Category Archives: Science
Fall — my favorite season ‘cept for the fading of the light — has fallen here in Minnesota, and our thoughts are turning towards the question of what kind of winter it will be: easy or miserable.
My winter is coming triple mile markers loom, the first dead ahead: Will it snow by Halloween? Will it snow by Thanksgiving? Will it snow by Christmas? Answers to all three vary depending on the whims of Mother Nature and her unexpected offspring, Climate Change.
In the meantime, here we are again for another edition of Friday Notes.
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17 Comments | tags: brown sugar, charts, Future Shock, math fun, Quadratic Equation, smoke alarm, stillness, weather | posted in Friday Notes, Math
This Science Notes series (a subset of the Friday Notes series) gives me a chance to record bits of science articles that catch my eye and seem worth sharing. I’ve been doing this since my library app provided access to a huge number of online magazines.
Nearly all of which don’t interest me — in some cases, seriously don’t interest me. Bridal and Fan magazines are an obvious example, but there are myriad magazines devoted to interests that don’t interest me at all.
But I do like the ones devoted to science, and some articles fit some receptor in my mind enough to generate a note.
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5 Comments | tags: gravity, human consciousness, infinity, lucid dreaming, real numbers, Science Notes | posted in Friday Notes, Science
It’s been a while since my last Sidebands post. That’s partly because I’ve been working on a project that I’m sure will become a multi-post series and thought it would be nice to start with #81. But I’m not done (or actually started on the writing) yet, and this one has also been lurking for a while.
Essentially, I needed to figure out how to join a cone to a sphere in a seamless way (as in the picture here). This requires the sides of the cone meet the sphere at a tangent point.
It’s yet another case of actually needing the trigonometry I learned in school.
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3 Comments | tags: cones, POV-Ray, trigonometry | posted in Math, Sideband
My usual breakfast — literally breaking the short fast that begins for me before midnight — isn’t until at least noon to ensure a minimum of 12 hours without food. If I get busy doing something in the morning, I might not break-fast until much later. “Lunch” therefore takes place around 4:00 or 5:00 PM, and “dinner” somewhere around 9:00 PM. I try to not eat after 10:00 PM, but definitely not after midnight.
Which isn’t particularly relevant here, but what does apply is that I typically read while I eat my two slices of breakfast toast. What I usually read is the latest issue of New Scientist or, more recently, Popular Mechanics (which is where Popular Science went when it died).
All of which is to say, here’s another issue of Science Notes.
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Leave a comment | tags: Betelgeuse, Lee Smolin, New Scientist magazine, Popular Mechanics magazine, Roger Penrose, Sabine Hossenfelder, Science Notes, social media | posted in Friday Notes, Science
I’ve written here before about the Libby app I use to access the local library’s ebook catalog. Over the years, I’ve read hundreds of library books without ever having to actually visit the library. (Which is a pity in some ways. I’ve always loved libraries and even was a student librarian in high school. And there is value in being able to wander and browse.)
A while back the Libby app seriously expanded access to periodicals, so I’ve been reading the British magazine, New Scientist.
Which has turned out to be yet another reason to take notes…
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2 Comments | tags: assembly theory, dark forest, Earth, Fermi Paradox, Libby, New Scientist magazine, Science Notes, solar system, three-body problem | posted in Friday Notes, Science
Back on Tau Day (which is also my retirement anniversary), I posted about a scene in the superhero comic Invincible that involves a baseball orbiting the Earth at a very close distance (roughly airplane height). Regardless of superhero strengths, I found the scene impossible on multiple counts.
At the time, I could only calculate the velocity of the ball given the circumference of the Earth and some guesses about the length of the presumed orbit. Suffice to say the answers sufficiently demonstrated the impossibility.
Here, I’ll use orbital mechanics for some hard data on putative baseball orbits.
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3 Comments | tags: Invincible, orbital mechanics, planets, Python | posted in Science
I don’t mean the social kind of integration, which I learned as a child, but the mathematical kind of integration, which I never learned in any of my math classes. I didn’t even take calculus until The Company sponsored some adult education classes for employees.
But those calc classes only got me through basic derivatives (of polynomials, mostly), so integration has been a bit of a mystery to me. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to pick up the basics.
This post just records my first attempts — my math lab book, so to speak.
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4 Comments | tags: calculus, integrals | posted in Basics, Math
Be a Tauist!
I’ve found it extremely difficult to focus this past week. Most of the blame is on Substack Notes, a part of Substack that’s very similar to Twitter or a Facebook feed. I never had Twitter, dumped Facebook ages ago, and barely know what Instagram, Snapchat, et cetera are.
I have no immunity to a doomscrolling feed of interesting micro-posts. Reading them is bad enough. The urge to jump in join the fun is all but irresistible. But days are passing with little to show for them: no books read, no posts worked on, no software projects advanced.
Now it’s Tau Day, and I can’t let that pass postless.
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16 Comments | tags: 360 degrees, 60 minutes, circle, Invincible, orbital mechanics, pi, tau, tau day | posted in Baseball, Science, TV
It’s happy hour and you and a friend go out for drinks. The bar is serving a new drink that catches your eye, and you both order one. They’re served in martini glasses (which are upside down hollow cones) and look quite tasty (see picture).
More to the point here, the glasses look acceptably full. Not a lot of “headroom” between the top of the drink and the top of the glass. Your friend, a mathematician, bets you they can pour all of your drink into their glass without spilling a drop.
Should you take that bet?
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6 Comments | tags: cones, fun with numbers | posted in Math, Wednesday Wow
It’s Friday, and I have Notes, but they’re all Science Notes, so while this post (and any others of similar ilk that may follow) is in the spirit of Friday Notes, it comes from a different direction. Science from right field, so to speak, rather than the usual oddities from left field.
These Notes were originally meant as reminders to mention some cool science things to friends over burgers and beers (or whatever). But rather than tasty morsels for the few, why not for the many? (Or at least for a few more.)
So today, Science Notes (and some reactions):
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1 Comment | tags: AI, aircraft pilots, Black Labrador Retriever, burning iron, cosmology, dogs, Parker Solar Probe, positronic brain, Science Notes, toys | posted in Friday Notes, Science
Logos con carne 