Minnesota Senate Recount: The First Quantum Election?

The American public, the national media, and even the Minnesota Secretary of State, all seem to agree with Albert Einstein, who famously said, “God doesn’t play dice.” Most scientists, however, now believe that Einstein was wrong on this particular point. Reluctantly, physical scientists have accepted that there are some things we can’t ever know for sure. And maybe the Minnesota Senate election of 2008 is one of those things.

Einstein’s oft-repeated quote refers to his distaste for quantum mechanics, its probabilistic nature, and its long-term implications about what we can ever hope to know. In the world of classical physics, first described by Isaac Newton in the 17th century, every physical event is ultimately knowable and predictable, if we have enough time and information. If we look long enough, hard enough, smart enough, and close enough at any physical situation, we’ll be able to eventually describe it exactly and predict what will happen next.

In the world of quantum physics, first explored theoretically in the early 20th century, different rules prevail. And the implications of these rules are often counter-intuitive, paradoxical, and downright unaesthetic. Even when we look long enough, hard enough, smart enough, and close enough at some physical situations, we still can’t know everything. There is uncertainty that we will never be able to resolve. It’s not just a matter of “margin of error” due to our skill at making measurements. It’s a more fundamental uncertainty, and it’s described by the “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.”

Werner Heisenberg, in 1927, stated that we can’t know both the exact location and exact speed of a small particle, like an electron. (Actually, scientists usually refer to “momentum” instead of “speed,” but these quantities are related to each other.) The very act of precisely measuring the location, for example, will yield a range of speeds for the electron. Or, vice versa, the very act of precisely measuring the speed of an electron will yield a range of locations. If we repeat the observation a number of times, we’ll get a variety of different answers. The only way to describe the system accurately is with a “probability cloud” for the electron.

In the “normal” world in which we live, these quantum effects are so tiny and are averaged out over so many particles and events, that we will never observe any differences between the world as described by quantum mechanics and the world described by classical mechanics. However, when we dive into a nano-world where we no longer look at the aggregate result—where we look instead at the tiny individual particle or event—we start to see quantum effects.

But what does this have to do with the U.S. Senate?

Let’s replace the word “electron” with the word “election”—we’re just changing one letter.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Elections, by analogy, tells us that at the micro-level, there is a fundamental uncertainty that we can’t ever dispel. The quantum election principle states that you can’t truly know the winner of the election, because there isn’t one true vote count, there is just a probability cloud of final tallies. Every time an observer goes into the voting system at the most micro of levels (for example, looking at each individual ballot and at the circumstances surrounding the casting of that individual ballot), the observer will come out with a different vote count. The very act of counting the votes introduces a fundamental uncertainty into the system.

Up until now, this principle has only been of theoretical relevance. With the Minnesota Senate recount, however, we are seeing the first experimental evidence of this principle in action.

No matter how many times we count the Minnesota Senate votes, no matter how close we look at each ballot, no matter how transparent the election process, no matter how unbiased the election officials, we can’t know the “true” winner. In fact, there is no such thing as a “true” winner.

So what do we do? Some have suggested that we flip a coin once and declare a winner who will occupy the Senate seat for the next six years. But I have a better solution.

Let’s flip a coin every morning and declare a “Senator-for-the-day.” If we really want to reflect the “will of the people,” the daily coin flip is a much better reflection of “reality.”

And wouldn’t it make for interesting politics? Maybe we’d finally achieve something closer to the mythical “bipartisanship” we seem to need in this time of crisis.

I believe we are going to be seeing more and more elections just as close as the Minnesota Senate election of 2008. Well-financed and sophisticated campaigns can fine tune their candidates’ positions to match focus group results and tracking poll data on an increasingly local level—from gerrymandering individual districts to tailoring mailings by individual zip codes to robo-calling individual phone numbers.

It’s time to recognize that, in Minnesota, we are experiencing the first quantum election. It’s time for political scientist departments to add courses on “quantum elections” to the current curricula, which only reflect the world of “classical elections.” It’s time for talking heads to bone up on their quantum theory.

And perhaps it’s time to introduce a “Heisenberg Uncertainty Amendment” to the Constitution.

Published in: on February 16, 2009 at 9:18 am  Comments (2)  
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Will today’s financial meltdown be this generation’s Sputnik?

