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What DO Physicists Think About?
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Subject: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 01 Mar 01 - 09:16 PM What Physicists Think About?Regards,
8 levels of harmony and 8 concepts of Complex SystemsAbstract A set of general physical principles is proposed as the structural ba-To understand complex phenomena [1] we suggest to detalize the concepts of harmony and re ection [2]. 1. Harmony. Considering Random Energy Model (REM)[3] in physics , swan neck as a If there is a hierarchy in a system and it is possible to dene the essence for each of its levels (a word, a number or a sign), there is a harmony, if they coincide. For the case of reflection one can define a harmonic reflection when the essence of reflected reality coincides with the essence of reflection. Every deep truth has several faces and any interesting physical system allows different ways of solution-REM, Hydrogen atom, 2d Ising model.... Such situation was essential for evolution [5],[6], d=1 barrier in strings also be- longs to this case [7],[2]. 6. Modalities.R.S.Ingarden,A. Kossakowski,M. Ohya introduced [8] modalities as "possible non- categorical attitudes to reality". From this point of view space, potential energy, classical entropy, classical information, quantum entropy and informa- tion are steps of the hierarchical staircase. I add to this list the number of replicas . Perhaps there are some harmonic situations here: "golden section", two replicas as multicritical point in generalization of [9]... One can distinguish dierent modalities by the level of complexity, so it will be reasonable to expect, the more is complex the system, the higher it should climb on the modality staircase. 7.Principle of purity.It is connected with the points 2. and 5., but it is something more. The sur- vival of system (vital energy!) is connected with the degree in which system 1•can reveal almost opposite pure properties. This property is crucial for human, without it any serious harmony is impossible. It will be interesting to dene it on quantitative level for other complex systems. Here it could be connected with conservation or circulation of some free energy among the hierarchy levels and while losing this property system becomes dissipate. 8.Principle of minimal reflections.This principle explicitly works in ethics (nobody likes words "not","but" and likes modesty) and economics (too much stocks create crush). The rest is at http://arXiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0102510. Enjoy!! Amos |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Joe Offer Date: 01 Mar 01 - 09:37 PM Isn't that the science class where you get to play with Slinky toys? -Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Sorcha Date: 01 Mar 01 - 09:50 PM And invite "guest fiddlers" to come in and play tunes while the students watch the waves on the O-scope!! Got paid for that one! |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 01 Mar 01 - 10:27 PM So what real problems has it solved?. Theories and classification schemes are a dime a dozen, but the proof of the pudding remains in the eating. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Bill D Date: 01 Mar 01 - 10:38 PM "guests" are a nickle a dozen,,,,, |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: JenEllen Date: 01 Mar 01 - 10:56 PM Thanks ever so much...Very Timely! |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Bev and Jerry Date: 01 Mar 01 - 11:32 PM We were just thinking the very same thing. My, what a coincidence. Bev and Jerry |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 01 Mar 01 - 11:53 PM I've always believed in my heart that the structure of the universe was really scads and scads of beauty and truth just packed in too tight. This guy finally seems to have figured it out!!! A. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 02 Mar 01 - 12:24 AM Bil D. this nickel a dozen guest is a Ph. D. physicist. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 02 Mar 01 - 12:46 AM Gee, Guest, it takes a lot of guts to defend a thesis in physics. I would not have imagined such fortitude from someone who logged in anonymously. But I am glad you're here because I need good physics guidance from time to time. As to the answer to your question, it remains to be seen what good such a classification scheme might or might not be. I assumed the paper was a peer-reviewed work. The real test, I expect, is whether such a scheme can reveal or predict hitherto unnoticed phenomena. Regards, A |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: wysiwyg Date: 02 Mar 01 - 01:24 AM Oh Amos, you HAVE been listening!!! That number 5-- perfect! It's the and/and thinking in a very large nutshell! ~S~ |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,paul dirac Date: 02 Mar 01 - 01:29 AM I am reminded of John Bell's theory when I hear the sweet harmonies of the Presley brothers up here in heaven. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Wolfgang Date: 02 Mar 01 - 04:34 AM If you've enjoyed the paper above you'll surely also enjoy this article. On a more serious note, I am completely unable to tell whether what this physicist has to say has any value or not. Only peers have a chance to judge that. The history of physics is full with peer reviewed ideas or experiments which later turned out to have no value. So what. Future will tell. However, I#d be surprised if we'd hear again of this particular idea. I have always been amazed how eagerly concepts from physics which have a clear meaning in a particular context (energy, force, harmony,...) have been used e.g in a New Age context as if these concepts meant anything remotely similar to what non-physicists mean when they use these words. Wolfgang |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gervase Date: 02 Mar 01 - 04:55 AM I've always loved the apparent interplay between physics and metaphysics. I remember being touched when particle physicists working on the nature of quarks concluded that there were more ways needed to describe them than simple positive and negative charges, and therefore came up with the attributes of charm, truth and beauty. And it's amazing how many novellists and story-writers have fallen in love with Werner Heisenberg - his uncertainty theory, along with Schrodinger's moggy, have kept people like Stoppard in jam sandwiches for ages. But, as for the original question - "What DO physicists think about?", I'm afraid in my experience it's usually beer, fantasy role-playing games and unattainable women. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 02 Mar 01 - 04:55 AM With nearly 30 years experience in that publish or perish environment I came up my estimate that of the new theories, classifications, and promising new techniques, about 15% survived their first 5 years. Cold fusion, polywater, the Raman spin flip laser, water dimers, and several others didn't last that long. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Pete Peterson at work Date: 02 Mar 01 - 09:18 AM What I admire about the polywater controversy is it was Deryagin himself who did some of the critical experiments proving himself wrong. . . he did great work before and after this and was, as Feynman says one should be, his own worst critic. Note that Fleischman and Pons (cold fusin) did the exact opposite. Amos, nothing I found mousing around (in a short time) led me to believe that this was peer-reviewed; I agree with you that I didn't see any testable consequences set forth. I find myself quoting Mr. Scott all the time: "Captain! Ya canna' break the laws of physics!" |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Lady McMoo Date: 02 Mar 01 - 09:22 AM I'm mostly with Gervase on this one. Don't know about role playing games but, bearing in mind the physicists I know, beer definitely and unattainable members of the opposite sex certainly (there are also female physicists!). These attributes are, however, even more highly developed in biologists! mcmoo |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Bill D Date: 02 Mar 01 - 11:10 AM " this nickel a dozen guest is a Ph. D. physicist. " ...then sign in as one..call yourself Schrödenger, or Heisenberg...or John the Baptist...but for the duration of the thread be someone, if you don't feel like being yourself. I'm not trying to get your address & phone#, I just hate blank voices from the air. If we met in person, I could have a face to talk to, but sometimes we get 2 or 3 'guests' in one thread, and it is maddening having a discussion with graffiti on a wall. (Seems like I am on some sort of crusade, huh? Maybe so..) |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: wysiwyg Date: 02 Mar 01 - 11:16 AM Hi Bill! (Wasn't me.) ~S~ |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 02 Mar 01 - 01:01 PM Would the guest who introduced this thread please ID himself firmly? Please tell us your line of speciality. I was in the thick of the theory during the attempt to slow down light back in the early 90's - also one of the first to propose a method for doing same (way back). |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 02 Mar 01 - 01:12 PM Pardon my fingers - the guest who introduced himself as GUEST in this thread. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Bill D Date: 02 Mar 01 - 03:02 PM I have suspicions about Mr "guest"..*smile*..but I still wish we had a name....ANY name |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Nonblack Hole Date: 02 Mar 01 - 04:09 PM Satisfied now Bill D? |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Nonblack Hole Date: 02 Mar 01 - 04:29 PM I should probably state for those not in the math or the phyical sciences that describing accurately in words is practically impossble. They don't think in terms of words. It's in 3D mental pictures and equations that the thinking is done. modlity, harmony and such have no real meaning until you have the picture and equations that define precisely their valid ranges. a priori those words can mean just about anything, and no two people will interpret them exactly the same.P>. I suspect E. Wigner would be appalled at what's called symmetry now. His book on it was very difficult to read, and his lectures were worse, because he never lost that heavy German accent, and was his spoken English wasn't very good. I've found that spoken and written pieces, the same pieces, from the same person, are often expressed very differently. With written pieces you can go back over and over again until you're satisfied that you've got it as well as you can do it. Enough, I don't come to Mudcat for math and physics.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 02 Mar 01 - 04:57 PM Actually, 99.9999 % of physics is easy to picture. On a very banal level, you see it all around you every day - lets not get picky about lost senses, please.
