach" The second world war is the best demonstration of relativity... The high energy density variations of vacuum are mainly produced within brains. The Physicist : "The positron will be dramatically modified by meeting an electron" The President : "You said ... position and ... election ??" P__________________________________________________________________________ From: mj@redbud (MJ Kahn) Lightbulb list Q: How many general relativists does it take to change a light bulb. A: Two. One holds the bulb, while the other rotates the universe. From:BRIAN6@VAXC.MDX.AC.UK (cannonical lightbulb collection) Q: How many quantum physicists does it take to change a lightbulb ? A: One. Two to do it, and one to renormalise the wave function. (Explanation - Renormalising the wave function is something that has to be done to a lot of quantum physics calculations to stop the answer being infinity and makes the answer always come out as one.) Q: How many quantum mechanicians does it take to change a light bulb? A: They can't. If they know where the socket is, they cannot locate the new bulb. Q: How many Heisenbergs does it take to change a light bulb? A: If you know the number, you don't know where the light bulb is. Q: How many astronomers does it take to change a light bulb? A: None, astronomers prefer the dark. Q: How many radio astronomers does it take to change a light bulb. A: None. They are not interested in that short wave stuff. From: Joao Batista Q: How many particle physicists are necessary to change a light bulb? A: Two hundred: 136 to smash it up + 64 to analyse the tiny pieces. From: mj@redbud (MJ Kahn) Lightbulb list The Dark Sucker Theory (courtesy of rec.humor.d) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For years, it has been believed that electric bulbs emit light, but recent information has proved otherwise. Electric bulbs don't emit light; they suck dark. Thus, we call these bulbs Dark Suckers. The Dark Sucker Theory and the existence of dark suckers prove that dark has mass and is heavier than light. First, the basis of the Dark Sucker Theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. For example, take the Dark Sucker in the room you are in. There is much less dark right next to it than there is elsewhere. The larger the Dark Sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark Suckers in the parking lot have a much greater capacity to suck dark than the ones in this room. So with all things, Dark Suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the dark spot on a full Dark Sucker. The dark which has been absorbed is then transmitted by pylons along to power plants where the machinery uses fossil fuel to destroy it. A candle is a primitive Dark Sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You can see that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark that has been sucked into it. If you put a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, it will turn black. This is because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. One of the disadvantages of these primitive Dark Suckers is their limited range. There are also portable Dark Suckers. In these, the bulbs can't handle all the dark by themselves and must be aided by a Dark Storage Unit. When the Dark Storage Unit is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before the portable Dark Sucker can operate again. Dark has mass. When dark goes into a Dark Sucker, friction from the mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating Dark Sucker. Candles present a special problem as the mass must travel into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat and therefore it's not wise to touch an operating candle. This is easily proven for lightbulbs too. When you compress a gas, it gets hot, right? So the light bulb gets hot because of all the dark being squished into the wires. Also, dark is heavier than light. If you were to swim just below the surface of the lake, you would see a lot of light. If you were to slowly swim deeper and deeper, you would notice it getting darker and darker. When you get really deep, you would be in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats at the top. The is why it is called light. Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in a lit room in front of a closed, dark closet, and slowly opened the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet. But since dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet. So next time you see an electric bulb, remember that it is not a light emitter but a Dark Sucker. The following line doesn't quite fit into the theory but almost does : - Ever seen the blue glow in vacuum tubes? That's because electrons are blue. *P_________________________________________________________________________ UTC physics humor. http://www.utc.edu/physics/physicshum0.html More on darksuckers: THE DARKSUCKER CONSPIRACY (DC) DARK CONSPIRACY INVOLVING ELECTRICAL POWER COMPANIES SURFACES: Updated 8/7/88 W0PN For years the electrical utility companies have led the public to believe they were in business to supply electricity to the consumer, a service for which they charge a substantial rate. The recent accidental acquisition of secret records from a well known power company has led to a massive research campaign which positively explodes several myths and exposes the massive hoax which has been perpetrated upon the public by the power companies. The most common hoax promoted the false concept that light bulbs emitted light; in actuality, these 'light' bulbs actually absorb DARK which is then transported back to the power generation stations via wires. A more descriptive name has now been coined; the new scientific name is for the device is DARKSUCKER. This newsletter introduces a brief synopsis of the darksucker theory, which proves the existence of dark and establishes the fact that dark has great mass, and further, that dark is the fastest known particle in the universe. Apparently, even the celebrated Dr. Albert Einstein did not suspect the truth.. that just as COLD is the absence of HEAT, LIGHT is actually the ABSENCE of DARK... light does not really exist! The basis of the darksucker theory is that electric light bulbs suck dark. Take for example, the darksuckers in the room where you are. There is much less dark right next to them than there is elsewhere, demonstrating their limited range. The larger the darksucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Darksuckers in a parking lot or on a football field have a much greater capacity than the ones in used in the home, for example. It may come as a surprise to learn that darksuckers also operate on a celestial scale; witness the Sun. Our Sun makes use of dense dark, sucking it in from all the planets and intervening dark space. Naturally, the Sun is better able to suck dark from the planets which are situated closer to it, thus explaining why those planets appear brighter than do those which are far distant from the Sun. Occasionally, the Sun actually oversucks; under those conditions, dark spots appear on the surface of the Sun. Scientists have long studied these 'sunspots' and are only recently beginning to realize that the dark spots represent leaks of high pressure dark because the Sun has oversucked dark to such an extent that some of actually leaks back into space. This leakage of high pressure dark frequently causes problems with radio communications here on Earth due to collisions between the dark particles as they stream out into space via the black 'holes' in the surface of the Sun. As with all manmade devices, darksuckers have a finite lifetime. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This condition can be observed by looking for the black spot on a full darksucker when it has reached maximum capacity... you have surely noticed that dark completely surrounds a full darksucker because it no longer has the capacity to suck dark at all. A candle is a primitive darksucker. A new candle has a white wick. You will notice that after the first use the wick turns black, representing all the dark which has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. Unfortunately, these primitive darksuckers have a very limited range and are hazardous to operate because of the intense heat produced. There are also portable darksuckers called flashlights. The bulbs in these devices cannot handle all of the dark by themselves, and must be aided by a dark storage unit called a battery. When the dark storage unit is full, it must be either emptied (a process called 'recharging') or replaced before the portable darksucker can continue to operate. If you break open a battery, you will find dense black dark inside, evidence that it is actually a compact dark storage unit. The darksuckers on your automobile are high capacity units with great range, thus they require much larger dark storage units mounted under the hood of the vehicle. Since there is far more dark available in the winter season, automobile dark storage units reach capacity more frequently than they do in the summer, requiring 'recharging', or in severe cases, total replacement. Dark has great mass. When dark is drawn into a darksucker, friction caused by the speed of the dark particles (called anti-photons) actually generates substantial heat, thus it is unwise to touch an operating dark sucker. Candles represent a special problem, as the dark must travel into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat, making it very dangerous to touch an operating candle. Because dark has such great mass, it is very heavy. If you swim just below the surface of a lake, you see a lot of 'light' (absence of dark, to be more precise). As you go deeper and deeper beneath the surface, you notice it gets darker and darker. When you reach a depth of approximately fifty feet, you are in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake, making it appear 'lighter' near the surface. The power companies have learned to use the dark that has settled to the bottom of lakes by pushing it through turbines, which generate electricity to help push the dark into the ocean where it may be safely stored for their devious purposes. Prior to the development of turbines, it was much more difficult to get the dark from the rivers and lakes to the ocean. The Indians recognized this problem, and developed means to assist the flow of dark on it's long journey to the ocean. When on a river in a canoe travelling in the same direction as the flow of dark, they paddled slowly, so as not to impede the flow of dark; but when they travelled against the flow of dark, they paddled vigorously to help propel the dark along its way. Scientists are working feverishly to develop exotic new instrumentation with which to measure the actual speed and energy level of dark. While such instrumentation is beyond the capabilities of the average layman, you can actually perform a simple test to demonstrate the unbelievable speed of dark, right in your own home. All that is required for the simple test is a closed desk drawer situated in a bright room. You know from past experience that the tightly shut drawer is FULL of dark. Now, place your hand firmly on the drawer's handle. Quickly yank the drawer open.. the dark immediately disappears, demonstrating the blinding speed with which the dark travels to the nearest darksucker! The secrets of dark are at present known only to the power companies. Dark must be very valuable, since they go to such lengths to collect it in vast quantities. By some well hidden method, more modern power 'generation' facilities have devised methods to hide their collection of dark. The older facilities, however, usually have gargantuan piles of solidified dark in huge fenced in areas. Visitors to these facilities are told the huge black piles of material are supplies of coal, but such is not the case. The power companies have long used code words to hide their activities; D.C. is Dark Conspiracy, whole A.C. is Alternate Conspiracy. The intent of the A.C. is not yet known, but the D.C. is rapidly yielding it's secrets to the probing eyes and instruments of honest scientists around the world. New developments are being announced every day and we promise to keep the public informed of these announcements as they occur via this newsletter. Les Dark, Editor P__________________________________________________________________________ From: randy@aplcorejhuapl.edu (Randall C. Poe) Here's a joke on the physicists which could be an absolutely true story in my opinion: The experimentalist comes running excitedly into the theorist's office, waving a graph taken off his latest experiment. "Hmmm," says the theorist, "That's exactly where you'd expect to see that peak. Here's the reason (long logical explanation follows)." In the middle of it, the experimentalist says "Wait a minute", studies the chart for a second, and says, "Oops, this is upside down." He fixes it. "Hmmm," says the theorist, "you'd expect to see a dip in exactly that position. Here's the reason...". P__________________________________________________________________________ From: s5100101@nickel.laurentian.ca Q: What is a tachyon? A: A sub-atomic particle devoid of good taste. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: s5100101@nickel.laurentian.ca Albert Einstein had been working on his theory of relativity a lot and he was just about finished. He was almost ready to publish his work. However, he was under a lot of stress so he thought he would go on vacation to Mexico. Albert had a glorious two week vacation and was having the time of his life. On the last night he was staying there he decided to take a walk along the beach and watch the sunset. As he watched the sun go down he thought of the light of the sun and then the speed of light. You see, he had been using the speed of light in a lot of his calculations but he didn't decided on what symbol to use for it. Greek had been so overused. Just at that moment Senior Wensez was also walking along the beach in the opposite direction. Albert caught him out of the corner of his eye and remarked suddenly, "Do you not zink zat zee speed of light is very fast?" Senior Wensez paused for a moment and replied, "Si." P__________________________________________________________________________ Polymer physicists are into chains. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Chris Morton (mortoncp@nextwork.rose-hulman.edu) do it collection From:Joao Batista(fbatista@cc.fc.ul.pt), rgep@pmms.cam.ac.uk (Richard Pinch) Acoustics do it like Doppler. Acoustics do it orally. Acoustics do it with sounds. Astronauts do it above the atmosphere. Astronomers do it all night. Astronomers do it anually. Astronomers do it Charging, Coupling and Devising (CCDs). Astronomers do it cosmologically. Astronomers do it ellyptically. Astronomers do it hyperbolically. Astronomers do it in clusters. Astronomers do it in nebulae. Astronomers do it in the dark. Astronomers do it in voids. Astronomers do it in X-ways. Astronomers do it meteorically. Astronomers do it on mountain tops. Astronomers do it orbitally. Astronomers do it parabolically. Astronomers do it spectroscopically. Astronomers do it telescopically. Astronomers do it under the stars. Astronomers do it universally. Astronomers do it variably. Astronomers do it while gazing at Uranus. Astronomers do it with binaries. Astronomers do it with dwarfs. Astronomers do it with giants. Astronomers do it with lenses. Astronomers do it with light. Astronomers do it with lights out. Astronomers do it with long tubes. Astronomers do it with mirrors. Astronomers do it with sextants. Astronomers do it with stars. Astronomers do it with Uranus. Astronomers do it with Very Large Bottoms Interfeering (VLBI). Astronomers do it with young stars. Cryogenic physicists do it on the cold. Cryogenic physicists do it on the ice. Cryogenic physicists do it with a cold. Dyslexic Particle Physicists do it with hadrons. Electron microscopists do it 100,000 times. Fluid dynamicists do it in jets. Fluid dynamicists do it in the bath. Fluid dynamicists do it in vortices. Heisenberg was never sure whether or not he did it. Opticians do it visually. Opticians do it with their eyes. Particle physicists do it energetically. Particle physicists do it expensively. Physicists do it a quantum at a time. Physicists do it at two places in the universe at one time. Physicists do it attractively. Physicists do it energetically. Physicists do it in black holes. Physicists do it in waves. Physicists do it like Einstein. Physicists do it magnetically. Physicists do it on accelerated frames. Physicists do it particularly. Physicists do it repulsively. Physicists do it strangely. Physicists do it up and down, with charming color, but strange! Physicists do it with black bodies Physicists do it with charm. Physicists do it with large expensive machinery. Physicists do it with rigid bodies. Physicists do it with string and sealing-wax. Physicists do it with Tensors. Physicists do it with the help of an absolute Bohr (ouch!). Physicists do it with their vectors. Physicists do it with uniform harmonic motion. Physicists get a big bang. Physics majors do it at the speed of light. Plasma physicists do it with everything stripped off. Quantum mechanics do it in leaps. Quantum theorists do it in tiny tiny pieces. Quantum theorists do it uncertainly. Rocket scientists do it with higher thrust. Spectroscopists do it until it hertz. Spectroscopists do it with frequency and intensity. Vacuum physicists do it in voids. P__________________________________________________________________________ Why did the chicken cross the road? Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side. Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast. Newton: 1) Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross the road. 2) It was pushed on the road. 3) It was pushed on the road by another chicken, which went away from the road. 4) It was attracted to a chicken on the other side of the road. Wolfgang Pauli: There already was a chicken on this side of the road. From: aaron@falcon.cc.ukans.edu (Aaron Hoyt) Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road? A: Because it was on the other side. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: sirius@wam.umd.edu (The Human Neutrino) HEAVY BOOTS About 6-7 years ago, I was in a philosophy class at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (good science/engineering school) and the teaching assistant was explaining Descartes. He was trying to show how things don't always happen the way we think they will and explained that, while a pen always falls when you drop it on Earth, it would just float away if you let go of it on the Moon. My jaw dropped a little. I blurted "What?!" Looking around the room, I saw that only my friend Mark and one other student looked confused by the TA's statement. The other 17 people just looked at me like "What's your problem?" "But a pen would fall if you dropped it on the Moon, just more slowly." I protested. "No it wouldn't." the TA explained calmly, "because you're too far away from the Earth's gravity." Think. Think. Aha! "You saw the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, didn't you?" I countered, "why didn't they float away?" "Because they were wearing heavy boots." he responded, as if this made perfect sense (remember, this is a Philosophy TA who's had plenty of logic classes). By then I realized that we were each living in totally different worlds, and did not speak each others language, so I gave up. As we left the room, my friend Mark was raging. "My God! How can all those people be so stupid?" I tried to be understanding. "Mark, they knew this stuff at one time, but it's not part of their basic view of the world, so they've forgotten it. Most people could probably make the same mistake." To prove my point, we went back to our dorm room and began randomly selecting names from the campus phone book. We called about 30 people and asked each this question: 1. If you're standing on the Moon holding a pen, and you let go, will it a) float away, b) float where it is, or c) fall to the ground? About 47 percent got this question correct. Of the ones who got it wrong, we asked the obvious follow-up question: 2. You've seen films of the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, why didn't they fall off? About 20 percent of the people changed their answer to the first question when they heard this one! But the most amazing part was that about half of them confidently answered, "Because they were wearing heavy boots." P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Tim.Nelson@Canada.ATTGIS.COM (list of Old * Never Die, they just) OLD ASTRONAUTS never die, they just go to another world OLD ATOMS never die, they just decay OLD LASER PHYSICISTS never die, they just become incoherent OLD METEORS never die, they just burn up OLD NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS never die, they just go off-line OLD PLANETS never die, they just lose their attraction OLD THERMODYNAMICISTS never die, they just achieve their state - - of maximum entropy P__________________________________________________________________________ From: joeshmoe@world.std.com (Jascha Franklin-Hodge) (List of Taglines) Plasma is another matter. Interstellar Matter is a Gas It's worse than that, it's physics, Jim! "Apple" (c) 6024 b.c., Adam & Eve "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton. "The faster you go, the shorter you are" - Einstein A stitch in time would have confused Einstein. And God said: E = +mv} - Ze}/r ...and there *WAS* light! All that glitters has a high refractive index. Black Holes are Out of Sight Black Holes were created when God divided by zero! Black holes really suck... The Universe is a big place... perhaps the biggest The Hubbell works fine; all that stuff IS blurry! Do radioactive cats have 18 half-lives? Friction can be a drag sometimes. Going the speed of light is bad for your age. Gravity: Not just a good idea...it's the LAW. How many weeks are there in a light year? Jet Engine Theory -Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow! Power corrupts, but we need electricity. Resistance Is Useless! (If < 1 ohm) Supernovae are a Blast P__________________________________________________________________________ Two electron convicts are sitting in a jail cell together. The first one says, "What are you in for?" The second one says, "For attempting a forbidden transition." P__________________________________________________________________________ Gravity brings me down Neutrinos have bad breadth (J.F. FreemanIII, Raleigh, N.C.) P__________________________________________________________________________ Q: What do physicist enjoy doing the most at baseball games? A: The 'wave'. P__________________________________________________________________________ Q: What is uttered by a sick duck? A: Quark! P__________________________________________________________________________ Q: What is an astronomical unit? A: One helluva big apartment P_________________________________________________________________________ Q: How many kinds of physicists are there? A: Three. Those who can count and those who can't. P__________________________________________________________________________ Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage. Jenning's Corollary: The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. P__________________________________________________________________________ The Heineken Uncertainty Principle: You can never be sure how many beers you had last night. P__________________________________________________________________________ From:ozbrown@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Paul Raymond "OZZY" Brown) Spell Checked and reformatted by Nathan Mates (nathan@cco.caltech.edu) As scientists and concerned citizens, we applaud the recent trend towards legislation which requires the prominent placing of warnings on products that present hazards to the general public. Yet we must also offer the cautionary thought that such warnings, however well-intentioned, merely scratch the surface of what is really necessary in this important area. This is especially true in light of the findings of 20th century physics. We are therefore proposing that, as responsible scientists, we join together in an intensive push for new laws that will mandate the conspicuous placement of suitably informative warnings on the packaging of every product offered for sale in the United States of America. Our suggested list of warnings appears below. WARNING: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity. WARNING: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them. CAUTION: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight. HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles Per Hour. CONSUMER NOTICE: Because of the "Uncertainty Principle," It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving. (Note: This one is optional on the grounds that Heisenburg was never quite sure that his principle was correct) ADVISORY: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Know as "Tunneling," This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your Neighbor's Domicile. The Manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result. READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE: According to Certain Suggested Versions of the Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting this Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years. THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result. PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW: Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe. NOTE: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a "Gluing" Force About Which Little is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed. ATTENTION: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space. NEW GRAND UNIFIED THEORY DISCLAIMER: The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled to Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are "Rolled Up" into Such a Small "Area" That They Cannot Be Detected. PLEASE NOTE: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State. COMPONENT EQUIVALENCY NOTICE: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied. HEALTH WARNING: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User. IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS: The Entire Physical Universe, Including This Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence of This Product in That Universe Cannot Be Guaranteed. (The above is from Volume 36, Number 1 of The Journal of Irreproducible Results. Copyright 1991 Blackwell Scientific Publications Inc.) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: ftp.cco.caltech.edu, maintained by Nathan Mates (nathan@cco.caltech.edu) Cartoon Law of Physics Cartoon Law I Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over. Cartoon Law II Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly. Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease. Cartoon Law III Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter. Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyses this reaction. Cartoon Law IV The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful. Cartoon Law V All principles of gravity are negated by fear. Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight. Cartoon Law VI As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once. This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A `wacky' character has the option of self-replication only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required. Cartoon Law VII Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science. Cartoon Law VIII Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify. Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container. Cartoon Law IX Everything falls faster than an anvil. From: Isoperimetrosity Cartoon Law X For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance. This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead. Cartoon Law Amendment A sharp object will always propel a character upward. When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a pin), a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with great velocity. P_________________________________________________________________________ From: James W Walden "Truth decays into beauty, while beauty soon becomes merely charm. Charm ends up as strangeness, and even that doesn't last, but up and down are forever." - The Laws of Physics P_________________________________________________________________________ From: jasonp@wam.umd.edu (Jason Stratos Papadopoulos) PROOF THE EARTH IS FLAT Hello. If anyone out there watched a Learning Channel show "In Search of the Edge of the World", they heard some pretty bizarre (though creative) conclusive proofs the earth is flat. A sampler: According to the theory of continental drift, all the continents can shift about the surface of the earth as if on a bed of some viscous fluid. Were the earth round and rotating, centrifugal force would make all the continents slosh to the equator, but this is a contradiction, as it is not the actual case. QED A plumb bob always points to the center of the earth (assuming the earth is a sphere). Then a plumb bob used by someone else in a different place would make a different angle to an impartial observer. Since builders use plumb bobs to make buildings stick straight up, any building of sufficient size would then be larger on the top floor than on the bottom floor, but this is a contradiction. QED And a few refutations of established results: Ptolemy (?) proposed the earth was round and proved it by figuring its radius based on the angle the sun made with Alexandria on the same day it was directly over another city (7.2 deg.). Flat Earthers insist that this is only an assumption; if the earth was flat the experiment would still yield meaningful results, since the system is then a right tri- angle and the sun would therefore be 4,000 miles away. And for all those who need visual proof and are satisfied with satellite photos, Flat Earthers cite Einstein's general theory of relativity and its proclaiming that light bends in the presence of massive objects; thus what is actually flat appears to cameras as round. This phenomenon also explains why ships appear to rise out of the horizon. Finally, a story I read elsewhere: a researcher at some lab once got a letter from a very distressed Flat Earther, who had heard that the Soviets (I guess 1950s?) were going to detonate a nuclear bomb. Newton's third law would then dictate that the (flat) earth would then tilt toward the USSR, and everybody would slide off. The researcher wrote back that all was well, and that we in U.S. of A. planned to detonate a similar bomb at the same instant on OUR end of the world, thus cancelling the torque the Soviet bomb created. The researcher was given a dressing-down when the Flat Earther wrote a letter of commendation and praise to the researcher's boss. P__________________________________________________________________________ jotero@ix.netcom.com (Jose Otero) Astromers's pickupline:your telescope or mine? From: becker@hal4.usm.uni-muenchen.de (Sylvia R. Becker) ...my computer doesn't understand me anymore... might be a possibility, too. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: an216284@anon.penet.fi (YUMMYYAMS) Overheard after a student failed a physics test miserably: Nuclear, Hydrogen, Atomic, My test- They can all be bombs. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: kovarik@mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca (Zdislav V. Kovarik) A math&physics student was hit by a brick falling from a house. He fainted, but came to after a while and started smiling. The onlookers were worried, so they asked him why the smile. "I just realized how lucky I am because the kinetic energy is only half m v squared." P__________________________________________________________________________ From: kim@shell.portal.com (Kim DeVaughn) "Quantum mechanics, hmmm. You put a cat in a box, along with a hammer and some poison and a radioactive isotope ... I forget exactly how this goes. Anyway, keep some bandages on hand, because I guarantee the cat won't be happy." -Jack-Jack Snyder P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Robert M Chittister CRAZED PHYSICS TEST ANSWER 1] A shotgun shooting 12 pellets of 00 Buckshot weighing 4g leave the barrel at 1125 fps. Assuming the average infant will absorb 127.3 f/lbs before disintegrating, how many babies will the average blast cut through (rounding off to the nearest whole number)? eight. 2] A 100 kg man is being swung by his entrails in a circle 16'in radius at the rate of 1600 radians/sec. Find the tension in the man's entrails (ignoring the effects of gravity). 65,024 Newtons. 3] A pagan priest attempts to vaporize a young virgin by placing her in a flaming pit. Assuming the woman, weighing 120 lbs, is completely composed of water, how much energy will he have to use to completely vaporize her? 130,000 BTU 4] An infant has a tensile strength of 400 psi and has a cross sectional area of 23.4 sq. inches. Assuming it is 23" long and has an elongation percentage of .0036%/120psi at roomtemperature, how long will the baby be before it is dismembered? about 26.45 inches. 5] A 12 year old blind orphan girl is shot from a cannon at the speed of 1200 fps at a solid brick wall. Calculate the force of impact given that the brick wall is 3 feet away from the barrel. if she weighs 50 lbs, and all of her sticks to the wall, 3.3 million Newtons. 6] A large plane weighing 12.7 M tons carrying 12 tons of nuns and orphans travelling at 724.46 kph and at an altitude of 40,000 meters suffers explosive decompression above the center of a 30km diameter population. Assuming that one passenger is sucked out every second, how many passengers will land within the population center? about (give or take a torso or leg) 12. 7] A 1000 lb car is moving at 130 mph and two poodles whose combined weight is 82 lbs are thrown out the back at 3 mph. Calculate the velocity of the car. 140.91 happy mph. 8] Farmer Brown is selling apples for 12 cents a dozen in a room where a torch has a brightness of 120 candela is 12 ft froma 14.36 sq meter surface.Assuming a light bulb 17.3 cubits fromthe surface has a brightness of 129 candlepower and gives offheat of 1.27 BTU and the room is 423 degrees Kelvin; assuming thethe pressure in the room is 1100 millibar; assuming the lightbulb is rotating at 4 pi radians per half minute, with the power source of the bulb a battery giving off energy at a rate of 12000000 terrajoules per exasecond; assuming the coefficient offriction at the base of the rotating lightbulb is 1.679 E9;assuming the room is being launched at 50 times escape velocity;assuming it collides with the moon in a perfectly elastic collision, when the room returns to the earth 6 days 4 hours 20 minutes 35 seconds and 12 nanoseconds later, how much does Farmer Brown sell one apple for? still one cent, but all thats left is well-done applesaus, P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Erin Leonard (not:Mariella Wells) Merit Copernicus' parents: Copernicus, young man, when are you going to come to terms with the fact that the world does not revolve around you?! P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Erin Leonard (not:Mariella Wells) Merit Fortune teller: Do the stars and planets control our lives? No; the IRS maybe, but not the stars and planets. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Edward Ruden An astronomer is on an expedition to Darkest Africa to observe a total eclipse of the sun, which will only be observable there, when he's captured by cannibals. The eclipse is due the next day around noon. To gain his freedom he plans to pose as a god and threaten to extinguish the sun if he's not released, but the timing has to be just right. So, in the few words of the cannibals' primative tongue that he knows, he asks his guard what time they plan to kill him. The guard's answer is, "Tradition has it that captives are to be killed when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky on the day after their capture so that they may be cooked and ready to be served for the evening meal". "Great", the astronomer replies. The guard continues, though, "But because everyone's so excited about it, in your case we're going to wait until after the eclipse." P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Edward Ruden A Princeton plasma physicist is at the beach when he discovers a ancient looking oil lantern sticking out of the sand. He rubs the sand off with a towel and a genie pops out. The genie offers to grant him one wish. The physicist retrieves a map of the world from his car an circles the Middle East and tells the genie, "I wish you to bring peace in this region". After 10 long minutes of deliberation, the genie replies, "Gee, there are lots of problems there with Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, and all those other places. This is awfully embarrassing. I've never had to do this before, but I'm just going to have to ask you for another wish. This one is just too much for me". Taken aback, the physicist thinks a bit and asks, "I wish that the Princton tokamak would achieve scientific fusion energy break-even." After another deliberation the genie asks, "Could I see that map again?" P__________________________________________________________________________ From: johncobb@uts.cc.utexas.edu (John W. Cobb) I had a professor who said that "physicists have a knack for jumping into mathematical cesspools and coming out smelling like a rose" P__________________________________________________________________________ From: emilsson@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Tryggvi Emilsson) Historians have concluded that W.Heisenberg must have been contemplating his love life when he discovered the Uncertainty Principle: -When he had the time,he didn't have the energy and, -When the moment was right,he couldn't figure out the position... P__________________________________________________________________________ From: rhi@festival.ed.ac.uk (Rhiannon Macfie) The particle physicist was tired of his work - he'd been trying to discover the loveton (the hypothetical particle that carries the force of attraction between two people) and he was getting nowhere. `What I need,' he said to himself,`is a good long holiday doing somthing completely different.'So he went to his travel agent and got some holiday brochures and looked through them, trying to decide what to do. Skiing in the Alps? No - too near CERN. Scuba diving on the barrier reef? No - he'd forever be trying to calculate the pressure he was under at any particular depth. At last, just as he was about to give up and go back to his collider, he spotted a small ad in the classified section that appeard to be just the thing. `SAILING HOLIDAYS', it declared. `Come and be part of the crew of a sailing vessel. Get away from it all.' Well, this looked like just the thing, so he picked up the phone and dialled the number. A voice answered. `Yes?' `Uhmmm, well, I saw your advertisement, and I was wondering if I might book a place on one of your sailing holidays..?' `Ah, well, you'd have to speak to the Captain of the ship about that. Hang on, and I'll get him for you.' A long pause. Finally, a deep gruff voice came on. `Captain Higgs speaking. You want to go on the sailing trip?' `Yes,' answered the physicist. `Well, you're only just in time. We leave next week, and there's only two places left. Would you rather be the cook or the bo'sun?' The physicist thought for a minute. `I'd rather be the bo'sun, I think,' he said at last. `Good.. ' replied the captain, and then went on to give details of where and when the ship was leaving. Next week, the physicist was sailing for foreign shores. He had a wonderful time on the ship, and came back to his work refreshed and ready to go (though he never did discover the loveton). He never did forget the trip, or the holiday he spent as Higg's Bo'sun. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: wshaw@gate.net (William Shaw) When light passes from one medium to another, it obeys a set of partial differential equations (which "optimize" the path as it were). The light "slows down" for the amount of time it takes for it to solve the equations. But if the light is experienced enough, it can solve the equations faster than when it first started out. Truly retarded light has so much trouble solving the equations that it just gives up and bounces back into the original medium (roughly four percent?)... P__________________________________________________________________________ From: bcbf At first, God said : Rot E = -dB/dt Div D = rho Div B = 0 Rot H = j + dD/dt and there was the light. J. C. Maxwell P__________________________________________________________________________ From: wiestt@rl.af.mil (Todd E. Wiest) Q.) What's the difference between a mathematician and a physicist? A.) A mathematician thinks that two points are enough to define a strait line while a physicist wants more data!!! P__________________________________________________________________________ From: kudlicki@hydra.astrouw.edu.pl (Andrzej Kudlicki) Q: What's the easiest way to observe Doppler's effect optically (not accoustically) in one's everyday life? A: Go out in the evening and look at the cars. They lights are white or yellow when they approach, but they are red when they are moving away of you. *P_________________________________________________________________________ Q: What would happen if the speed of light were only sixty miles per hour? A: As we approach the speed of light, the aging process slows down. So, if the speed of light were sixty miles per hour, we would have even more people speeding, especially older people trying to stay young. As a matter of fact, physics would demand that we go faster than the speed of light. The safest thing is to drive at a steady sixty to keep time and the highway patrol off our necks. Airplanes would become obsolete in this slow light world, because you would be going so fast, relatively speaking, that you'd be back before you even left. This would make business trips unnecessary and lead to economic collapse. So, to answer your question, life, if the speed of light were sixty miles per hour, would be youthful, fast, and dark. -- Ask Dr. Science P__________________________________________________________________________ From: dcp@alpha.sunquest.com (Dave Peterson) If the Titanic had struck a Heisenberg, would it still be floating? P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Werner Haelg A question for NMR-Freaks: What is the meaning of the abreviation SPIN ? S ociety for the P rotection of I nnocent N uclei P__________________________________________________________________________ From: "Caleb B." Got mole problems? Call Advogadro at 602-1023. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: eridani@scn.org (Martha K. Koester) New Age shops sell negative ion generators, as it is thought by some that breathing negative ions boosts the immune system. I have also heard that you can save your money and pet your cat, as rubbing it's fur has the same effect. This is unfortunately non-scientific, because how can a negative ion be a cat ion? P__________________________________________________________________________ From: fc3a501@rzaixsrv1.uni-hamburg.de (Hauke Reddmann) Editors (=my) note: This is a classical joke that appeared in "Die Naturwissenschaften" somewhere in the 30's. Eddington numerology was hip, and the Editor must have slept, so this stuff went through. In the next issue the sour-faced retraction followed. I have freely translated the stuff, luckily the central pun carries over unharmed. "This is an attempt to explain the value of the absolute zero temperature. To reach it, all degrees of freedom must be frozen. Now, due to Eddington, proton and electron have both 1/alpha degrees of freedom. But even at absolute zero, their circulating around each other can't stop. Summing up, this means absolute zero is at minus (2/alpha-1) degrees. With a value of 1/alpha=137.08, this makes -273.16 degrees, which is surprisingly close to the known value." Now, if you take more than 10 seconds to ROTFL, you should better "out" yourself to Doraemon... ;-) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Jan.Six@uku.fi (Jan Six) "It is a hypothesis that the sun will rise in the morning. This means we don't _know_ it will rise" - Ludwig Wittgenstein "Actually, now that you come to mention it..." - Nikolaus Copernicus P__________________________________________________________________________ From: al698@torfree.net (Christian Base) Why did Schrodinger sign his mane this way? .. o r d h i c n S g e r Because the dots over the "o" are actually a lone pair! P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Wilbert Dijkhof T2 = 2 degrees Celius = 275.15 degree Kelvin T1 = 1 degree Celius = 274.15 degree Kelvin ______________________________________________- T2-T1 = 1 degree Celius = 1 degree Kelvin => 1 degree Celius = 1 degree Kelvin P__________________________________________________________________________ From: marnow@wwa.com (Murray Arnow) K.K. Darrow in a colloqium that recounted some of his rememberances told this story about a European physicist. About 75 years ago the physicist was visiting the Harvard Library and couldn't find the Natural Philosophy section. He asked the librarian for help. She showed him to the proper section and said "We call it Physics." P__________________________________________________________________________ From: ale2@psu.edu (ale2) In Dec 1989 Physics Today ,page 9, David Gross wrote "...One of the best of the many Pauli jokes tells of Pauli's arriving in Heaven and being given, as befits a theoretical physicist, an appointment with God. When granted the customary free wish, he requests that God explain to him why the value of the fine-structure constant, alpha = e^2/(hbar*c), which measures the strength of the electric force, is 0.00729735 .... God goes to the blackboards and starts to write furiously. Pauli watches with pleasure but soon starts shaking his head violently...." P__________________________________________________________________________ From: pclarke@waite.adelaide.edu.au (Philip Clarke) Cause and effect. There are only three laws of nature, and one exception. 