I owe my career path to a metallic sphere that weighed about 185 pounds and was slightly larger than a big beach ball. Launched by Russian scientists on October 4, 1957, Sputnik-1 had a profound effect on American culture, education, and science. As the first satellite in outer space, it shocked the American public and its political leadership. Fortunately, the Sputnik scare served as the catalyst for a strong and broad emphasis on science and engineering that influenced a generation of American students–including me.

I celebrated my second birthday while Sputnik was orbiting the earth in 1957. When I was in first grade, my class gathered in the back of the school auditorium to watch John Glenn’s historic space flight. My high school textbooks in physics (PSSC Physics) and chemistry (CHEM Study) were developed in the aftermath of Sputnik and adopted widely across the country. Although I realized early on (shortly after I got my first pair of glasses in second grade) that I wasn’t going to grow up to be an astronaut, I could become a scientist—an occupation that was highly respected and sought after in those days.

The post-Sputnik fervor, of course, didn’t last forever. As icons of American culture and success, the astronauts and scientists of the 1960s were replaced, forty years later, by Wall Street investment bankers and hedge fund managers. In 2007, according to a survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson, of the Harvard seniors graduating that year and heading directly to the workforce, half of them (47 %) were heading into jobs with consulting firms and financial-sector companies. Yes, you read that right—47%!!

I expect that the survey results in 2009 will be quite different.

Just as Sputnik shocked American society into re-evaluating its priorities, the current financial meltdown will be forcing similar re-evaluations by a generation of students. Where will America’s best and brightest students be heading over the next generation?

The stimulus bill being passed today on Capitol Hill includes significant new funding for science and technology. President Obama promised in his inaugural speech to “restore science to its rightful place.” If we slog our way out of the current financial crisis, the solutions to the looming crises of the next generation (e.g., health care, energy, and climate change) will all require science and engineering.

We’ll need bright, creative scientists and engineers, of course. But perhaps more importantly, we’ll need a general public and citizenry that values and rewards innovation, invention, and success in areas other than just financial services.

It’s time for STEM (Science, Technology, Education, and Math) leaders and educators to make a difference again in the future of our country. It’s time to “step up to the plate.” And I don’t mean home plate on a baseball field. Forget that tired, old sports metaphor. I’m referring to the “plates” we’ll find in laboratories, nature, and classrooms. It’s time to step up to agar bacterial plates, tectonic plates, and thin layer chromatography plates.

Published in: on February 13, 2009 at 9:21 am  Comments (2)  
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Bonding in the Blogosphere

As I’ve watched my teenage and young-adult children the past few years, I’ve become painfully aware that they live in a different communication environment than I do. We all have access to the same tools—e-mail, voice mail, cell phone (both talking and texting), list serves, and social networking sites (LiveJournal, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace).  But we use these tools in fundamentally different ways.  My kids use Web 2.0, and I’m still getting used to Web 1.0.

Nevertheless, I’m trying to understand (and emulate) their style of communication, because it’s the Future.

So over the past few months, I’ve listened to dozens of podcasts, exchanged frequent text messages with my sons, joined LinkedIn, and started using RSS feeds to follow others’ blogs. I’m now getting all my news online, and I’ve canceled my print newspaper subscription (sorry, Star Tribune employees). I even signed up for Twitter.

But I don’t think I really “got it.” I didn’t really understand how and why these forms of communications were fundamentally different. Until February 5.  Now, I get it.

What happened last week that changed my experience of communicating?

To put it simply, I took my first real step into the world known as the Blogosphere. As part of my strategy to join the 21st century, I had recently started a blog, “The Alchemist in the Minivan.” But I hadn’t yet made any attempt to generate traffic to my site.

However, that changed on February 5, when a blog entry I submitted as a “guest blogger” was published by the New York Times on its “Motherlode” Parenting Blog. (See “Just Chill, Dad.”)

Suddenly, I felt exposed to the entire world.  After all, the New York Times website receives millions of visitors each month, from all over the world.   And some of those people might actually read my article!  As a writer, I was excited and proud.

But as a shy chemist and unassuming father living in Minnesota, where we value reticence and modesty, I was uncomfortable.  That feeling didn’t last long, however, because the Blogosphere took over.

I started seeing “comments” added to my NYT story—“comments” from parents around the country sharing their own experiences, humor, and wisdom. Fifty comments flooded in over the first two hours.

Their comments were warm, articulate, and insightful.  Some of these people followed the link to my blog site.  The number of daily hits on my website went up by a factor of 30–at least for that one day.    I was communicating and interacting, in a new way, with all these people.