As for harmony and things musical, the physicist, to his credit and undoing sometimes, is trying to get to the math (read, THE BOTTOM, or THE WAY, or THE WHY or CAUSE AND EFFECT, or
All kinds of sound modeling can be done this way. Check out the new and next generation versions of amplifiers for guitars if you doubt this. The scientist gave the engineers more than just their ears to base the new modeling technology on.
About the remaining percentage: In some very serious scientific circles, it is now believed that a combining, synthesis or even basic understanding of the relationships between quantum and traditional theory in experiment will result in the erasure of life as we know it. I've read on it a bit and I see some valid points that do indeed point to a possible closure of everything we know if a successful measure is achieved.
Let's hope the MAD Scientists of the world really think about what they're doing in future.
As for the Mudcat physics: It is. Just a different point of perspective, thank God. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Bill D Date: 02 Mar 01 - 06:02 PM Nonblack hole will do very nicely...(let your little light shine!) |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: John Routledge Date: 02 Mar 01 - 06:39 PM I studied Pure Physics at Uni for three years. Now I know why 34 years later that I am delighted that I chose another career. Geordie(Non-Physically)Broon |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Nonblack Hole Date: 02 Mar 01 - 08:22 PM I overlooked that real celebrity we have above P. A. M. Dirac. Paul, do you still sleep through seminars? Or is it only ones like that crap Gray Rooster tried to feed us. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,pd Date: 02 Mar 01 - 09:18 PM Yes. I was awake for Wigner in 1934!*wink* |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 03 Mar 01 - 12:52 AM Dear Nonblack Hole, Why don't YOU try and feed me as well as the rest of us with your obviously incredible intellect instead of wasting it with sophomoric insults that have no mass or inertia? In other words, you are acting the imbicile. With your silly words, you maligned everyone here at the Mudcat - or were you too ignorant to realize the logic directly implied by my observations. Please re-read my thread notes and do so between the lines - you are in there. I do indeed hope you ponder your next exchange and use a wee bit more of your intellect. I'd hate to think you were really thrusting out at everyone here, not to mention the likes of the Steven Hawking's and Dirac's of the world, too name a couple of people who subscribe to things you haven't had time to learn or consider. Altogether, I'd suggest you fail to respond to this challenge, you will only make it worse for yourself. And that's a promise I can keep. Don't you just love Mudcat? |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 03 Mar 01 - 01:08 AM Well, that little Gray Rooster, yes, she got fire in her soul She got that -- uh huh! -- fire in her soul She gonna duke out high science With a Non-Black Hole! Deeteedee dumtedum... :>_) You guys are both very smart; let us not quibble or stoop to ad hominemities. But, Gray Rooster, can you give me some references from which I might learn what this "end of the world through harmonics" proposition is all about? Sure sounds like a long draw -- on the other hand I have read that Nikolai Tesla once threatened to cause an earthquake in the bedrock of Manhattan because he was reinforcing some harmonic or other with a timed pulse on a foundation pillar in his lab. Dunno if its apocryphal or not. Not the same thing. But look what happened to Galloping Gertie, the Tacoma Narrows bridge, due to reinforced oscillations. Hmm. Thanks for the sparks, folks! Enjoyed it. Regard, A |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 03 Mar 01 - 01:44 PM Prehaps Gray Rooster will show us his simple picture of a photon, demonstrating the properties we know about if from corpluscular, wave, and quantum electro-dynamics models. Picture please, too, the Heisenberg uncertaintly principle, and show how this becomes the reciprocal spreading of electronic circuitry (few electonics engineers know of this identity). Gray Rooter has identified the 'harmony' in the original posting with music, which is completely unwarranted. Music harmony itself is rather complex. In Juan Roederer's recent book "The Physic and Phsyco-Physics of Sound' is given a graph of an experimental determination of the limits of consonance between two notes (frequencies) and within 75% confidence limits any thing from a minor 3rd to major 5th is consonant. Applying it again between that second note and a new note we find the minimum for a three note chord as the diminished 5th, but the maximum puts the last note as 9/4 times the base note, so it's two octaves away from the base note. The diminished 7th involves the minimum separation for a 4 note chord. A 12TET scale, like from a piano gives a rotten approximation to a true diminished 7th. Once can come close to that last note (the 7th double flatted) with a 21 note just intonation scale, but to get it right on you need the whole 35 note just intonation scale, having all the double flats (and sharps). Now let's see if Gray Rooster knows anything worth while about the subject of physics. From what I've seen so far he seems to have a good command of the pseudo-science equivalent of psychobabble, but nothing more.