-Math wiz?

This is an interesting story. A couple won 4 lottery jackpots in a single draw. He claims he's found a winning formula and is looking to patent it. But a math professor doesn't think it's true. Either the couple were lucky (most likely), the guy is a genius or the number generator is not so random.

If he's found the formula I hope he reads my blog, I swear I will delete yesterday's post. =)

-At least pay better!

Grad students don't really get "paid" a lot (I would say an average of $18k a year that actually goes to our pocket might be already an overestimate), and I had always seen it as a good amount of money. A student can typically survive with $1,000 or so a month, and because it's our choice to go to grad school I considered it a privilege, a prize.

Well, not anymore. I have found that the amount of stress a grad student has to carry on his/her shoulders is way too much for the money we get. As an undergrad I didn't have a lot of money in my pockets either (I had about a third of the money I get now), but somehow the way to survive college is way easier than that of grad school.

As an undergrad, I didn't hesitate to go to the movies, or a hiking weekend, or to spend hours at the field playing some kind of sport. Now, in grad school, I am always questioning myself about doing these activities. Can I really afford going to the movies? You at least spend 2 hours there, plus ~$20 (including ticket) per person if you happened to stop by the snacks. Maybe if I stay those 2 extra hours in the lab I can graduate earlier (or at least not later than planned). A movie is easy to give up, but there are other things that are not easy or good to give up. Exercise, for example, is recommended at least 3 times a week. You have to either do it very early in the morning, or late afternoon (maybe even at night). At least experimentalists don't want to stop their experiment when it's working nor waste time on something else when it's not working (once again, the longer it doesn't work the longer we are staying in school). And there are several problems with exercising in the morning or at night, 1) you get less hours of sleep, which are probably already running low, 2) there is nobody to exercise with you, unless you like running long distances by yourself (not me, I find that boring) you won't have a tennis, basketball, etc. partner, much less to play soccer, volleyball or any other sport that requires more than 2 people.

Having no pleasure activities builds stress, in many cases way too much stress. Now, add to that the physical stress that comes with operating a piece of equipment, preparing a sample or sitting at your desk or computer carrying out a calculation and we are fucked!

And I am not considering the food quality, the bed quality, the foreign students that miss home or feel out of place in a new society, married students, lack of future security, etc.

If the levels of stress are that high, we need more money. That way we could at least afford a massage one or two times a month (or semester?), or to take a one week vacation once a year in a nice place (but most likely expensive) and with no advisor or lab duties. Unless you are an assistant professor, you cannot complain: you either make a lot of money in the industry or are tenured and have job security.

- Sicko

I finally watched Sicko and it got me thinking a lot. I am not originally from the US, but I have lived here for a few years while going to grad school. Ever since the first time I went to a doctor in the US I have been unhappy with the way things are handled here. My country doesn't have Universal Health Care (UHC) either, but for some reason I feel I am treated a lot better there, than here and for a much lower cost. Actually, if there is something I miss about my country, medical care is right at the top closely followed by food.

Now, I have seen most of Michael Moore's films and I know that many times he exaggerates reality with the purpose of making the US look bad so I naturally don't believe him immediately. On top of this, I have never been in any other country for enough time to need medical care and therefore I lack data to make up my mind on the topic of health care. Stop by and leave your country's health care story!!!!

- Debatable answers

Some time ago I posted about the Physics Question of the Week (PQW) website. A very interesting site, with questions and answers (videos for anyone to believe). Recently, I was showing my classmates (other grad students) some of these questions and there was a huge uproar about some of the answers given on the website. For example, look at this question, the answer is on the site but I invite you to try to answer it on your own first. After that, look at the answer and tell me if you agree. From their answer I understand that the same thing will happen no matter what spring (k-constant value) and what mass are used, as long as the initial setup looks the same, that is, the mass is sufficiently large to stretch the spring outside of the cup and the spring is strong (or weak) enough to balance the weight.

Among my friends, the biggest debate was that we could visualize situations in which we think a different thing will happen. I should admit though that I agree with the video.

By the way, I was told that the Professor in charge of PQW has asked these questions to many Assistant, Associate and Full Professors, including Nobel Laureates and supposedly they don't all get them right. So, don't feel bad about getting it wrong either.

- Mathematical world?