And I enjoyed it! It wasn’t like talking to them face-to-face, by phone, by e-mail, or by teleconference. It was a qualitatively different type of bond—not particularly strong on an individual basis but powerful on a wide basis.

When faced with new situations, groping for a way to understand something, I often reach for a chemical metaphor. So I accessed the chemistry memory bank in my brain, searching for a chemical metaphor for this new type of bonding.

The first metaphor I visualized involved the delocalized electrons in aromatic rings, such as the electrons in a molecule of caffeine. I’ve written about that metaphor in an earlier published essay, “Coffee Chemistry,” so I kept searching for a new metaphor.

The second metaphor that came to mind involves the type of bonding that occurs in a metal. I’ll write more about this metallic bonding metaphor soon, but I first need to brush up and update my understanding (it’s been about 30 years since my college courses in inorganic chemistry ).

Where will I go to start my research?  I’ll use several of those new forms of knowledge and knowledge-sharing that have emerged in the 21st century. I’ll google “metallic bonding” and read the Wikipedia article.

Published in: on February 10, 2009 at 7:47 am  Comments (1)  
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Kindergarten Chemistry

In his inaugural address, President Obama thrilled scientists across the country by simply uttering the following phrase:  “We will restore science to its rightful place.”

What a relief! The last eight years have been bleak for many scientists, as the Bush administration seemed to place ideology over scientific fact all too often. A good overview of scientists’ attitude can be found in this January 21st New York Times article, “Scientists Welcome Obama’s Words.”

Science will clearly play a more important role in the Obama administration. It’s about time. Science and technology have a great deal to offer on policy issues such as climate change, energy, and health care. Encouraging scientists and engineers to help on these issues is certainly one of the things that Obama meant when he referred to science’s “rightful place.”

But that’s not the only “rightful place” where science must return.

I did my small part last week, when I helped restore science to one of its most important rightful places–the Kindergarten classroom.

As a Christmas gift to my godchild, a bright and curious five-year-old girl, I offered to visit her class to do some hands-on science activities. When my sons were in elementary school, I enjoyed doing this once or twice every year at their school. However, it’s been more than five years since I stepped into a classroom. It’s definitely time to restore science to its rightful place…

I was just as excited as the students were when we began our activity last week. We did an activity that uses red cabbage as an acid-base indicator. You just rub the red cabbage leaf on an index card to leave a big reddish-purplish smudge. Then, you can dip a Q-Tip in a common household acid, such as vinegar (acetic acid) or lemon juice (citric acid). Swiping the moistened Q-Tip across the smudge will reveal a color change. You can also dip a Q-Tip in a common household base (a mixture of water and baking soda or Alka-Seltzer works well) and repeat the experiment to get a different color change.

We experimented with other plant materials–from carrots to radishes to hydrangea petals. Some gave us wonderful color changes, and others gave us no change.  We talked about making observations, making guesses, and doing experiments–the scientific method.

At the end of the class, I asked all scientists in the room to raise their hand. With a little prodding, every Kindergartner (and the teacher and I) raised a hand.

Science was restored to its rightful place.

——

Want to try the experiment yourself? Here’s a copy of the information I sent home with the students that evening. (I printed the handout on goldenrod-colored paper, which also undergoes some fascinating color changes when you try the same experiment.)

———-

“Science is Fun”

In Mrs. A’s class today, we did some hands-on science experiments involving chemistry and color changes. We learned about some household acids (lemon juice, vinegar, soda pop) and bases (baking soda, Milk of Magnesia). We used red cabbage to make an acid-base indicator that can be used to test pH, a measure of acidity.

pH measurement can be important in many areas of life. If you watch your favorite TV show or movie carefully, you just might start seeing acid-base chemistry in action:

  • Medicine — Blood pH is a routine medical test. It’s part of the “blood gas” test the ER doctors always seem to want on their patients.
  • Cosmetics — Watch those ads carefully. Is your shampoo “pH-balanced?”
  • Food – Acid indigestion? Eat too much of that rich food? You might want to use “Tums” (a base) to take care of that extra stomach acid.
  • Forensic science – Those CSI investigators can tell you all about acids, bases, and pH.
  • Recreation — Swimming pools and hot tubs must be maintained at a constant pH. In those movies set in Southern California, the cute guy that takes care of those pools seems to always be kneeling by the side of the pool testing its pH.

Today’s activity is just one of dozens of fun “kitchen chemistry” experiments that you can do with safe materials that are readily available at your grocery store. If you want to try some of these experiments in your own home, there are many resources available. Here are some to get you started.

