Chad Orzel's Blog, page 14

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Randomness, Lenses, Scooters, Time, The Expanse, Many-Worlds, Playoffs, Wireless Charging, and Bubbles

It’s been a disgracefully long time since I did a links post covering what I’ve been posting over at Forbes. In my defense, December was a complete mess of a month…

Anyway, here’s a great big bunch of stuff:

— Football Physics: Can We Do Better Than Tossing Coins? In which I try to ease the sting of a bad overtime loss for my Giants by writing about the physics of generating random numbers.

— How Big Is the Moon? Understanding Camera Lenses: Talking about angular size and resolution based on photos of my back yard.

— Holiday Gift Physics: The Flying Turtle Scooter: SteelyKid has one of these at my parents’ house, and I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out the physics that makes it go. Here’s my attempt at an explanation.

— Football Physics: Sports and Philosophies of Time(keeping) A somewhat joke-y look at how the way various sports monitor the passage of time maps onto different physics theories.

— How ‘The Expanse’ Gets General Relativity Right: I’m enjoying this show a good deal, and have been reasonably happy with the way they manage to finesse the issue of gravity given that they’re filming a show set in space in a studio here on Earth.

— ‘The Expanse’ And The Physics Of Stealth In Space: Some of the plot of the show turns on the use of “stealth materials” to hide warships out in space. This is a topic that often strains plausibility in science fiction, and I try to explain why.

— Why Does Rudolph Have A Red Nose?: A joke-y holiday post using the famous cartoon as an excuse to talk about Rayleigh scattering.

— What the Many-Worlds Interpretation Of Quantum Physics Really Means: Prompted by a conversation at the Renaissance Weekend, yet another whack at this eternally popular topic.

— Football Physics: Will The Best Team Win?: A toy simulation to look at the question of whether a seven-game playoff series is really an improvement over the single-elimination format used in the NFL.

— The Surprisingly Old Physics Of Wireless Charging: I got a new smartphone with a wireless charger, and you just knew I had to get a blog post out of that. With a bonus aside about why Einstein is the wrong guy for non-physicists trying to make a Theory of Everything to claim as their inspiration.

— The Photogenic Physics Of Soap Bubbles: There’s a bunch of physics hiding in a cute picture of The Pip at the local science museum.

Whew.

That’s a lot of posts since the last recap here. I’ll try to be better in the future.

As usual, some stuff I was pretty happy with totally bombed, in terms of getting read. Blogging is Hard. I’m probably going to stop trying to wring new posts out of the football thing, because that’s not really working. Having said that, though, I’ll probably get an idea for a great “Football Physics” post later today…

134/366: BalsaKid

Back in the fall, a note came home with SteelyKid about an organizational meeting for an Odyssey of the Mind team for her elementary school. My father coached this for several years back in the 80’s, and one of my sister’s teams went to the World championships (held in Cole Field House at the University of Maryland, of all places, which put an odd spin on going there for basketball games when I was in grad school….), and of course, I’m all in favor of creative problem-solving. So we went, and I ended up as one of the coaches of the team.

The kids, to the surprise of the other coaches, voted for the balsa-wood-construction project (“Stack Attack!” on this list) by a significant margin. So we’ve acquired a lot of balsa wood and glue, and have spent the last couple of Wednesday night team meetings gluing them together to make a structure that (hopefully) will support a significant amount of weight. And here’s their first completed test structure:

The first complete test structure from SteelyKid’s Odyssey of the Mind team.

(I have more photos from last night’s team meeting, but they all have other people’s kids in them…)

We haven’t tested this yet, because it was late, but hopefully next week we’ll see what kind of weight it can support.

This has, by the way, completely confirmed what I already knew, namely that I could never, ever, ever, ever, ever make it as an elementary school teacher. I’m pushed to my limits riding herd on seven second-and-third-graders (“Stop waving the glue around! Why are you touching that? What are you doing? I said, stop waving– you’re dripping glue on the floor! Get back here, it’s not time to play tag… Stop bugging the other group, they’re building their own structure… Put the glue DOWN, already!…”). I can’t begin to fathom how SteelyKid’s teacher manages a class of 23.

133/366: No Writing On Paper Today!

This one’s a bit of a cheat, but the only pictures I got Tuesday that turned out well had other people’s kids in them, and I won’t post those. So here, instead, is a picture from over the weekend, mostly because I want to tell the cute-kid story that goes with it.