1) F=ma; 2) E=m(c squared); 3) You can't push a rope >From these three laws all others can be derived. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: aaron@falcon.cc.ukans.edu (Aaron Hoyt) Prof: Some people have proposed using Krypton gas in scintillator detectors. Grad Student: Won't that scare away the superstrings? P__________________________________________________________________________ From: aaron@falcon.cc.ukans.edu (Aaron Hoyt) Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: kanti@cs.brandeis.edu (kanti bansal): A physics book seems to be a mathematican's worst nightmare. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: sellis@superscape.com (Sean Ellis) 25 Dec - Put an apple on your tree to celebrate Newton's Birthday! P__________________________________________________________________________ From: jonathan@zeta.org.au (Jonathan Jermey) This is from a Project Gutenberg Etext of 'Literary Blunders', by Henry Wheatley. I thought that this section in particular deserved a wider audience. ACOUSTICS, LIGHT AND HEAT PAPER (1880) Science and Art Department. The following are specimens of answers given by candidates at recent examinations in Acoustics, Light and Heat, held in connection with the Science and Art Department, South Kensington. The answers have not of course all been selected from the same paper, neither have they all been chosen for the same reason. Question I.--State the relations existing between the pressure, temperature, and density of a given gas. How is it proved that when a gas expands its temperature is diminished? Answer.--Now the answer to the first part of this question is, that the square root of the pressure increases, the square root of the density decreases, and the absolute temperature remains about the same; but as to the last part of the question about a gas expanding when its temperature is diminished, I expect I am intended to say I don't believe a word of it, for a bladder in front of a fire expands, but its temperature is not at all diminished. Question 2.--If you walk on a dry path between two walls a few feet apart, you hear a musical note or ``ring'' at each footstep. Whence comes this? Answer.--This is similar to phosphorescent paint. Once any sound gets between two parallel reflectors or walls, it bounds from one to the other and never stops for a long time. Hence it is persistent, and when you walk between the walls you hear the sounds made by those who walked there before you. By following a muffin man down the passage within a short time you can hear most distinctly a musical note, or, as it is more properly termed in the question, a ``ring'' at every (other) step. Question 3.--What is the reason that the hammers which strike the strings of a pianoforte are made not to strike the middle of the strings? Why are the bass strings loaded with coils of wire? Answer.--Because the tint of the clang would be bad. Because to jockey them heavily. Question 4.--Explain how to determine the time of vibration of a given tuning-fork, and state what apparatus you would require for the purpose. Answer.--For this determination I should require an accurate watch beating seconds, and a sensitive ear. I mount the fork on a suitable stand, and then, as the second hand of my watch passes the figure 60 on the dial, I draw the bow neatly across one of its prongs. I wait. I listen intently. The throbbing air particles are receiving the pulsations; the beating prongs are giving up their original force; and slowly yet surely the sound dies away. Still I can hear it, but faintly and with close attention; and now only by pressing the bones of my head against its prongs. Finally the last trace disappears. I look at the time and leave the room, having determined the time of vibration of the common ``pitch'' fork. This process deteriorates the fork considerably, hence a different operation must be performed on a fork which is only lent. Question 6.--What is the difference between a ``real'' and a ``virtual'' image? Give a drawing showing the formation of one of each kind. Answer.--You see a real image every morning when you shave. You do not see virtual images at all. The only people who see virtual images are those people who are not quite right, like Mrs. A. Virtual images are things which don't exist. I can't give you a reliable drawing of a virtual image, because I never saw one. Question 8.--How would you disprove, experimentally, the assertion that white light passing through a piece of coloured glass acquires colour from the glass? What is it that really happens? Answer.--To disprove the assertion (so repeatedly made) that ``white light passing through a piece of coloured glass acquires colour from the glass,'' I would ask the gentleman to observe that the glass has just as much colour after the light has gone through it as it had before. That is what would really happen. Question 11.--Explain why, in order to cook food by boiling, at the top of a high mountain, you must employ a different method from that used at the sea level. Answer.--It is easy to cook food at the sea level by boiling it, but once you get above the sea level the only plan is to fry it in its own fat. It is, in fact, impossible to boil water above the sea level by any amount of heat. A different method, therefore, would have to be employed to boil food at the top of a high mountain, but what that method is has not yet been discovered. The future may reveal it to a daring experimentalist. Question 12.--State what are the conditions favourable for the formation of dew. Describe an instrument for determining the dew point, and the method of using it. Answer.--This is easily proved from question 1. A body of gas as it ascendsexpands, cools, and deposits moisture; so if you walk up a hill the body of gas inside you expands, gives its heat to you, and deposits its moisture in the form of dew or common sweat. Hence these are the favourable conditions; and moreover it explains why you get warm by ascending a hill, in opposition to the well-known law of the Conservation of Energy. Question 13.--On freezing water in a glass tube, the tube sometimes breaks. Why is this? An iceberg floats with 1,000,000 tons of ice above the water line. About how many tons are below the water line? Answer.--The water breaks the tube because of capallarity. The iceberg floats on the top because it is lighter, hence no tons are below the water line. Another reason is that an iceberg cannot exceed 1,000,000 tons in weight: hence if this much is above water, none is below. Ice is exceptional to all other bodies except bismuth. All other bodies have 1090 feet below the surface and 2 feet extra for every degree centigrade. If it were not for this, all fish would die, and the earth be held in an iron grip. P.S.--When I say 1090 feet, I mean 1090 feet per second. Question 14.--If you were to pour a pound of molten lead and a pound of molten iron, each at the temperature of its melting point, upon two blocks of ice, which would melt the most ice, and why? Answer.--This question relates to diathermancy. Iron is said to be a diathermanous body (from _dia_, through, and _thermo_, I heat), meaning that it gets heated through and through, and accordingly contains a large quantity of real heat. Lead is said to be an athermanous body (from _a_, privative, and _thermo_, I heat), meaning that it gets heated secretly or in a latent manner. Hence the answer to this question depends on which will get the best of it, the real heat of the iron or the latent heat of the lead. Probably the iron will smite furthest into the ice, as molten iron is white and glowing, while melted lead is dull. Question 21.--A hollow indiarubber ball full of air is suspended on one arm of a balance and weighed in air. The whole is then covered by the receiver of an air pump. Explain what will happen as the air in the receiver is exhausted. Answer.--The ball would expand and entirely fill the vessell, driving out all before it. The balance being of greater density than the rest would be the last to go, but in the end its inertia would be overcome and all would be expelled, and there would be a perfect vacuum. The ball would then burst, but you would not be aware of the fact on account of the loudness of a sound varying with the density of the place in which it is generated, and not on that in which it is heard. Question 27.--Account for the delicate shades of colour sometimes seen on the inside of an oyster shell. State and explain the appearance presented when a beam of light falls upon a sheet of glass on which very fine equi-distant parallel lines have been scratched very close to one another. Answer.--The delicate shades are due to putrefaction; the colours always show best when the oyster has been a bad one. Hence they are considered a defect and are called chromatic aberration. The scratches on the glass will arrange themselves in rings round the light, as any one may see at night in a tram car. Question 29.--Show how the hypothenuse face of a right-angled prism may be used as a reflector. What connection is there between the refractive index of a medium and the angle at which an emergent ray is totally reflected? Answer.--Any face of any prism may be used as a reflector. The connexion between the refractive index of a medium and the angle at which an emergent ray does not emerge but is totally reflected is remarkable and not generally known. Question 32.--Why do the inhabitants of cold climates eat fat? How would you find experimentally the relative quantities of heat given off when equal weights of sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon are thoroughly burned? Answer.--An inhabitant of cold climates (called Frigid Zoans) eats fat principally because he can't get no lean, also because he wants to rise is temperature. But if equal weights of sulphur phosphorus and carbon are burned in his neighbourhood he will give off eating quite so much. The relative quantities of eat given off will depend upon how much sulphur etc. is burnt and how near it is burned to him. If I knew these facts it would be an easy sum to find the answer. 1881. Question 1.--Sound is said to travel about four times as fast in water as in air. How has this been proved? State your reasons for thinking whether sound travels faster or slower in oil than in water. Answer(_a_).--Mr. Colladon, a gentleman who happened to have a boat, wrote to a friend called Mr. Sturm to borrow another boat and row out on the other side of the lake, first providing himself with a large ear-trumpet. Mr. Colladon took a large bell weighing some tons which he put under water and hit furiously. Every time he hit the bell he lit a fusee, and Mr. Sturm looked at his watch. In this way it was found out as in the question. It was also done by Mr. Byott who sang at one end of the water pipes of Paris, and a friend at the other end (on whom he could rely) heard the song as if it were a chorus, part coming through the water and part through the air. (_b_) This is done by one person going into a hall (? a well) and making a noise, and another person stays outside and listens where the sound comes from. When Miss Beckwith saves life from drowning, her brother makes a noise under water, and she hearing the sound some time after can calculate where he is and dives for him; and what Miss Beckwith can do under water, of course a mathematician can do on dry land. Hence this is how it is done. If oil is poured on the water it checks the sound-waves and puts you out. Question 2.--What would happen if two sound-waves exactly alike were to meet one another in the open air, moving in opposite directions? Answer.--If the sound-waves which meet in the open air had not come from the same source they would not recognise each others existence, but if they had they would embrace and mutually hold fast, in other words, interfere with and destroy each other. Question 9.--Describe any way in which the velocity of light has been measured. Answer (_a_).--A distinguished but Heathen philosopher, Homer, was the first to discover this. He was standing one day at one side of the earth looking at Jupiter when he conjectured that he would take 16 minutes to get to the other side. This conjecture he then verified by careful experiment. Now the whole way across the earth is 3,072,000 miles, and dividing this by 16 we get the velocity 192,000 miles a second. This is so great that it would take an express train 40 years to do it, and the bullet from a canon over 5000 years. P.S.--I think the gentlemans name was Romer not Homer, but anyway he was 20% wrong and Mr. Fahrenheit and Mr. Celsius afterwards made more careful determinations. (_b_) An Atheistic Scientist (falsely so called) tried experiments on the Satellites of Jupiter. He found that he could delay the eclipse 16 minutes by going to the other side of the earths orbit; in fact he found he could make the eclipse happen when he liked by simply shifting his position. Finding that credit was given him for determining the velocity of light by this means he repeated it so often that the calendar began to get seriously wrong and there were riots, and Pope Gregory had to set things right. Question 10.--Explain why water pipes burst in cold weather. Answer.--People who have not studied Acoustics think that Thor bursts the pipes, but we know that it is nothing of the kind for Professor Tyndall has burst the mythologies and has taught us that it is the natural behaviour of water (and bismuth) without which all fish would die and the earth be held in an iron grip. P__________________________________________________________________________ Numerical physicist might have the Monte Carlo method, other physicists use the Monte Christo method: Dug at a problem for years, and then solve it in a completely different way. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: egreen@nyc.pipeline.com (Edward Green) All coordinate systems are equal, but some are more equal than others. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Giorgio Torrieri What did heisemberg say about sex? if you've got the position you haven't got the momentum & if you've got the energy you haven't got the time! P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Giorgio Torrieri What is a quantum particle? The dreams that stuff is made of! P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Giorgio Torrieri What is JJ coupling? JP Thompson's conception P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Aliquotes iv.i (journal) (rogerb@microsoft.com) Did you hear about the French post-doc who went to work at the Fermi Lab, but never went in because the sign over the door always said it was closed. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: ken@capitalnet.com (Ken) BUTTERED BREAD ON THE BACK OF A CAT: WHAT FALLS FIRST. Daniel D. Van Hoy wrote: >Just think: When you drop a cat from a few feet, it lands upright. >Also think: When you drop a piece of buttered bread, it lands with >the buttered side down >Now think: If you strapped a piece of buttered bread to the back >of a cat, which would land first. First the source of the forces must be understood. The force acting on the bread is not the butter, as some may think. Without the bread, butter wouldn't land bread side up, and therefore the force could not possibly be in the butter. We know the force is not the bread because it has been experimentally proven that bread does not land any particular side down without butter. The bread/butter force is caused by the fusing of bread and butter particles together. This fusion causes energy to be released in the form of shifting gravity and anti-gravity energy to opposite sides of the bread/butter continuum. The gravity energy naturally shifts to the butter since it is denser then the bread, while the anti-gravity energy shifts to the bread side. The energy in a cat for landing on its feet comes from the feet themselves. This has been proven experimentally. Cats without feet have a near zero success rate of landing on their feet. We will call this energy cat foot energy. Considering the equal but opposing bread/butter and cat foot forces one would expect the cat to spin violently about its axis. However the strength of these forces must be considered. A regular cat is not structurally stable enough to withstand the torque the spinning causes. I should not have to describe the way the cat's limbs give way, the way the legs wrench around until the feet are on the same side of the cat as the butter. And thus the cat can then land on its feet, butter side down. We are now researching the possibility of using structurally reinforced cats for levitation systems, but so far the cost is too high to be practical. Several attempts at producing economically viable systems were made by separating the feet so that the instability of the cat would not be a factor. At first there was dificulty because there was no cat to tie the bread to. Later it was discovered that when not attached to a cat the feet lost their cat foot force over time. It is hypothesized that the feet need to be living to exert the cat foot force, and so far no practical method has been found for keeping the feet alive other than a cat. Attempts are also being made to breed flat cats with no legs (only feet). There are many other problems related with this method of levitation as you may well imagine, but they are beyond the scope of this discussion. Harold G Sputsberry PHD Institute for Alternative Energy Research *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: Lizabeth Henderson [The following question was originally posed by Steven Wright.] Question: If you strapped a slice of buttered bread to the back of a cat, which way down would it land? [Well, here's an explication of that question...] I'm glad you asked this question. IF WHEN YOU DROP A BUTTERED PIECE OF BREAD, IT DROPS BUTTER SIDE DOWN AND A CAT ALWAYS LANDS ON ITS FEET. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU TOOK A PIECE OF BUTTERED BREAD, STRAPPED IT ON THE BACK OF A CAT (BUTTER SIDE UP) AND DROPPED IT OFF CENTERPOINT TOWER? Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash it's furry back. If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall. That's right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent. Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several hundred tabbies. The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of red-hot starship and pissed off aliens crash on top of them. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: lbsys@aol.com (LBsys) (Tim Joseph) Furgeson and the Unified Field Theory In the beginning there was Aristotle And objects at rest tended to remain at rest And objects in motion tended to come to rest And God saw that it was boring, although very restful. Then God created Newton And objects at rest tended to remain at rest And objects in motion tended to remain in motion And energy was conserved, and momentum was conserved, And matter was conserved And God saw that it was conservative. Then God created Einstein And everything was relative And fast things became short And straight things became curved And the universe was filled with inertial frames And God saw that it was relatively general but some of it was especially relative. Then God created Bohr And there was the principle And the principle was quantum And all things were quantified But some things were still relative And God saw that it was confusing. Then God was going to create Furgeson And Furgeson would have unified And he would have fielded a theory And all would have been one. But it was the seventh day And God rested And objects at rest tend to remain at rest. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Joao Batista IN CASE YOU THOUGHT THAT WE KNEW EVERYTHING AND THE REST WAS JUST DETAILS 1. In the beginning there was nothing, then something went wrong.[Murphy's Law] 2. The empty set contains and is contained within all other sets.[Fibonacci's Rule] 3. Universe has no plural. 4. Space is nothing. 5. Time is an abstraction. 6. Energy is the opposite of mass. 7. Energy is not effected by gravity. 8. In order for two points to exist, a third point must exist between them. 9. Less than enough is not sufficient, more than enough is not necessary. 10.Enough is a finite quantity. 11.That which has been done is not impossible. 12.Pythagoras trisected an angle. 13.Mathematics is a set of languages providing different ways to describe reality. 14.Statistical norms are not real integers even when they are whole numbers. 15.A line representing a continuous function contains no discrete elements. 16.A "Field" is a continuous static structure extending to infinity. 17."Field Lines" are mathmatical constructs having no existence. 18.Reality is what it is irrespective of description. 19.Ptolomy was believed because his math was correct and it worked. 20.The "Plane of the Elliptic" is perpendicular to and centered upon the Barycenter of the Solar System (or any other system). 21.All orbits are planes of ecliptic. 22.The eccentricity of an orbit is proportional to the deviation from the perpendicular to the path of the center of mass. [Kepler's 4th Law] 23.The Earth does not revolve around the Sun, the Sun and the Earth revolve around the center of mass. 24.There is no error in the orbit of Mercury. 25.A measured value is the sum of its contributing elements. 26.The specific computed values of the elements do not change the measured sum. 27.The measured gravity of the Sun was the same after Einstein as before. 28.The bending of light observed near a star is thermal reflection, a mirage. 29.Velocity is measured at two different times, not on two different objects. 30.A zero based measurement is required to know the value of measured variables. 31.The "Aberration of Light" is the same in a column of water as it is in a column of air. 32. The velocity of light is constant in all media. 33. The aberration of light is a measure of the Earth's absolute velocity. 34. Light is a spherical wave containing no particles. 35. The outside of a wave has more degrees of freedom than the middle, the inside has fewer. 36. As a wave expands outward from its' source, it expands outward from its' middle, a red shift. 37. The further away it is, the greater the red shift, coming or going. 38. The energy required to operate a mechanism increases with velocity while the available energy decreases. 39. There is nothing new here, it's all old stuff. You must get the old stuff right before you can benefit from the new. D.MURPHY - HCEZJCIA P_________________________________________________________________________ THE PHYSICISTS' BILL OF RIGHTS (Author Unknown) We hold these postulates to be intuitively obvious, that all physicists are born equal, to a first approximation, and are endowed by their creator with certain discrete privileges, among them a mean rest life, n degrees of freedom, and the following rights which are invariant under all linear transformations: 1. To approximate all problems to ideal cases. 2. To use order of magnitude calculations whenever deemed necessary (i.e. whenever one can get away with it). 3. To use the rigorous method of "squinting" for solving problems more complex than the addition of positive real integers. 4. To dismiss all functions which diverge as "nasty" and "unphysical." 5. To invoke the uncertainty principle when confronted by confused mathematicians, chemists, engineers, psychologists, dramatists, and other lower scientists. 6. When pressed by non-physicists for an explanation of (4) to mumble in a sneering tone of voice something about physically naive mathematicians. 7. To equate two sides of an equation which are dimensionally inconsistent, with a suitable comment to the effect of, "Well, we are interested in the order of magnitude anyway." 8. To the extensive use of "bastard notations" where conventional mathematics will not work. 9. To invent fictitious forces to delude the general public. 10. To justify shaky reasoning on the basis that it gives the right answer. 11. To cleverly choose convenient initial conditions, using the principle of general triviality. 12. To use plausible arguments in place of proofs, and thenceforth refer to these arguments as proofs. 13. To take on faith any principle which seems right but cannot be proved. P__________________________________________________________________________ Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson. It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit. Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting. Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" P__________________________________________________________________________ From: mdecaire@eagle.wbm.ca (Marc Guy DeCaire) Q: What do you call it when atomic scientists grab their rods and gather around the old watering hole? A: Nuclear fishin' P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Bert de Bruijn "Wanted, dead or alive : Schroedinger's cat." P__________________________________________________________________________ From: seashore@pirinen.demon.co.uk (Anetta Meriranta Pirinen) Schroedinger's Vet: Specializing in gassed cats and monkeys with Carpal-tunnel syndrome. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: wombat@tiggs.demon.co.uk (wombat) "Here Kitty,Kitty" - Schrodinger P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Aliquotes iv.vi (journal) (rogerb@microsoft.com) My, But That's An Attractive Lawn Mower Scientists aren't the only ones capable of starting relationships in the lab. Often times, in our effort to get that last result, we forget about the feelings of the equipment which we so callously use and discard. This is one such story of the love between a lawn mower and an NMR-MRI imager. Machines, yes, but machines wich couldn't bear to be separated. The research facility had just received their new NMR-MRI System and had been careful to inform the cleaning staff of the hazards of working around such a piece of equipment ... the high magnetic field wreaking havoc with any metal bearing equipment, erasing banking cards and terminating electrical equipment. This also includes pacemakers although you gotta wonder how they determined that the machinery would affect pacemakers, experiments or just a good guess. They were even so careful as to put the magnet well towards the back wall, away from the general working area of the facility. Yes, they were careful in telling the caretaking staff. Unfortunately, no one had taken the same care in informing the outdoor, groundskeeping staff. Shortly after the system was set up, one of the outdoor maintenance crew was mowing the lawn near the back wall of the facility. Picture the idyllic setting as the groundskeeper in wandering around the yard on a bright summer's day. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the blades of grass are flying around in the normal manner when cut by the mower. Suddenly, the mower is yanked out of the groundskeeper's hands and is flung against the wall, suspended three feet off the ground with no signs of support. The surprised fellow spent quite a while trying to pry the mower of the wall but to no avail. It doesn't take a scientist to tell you that this only happens on Roadrunner cartoons. What was the poor man going to tell his boss? Eventually, when everyone became aware of the problem, they got their heads together and tried to come up with a reasonable expanation for this sudden, non-Newtonian event. Unfortunately, someone was running an experiment at the time and noticed the change in the field. Following the commotion, they discovered the problem and, using a tow truck (not a piece of equipment which is usually issued with an MRI but we won't quibble), they were able to pry the mower from the wall. This wall is now surrounded at a distance by a large fence and no one cares if the grass grows long and unruly. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: jsalmon@sapcmail.jsc.nasa.gov (jsalmon) Are vacuum thermoses formed using a Dewar die? P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Keith Stein It is said that the "J", also know as the "psi particle", has zero charm ". I'm sure that's not true ! ( when you get to know it :-) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: sbaker@oro.net (Steve Baker) Here's a sample of some on-line humor from the website http://www.drscience.com . Dear Dr. Science Why is the speed of light only 186,000 miles per second? Can'[t science do better than this? "Yes, you're right. It's a disgrace light only goes a measly 186,000 miles per second, but physicists are working on this problem. There's already a prototype vehicle that goes 200,000 miles per second, but the headlights shine at only 186,000 miles per second. This is equivalent to driving down the freeway the wrong way with the headlights not only out but actually chasing you down the road. This is why so many scientists today no longer own a driver's licence. " Remember, Dr. Science knows more than you do! *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: Jan-Eric Nystrom A student recognizes Einstein in a train and asks: Excuse me, professor, but does New York stop by this train? *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: Ian Ellis FRESHMEN in the general-science class at Mark Twain Middle School in Mar Vista, Calif., were studying astronomy. "What do we call a group of stars that makes an imaginary picture in the sky?" the teacher asked. "A consternation," one student replied. --Contributed to "Tales Out of School" by Ralph E. Hedges (c) 1996 The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. All rights reserved. *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: rod2410@iperbole.bologna.it (Jim Cregan) Q:What do you call a nun who's had a sex change? A:A Trans-sister *P_________________________________________________________________________ A Simpleton's Guide to Science (stolen from UK magazine) Relativity : Family get-togethers at Christmas Gravity : Strength of a glass of beer Time travel : Throwing the alarm clock at the wall Black holes : What you get in black socks Critical mass: A gaggle of film reviewers Hyperspace : Where you park at the superstore *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: Raymond W Jensen Q:What do you get when you cross a Hell's Angel and a nerdy physics major? A:A guy that has Maxwell's Equations tatooed on his chest. *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: rod2410@iperbole.bologna.it (Jim Cregan) Q:What is horsepower? A:The power it takes to drag a horse a given distance in a given amount of time. *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: rboland@eden.com ()