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 03 Mar 01 - 02:08 PM Amos, The "end of the universe as we know it" was pertaining to the combination of quantum and traditional theory tied together (or in other words to a unified theory, the Holy Grail of many). It seems there may be the chance of a tear in the fabric of the universe should someone stumble upon a way to unlock dimensionality. Please, I use fabric as a metaphor for convenience only. By the way, string theory grabs this very bull by the horns, Mr. Nonblack Hole. It suggests a temporal edge. Where HAVE you been? There are several dozen papers on the subject and I believe one or two popular editions that include the layman and scientific views. They aren't really that new. And I never said I subscribed to these views, only offered them as a point of reference for the remaining percentage (remember the 99.999?). Pure speculation does have a place in physics and the example I chose was only one of an incredible array of choices. On inspection of harmony, I do think a case could be made for the end of the universe if we suddenly found ourselves without it, but I don't want to open up another can of worms. Remember, there are many other harmonic forms, not just music (but again, I could make a case for everything being musical, couldn't you?). I suppose I could have been more mundane in that "last percentage" effort. I could have pointed to the RHIC finally "making" what appears to be quark-gluon plasma (the building blocks of protons and neutrons). Not that long ago, this wasn't even in the theoretical catalog. Today, it is commonplace to think we are able to erect structures available only in the first microseconds of the Big Bang. And I'm SURE Mr. Nonblack Hole subscribes or not to the BBT. This would at least gives us a common point of discussion. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 03 Mar 01 - 06:00 PM What end of the universe? Recent publicized observations from the Hubble space telescope have shown the the universe is vastly bigger than previously thought. However, the speed of light is so low that much of it may have disappeared eons ago, and we'd just don't know it yet.
No answers to my questions, and not a single reference to any known expert in the field, (as already requested by Amos, and unanswered) so we know nothing about what Gray Rooster's terms might mean. It's in the academic journals, and at seminars and symposia that one finds the real meat, not in the pop magazines. Some science writers are pretty good at writing up a popular account, but that's not always the case. And a few scientists have done well, too (as in Scientific American), and Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. The latter had been a physicist, but not a terribly good one, and found pop fiction to be his real forte, and knew how to make a lot sound scientific.
Every schoolkid can expound on black holes, but the precise modeling and it's solution are beyond me, so I only know the highlights and jargon of the pop pap.
As I pointed out with respect to music, harmony is advanced in practice, but remains extremely primative in theory, so we really don't have much theory of harmony in the field of music, let alone elsewhere.
I forgot to note in connection with Paul Dirac's note above that I've had his book on quantum mechanics for about 30 years, but have not as yet managed to get through much of it. The Hamiltonian (Hamilton was a real genius during his all too brief periods of sobriety) model for the harmonic oscillator (a simple model which has not been found in nature. Vander Pol did some good work or real oscillators in electonics, and one can treat quantum mechanical models of coupled systems of anharmonic oscillators reasonably well by perturbation theory or Wave Shaefer's contact transformation theory) and adaption it to the Scroedinger equation and the subseqent solution is the most short and elegant treatment of it I've ever seen, indeed, almost magical. And while we're at magical, my congratulations to Paul his return from the dead, but could you please give us a hint about how you acomplished that? I'm getting old, and haven't nearly completed all I want to do, so it is a matter of no small practical inportance to me. 4 books reported a similar occurance of a case about 1964 years ago, but these were written long after the event from hearsay, and their accounts are at some variance with each other, and all in all it seems a bit suspect. As to my credentials, you can find me in Who's Who in the East, and American Men of Science, but real worth is in Citation Abstracts, where reference to your work by others is noted. That tells you where you stand in the field. (Of course, some are there many times, because many others published papers proving their work was all wrong). I am also co-inventor of laser stark and laser Zeeman spectroscopy (the latter now called LMR- laser magnetic resonance spectoscopy) as reference to Science, 1972, and a US patent will show. (That was a little showpiece on the side, not my main work. Administration wanted some pop to make a splash before the public for budget reasons, and that was the best our paltry imaginations could come up