Resources on the Internet

One of the handiest sources for wonderful experiments is the World Wide Web. Here are two sites that I highly recommend.

http://www.exploratorium.org/
This site, from the Exploratorium (San Francisco’s science museum), is perennially voted one of the best science sites on the web.

http://www.acs.org/kids
The website of the American Chemical Society (ACS) is a rich resource of information about chemistry. The webpage listed here will point you towards dozens of science activities for children (and their adult helpers). The red cabbage experiment that we did today is adapted from the activity called “Lose the Indicator Blues.” To go directly to the page for this activity, use this address:

http://portal.acs.org/portal/PublicWebSite/education/whatischemistry/scienceforkids/chemicalphysicalchange/acidsbases/index.htm

Published in: on February 5, 2009 at 11:25 am  Comments (6)  
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In Memoriam: John Updike

John Updike passed away two days ago, on Tuesday, January 27, and The New York Times published a detailed obituary. While the obituary did a very good job of summarizing his life and works, it didn’t mention the aspect of Updike’s life that made the biggest impression on me—his longstanding interest in science.

Thirty years ago, while a chemistry graduate student at Harvard, I lived and worked as a “caretaker” for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. This meant that my wife and I lived in the upstairs attic apartment of a stately house, known as Walter Lippmann House, just three blocks from  Harvard Yard. Our presence provided added security for this house, which served as the headquarters of the Nieman Foundation. We also had the job of setting up and serving snacks and meals for the many notables that passed through the house. At least three times each week, a well-known academic, writer, politician, or artist would give an informal presentation to the 20-25 Nieman Fellows, mid-career journalists who were spending the year at Harvard.  After serving the lunch, I would sit at the back of the room and listen to the presentation.

John Updike was one of those notables, and I was fortunate to hear him and meet him on at least two different occasions. Rubbing shoulders with the famous and powerful is part of the allure of a place like Harvard. While the shoulder-rubbing hasn’t profoundly changed the course of my life, it furnishes a storehouse of good memories.

My memory of John Updike involves science. When asked by one of the Nieman Fellows about what books and periodicals he regularly read, Updike surprised all of us by mentioning Scientific American. He said that he was a regular reader and that a writer and thinker in the 20th century should really be interested and involved in science.

His specific mention of science has come back to me time after time in the past three decades.  It’s given me the courage to dabble in creative writing about science.

I’ve read some of Updike’s poems, essays, and novels over the years (although certainly not all of them – he was incredibly prolific) and have seen evidence of his fascination with science. He also frequently wrote about the relationship between science and religion.

Here are two of his poems that prove, beyond a doubt, that he “got” science. He understood it, and he found words to bring it alive. He’ll be missed.

This short poem about neutrinos, “Cosmic Gall,” was quoted by the Nobel Prize committee when it gave the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics to Frederick Reines for the detection of the neutrino. (Gratuitous, editorial comment: It’s a pity and a scandal that Updike himself never received the Nobel Prize for Literature.)

Here are the opening lines of “Cosmic Gall”:

Neutrinos they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.

And here’s a longer poem, “The Dance of the Solids,” that Updike wrote after reading the September 1967 issue of Scientific American, which was devoted to the science of materials:

Here’s the final stanza:

Textbooks and Heaven only are ideal;
Solidity is an imperfect state.
Within the cracked and dislocated Real
Nonstoichiometric crystals dominate.
Stray Atoms sully and precipitate;
Strange holes, excitons, wander loose; because
Of Dangling Bonds, a chemical Substrate
Corrodes and catalyzes – surface Flaws
Help Epitaxial Growth to fix adsorptive claws.

I wish more of today’s writers, novelists, and poets felt the same way that Updike felt about science.  He’ll be missed.

Published in: on January 29, 2009 at 8:47 am  Comments (1)  

Just Chill, Dad

How cold has it been this winter? It’s been so cold that my teenager wore a hat to school.

Here in Minnesota, in the suburbs of the Twin Cities, high school students choose their daily outfits very carefully. Many different factors can go into the decision-making process, but weather-appropriateness is not one of them.

For some reason, at my son’s high school, more than 90% of the students refuse to use their lockers. They insist on carrying all their books, supplies, and outerwear around with them from class to class. Parkas, boots, mittens, and snow pants just don’t figure into the fashion equation. (Maybe we should install space heaters in their backpacks and shoulder bags.)