Q:Does light have mass? A:Of course not. It's not even Catholic!!! *P_________________________________________________________________________ (This just materialized on my desk one day. It's in my handwriting, so I must have written it, though I'll deny it if I'm indicted. -AA) The topic for today is quantum physics. Quantum physics was developed in the 1930's, as a result of a bet between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, to see who could come up with the most ridiculous theory and still have it published. Most people agree that Bohr won hands down, although Einstein did very well in the swimsuit competition. One of the most important researchers in quantum physics is Werner Heisenberg, a man with a wonderful sense of humor, who was always cracking one-liners, like "delta-p times delta-x is less than h!" Ha! ha! What a card! This is known as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which is closely related to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, which says that some things are true, but you can't prove them, like when my wife and I argue over whether it's her turn to take out the garbage or not. What Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says is that if something is small enough, you can't say anything about it. Anyone with the I.Q. of baking powder immediately understood that this means that if you look at something so small that you can't even *see* it, like my dog, Oscar Wilde's, brain, then you obviously can't tell, say, what color it is. But some people didn't get the joke, and decided to investigate this principle further. They would gather and sit around all day, drinking beer and performing "Gedankesexperimenten," or "Thank God we're theoretical physicists so we don't have to get our hands dirty with particle accelerators and other heavy machinery." The most famous of these is Schroedinger's Cat, where several physicists kidnap Erwin Schroedinger's cat Fluffy and lock it up in a box, along with a radioactive source such as Cheez Doodles. Then they walk around with concerned expressions on their faces, commenting about how they don't know what's going on inside the box. This goes on until the cleaning lady discovers the box, opens it and tells the physicists whether the cat is dead, or whether it has mutated into a man-eating flea the size of Norway. The point of this experiment is to show that uncertainty at the quantum level can be detected in the macroscopic world and produce widespread anxiety and paranoia. It also explains why paper clips just lie there while you look at them, but as soon as you turn your back, they run away, giggling wildly, and transform themselves into coat hangers. Another famous researcher is Richard Feynman, who invented Feynman diagrams, which are bunches of squiggly lines with greek letters next to them. The way they were discovered was, one day, Hans Bethe came in to Feynman's office to say that some of the guys down in particle research were having a jam session down by the cyclotron, and would Richard like to come over and bring his bongos? Feynman was out, at the time, cracking a safe or something, so Bethe tried to leave him a note. On the desk, he found one of Feynman's daugter's kindergarten drawings. Bethe couldn't make head or tail of it, and figured that if even he couldn't understand it, then it must be something Terribly Clever, and promptly called it a Feynman diagram. This was a major scientific breakthrough, and ever since, proud parents have been hanging their children's Feynman diagrams on refrigerators with little muon-shaped magnets, confident that their Little Darlings are developing important scientific theories every day, because they are, after all, Gifted Crank Unified Theories: The CUTting edge of Fuzzy Science Quite recently the Institute of Fuzzy Science has announced the discovery of several bold new theories, providing a unified explanation, or at least excuse, for a broad range of natural phenomena. These theories are both extremely ambitious in their scope and modest in their assumptions. Their main trait is that they deduce a great deal from practically nothing. The creation of Crank Unified Theories is an old and honorable tradition, dating back to prehistoric times, when our ancient ancestors looked around them and asked "How the heck did *this* all get here?" The process was lent considerable prestige by such luminaries as Aristotle and Ptolemy, in the classical age, and continues up to this day. One recent idea by a worker outside the Institute was Photon Mechanics, which postulated that all fundamental particles were composed of photons. In an attempt to prove this, he tried to synthesize a meal from gamma rays. Unfortunately, the food immediately propagated away at 299,000 kilometers per second, leaving critics of the light lunch unsatisfied. "Terrible," one physicist commented. "Much too bland." Others seemed to agree. The CUTs produced at the Institute of Fuzzy Science are notable in that they all contradict each other, and sometimes themselves. Thus, few would argue that all, or even most, are correct. The most successful theory to date is that of Dr. Isaac M. Woozy, commonly known as Woozy Theory. Woozy Theory has proven capable of predicting practically anything you put to it. What is Woozy Theory? In its simplest outlines, it is an attempt to describe nature by unifying three separate realms of observation: General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Scrabble. By adopting a three pronged approach the theory is able to resolve the apparent contradictions between each of the sub-theories. "I believe that the problems of earlier researchers," stated Dr. Woozy, "arose from treating the subjects piecemeal. A unified approach is required." He cites difficulties with Superstring Theory, Quantum Scrabble, and Scrabble in Curved Spacetime. In each case, he maintains, difficulties arose from neglecting a broad class of other phenomena. "My discovery was serendipitous," he recalls. "I'd been wrestling with various theories for weeks without getting anywhere. Finally, in my office, I picked up Merzbacher's Quantum Mechanics in one hand and Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's Gravitation in the other -- well, I touched it, anyway, it's too heavy to lift. Just as I was staring at both of them, my Scrabble set fell from the top shelf and hit me on the head." With the blow came illumination. If one merely assumes that Scrabble must exist, the rest of nature follows. Gravity, for example, is necessary to keep the pieces on the board. Electromagnetism provides light, to see the letters with. One critic pointed out the possibility of magnetized pieces; Woozy pondered for hours until he had resolved the conflict to his satisfaction. "One not only needs gravity to keep the pieces on the board," he explained, "but also to provide an atmosphere, so the players can breathe." When the critic began to suggest pressure suits and space colonies, Woozy silenced him with a skillfully thrown paperweight. "I take my work seriously," he declared. Most exciting of all, Woozy theory provides the first coherent explanation for the universe as a whole. If Scrabble is necessary, then so are players, and a universe to play in. Woozy calls this the "Really Strong" or "Scrabble" Anthropic Principle. Humans (or at least intelligent beings) are necessary, providing an order to biological evolution which has been lacking since the failure of the Chain of Being. This also suggests that if aliens exist, they may well play Scrabble. "That doesn't mean that they will speak English, necessarily," Woozy added cautiously. "There are foreign language versions, after all. And the point values may differ, somewhat." He suggested to SETI that they listen for very long range Play By Mail games. At present, his suggestion has not been acted on. "They're just miffed that they didn't think of it," Woozy sniffed. Rival theories include unifying QFT and GR with chess or checkers, or even tic-tac-toe. While the originators of these theories remain hopeful, Woozy is pessimistic. "Those games are extremely difficult to unify with Quantum Mechanics," Woozy explained, "since they lack an element of chance. And tic-tac-toe doesn't even have pieces, so gravity is pretty shaky as well. Plus it's a drawn game (no pun intended). Who'd want to live in a universe that boring?" Woozy also recalled an early game of quantum chess: "After about thirty moves, black was both mated and not mated. It made for terrible arguments." Are these, or similar theories, the answer to the riddle of the universe? Most observers doubt it. Still, as Dr. Woozy himself points out, "What the heck, it keeps us off the streets." *P_________________________________________________________________________ A fellow was following a truck in heavy traffic. Every block or so, when they were stopped at a stop light, the driver of the truck would jump out of the cab with a big stick and bang on the side of the cargo bay. He'd then jump back into the cab in time to drive away when the signal changed. The first fellow observed this for several miles, until he could stand it no longer. The next time the truck driver jumped out with the stick, the first fellow jumped out and ran up to him. "I'm sorry to bother you," he said, over the din of the banging, "but I am very curious; could you tell me what you are doing?" Without breaking rhythm, the truck driver replied, "Sure, Mac. Ya see, this here's a six-ton truck but I've got eight tons of canaries aboard, so I've gotta keep two ton of them flying all the time so I don't break an axle". *P_________________________________________________________________________ "Absolute zero is cool." *P_________________________________________________________________________ Researchers in Fairbanks Alaska announced last week that they have discovered a superconductor which will operate at room temperature. *P_________________________________________________________________________ Cold Fusion: Looney Theory of the Week "Hey Mike?" "Yeah, Gabe?" "We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah." "I thought you fixed that last century!" "No, no, not that. Someone's found a loophole in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere." "Blessit! Lemme check..."< tappity clickity tappity> "Hey, I thought I fixed that! All right, let me find my terminal."< tappity clickity tap... save... compile> "There, that ought to patch it." *P_________________________________________________________________________ TIME TRAVEL SEMINAR To whom it may concern, There will be a seminar given on the subject of time travel in the 21st century. It will be held on Thursday, January 1, 1920 at 12:00:01AM. Please to have marked your calendars. Hamster Power: 42 ways to get electric power from hamsters 1. Stick copper and zinc electrode-needles in opposite ends of hamster. Use in series for higher voltage. -gwh 2. Shove them back and forth in Richard Gere's butt. Creates static electricity. 3. Go to Radio Shack and offer them the hamster in exchange for two AAA batteries. 4. Attach the hamster to a hand-crank generator and then drop it onto a trampoline. 5. Ignite in large numbers. Use heat released to drive steam turbine. 6. Kidnap and threaten to torture. Extort ransom from animal-rights activists and other anti-cruelty types: demand payment in the form of electric current. 7. Drop hamsters from great heights. Use water-mill like turbine to generate electricity. 8. Drop large numbers of hamsters into tar pit, wait a few million years, drill for crude oil at same location to run electric turbine. 9. Cold Fusion -> Steam Turbine. No explanation necessary. -seano 10. Any form of neutron capture / beta emission. -seano 11. Convince hamsters they're really lemmings. Show cliff to hamsters. Install turbine halfway down cliff. 12. Densely pack hamsters into flywheel shape. Spin rapidly. Attach generator. 13. Put hamster on electricity-generating treadmill. Feed back small portion of generated electricity into hamster brain pleasure center. Watch him generate his little heart out! 14. Seal large quantity of hamsters in air tight holding tanks. Add water. Allow suitable time to pass for decomposition. Collect methane gas resulting. Put gas in fuel cells. 15. Smush mucho hamsters in a trough, use the drippings/blood to run a waterwheel for hydroelectric power. 16. Give hamsters lots of shitty beer. Use piss and vomit to run hydroelectric generator. 17. Skin hamster. Melt animal fat into tallow and then form candles. Heat steam turbine. 18. Switch hamsters for P6 chips coming of Intel assembly lines. Saved electricity will be enormous. Cover performance loss by releasing new version of Windows NT at the same time. -gwh 19. Build glass room. Put hamsters inside. Put cocaine inside. Ground the floor and attach negative leads to the ceiling. -gwh 20. Have hamster steal one of Kube's magic cards. Leech power from resulting nuclear strike. 21. Teach hamsters to play blackjack. Once they're at the competitive level, convince Las Vegas hotel owners to convert to serving hamsters. Saved electricity from smaller lights, hotels, etc. -gwh 22. Accumulate enough hamsters that the self-gravitational force causes the mass to shrink and heat up. Use thermocouples to generate energy. -gwh 23. Raid PG&E corporate headquarters. Threaten to drop hamster down CEO's pants unless he gives you a power plant. -gwh 24. Get several dozen hamsters. Shoot them up with crystal meth. Attach dog sled. 25. (This is, undoubtedly, the way to get the most power from them) Combine the hamster with an equal mass of antimatter -- a anti-hamster if you will. Then harness the massive energy release for power.... 26. Have the Emperor warp and twist a hamster clone into an evil Anti-Hamster, Darth Hamster. This should be good for 4-6 sequels. Install tension to electricity converters into theatre. -gwh 27. a. Find a _good_ genetic engineer. b. Splice appropriate genes from electric eels into hamsters, because they're smaller and cuter and, well, hamsters. c. Feed the hamsters. d. Surgically install appropriate electrodes. e. Periodically drain off the voltage. Unfortunately, this only gets you DC current. P.S. How could I have been so blind? Splice in genes from blue-green algae as well, and you wouldn't even have to feed the hamsters! (Well, maybe some phosphorous and iron and stuff) 28. Mail the electric company a dead hamster every day until they give you power for free. 29. Crossbreed hamster with a Mothra (a giant rodant in India) and use resulting giant mutant lightning-breathing hamster as power source. 