On Sundays, I take the kids to the Schenectady Greenmarket, then to lunch at Panera, then to the grocery store, which gets our various errands taken care of and gives Kate a little quiet time. Depending on how they behave, I sometimes require a bit of quiet time of my own after this, and this past Sunday was One of Those Days. So, I went off and did my own thing for a bit, and came back to this:

The kids manning their sign-in desk.

For some reason, they had decided that they needed a “desk” in the middle of the living room, and then created sign-in sheets. So, when I came through, SteelyKid insisted I had to write down my first name, my last name, and the time. The Pip was equally insistent that I write down only my first name.

This expanded to various other enterprises involving the production of documents, and then they decided they needed “Open” and “Closed” signs to indicate when you could and couldn’t sign in to their “shop.” SteelyKid just wrote “OPEN” and “CLOSED” on a sheet of paper, and hung it on the table, but The Pip very carefully dictated this sign to Kate:

The “Closed” sign that the Pip dictated to Kate.

It reads:

Sorry, the shop is

CLOSED

No writing on paper today!

We open at 10:40

He was extremely happy with the result, and this has been posted on our front door for a few days now. Every now and then, he notices it and insists we change it from open to closed, or whatever, to indicate whether or not there will be writing on paper.

And there’s your glimpse of life in Chateau Steelypips for the moment. Often confusing, but never dull.

132/366: New Phone Test

Having picked up a new phone last week, it seems sort of appropriate to give a photo-a-day to a picture taken with that phone, as a kind of test. Also, I realized while on the way to SteelyKid’s taekwondo class that I had forgotten to take any photos with the good camera, and wanted some insurance.

So, here’s a shot of the very early crescent moon just after sunset, taken from the parking lot at Panera where we got dinner before class.

Crescent moon just after sunset, taken with my new phone.

Which, you know, isn’t too bad, given the kind of difficult lighting conditions. This is, of course, scaled way down from the original image file; here’s a zoom in on just the moon at the original resolution:

The crescent moon, shot with my new phone.

For comparison, here’s the moon from about a week ago with the 50mm lens on the DSLR:

The crescent moon shot with the good camera.

Not exactly a perfectly fair comparison, of course, but kind of cool to see them side-by-side. Also, note the difference in phases– the good camera picture was taken just after sunrise, so the lit portion is down and to the left (toward the rising sun), while the phone picture was just after sunset, putting the lit portion down and to the right (toward the setting sun). Unless I’m secretly in the Southern Hemisphere and bullshitting you about the dates of the photos for obscure reasons.

Science!

131/366: Nott Shots

One of my recurring half-serious grumbles about this photo-a-day business is that our neighborhood doesn’t offer a clear view of the horizon, making it impossible to get nice sunset pictures. On sunday afternoons, though, we have a babysitter come stay with the kids for a while so Kate and I can do some work, and at this time of year, that window includes sunset. And my work yesterday took me to campus, where there are much better horizon views. Of course, it was grey and dreary for most of the day, but just before sunset, the clouds to the south and west lifted a bit, just enough to be dramatic:

Memorial Chapel at Union with dramatic clouds.

Of course, I’d lose my license to take dramatic pictures on Union’s campus if I didn’t photograph one particular building:

The Nott Memorial with dramatic clouds.

That’s the Nott Memorial, which stands smack in the center of campus and was memorably described by one convocation speaker, the Rev. Peter Gomes, as a metaphor for a liberal arts education: tremendously impressive to look at, frightfully expensive to maintain, and nobody is quite sure what it’s for.

And just so you know I wasn’t lying about the rain:

The Nott, reflected in a puddle.

I didn’t think of this myself– I saw a student squatting down in the mud trying to get a reflection image with his cell phone, and said “Oh! Yeah, I should do that…” Sadly, I didn’t quite have the right lens– this is with the 24mm f/2.8, and I couldn’t quite get the full building and the reflection in the frame together. 18mm would’ve done it, but I didn’t have it with me.

Oh, well. I’m pretty happy with the dramatic clouds picture, so that’ll have to do.

130/366: Bubble Battle

I try not to have this be Cute Kid Photo of the Day, but really, when these are the subjects, how can I avoid it?

SteelyKid blowing a bubble toward The Pip, at MiSci.

This is from yesterday’s morning excursion to MiSci, where they have added a soap bubble area. This, of course, led to the kids battling with each other by blowing huge bubbles across the table and each popping the other’s bubbles. Here’s the early stage of a bubble offensive by SteelyKid, shortly to be popped by The Pip.

Another highlight of the visit was the “put yourself inside a bubble” thing, which is a perennial favorite of The Pip’s:

The Pip inside a soap bubble.