Our educational system here in Minnesota (just like everywhere else) is becoming more and more cluttered with standards and assessments—for math, science, writing, and reading. I’m tempted to start a citizens’ revolt to also demand sartorial standards. (“The student will learn to observe the weather conditions, using electronic information or actual physical observations. The student will learn the properties of rain gear and cold weather gear. The student will choose the appropriate outerwear at least 70% of the time.”)

I guess I shouldn’t wait until the educational system does my parenting job for me. As a parent, I have to draw the line somewhere, even with teenagers. It’s my moral, legal, and paternal obligation.

So here are my tough rules:
• For cool weather, my son can’t wear shorts when it’s below freezing (that’s 32 degrees Fahrenheit). Sometime in late fall, he has to switch to long pants or jeans.
• For really cold weather, I insist on a hat when the wind-chill temperature drops into the frostbite zone—at -20 degrees or lower. At these temperatures, my childhood memories take over, and I can still hear my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Mathre, saying, “Wear your hat at recess. You lose 2/3 of your body heat through your head.”
• My rule for wet weather? Well, I gave up on that one. If they want to get soaked, suffer wet hair, and wear soggy clothes all day, then go right ahead.

According to the National Weather Service website, last week’s coldest reading was an air temperature is -27 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind chill temperature was -41 degrees. Scientific studies have shown that, in these conditions, exposed skin will begin to suffer frostbite in ten minutes. Just to put that amount of time in proper perspective—that’s about the time required to read seven status updates on Facebook, write four text messages, or listen to three songs on an mp3 player.

I would hope that frozen skin might be a disincentive for teenagers. More importantly, however, those bitterly cold temperatures aren’t too good for cell phones, iPods, and body piercings either.

Maybe if I make a YouTube video about frostbite, set it to some hip-hop music, and release it to the Internet, my teenager will finally get the message.

Published in: on January 24, 2009 at 10:18 am  Comments (1)  
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January 22 is “Thank Your Mentor Day”

Here’s a link to one of my blog articles on the ACS Careers blog:

Out of my high school graduating class of 400 students, three of us went on to get Ph.D. degrees in chemistry—an amazing proportion that’s a factor of 10 greater than expected. Was it something in the water?

No. It was Mr. Sturtevant, our chemistry teacher. He was enthusiastic, creative, and passionate about chemistry. He treated all his students (he called us his “little chemists”) with a respect that let us know we were on the cusp of young adulthood. more

Published in: on January 22, 2009 at 10:31 am  Leave a Comment  
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NY Times article on one aspect of science and parenting

Today’s New York Times has a fascinating article about the implications of parents, as scientists, using their children as subjects of scientific study. The article is “Test Subjects Who Call the Scientist Mom or Dad.”

Most of the scientist-parents discussed in this article are scientists from psychology, medicine, and sociology. In my own experience as a chemist-parent, I haven’t faced many of the ethical issues raised in this article. However, there are important issues beyond just the ethical issues.

Here’s a comment that I just sent to the NY Times (see below). I hope this will be added to the conversation and debate at the NY Times website.

——-

Leaving aside the important question of ethics (which is dealt with well by the article and many of the comments), is this trend of intertwining science and parenting a good thing for science and for parenting? I think the answer can be an emphatic “yes.”

When parents let their children share the parts of their own lives as scientists—the parts that encourage curiosity, experimentation, and direct interaction with the world through careful observation—they are giving their children a gift. In an era when science education in the classroom leaves much to be desired, these children will integrate these important aspects of scientific thinking into their lives. And society will benefit in the long run, because we need more science-literate citizens in the 21st century.

When parents (and this applies to parents of any profession or occupation) show their children that a job can be a source of deep satisfaction, a way to make a positive difference in the world, and a way to express themselves, they are giving their children another gift. Science can be a vocation and a calling. In this very human way, science is no different from many other professions (art, religion, agriculture, military service, and social action all come to mind as obvious examples). Scientist-parents shouldn’t deny their children a chance to glimpse the excitements and frustrations of their careers—which just happen to be in science.

And how does science benefit from having parents involving their children in scientific studies?

For all of us, scientists and non-scientists alike, many insights and innovations come from our daily lives. If scientists, business executives, artists, and politicians are required to check their occupations at the door of their own homes (like they are required to slip out of their shoes and overcoats as they enter their homes), we will be drying up many wellsprings of creativity.

For scientists, these initial insights and innovations must be tested and explored through objective and repeatable research. As the article points out, this objective phase of science may require parents to leave their children out of studies that will be published in the scientific literature. Nonetheless, we can’t afford to ignore the creative phase of science.

