Spacing Out-My Intellectual Superpower

Apparently spacing out for a while can boost your brainpower

At least that is the story in the popular media. The study actually shows that people who are left alone after learning something remember better than people who immediately move on to the next thing. (So, no phones/games/electronics in class.) It's my own experience that tells me if I start daydreaming about an idea I'll understand it better

What is Your Science Fair Project?

I never entered a science fair but I have judged a few. Some of my favorites were the boy who tested various batteries to see which lasted longest or the boy who measured the performance of a motor at various loads, voltages and currents.

How about designing a computer program to diagnose breast cancer? Brittany Wenger programmed a neural network to consider nine different pieces of information and make a diagnosis of breast cancer. That won her the international Google Science Fair.

Watching Light Travel

If you thought this was fast...

Professor Ramesh Raskar of MIT has been taking video at a trillion frames per second. (Normal video is 30 fps.) The video from his camera of the bullet passing through the picture above would take a year to watch...just fast enough to see light travel. It turns out that if you can watch light travel, you can see the ripeness of fruit, see around corners and observe relativity.

Of Subprime Loans and University Degrees

Are you thinking about going to university? Beware the higher education bubble!

(US data. I'd guess Canada's is less dramatic but I haven't checked.)

In your great-grandparents' day, you took what life had to offer. Only a few would dream clearly, work hard and be lucky enough to get the education to pursue a dream. If it wasn't exactly your dream, well...close enough. In your parents' day, education was easier. Lots of kids got some extra education whether they had the dream or not. The world needed educated people and it was bound to work out. That degree in Psychology was handy to have even if you ended up selling real estate.

In your day the guarantee is gone. University is more expensive; lots of people have generic degrees and degrees are less rigorous/less respected. University still makes sense but only if you know why. Trade school makes sense if you know why. starting a business makes sense if you know why. Any one of those could put a big, expensive hole in your life if you don't know why. More than ever, you need to dream clearly.

Teens Who Will be Happy

Nearly every movie or TV show I see aimed at the teen (or worse, pre-teen) audience sends the message that teens are sullen, moody, pouty, self-centered, narcissistic, disrespectful and rude. Worse: they send the message that this is healthy and proper. Any kid who is not narcissistic and disrespectful is a suck, a goody-two-shoes or some sort of deviant.

A new study says otherwise. The most important indicator of how happy and healthy you will be in life is not money, intelligence, grades, image or even popularity. It is connectedness: can you find people nearby to talk to, to help, to enjoy? Do you join clubs? sports are fine and so is the chess club, church youth group or volunteering group. (Even the video games or anime circles work as long as you are talking, not just gaming.) Don't forget mom and dad. It matters.

A Great Leap for the "Quite Poor"

A while back I blogged about a wood stove that promised great benefits for the world's poorest. Today's revolutionary gizmo targets a less poor demographic, though I expect a lot of overlap.

Do you hear people talking about "washing day"? That's because in my grandmother's time, washing took most of a day. That situation is still reality in some places. Worse, drying on a line in humid climates can take weeks and lead to mildew in your clothes and on your children's skin. What can we do about it?

green or Green?

Fires are burning all over Colorado just as they recently were in BC. Ironically, this environmental devastation is an unintended consequence of forestry practices that we adopted in the name of the environment.

Clearing underbrush for example, once a common practice, is often discouraged. Instead rotting, decaying wood is encouraged as a habitat for various forest critters. Unfortunately, it provides a source of fuel to promote forest fires and make them hotter. It also allows the pine beetle to spread, destroying vast forests. Darn those unintended consequences!

A mild pine beetle infestation

Wanna Go Double or Nothing?

Robot plays a wicked rock-paper-scissors. Never trust a robot.

Forbidden History of Unpopular People

Talk of a scientific consensus always gives me a moment of unease. This entertaining video tells of Ignaz Semmelweis, who had some funny ideas that were contrary to the scientific consensus and insulting to his peers.

Contrast with the news last September that an experiment has measured neutrinos traveling faster than light. To do so would violate Einsein's special relativity (E=mc2),The reaction among scientists was anything but hostile. Most people assumed there was a mistake, but couldn't find the mistake. Discussions of what the mistake might be were open and good-natured. In the meantime, the physics community lit up with speculation of what it might mean if it were true. 

Yes, there are ideas in science that are commonly accepted. Call it "consensus" if you like. But science needs to remain receptive to falsifying evidence. If, for whatever reason, a set of principles is not open to challenge from empirical evidence or alternate explanations, we shouldn't call it "science". Instead, we should use the older, broader term: "natural philosophy".

Who Smells Better: Old Men or Teens?