I have had this discussion with several people now, and it seems this is one of those never-ending debates where no one party will accept they are wrong and the other one is right. Now I share it with you, let's see what you think:

My claim is that Physics is independent of Mathematics. Yes, yes... I know when you take physics in school it's always mathematics or at the very least full of mathematics, but that is understandable because Mathematics is just another language and it turns out to be one which everyone is suppose to know plus it allow us to calculate numeric answers for Physics problems. I know all of these, but I still think that Physics exists whether or not I can put them in an equation, or whether or not you can put numbers to it.

Let's just think of a child. S/he knows that to reach the top of the kitchen counter he needs to jump higher than he needs to reach the top of the couch (where he might not even need to jump), and therefore the initial upward velocity needs to be large enough. He goes through all this process and eventually gets it right. Now, I think the kid learned Physics by trial and error, however some people think the child unconsciously solved a complicated (or not so complicated) mathematical model. Some of the advocates of a mathematical world believe that we are born with the mathematical abstraction, some others believe that we subconsciously learn it as we go. Also, some people are not amazed by the fact that relatively simple (by simple I mean something that at least 1 person in this world can do) mathematical models can "describe" the universe. Why should they be? After all, Physics is Mathematics, or so they claim.

Here is the list of (some) points I have heard in favor of Physics being independent of Math:
1) If Mathematics is just another language, I should be able to say the same things in English, or Spanish or Chinese or whatever. Mathematics is then not special at all and there is no reason the world should be mathematical.
2) It's hard to believe that a kid or an animal have a subconscious mathematical machinery that solves some kind of equation for every single world situation. It would be easier to just learn by experience where left or right, up or down are.
3) Before Newton, people could also tell things fell to the ground. They just didn't make much of it.
4) This is similar to 3 - Physical phenomena exist whether or not we have a mathematical theory for it.

Now, for Math is basically just the negation of every point above mentioned:
1) Mathematics is NOT just another language, it is THE language.
2) Whether or not you believe it, we all have the mathematical machine inside our heads.
3) We don't know new Physics until we can explain them with a mathematical model.

There are probably more, and better points to consider. However, usually these points are defended with examples which makes it hard to convince anyone. Like I said at the beginning, I don't think this battle will ever end but if you have a good argument for either one (or maybe a different option) please share it.

- Gas savings can be misleading

I just read an article in Science (Volume 320, page 1593) about gas consumption and how the typical reporting data (in this case Miles Per Gallon, MPG) can be misleading.

The main idea of the article is that people think gas savings go linear with MPG when "upgrading" their vehicles, for example, going from a 10 MPG to 15 MPG would be considered a worse option than going from 40 to 45 MPG. Or, even going from a 20 MPG to a 30 MPG being worse than going from a 20 MPG to a 40 MPG. It turns out it's not so easy, because gas consumption is not linear with MPG,

From this graph, which I reproduced it from the paper and added the two linear regimes, it easy to see that somewhere around the 30 MPG the gas consumption difference slows significantly for a given change in MPG. This calculation was done for total travel of 10,000 miles a year which I think seems a pretty good average.

If one also considers that high MPG vehicles can cost significantly more these days, it might be wise to reconsider how to shop for a car.

- Teaching how to teach

There was an article in APS News recently about a fictional story of a Nobel Laurate MIT professor applying for a job at a high school. He was rejected because he didn't have the state credentials to teach, i.e. he wasn't a licensed teacher.

This article has sparked several comments on both sides of the aisle. Some people argue that it is true that college/university professors are never taught how to teach and that reflects in the poor teaching skills seen in a lot of classrooms. These people can go as far as to say that those professors shouldn't be teaching at all. While I ocassionally agree with this scenario, I really don't think it is because they don't know how to teach, I think it's because they really don't care about teaching (I am talking about the ones that perform poorly in the classroom, not the ones that give remarkably good lectures). Some professors probably went into academia for the advantages of research (IP has a post on this) and not so much for the teaching, at least not the teaching by itself. This doesn't mean they suck at teaching. My point is just that probably a lot of university professors are there because of research and teaching then comes in second place. Is this an issue that requires attention? Absolutely, but I don't think requiring teacher's certification for all professors is going to solve the problem, it might not actually do anything since it is lack of willingness to teach as opposed to lack of preparation in teaching that's affecting college education in my opinion. High school now, has bigger issues.