More blog reflections about my own scientist-parent experience can be found at “The Alchemist in the Minivan” (www.alchemist.pro).

Published in: on January 18, 2009 at 9:28 am  Comments (1)  

Brrrrrrr…..

Brrr… It’s verrry cold in Minnesota. This morning, the air temperature in the neighboring suburb of Eden Prairie is -21 degrees Fahrenheit. On the metric temperature scale used by all scientists and by the general public in nearly every country in the world, the temperature is -29 degrees Celsius. [Only the United States, Liberia, and Burma (Myanmar) haven’t yet switched to the metric scale for measurement.]

When the temperature gets this low, I start surfing the web pages of the National Weather Service so I can find the lowest official temperature that I can honestly claim to others. For example, this morning’s low temperature in the Twin Cities metropolitan area ranged from -21 (Eden Prairie, Flying Cloud Airport) to – 18 (Bloomington, Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport) to -24 (Lakeville, Airlake Airport).

My 17-year-old son must have inherited the same cold-seeking gene.  He told me yesterday that he had been roaming the internet to look at temperatures; he reported that our temperatures in Minnesota were the same as those at the South Pole (where it is currently summer).

The same sort of cold competition can be found in northern Minnesota, where three different towns (International Falls, Tower, and Embarrass) all claim to be the coldest place in the “lower 48.” This morning, the temperature in International Falls was -40. The lowest recorded temperature in Minnesota was -60 (Tower, MN, February 2, 1996).

During that extremely cold winter of 1996, the temperature here in Minneapolis dipped to -32 degrees Fahrenheit. I was thrilled. I bought several thermometers to keep outside on the deck, so I could monitor the cold. As long as it was going to be that frigid, I really wanted the temperature to plunge to -40 degrees. For me, that’s a magical temperature, for several reasons.

First, it’s the one temperature at which the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales coincide. -40 degrees Fahrenheit is also -40 degrees Celsius. At that particular temperature, the residents of the United States are international citizens in the world of measurement. Like the early Christians on Pentecost, we can understand each others’ languages.

And there’s a second reason I’m a big fan of -40 degrees. At just about this temperature, mercury will freeze solid. The freezing point of mercury, at standard atmospheric pressure, is -38.83 °C or -37.89 °F. If you’re using a mercury thermometer (not as common today as they used to be), it stops working at this temperature.  You can’t ever reach -40 on a mercury thermometer.

Just about a year ago, I was thinking about even colder temperatures, while working on a project for public television. My assignment was to prepare a timeline that showed the progress of low-temperature science, a timeline that would accompany the “NOVA” television program, “Absolute Zero.” Here’s the hyperlink for my timeline contribution to the project, Milestones in Cold Research.

Here are several fun temperature facts I learned while working on that timeline project:

• The thermoscope (a predecessor to today’s thermometers) was invented by Galileo Galilei in the 1590s. The first modern-style, sealed-glass thermometer was invented in 1654.

• The world’s first home air conditioner was installed in Minneapolis, Minnesota—in 1914 by a man named Charles Gates. The machine, built by Willis Carrier, was almost 7 feet high, 6 feet wide, and 20 feet long. (Of all places to install the first home air conditioner, why in Minnesota?)

• At extremely low temperatures (20 nanokelvin or 0.00000002 degrees above absolute zero), a new form of matter can be observed. Called the Bose-Einstein condensate, it was the subject of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001.

Now that I’ve spent so much time thinking and writing about cold, I think I’ll stay inside and read a good book in front of my fire.   I’ll probably choose a book about the cold–perhaps the famous short story by Jack London, “To Build a Fire,” about a man and his dog trying to survive in the Yukon in temperatures of 75 degrees below zero.

Published in: on January 13, 2009 at 8:31 am  Comments (2)  
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Isaac Newton: Alchemist Role Model?

Olivia Judson writes about Isaac Newton in today’s New York Times (“The Ten Days of Newton“).  It’s heartening to see an article in a major newspaper discussing some aspect of science in both an informative and entertaining way.

I must confess that I use Sir Isaac Newton as one of my secret justifications for my interest in alchemy, as well as my interest in the interaction of science and religion.  If he could dabble in alchemical studies, I guess it’s OK for me to do the same.  (See Wikipidea’s extensive article on “Isaac Newton’s Occult Studies.”)

Published in: on December 24, 2008 at 7:51 am  Leave a Comment  
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