Did you know that people smell different as they age. What's more, people are surprisingly good at distinguishing between old person smell and young person smell. Guess who smells better.

Why I Wish We Taught More Statistics

Ed Yong explains what it means to say that something causes 16% of cancers.
It doesn't mean:

• He can name the cancer victim
• He is certain it causes cancer
• His 16% is higher than someone else's 15%
• 84% of cancer is caused by something else (100-16=84)

I'd like to live in a world where this makes perfect sense to everyone who has finished high-school math.

Shaping Silicon on the Nano-Scale

Shaping silicon on the nano-scale promises a way to make a battery that stores lots of energy and lasts for many charges.

This remind me of the story of Thomas Edison's first long lasting light bulb filament. He took a bit of cotton thread, shaped as he liked and then baked it until all that was left was carbon. If he put a thin carbon wire in a vacuum, he had a reasonably long-lasting light bulb. Ingenuity never grows old.

The Things You Find in Your Basement

Making a nuclear bomb is pretty easy, if only you can get the weapons-grade uranium. Apparently Kodak had 3.5 pounds of weapons-grade uranium sitting in a lab in the basement from 1974 to 2006. It is not enough for a bomb, but enough to make the Department of Defense awfully nervous.

 They used it to check chemicals for impurities.

Looking for a Backup Earth

There has been ever more exciting news of late in looking for a a hospitable, earth-like planet. Thanks to a new orbiting telescope, the news is coming faster.

Most of the best looking planets are bigger and closer to their sun that earth. that is bad news because they will probably be too hot. If it is true that earth-like planets are normally too close to a sun, maybe we should be looking near a cooler red dwarf star to find a habitable planet.

Of course, the very idea does bring this to mind.

Plus, recent progress in how we might get there.

"Visualizing" Earthquakes

Have you ever wondered what an earthquake would sound like? Well, it wouldn't sound like anything because earthquake frequencies are in the 0.01 - 100 Hz range and we humans can't hear anything below 20 Hz.

But if you were to speed up the frequency, it would sound like this. (Note: in speeding up the frequency, they speed up the recording so what you hear in a minute, took an hour in real life.)
Update:
Look at all the other things we can listen for.

This Seed Grew 30,000 Years Ago...

And now a Pleistocene-era plant is once again growing on earth.

Our thanks go out to the hero of science who made this all possible: 

The Big One

We keep hearing about the big earthquake that may happen off the coast of Vancouver Island. A new paper says that Japan's latest quake makes our next quake more likely. Estimates put the likelihood between 10-35% that we will get one in the next 50 years. Oh did I mention it was a 9.0.

Sunshine: It's Good For You Again

Are you tired of the nanny state telling you to wear your sunblock? Vindication at last! For some months, I have been hearing murmurs that sunlight does more good than harm. It is one of those subjects where a bunch of evidence exists that goes against accepted science and government recommendations. This is not yet accepted as fact in the mainstream, so treat it as such. Even so, I guess it is time to write a post.

According to Dr. Michael Holick, "Vitamin D deficiency is the most common medical condition in the world." It leads not just to rickets and osteoporosis, but hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and stroke, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, dementia, autoimmune diseases, and cancers including, surprisingly, skin cancer. See here for a summary.

It is still recommended to wear sunglasses and limit exposure of your hands and face. They already get plenty of sun.

Yes, Virginia There is Controlled Fusion

A student was asking me if humans had ever achieved controlled fusion. I was pretty sure the answer was yes, but couldn't think of any examples. (Note We have not achieved a controlled fusion reaction that released more energy than was input.) Well here is an example put together by a 14-yr-old who also dreamed up a practical near-term use.

Going for a walk...with my Geiger counter

Update (Jun'14):
Taylor is 19 now. Here is a NBC feature and a report on another guy doing fusion in his garage.
Finally, my old colleague, Michel Laberge gives a TED talk about his exploits in Fusion. General Fusion has a plausible shot at being the first company to produce practical fusion.

Hobbies Getting Out of Hand

Theodore Gray, the Mad Scientist of Popular Science speaks frankly while doing chemistry demos. Did you know that Pyrex is no longer pyrex? He shows why this matters at 28:00 (it involves a blow torch). He also makes salt(think about it!), a cutting torch out of bacon and appears on a Japanese game show. Don't you wish my classes were like this?

  Along the way, Gray has made the periodic table website, book and table; re-popularized the song (slower). He put all his columns into a book: Experiments You Can Do At Home--But Probably Shouldn't. He even praises the iPad for enabling the Harry Potter version of his book.

Full circle: Harry Potter sings the element song.