with). I've got about 55 publications in academic journals. I didn't do as well as my English acquaintance Harry K. (a Steeleye Span addict). He got one of those Nobel thingies. (All the other Nobelies I knew were older than me and have all died, even G.H. last year. Everybody was using the theory in G.H.'s book for analysis of data, until I found it wouldn't fit my very good data, so I had to correct it. G. H. didn't much like it at first, but finally admitted that he had missed the boat. That's what makes a good scientist and great man, admitting your mistakes. Everybody makes them, some time or other. In that paper in Science above, nobody caught about the simplest possible mistake. Our theoretician's oversight ended up in our having the sign of the charge on the electron wrong, and nobody ever bothers to check on such simple-minded things.) Some errors are rather humorous. We did a paper where we were supposed to use only SI units, so reported our pressures in Pascals-Pa. The Journal's copy editor obviously had an electrical enginering background, because in the galley proofs we got back we found the pressures had been changed to pA - picoAmperes. I hit an extremely rare type of Coriolis interraction in the rotational structure of a degenerate fundamental vibration that I couldn't find that anyone had treated before, so I set up the Hamiltionian and next had to solve it. I decided to do both by perturbation theory and the contact transformation method. The multiplictive factors of physical constants and rotational constants were the same in both cases, but the factor involving the frequencies of the interracting vibrations came out differently. That was perplexing, and even more perplexing was when I put the numbers for the frequencies in I got out practically the same result (well within experimental error). There was no transformation that could turn one of the frequency expressions into the other. I still don't know which method is the more reliable. Perhaps this will fall into Gray Rooster's 99.9999% simple physics, and he will enlighten me.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 03 Mar 01 - 07:43 PM Whoops, that was supposed to have been signed Nonblack Hole, but since the cat is out of the bag, be it known that I am Dr. Wm. Bruce Olson, now retired from the Molecular Spcectroscopy Division, Institute of Basic Standards, National Bureau of Standards (now NIST, 3 miles away, where I am still in touch with former colleagues).
My dual specialty area was instrumention, the design and construction (optical and electronic) for the purpose of obtaining well calibrated high resolution infrared spectra, and the analysis of vibrational bands of symmetric and assymetric rotor spectra. Techniques were initially plane grating spectrometers, then tunable solid state and fixed frequency gaseous lasers, then Fourier transform spectrometers (the last I didn't design and build).
I never saw the first laser in operation, but about two months later Bell labs people brought theirs down to Princeton (where I was doing a post-doc under President Kenney's science advisor, whom I rarely saw, because he was in Washington) and gave us a demonstration.
From the time of my discovery of perturbation allowed transitions in symmetric top molecules about 1970 until my retirement I was #1 or close to it in symmetric top analysis worldwide. Good work on symmetric top spectra was at best 3 rotational constants when I entered the field. My data and analysis were good enough that I was the first to get a 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th rotational constant from symmetric top infrared spectra. The structure of hydrogen peroxide in the chemical reference handbooks is from my Ph. D. thesis project. I managed (for the first time) to get a moderately high resolution spectra of it. Previously published spectra had proved to be nothing but interference fringes from the absorption cell. I have worked on joint projects with visiting scientists from Novosibirsk to Tokyo- the long way around. Those fancy computer programs that model complex molecules and and make a 2D projection of a 3D model on a computer screen, so you can rotate it around and look at it from all angles, use the bond distances and angles determined by me and fellow infrared and microwave spectroscopists at NBS. X-Ray diffraction can't come close to the accuracy we can get for bond distances and angles. We occasionally worked with the time and frequency division at Boulder, Colorado (where 4 of them, all of whom I know, extended direct frequency measurments into the visible region of the spectrum) and on one visit there I got a personal tour and explaination of the workings of the cesium atomic clock that is the time standard for the US (They wouldn't let me touch it).
I left a spectroscopy conference at a resort near Loveland pass, Colordo, one Friday morning at about 10 AM, and made it back to open the open sing at WES in Washington, DC on time (8 PM). Although not an astronomer, I have taken data on Jim Brault's FTS spectrometer at the MacMath solar telescope observatory at Kitt Peak. You could see through the window into the next room the aproximately 10 inch diameter blinding image of the sun at the focus of the telescope, and several astronomers (with very dark glasses) carefully observing it.