They also had wooden construction blocks— SteelyKid spent a long time building a hexagonal tower with these– and a holiday train display. It’s a reliably entertaining way to kill an hour or two with the kids, and that’s pure gold from a parent’s perspective…

129/366: Hoop It Up

When schedules permit, I like to take the kids to home basketball games at Union. This works out well for everyone, as almost nobody goes to the games, so the kids can rampage all over the gym and get good and tired without upsetting anyone, and we add somewhat to the crowd supporting the home team.

(I’m not sure what the players made of The Pip yelling “DAAAAAAAD! You can’t tickle me when I’m way up here!” from the very top of the bleachers, though…)

This also gives me a chance to shoot some different subjects, in keeping with the general goal of this photo-a-day business. Thus, a couple of sports action shots:

A free throw during the first half of the Union women’s victory over RPI.

A jump shot late in the second half of the Union women’s win over RPI/

The main take-away from this is that sports photography is really frickin’ hard (and not made any easier by the need to keep an eye on the kids to make sure they’re not about to run onto the court, swan-dive off the bleachers, or anything else disruptive and/or dangerous). I sort of figured it wouldn’t be much different than taking photos of our highly active kids, but when I’m photographing the kids, I’m at least allowed to follow them around, not restricted to the sidelines.

These shots were taken with the 50mm f/1.4 prime lens, because it’s the fastest I have, and thus the least prone to motion blur. Of course, the fixed focal length is sub-optimal for this, but a fast zoom lens would cost about double what I paid for the camera, so, yeah…

(It’s also not great for taking pictures of the kids, as I need to be kind of far from them to get them in the frame. But I got some good cute-kid material, too…)

Anyway, that’s my latest experiment. I can see where this would be a lot of fun, if I didn’t also have to ride herd on the sillyheads. They have play-dates this afternoon during (part of) the time when Union is playing Siena; maybe I’ll go over with the camera and no kids, and see…

128/366: Shiny!

It seems appropriate to use a power-of-two day for a new digital device, so here’s a photo of my new phone:

My new phone on the wireless charger.

Getting and setting this up took up much of yesterday. It’s a Droid Turbo, which is basically the Verizon-branded version of the 2015 equivalent of the Moto X I had previously. Yes, I know, Verizon is kind of unpleasant, but I do just enough travel that the better coverage they offer matters to me. And one of the regularly-cited grievances against them, that they don’t push out Android OS updates as often as other carriers, actually verges on a positive feature for me– I really hate it when I get a decent workflow established, and then a software update moves all the buttons around and eliminates or changes features I use all the time.

Anyway, it’s new, it’s shiny, the wi-fi works (one of the reasons I needed a new phone is that the wi-fi crapped out on the old one ages ago, and updates that were big enough that the phone would only download them over wi-fi have been piling up. And I’ve been overrunning my data plan because everything went via that rather than using the home wi-fi network. I’ve had it for less than 24 hours, so I’ve still got a bunch of playing to do to discover new features, but right now, I need to get back to doing useful work.

127/366: Winter Moon

After a ridiculously warm December, I was lamenting the lack of winter this year. Which led, of course, to its sudden return for at least a few days of blowing snow and single-digit Fahrenheit temperatures. The snow is, at least, kind of photogenic, though:

Crescent moon over the snowy roof of our neighbors’ house.

This one took a bit of processing– the raw image was kind of crooked, as it was a quick photo grabbed between trips ferrying school stuff out to the car. And the just-barely-after-sunrise sky always needs some color correction to make it look right.

Anyway, y’know, winter: cold but pretty.

126/366: Artifact

For 11 months of the year (give or take), our Christmas decorations live in plastic storage boxes in the cabinet under the stairs in the basement. Of course, when we stow these away, there’s inevitably one or two things that get missed in the initial sweep, and end up outside the boxes. And when I pulled the boxes out a few weeks back, something rolled off the top box, so I had to go fishing around in the back of the cabinet, where I eventually found both the ball I was looking for and this bit of pop-culture archaeology:

An old plastic car I found under the cellar stairs.

This is a little plastic toy car (currency for scale) that was in the French drain trench that circles the basement and connects to the sump pump. I have no idea how old it is– I’d guess 1970’s vintage, but I have no solid reason for thinking that other than I think that the previous owner’s kids are around my age. It’s been sitting on my desk since mid-December, until I got around to taking a couple of quick pictures last night when I realized I didn’t have a photo of the day yet.