30. Give the hamster to Scotty, he'll find some way to yeild 20% more power from the dilithium crystals. 31. Take thousands of hamsters into orbit -- when the orbit decays, they will heat up the atmosphere. With enough hamsters, you could raise the planets temperature as much as you want. 32. Pull the hamster out of root@soda's ass. Then when they turn red & embarrassed, use the heat from their red face to drive a Carnot engine. 33. Emmass enormous quantities of hamsters until it reaches enough mass to begin hamster fusion in the core. Use solar cells to convert radiation to electricity. - seano 34. Throw in more hamsters to 33 (above) until the hamster star goes supernova... you couldn't want any more energy than that... 35. Repeat 34 with another mass of hamsters... spin the resulting neutron-hamsters around each other in a binary orbit... use gravity waves to rotate hydro-turbine. 36. Take five or six hits of acid. Tell yourself very firmly that hamsters _are_ electricity. (Well, they've got lots of electrons in them, yes?) Acquire hamsters however you choose; "operationally", you've now got electricity. (I say "five or six hits", because I find that things which were perfectly clear to me after _one_ hit, e.g., that the word "Krups" is actually a make onomatopoeic piece of German slang for an unprintable Viennese practice, make absolutely no sense afterwards; and Leary used to take five hits or so. QED.) 37. Give them little magnetic collars, and run them through a maze of coiled wires. 38. Reduce hamster to their component atoms. Compress the resulting plasma until it fuses. Transfer the released energy via heat/engine or energy conversion scheme of your choice. -ERic 39. Take two hamsters, run one through a klein bottle to convert it to anti-matter. Combine the first hamster with the anti-hamster. Harness the resultant massive burst of energy as per #38 above. -ERic 40. Drop hamster into black hole. Use photovoltaics to release the radiated energy. -Eric 41. It is a well-known result of quantum field theory that all fields are symmetric under the combined action of time-reversal, charge-conjugation and parity-inversion operators: the familiar TCP symmetry. It is trivial to show that time reversal and charge conjugation both take fermions into their anti-particles. Use this to show that plucking hamsters from mirrors will produce beaucoup electromagnetic radiation. (Hint: Do you need to pull the hamsters out of the mirror _going_backwards_in_time_?) Ref: J. J. Sakurai, _Adv. Quan. Mech._ 42. Put female hamster scent on glass rod. Release male hamster. He will try to rub his furry coat against glass rod. Drawback: only creates static electricity. A friend of mine has a theory about things electronivc: they operate on smoke. It is very important for each component to have the correct amount of smoke, which is sealed inside at the factory. If this smoke ever gets out, the part is no longer functional. This is true: how many times have you ever seen an electrical or electronic device work right after smoke has been emitted? *P_________________________________________________________________________ A friend of mine has a theory about things electronivc: they operate on smoke. It is very important for each component to have the correct amount of smoke, which is sealed inside at the factory. If this smoke ever gets out, the part is no longer functional. This is true: how many times have you ever seen an electrical or electronic device work right after smoke has been emitted? *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: Suzanne Sarlette/Gerald Pearson Q: What do you call the sum of the diagonal elements of the tensor of inertia? A:The spur of the moment. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ =2.1 PHYSICS POETRY P__________________________________________________________________________ robertk@xmission.com (robertk): There once was a fellow named Fisk Whose fencing was exceedingly brisk. So fast was his action That by the Fitzgerald Contraction His rapier soon was reduced to a disk. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: slw1@ellis.uchicago.edu (SluT) There was a young fellow named Fisk Whose stroke was exceedingly brisk By relative action The Lorenz contraction Had reduced his dong to a disk. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: jim.henry@ftl.mese.com (Jim Henry) A quantum mechanic's vacation Had his colleagues in dire consternation. For while studies had shown That his speed was well known, His position was pure speculation. (Not sure who wrote that one.) I saw an old fellow of Sirius, I thought I was merely delirious. But he ate me with zeal, I'm convinced he was real That zealous old gourmand of Sirius. (I wrote that one.) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Ken & Jo Walton (Magellan@kenjo.demon.co.uk) There was a young lady called Bright Who could travel much faster than light. She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night. Arthur Buller in Punch, 19 Dec. 1923 From: Sam Hobbs To her friends, that Miss Bright use to chatter, "I have learned something new about matter, My speed was so great That is increased my weight; Yet I failed to become any fatter." Source: A. Reginald Buller P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Sam Hobbs There was an old man who observed, "I confess I am somewhat unnerved. I had never before Seen the truth of the lore That, where matter is, space must be curved! P__________________________________________________________________________ From: rrcraig@eos.ncsu.edu (Ralph Ray Craig) There was a young couple named Bright Whose fucking was faster than light They went at it one day In a relative way And came on the previous night. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: robertk@xmission.com (robertk) There once was a fellow named Blight Whose speed was much faster than light. He sat off one day In a relative way and returned on the previous night. We've heard of that fellow named Blight, And his trip on that fabulous night, But his increasing mass Would have soon proved so vast He'd have been a most *singular* sight! P__________________________________________________________________________ Relativity Said Einstein, "I have an equation," "Which some might call Rabelaisian:" "Let P be viginity," "Approaching infinity," "And let U be a constant, persuasion." "Now, if P over U be inverted," "And the squareroot of U be inserted," "X times over P," "The result, Q.E.D." "Is a relative." Einstein asserted. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Sam Hobbs Said a pupil of Einstein, "It's rotten To find I'd completely forgotten That by living so fast, All my future's my past, And I buried before I'm begotten. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Sam Hobbs Steven Hawking can prove with a plot Whether we will or will not Expand without limit Or end in an intimate Space which is all in one spot. Source: Larry Dahl P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Colin_Douthwaite@equinox.gen.nz (Colin Douthwaite) There's a wonderful family named Stein, There's Ep, there's Gert, and there's Ein. Ep's statues are junk, Gert's poems are bunk, And nobody understands Ein. P__________________________________________________________________________ Twinkle, twinkle little star, I don't wonder what you are For by the spectroscopic ken I know that you are hydrogen Big whirls have little whirls That feed on their velocity; And little whirls have lesser whirls, and so on to viscosity. -Lewis Fry Richardson P__________________________________________________________________________ From: sdnaik@iastate.edu Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night, God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light. -- Alexander Pope It did not last; the devil howling "Ho! Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo. -- Sir John Collings Squire P__________________________________________________________________________ When Newton saw an apple fall, he found ... a mode of proving that the earth turn'd round in a most natural whirl, called gravitation; and thus is the sole mortal who could grapple since Adam, with a fall or with an apple -- Byron. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: wcw@math.psu.edu (William C Waterhouse) There's a little version of "Comin' through the rye" that James Clerk Maxwell wrote for a friend and that has made its way into some anthologies of light verse: (Rigid Body sings:) Gin a body meet a body Flyin' through the air, Gin a body hit a body, Will it fly? and where? Ilka impact has its measure, Ne'er a ane hae I, Yet a' the lads they measure me, Or, at least, they try. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: crystalc@cpcug.digex.net (Edward Cooper) Possible, probable, my black hen She lays eggs in the relative when She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now Because she's unable to postulate how - Frederick Winsor "The Space Child's Mother Goose",1958 P__________________________________________________________________________ From: dave.coble@equinox.org (Dave Coble) Her voice is so high it's absurd It's so shrill that you can't hear a word When she's something to say She starts running away So the pitch drops enough to be heard P__________________________________________________________________________ There once was a man who said: 'Damn! I can't possibly be in this tram For how can I know Both how fast that I go And also the place where I am.' P__________________________________________________________________________ Gar manches rechnet Erwin schon mit seiner Wellenfunktion nur wissen moechte man gerne wohl was man sich dabei vorstell'n soll. From: Physics Today, 1976 P__________________________________________________________________________ From: schornj@way.com (jay m. schornstein) SPACE by James Wieghart The Orphan Entity The entity, we'll call it S, differed in every way. While some spun left and some spun right, S would merely stay. S was neither left nor right nor up nor down, but rather in the middle. Lacking color and charm and other traits that made its neighbors notable, S resolved to leave this place and find a spot more suitable. A quiet place that a colorless, measureless waif would find hospitable. A spot where an entity without mass, or motion, would not be likely to cause commotion. After giving much thought to the matter, and energy too, S arrived at a solution which it felt would do. "Empty space is just the place for an orphan entity to spend infinity," S thought. Alas, although the universe is far and wide, there is no empty space inside. So S went beyond into a black void and found.... nothing. "Perfect," it said, "but let there be light." P__________________________________________________________________________ From: mini-AIR The offering by Kevin Ahern: A violation of Sir Isaac was found By Megan hurtling fast toward the ground She's not in smithereens Because on trampolines What goes down, must go up, then go down. Can be rewritten into limerick form, saving the excellent last line (with a minor violation in the lack of true rhyme), as: The laws of Sir Isaac were found To bring Megan so fast toward the ground Yet she's not smithereens Since on all trampolines What goes down, must go up, then go down. -- Jay M. Pasachoff [Here is a limerick about I paper I submitted to "Physics Review E" entitled "Novel soliton solutions in Rowland ghost gaps:"] In a periodic grating structure, I claim Rowland ghosts should occur, They have wriggles and bumps, And travel over humps, But the reviewer has yet to concur. --Neil B. The "Novel soliton solutions in Rowland ghost gaps" is far from a limerick. A corresponding limerick might read A grating can lead to a blur When its lines cause some ghosts to occur. I showed wriggles and bumps And then also some lumps, But reviewers have yet to concur. -- Jay M. Pasachoff [My astronomy PhD thesis in limerick form:] High-velocity clouds are found, In disk galaxies to abound. And although superbubbles, Have given great troubles, The fountain model is sound. --Eric Schulman Rewriting this example, with the minor deviation in the lead- in that is often allowed, could give: High-velocity clouds can be found And in galaxies' disks they abound. Now although superbubbles Have given great troubles The model called "fountain" is sound. -- Jay M. Pasachoff In Boulder, where often it snows, NIST/JILA staff got high from lows. A great celebration: at last! condensation according to Einstein and Bose! --Walter Leight P__________________________________________________________________________ The Meaning of Life Song Just remember that your standing on a planet. That's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour. It's orbiting at 90 miles a second, so it's wrecked. A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me, and all the starts that we can see. Are moving at a million miles a day. In an outer-spiral arm at 40 thousand miles an hour. Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way. Our galaxy itself, contains a hundred billion stars. It's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, 16 thousand light years thick. But out by us, it's just 3 thousand light years wide. Were 30 thousand light years from galactic central point, We go around every 200 million years. And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions. In this amazing and expanding universe. The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding. In all of the directions it can whiz. As fast as it can go -- the speed of light you know. 12 million miles a minute. And that's the fastest speed there is. So remember when your feeling very small and insecure. How amazingly unlikely is your birth. And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space. Cause there's buggers-off down here on earth. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Ken Smith Limerick page http://www.teleport.com/~klsmith/limerick.shtml Hervelius on a clear night did view Through the scope on a pole hanging true, That due to a subordinate, The flexture was inordinate And the back of his head was on view. (And I thought space was curved - McW) Source: MEK P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Ken Smith Limerick page http://www.teleport.com/~klsmith/limerick.shtml An astronomiss happily sang, "I've been screwed by the telescope gang, They all had a bit o' me, For I'm the epitome Of the grandly impressive Big Bang." Source: Isaac Asimov P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Ken Smith Limerick page http://www.teleport.com/~klsmith/limerick.shtml >From the world, his discovery brought cheers; >From his wife, it drew nothing but tears. "For you see," said Ms. Halley, He used to come daily; Now it's once every 76 years!" Source: Rowdy Jack P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Ken Smith Limerick page http://www.teleport.com/~klsmith/limerick.shtml A wonderful tube is the Hubble, Peering out from its space-platform bubble. Through billions of years, The telescope peers, Turning creationist stuff into rubble! Source: Bert P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Ken Smith Limerick page http://www.teleport.com/~klsmith/limerick.shtml We cannot know where in the sky A signal is lurking, or why. We will search even though The chances are low. The payoff is well worth a try. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Sam Hobbs The Einstein and the Eddington The sun was setting on the links, The moon looked down serene, The caddies all had gone to bed, But still there could be seen Two players lingering by the trap That guards the thirteenth green. The Einstein and the Eddington Were counting up their score; The Einstein's card showed ninety-eight And Eddington's was more. And both lay bunkered in the trap And both stood there and swore. I hate to see, the Einstein said; Such quantities of sand; Just why they placed a bunker here I cannot understand. If one could smooth this landscape out, I think it would be grand. If seven maids with seven mops Would sweep the fairway clean I'm sure that I could make this hole In less than seventeen. I doubt it, said the Eddington, Your slice is pretty mean. Then all the little golf balls came To see what they were at, And some of them were tall and thin And some were short and fat, A few of them were round and smooth, But most of them were flat. The time has come, said Eddington, To talk of many things: Of cubes and clocks and meter-sticks And why a pendulum swings. And how far space is out of plumb, And whether time has wings. I learned at school the apple's fall To gravity was due, But now you tell me that the cause Is merely G_mu-nu, I cannot bring myself to think That this is really true. You say that gravitation's force Is clearly not a pull. That space is mostly emptiness, While time is nearly full; And though I hate to doubt your word, It sounds like a bit of bull. And space, it has dimensions four, Instead of only three. The square of the hypotenuse Ain't what it used to be. It grieves me sore, the things you've done To plane geometry. You hold that time is badly warped, That even light is bent: I think I get the idea there, If this is what you meant: The mail the postman brings today, Tomorrow will be sent. If I should go Timbuctoo With twice the speed of light, And leave this afternoon at four, I'd get back home last night. You've got it now, the Einstein said, That is precisely right. But if the planet Mercury In going round the sun, Never returns to where it was Until its course is run, The things we started out to do Were better not begun. And if before the past is through, The future intervenes; Then what's the use of anything; Of cabbages or queens? Pray tell me what's the bally use Of Presidents and Deans. The shortest line, Einstein replied, Is not the one that's straight; It curves around upon itself, Much like a figure eight, And if you go too rapidly You will arrive too late. But Easter day is Christmas time And far away is near, And two and two is more than four And over there is here. You may be right, said Eddington, It seems a trifle queer. But thank you very, very much, For troubling to explain; I hope you will forgive my tears, My head begins to pain; I feel the symptoms coming on Of softening of the brain. @A: W. H. Williams @R: ``The Einstein and the Eddington'', from G. J. Whitrow (ed.), _Records of R. A. S. Club 1925-1953_, p. xxiv-xxvii, quoted in S. Chandrasekhar, _Truth and Beauty : Aesthetics and Motivation in Science_, University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 124-127. @%: Dr. Williams (who shared an office with Eddington) prepared this verse for a faculty club dinner on the eve of Eddington's departure from Berkeley in 1924 *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: Greg Roelofs (newt@uchicago.edu) Physics Theoretical BY JOHN A. BARRETT (This is one of Greg's favorite poems, for obvious reasons. He thinks it was probably first published in Physics Todaysometime between 1987 and 1991, but since he is unable to find the proper issue...oh well.) I've studied all the sciences in order alphabetical, My judgment is, which some of you may find to be heretical, The field that's really quite abstruse, The field where all the screws come loose, The field that's famous for its spoofs, is physics theoretical. I've taken undergraduate work whose content is forgettable; And graduate work is gen'rally regarded as regrettable. The lecturers are all absurd. A cogent word is never heard. Insanity afflicts a third in physics theoretical. We never do experiments; we shun the purely practical. Our best work's done in getting grants--our budgets are fantastical. In one respect our motive's pure: Though funding fails, we still endure-- We make damn sure our job's secure in physics theoretical. Our scientific breakthroughs are, to say the least, debatable. We laugh at critics haughtily; our egos are inflatable. The rest of science goes along, Because our last defense is strong: It's hard to prove we're ever wrong in physics theoretical. *P_________________________________________________________________________ WHY THE SKY IS BLUE by John Ciardi I don't suppose you happen to know Why the sky is blue? It's because the snow Takes out the white. That leaves it clean For the trees and grass to take out the green. Then pears and bananas start to mellow, And bit by bit they take out the yellow. The sunsets, of course, take out the red And pour it into the ocean bed Or behind the mountains in the west. You take all that out and the rest Couldn't be anything else but blue. Look for yourself. You can see it's true. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ =2.2 PHYSICS QUOTES P__________________________________________________________________________ p.austin@info.curtin.edu.au (Peter Austin) "Very strange people, physicists - in my experience the ones who aren't dead are in some way very ill" -Mr Standish "The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul" by Douglas Adams PE_________________________________________________________________________ It is not uncommon for engineers to accept the reality of phenomena that are not yet understood, as it is very common for physicists to disbelieve the reality of phenomena that seem to contradict contemporary beliefs of physics - H. Bauer P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Ian Ellis Newton sat in an orchard, and an apple, plumping down on his head, started a train of thought which opened the heavens to us. Had it been in California, the size of the apples there would have saved him the trouble of much thinking thereafter, perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not to us. [clipped from "TheCourier-Journal," Louisville, KY] -- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), American clergyman P__________________________________________________________________________ From: fcbaer@shentel.net (FRANK) FRANK's Quotations for October 7 from Niels Bohr Foraging Quote: When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images. Reflecting quote: There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them. Adopting quote: It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature. Nurturing Quote: An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. % Niels Bohr (1885-1962) born on October 7 Danish physicist; He was the major contributor for 50 years to developing quantum physics and established the Bohr theory of the atom. (More from Bohr in the miscellany section) P__________________________________________________________________________ All science is either physics or stamp collecting. -- Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand physicist (1871-1937) Winner Nobel prize chemistry!! (1908) Source given is JB Birks "Rutherford at Manchester," 1962. More Rutherford in Miscellany section P__________________________________________________________________________ On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian physicist (1900-1958) P__________________________________________________________________________ "One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of sheer terror." -- W. K. Hartmann P__________________________________________________________________________ From: aephraim@physics5 (Aephraim M. Steinberg) To this day, lab directors keep a physics lecture on hand [to disperse rabble-rousers]. Let us pray we never need to use it." -- Lederman P__________________________________________________________________________ From: sichase@csa5.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) Physics is not a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money. - Leon Lederman P__________________________________________________________________________ From: aephraim@physics5 (Aephraim M. Steinberg) WHY must I treat the measuring device classically?? What will happen to me if I don't?? - Wigner, Eugene Paul. Hungarian/US physicist (1902-1995) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: c1prasad@watson.ibm.com (prasad) What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. - Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875 P__________________________________________________________________________ Fermi was asked what characteristics physics Nobelists had in common. He answered, "I cannot think of a single one, not even intelligence." Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist, 1901-1954 (Phys Today, Oct 1994, pg70) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: kitchse@mail.auburn.edu (Susan E Kitchens) "Gravitation can not be held resposible for people falling in love" -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) [German physicist] P__________________________________________________________________________ From: sdnaik@iastate.edu The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat. - Albert Einstein P__________________________________________________________________________ From: Colin_Douthwaite@equinox.gen.nz (Colin Douthwaite) Here are some more Einstein quotes: When asked how World War III would be fought, Einstein replied that he didn't know. But he knew how World War IV would be fought: With sticks and stones! "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber. Einstein, Albert (1879-1955) * Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. _Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium_ (1941) ch. 13 *P_________________________________________________________________________ From: throopw@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) traditional paraphrase sequence: "God does not play dice with the universe." -- Einstein "Who are you to tell God what to do?" -- Bohr "God not only plays dice, but sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen." -- Hawking (More Einstein in the miscellany section) P__________________________________________________________________________ Physics is not diffucult, it is just weird - Vincent Icke "The Force of symmetry" (1994) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: cdhiv@aol.com (CDH IV = C. Dodd Harris IV) "The next question was - what makes planets go around the sun? At the time of Kepler some people answered this problem by saying that there were angels behind them beating their wings and pushing the planets around an orbit. As you will see, the answer is not very far from the truth. The only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their wings push inward." -Richard Feynman _Character Of Physical Law_, p. 8 P__________________________________________________________________________ I love only nature, and I hate mathematicians. - Richard Feynman (1918-1988) P_________________________________________________________________________ From: kriman@acsu.buffalo.edu (Alfred M. Kriman) @A: Feynman, Richard P. (1918-1988) @Q:Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next? P__________________________________________________________________________ What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does. Feynman, Richard P. (1918-1988) b. Far Rockaway, New York Richard P. Feynman, QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p 9. (1) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: mmcirvin@world.std.com (Matt McIrvin) Near the end of "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.", Feynman is demonstrating how all of the other interactions in the Standard Model are analogous to the QED interaction (both QCD and weak interactions), and he jokes that it's because: "physicists can only think the same damn thing over and over." (Of course, really, they thought some pretty remarkably different things for a while, before the evidence for the astounding parallels started coming in. 1960s literature on strong interactions is a baffling swamp of bizarre theories.) Incidentally, "QED" is an *excellent* popular book on modern physics, one of the very best ever written. Also, it's short. P__________________________________________________________________________ Carlyle has somewhere said something like this: " Nothing but facts are of importance. John Lackland passed by here. Here is something that is admirable. Here is a reality for which I would give all the theories in the world." Carlyle was a fellow countryman of Bacon; but Bacon would not have said that. That is the language of the historian. The physicist would say rather: "John Lackland passed by here; that makes no difference to me, for he will never pass this way again." -- Henri Poincare P__________________________________________________________________________ From: kriman@acsu.buffalo.edu (Alfred M. Kriman) @A: Dyson, Freeman J. @Q: We have learned that matter is weird stuff. It is weird enough, so that it does not limit God's freedom to make it do what he pleases. @R: Ch. 1, p. 8, _Infinite in All Directions: Gifford lectures given at Aberdeen, Scotland, April-November 1985_; edited by the author (Harper & Row, New York, 1988). P__________________________________________________________________________ @A: Murray Gell-Mann @Q: Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem [of the interpretation of quantum mechanics] had been solved fifty years ago. @R: Acceptance speech Noble Price (1976) P__________________________________________________________________________ From: moloch@starbase.neosoft.com (Anne Voelkel) The rules of clockwork might apply to familiar objects such as snookerballs, but when it comes to atoms, the rules are those of roulette. ---Paul Davies _God and the New Physics_ P__________________________________________________________________________ "My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as it is and why it exists as all." Stephen Hawking P__________________________________________________________________________ From: eclayton@trincoll.edu (Edward Clayton) "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: eclayton@trincoll.edu (Edward Clayton) "Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work. P__________________________________________________________________________ From: eclayton@trincoll.edu (Edward Clayton) Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances. -- Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television. P__________________________________________________________________________ A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. - George Wald