The article also shows how probably a lot of very well prepared people (PhDs, reknowned university professors, excellent researchers, etc.) might be rejected from high school teaching jobs because they don't have that a piece of paper that in some unknown way (at least to me) shows someone can teach. Come on, it's not like high school education in the US is something to brag about, and all the teachers are certified. As far as I am aware, there are more underprepared high school teachers than college/university professors. You can argue that university professors could just go an get the certification which is a valid point assuming that the certification actually changes teaching. That is a BIG assumption.

Maybe university professors should be required to pass the state certification before teaching in college, they certainly need one right now to teach high school, maybe high school teachers should be required to have a PhD. I really don't know what can be done, but I'll take a university professor a million times over a high school teacher.

-One more semester's gone...

So, finally this semester is over. I gotta say it was no easy ride but things seem to have gone good.

Some time ago I posted about teaching at a ranked university and I had high expectations about it. Although I expected more, I have to admit things went much better here. Students seemed more interested (not totally, but more) and one thing that really surprised me was that they were grateful to me for teaching them. I got a lot of thank you's for doing such a good job and for making it fun. This is a first, no student had thanked or congratulated me for the way I thought them. It feels good, and I think that is the main difference between the students here and the students at my old university: they appreciate their education and don't necessarily take it for granted.

I found, however, a problem with the grading. There is a lot of subjectivity when transforming a number into a letter. I feel all the grades I gave are appropriate to the student's work/abilities but they don't always feel that way. Two or three people told me they think they deserve a better grade because their lab partner got a letter higher than them. That makes no sense to me: Give me a better grade because he/she worked harder or knows more than me. But then again, who's right? I guess I'll never find out.

Anyways... let's wait for next semester. Will it be even better? Happy Holidays!

-Neutrinos

It has been a long journey to discover neutrinos, not only from the experimental point of view but also from the theoretical standpoint. All of it started when Pauli proposed the existence of a new charge-neutral, massless, weakly interacting new particle to explain energy conservation in beta decay (radioactive process). You can immediately see the trouble with that particle: it is undetectable... almost. People started thinking about possible ways to measure the neutrino and sources of them. It turns out the sun makes millions and millions of them so they now look at those neutrinos.

The problem in question is not a simple one and the experiment requires a lot of engineering work. The "detector" consist of a large volume of heavy water, though water can also be used. How much water? About 1000 tons of it. But this is not the end of the story, to make matters worse, it needs to be underground ~1.5-2 miles below the ground to shield it from the cosmic radiation which also makes a count in the detector. Then, it has to be all clean, pure water, no dirt or dust, etc. which sounds easy but underground is kind of not clean right? Now, it comes the detection part: they detect something called Cherenkov radiation (produced when a charged particle, say an electron, travels faster than light inside an insulating medium) using photomultipliers, something like 9500 at SNO. The problem here is that many things make a photomultiplier detect a count, I think at SNO they got something like half a billion counts but only about 3000 were possibly neutrinos, which means that once you have "data" you have to sort it out into probabilities of it being a neutrino. This task takes more than a year of work.

They initial prediction include three neutrinos, one for each lepton (electron, muon, tau). We now know that they do come in three (named 1,2,3), but not directly the ones initially thought of. There are three quantum-mechanical wave functions that superpose (they combine) to form something like the classical "beats" with sound waves. The superposition of those give rise to the other three. Also, they do have a mass but a minuscule one. This particular property forced physicist to reformulate the most of the neutrino theory, since the massless condition implies certain theoretical results, namely that neutrinos cannot change flavor.

There are many experiments taking place or being planned to extend the research in neutrino physics, specially for those coming directly from the sun. If you are interested check out the wikipedia entry, it has links to the different underground labs and to the professors and universities where they work. Some of them have explicit adds for grad and/or undergrad students.

- Whistlers

Recently, I learned about something really cool called Whistlers. It is a low frequency electromagnetic wave (audio range) produce by lighting striking the ionosphere. After the lightning strikes, an electromagnetic pulse is created and it travels very long distances. Due to dispersion, the higher frequencies of the pulse travel faster and with the proper equipment you can receive them and actually hear the sound of a whistle. It turns out these signals can come from "half around the world". Wow.

Here is a website where you can hear some of them: http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/inspire.html

- Things I cannot understand

So I know this guy very successful (as far as I can tell) in his line of work though it has nothing to do with science, it has to do with business, finance, etc. I have to be honest, I have asked him for advice when it comes to money and I have been satisfied with his answers.

Recently, however, I have been able to see him in everyday action and it is pretty disappointing his level of stupidity when he is presented with physical situations that require a little common sense. Or course I am not talking about building a car, or a space shuttle, nor understading quantum mechanics or something like that. I am talking about simple things like untying a knot or putting together one of those pieces of furniture that come in a box with instructions that I thought even a kid could do without much trouble, etc, etc, etc.

I am the type of guy that believes non-science or non-engineering majors shouldn't take any science course, what for? Eventually they will go on to work in something that has nothing to do with science (most likely) and they could use those credit hours to learn more about their fields. On top of that, any one that has TA'd a science lab for non-science majors will tell you that 99.9% of those students do not give a fuck about the material they're suppose to be learning. I still maintain that opinion, I think that serves no real purpose, and I don't care what universities say about their broad curriculum or anything like that. Bottom line: if you are not in science/engineering you will not know/remember any of the things you were suppose to learn in your sciences courses.

I still have a problem with people being stupid when it comes to obvious physics. Specially those ones that think they are soooo smart because they have a good salary in some business-oriented job. I am not saying there are no smart people in business or finance, I am just saying some of those think they are smarter than everybody else just because their paycheck is larger than the average scientist's salary. Where did that come from? Did they learn that in college? Who told them the size of the paycheck makes them smart automatically?

And that, my friends... is one of the things I do not understand.

- More quantum bioprocesses

Some time ago I posted a comment about how photosyntesis shows quantum mechanics charateristics in the macroscale.

Well, there are apparently only 3 biological processes that show quantum mechanical behavior in the large scale. Photosynthesis as already mentioned is one of them, but also vision by absorbing discrete lumps of energy and converting them into an electrical current, and pulmonary activity which I don't completely understand why.

Who would have thought only 3 uh? In any case, nature is so cool that didn't forget to add "macroscopic" QM systems in our bodies!

On a different note, I am realizing how difficult it is to maintain an updated blog. I'll try to be better at it.

-Teaching Physics...

Next week begins the lab for which I'll be the TA. It is an undergraduate electromagnetism lab for engineers. I am excited about it. Although this is not the first time I teach, I am looking forward to it because I am now at a well ranked university. There are rumors about it being much more fun. I hope the stories are true.

I enjoy physics, but I enjoy teaching physics a lot more. I've had good students before, even if just a small number of them. We'll see how this goes.

I just read a very interesting article. It is not new, but it is to me. It talks about how out society has pushed college education into making a grade, and thus, "making" some students beg for a better grade at the end of the semester, when there is nothing more to do.

Here is the link, you should check it out: http://gtalumni.org/news/ttopics/win96/wiesen.html

Anyways, time for me to go. but a message to my students: Get ready!!!

-Contributions to biology/medicine

I just got the August 2007 issue of Physics Today and found something interesting to talk about.

On page 19, an article titled "Electric fields have potential as cancer treatment" talks about how common physics can be used in alternate fields, such as medicine and biology. Cancer is characterized by an uncontrolled production of cells, that is, the regulating mechanism for cell division stops working and therefore cells are produced in large quantities. Existing cancer treatments hamper cell division, but unfortunately they attack healthy cells too. Although the article discusses a model for Electric fields to work as cancer treatment, the final answer has yet to be known.

Whatever the answer is, this article shows how an understanding of the physical properties of biological entities can lead to the use of well known physics to contribute in new developments. For those thinking about biophysics, that is a great area to work in.

-Quantum mechanics in nature...

Some people do not appreciate the practical importance of Quantum Mechanics, considering it nothing more than some calculations and ideas in the pages of a book. Of course, the man-created digital electronics era would not be possible without an understanding of QM but also, as it turns out, certain everyday natural phenomena are possible due to the quantum characteristics of our world. One these natural phenomena is plant photosynthesis.

That interesting way plants use to convert sunlight into their fuel wouldn't be possible without the quantum-mechanical properties of the world. The main idea is very similar to what happens in photoabsorption of semiconductors, in which a photon of the right energy excites an electron into the conduction band. However, the multiple excitations and availability of states makes the process complicated. This is just another example of how simple models (energy and forbidden bands) have implication in many different fields and/or situations.

Photosynthetic processes have a nearly 100% efficiency. So, if we can ever control/mimic the way plants do photosynthesis we'll have, to name one example, highly efficient solar fuel cells.

For the mean time, we'll have to keep admiring nature and its quantum mechanical ways!