The long path-low temperture absorption cell I designed and built for the FTS instrument at NIST is still in use. It allows up to 58 passes of the two meter base path with pressures up to 10 atmospheres and temperatures to -40 C. The unusually high number of passes is from the vanishing of astigmatism in a configuration I discovered with my 3D ray tracing program. Absolute absorption intensities of high accuracy for N2, O2 and H20 have been determined with it (N2 and O2 only absorb from pressured induced quadrupoles moments.)
What's your name and what are your credentials Gray Rooster? |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 03 Mar 01 - 07:57 PM Just a little side note. In threads here on railroad songs you'll find mention of Norm Cohen's compendium 'The Long Steel Rail'. He published so much on folklore, 'Journal of American Folklore, etc.,) that folklorists thought he was one of them. I guess maybe he was, but he was also a worldclass researcher in chemical kinetics. (He's now retired from that, living near Portland, Oregon and working on a temendous bibliograph of American songbooks. Although I had known about him from kineticists at NBS (who knew nothing about his folklore interrests) I didn't meet him until after both of us had retired from science. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Tini Date: 03 Mar 01 - 09:01 PM as a light aside and backtracking a bit back to the thread name- I was just at a high school theater festival, where various schools presented plays, most of which were badly done. One play was an adaptation of Marlowe's "Faustus." In this version, Faustus was a woman scientist of unspecified disipline. But she soul her soul to the devil in exchainge for knowledge! Hopefully most physics aren't like that ;) |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 03 Mar 01 - 09:24 PM Mary Shelly wasn't a scientist. Another aside: the publisher of the first edition of Marlow's 'Faustus' had a woodcut made up for the title page. He also published it on broadside ballads, where the printed matter was deleted. It was passed on to subsequent printers, and can be seen throughout the 17th century. A rival printer, c 1680, who didn't have access to it, commissioned a copy, but it wasn't terribly good and is easily spotted as an imitation. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Sluefoot Sue Date: 03 Mar 01 - 09:37 PM May I ask what are the practical applications of your discoveries, inventions, or patents, Dr. Olson? And what is that nonsense about reality being non-local? I ask with the utmost sincerty. Thanks, Sue |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 03 Mar 01 - 11:04 PM D-n, a long reply was wiped out when my internet connection broke. I said nothing about reality being non-local. Also people don't think alike, and one person's reality is often another's chaos. Serious thinkers have questioned on what side of the walls of an insane asylum the insane are to be found.
The Science article I noted was directed at determining concentration of common polutant of internal combustion exhaust. For other applications search the web for partition functions and planetary atmospheres. Also molecular modeling of pharmaceuticals (which I already came close to). |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 03 Mar 01 - 11:13 PM Sorry about that trite 'one person's reality is often another's chaos'. Everyone who's ever give more than a casual glance at religion or politics already knows that. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 04 Mar 01 - 01:35 AM Bruce O: An impressive career and a welcome friend at the 'Cat! I hope you find it as enjoyable as we do; some of us come purely for the hsitories, some for the chatter, and some for some of each. But they are all bright minds and quick witted. Glad to make you ascquaintance. A |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 04 Mar 01 - 04:09 AM I'm here for folk song and music, and have been since about the end of July 1997. You can find some histories on my website, which will soon be 3 years old. Also there a list of my scientific and a few folklore related publications. The last one's not in yet, but is a review requested by the editor of 'Folk Music Journal' of EFDSS of the Bodley Ballads website and Steve Roud's broadside ballad and folksong indexes. It's in the last issue (2000), which came out last December. If you search the forum for my name you'll find I've posted a few times previously. WBO in DT is me, but some credited to me are really from MS (Murray on Saltspring) Impressive carrer, well yes, I guess maybe, but exceptional, no. Good scientists are intelligent and highly motivated workers and very hard workers, and I know many that have had a lot more impressive carrers than mine. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Sluefoot Sue Date: 04 Mar 01 - 10:37 AM Dr. Olson, I didn't mean I thought you had said it. I was referring to the popular ideas evolving from Bell's Theorem, about the nature of reality. I heartily agree that one person's reality is another's chaos!! Ha Ha Ha sincerely, Sue |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 04 Mar 01 - 10:53 AM I'll second the welcome and hello from Amos, Dr. I am René Lawrence, performance coach, musician and composer (film, TV, radio, recording, concert, symphony), and children's concert specialist. I take on the cast-offs, special ed, and those children who have been expelled from the Dallas and Houston school districts and teach them "how to fish." I don't apologize for drawing you out like I did. I just couldn't understand the slap you delivered when I was speaking from an originally humorous position (read the first post again, please). You must have had a bad day. I warned you that you could not win. I was never in a fighting position. After your slap, my only tools were wit, the (I thought) evident humor and, to bait you and hope you took it. I was in the thick of the theory (and I just mean theory) that led to the reduction of the apparent speed of light. And, unpublished but witnessed and recognized by a few that I suppose you'd consider "intelligent enough to count," proposed a method to reduce the speed of light in 1958. I only knew "a super cold, reflective/opaque, particulate medium" might do it back then - when I was 8. I was accused of being counter intuitive. How nice. Funny, theorists start "in the head" - no matter what their names, ages or specialties are. As Amos allowed, there are those of us out here who have good minds and don't need a who's who to use them. I do read original papers on the subjects that interest me and I don't mean distilled versions for the layman. I read those as well, so I can have some more ammunition for the children I deal with. As I'm sure you realize now (and I hope with a smile), I use any tool I can get my hands on. I need people like you to point to and say, "Ask Him. He can really help you on that subject," when I run into someone with questions in your field. Here's to you. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 04 Mar 01 - 04:36 PM Sorry Gray Rooster, when I saw that 99.9999% of physics was easy I sort of snapped, and failed to discover your subtle humour. When one's ire is up his common sense is gone. I thought mine was pretty subtle, and I've made a few enemies of people who didn't understand it and mistakenly thought I was insulting them. I never found physics easy. I've gotten rid of my copy of Eyring, (later a Mormon elder), Walter and Kemble's 'Quantum Chemistry' that was known familiarly as the green diamond. Green was the color of the cover, and it was very, very hard. [My research director in college (later director of the Mellon Institute, who combined it with Carnegie Tech) and had post-doct'd with Pauling at Cal. Tech, told me that Pauling had once gone to Utah to visit Henry Eyring to talk science, but Eyring had used the whole time trying to convert Pauling into becoming a Mormon. Pauling and Wilson's 'Quantum Mechanics' wasn't easy, but with perseverance I could make it through their treatments. I knew both authors slightly and couldn't understand why E. B Wilson never got a Nobel prize (contrary to popular conception there's a bit of politics in those; any self advertizing instantly kills your chances, and you have to get recommended by the right people to get on the list of possibles). His son went into research in a different area and became what is probably the youngest Nobel winner ever. Wilson started out with World War II surplus radar equiptment, and did a lot of great microwave spectroscopy, but Walter Gordy and Art Shallow did a lot of the development, too. Art Shallow later got a Nobel prize for work one of his grad students-later post doc did, but it was really in recognician of his earlier work in microwave spectroscopy and his invention of the maser, which was later translated from the microwave frequency domain into the optical freqency domain to become the laser. I should confess that I don't have a Ph. D. in physics. It was in physical chemistry, but when I applied to NBS I was told they didn't have any openings for physical chemists but Earle Plyer had opened aposition for a physicist before he went off to Europe on sabbatical for a year, and with my unusual background in electronics (for a chemist that is) I should reapply as a physicist. That's how I got to be a physicist. [Life seems to be a bewildering series of accidents] Needless to say I had to do a lot of out of hours studying to get to be a real physicist. I'd had electonics as a hobby since about age 15, building AM radios (and fixing the neighbours), phonographs (nylon plastic broom bristles made great needles), small transmitters, etc. Jim Russell (inventor of the CD) was always better at that kind of thing than I was (but his family had some money and he didn't have to build everything out of junk. His wife Barbara was the only other one in my junior high school class who wanted to be a chemist, which she still does on a consulting basis, when her beloved viol lets her). At any rate I took senior level electronics courses in college, and though my BS was in chemistry I had a solid minor in EE. (In junior college an engineering prof had told me to forget the EE bit, that didn't mix with chemistry, advice I fortunately ignored). It was pretty funny in the advanced electricity course in the Physics Department at UW. (I never liked that instructor much, who I again had for classical mechanics. He didn't go for straight forward treatments of topics, but always had some trick mathematical transformation to get the answer to a different problem, then by a different transformation got that one back into the starting problem). I was far from the top in the physics treatment of electricty, (and still have to struggle with electro-magnetism) but the geniuses all came to my setup in the lab to find out how to get the wires connected to the right boxes, in order to do the experiment. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Bill D Date: 04 Mar 01 - 07:07 PM ...and you know, Bruce O. 'could' have had a career as a parking lot attendent, too!..*big grin*, but he's much too shy to list that in his accomplishments. (sorry for the earlier nagging, Bruce...I should have tumbled to who it was sooner..) |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 04 Mar 01 - 07:54 PM There are a lot of things like that parking lot attendant business that I did't mention, and I hope no one ever does. Periods of stupidity seem to come much more often than those very brief flashes of brilliance. You've really got to grab the latter fast or they get away, and they aren't very sporting; they never give you a 2nd chance to catch them. I'm really quite disappointed in myself, because I've tried hard to control my temper until I was reasonably certain I had the facts straight, but I sure goofed it up this time. Subtlety on the internet is a completely new phenomenon to me. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 04 Mar 01 - 08:47 PM Perhaps I should give a little background here for newcommers. There haven't been many 'in' jokes here, and let's keep it that way, because I don't think that would do the Mudcat Forum any good. There are several here that have for a long time been members of FSGW (fsgw.org) and Dick Greenhaus and Susan of DT have long ben regualar regular visitors, and more recently Max. Bill D. and I aren't what one would call real close friends, but have been well acquainted for over 20 years, and I was at his wedding to Ferrara. When Bill D. performs, with his autoharp for accompaniment, he's alway got a droll or subtle piece of humour to introduce his song. That lucky guy married a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice, who knows lots of great old folk and other songs.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Bill D Date: 04 Mar 01 - 11:40 PM 20 years?..but who's counting? It has been fun...yep, I AM lucky...thanks, Bruce ....if I had crammed 1/4 as much into my life as Bruce has, I'd be happy as a clam... |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 05 Mar 01 - 01:15 PM The difference between how a layman thinks and a physicist thinks can sometimes be hilarious. Ken Evenson has kept a newspaper editorial. Evanson and crew in their earlier work on the speed of light did a preliminary experiment and got a better value, which analysis of the possible errors indicated it was good to + or - 2 meters per second (out of 299792458 m/s). The newspaper editor asked, why all this ballyhoe about NBS's speed of light. Why don't they just shut up until they get it right. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 05 Mar 01 - 01:41 PM Glad you're smiling again Bruce. Sometimes it takes a little humor and fun to get to know people here at the 'Cat. I never intended my "whopper" to get under anyone's skin - I thought it as transparent as glass. I DO love physics. I could'a been a contenda too, but my family consisted of doctors and teachers so I took up music to sooth my logic circuits. I grew up following as much of the sciences as I could while avoiding medicine. My uncle, Dr. Maurice Adam, was the chief of thoractic's at Baylor here and his wife a pediatrician. My grandmother was a fifty plus year veteran teacher of foreign languages. My brother, Stephen West, went on to write much of the code that put us on the moon and was one of the granddaddies of EDI. My mother dated guys like Kirtley Mather (Prof. Emeritus, Harvard), Alan Mannion (Main Currents in Modern Thought) and "Freznel" (in joke) AND Bolsey and the beat generation crew - Jack and Neal. I was surrounded by intellect from the best of all possible worlds. If I had a question, there was someone I could find to answer it or point me in the right direction. I used to mess with my homemade radios, telescopes and Theremin's. I helped my brother build a tic-tac-toe logic board game (out of tubes) in the late 50's. I have the "jargon" down because I have to tranlate for children. I hate to let a question go by unanswered in some basic fashion, or at least, point 'em to the fishin' hole. I kicked off my musical road at five and haven't stopped since. I did it to have my own little niche. I surprised my family with my meager talent and they (to their credit) let me go to it. Now, I have a question for you:
Maxwell vs. Fermi . . . who wins?
Great to learn a little about you . Hope it doesn't end here. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 05 Mar 01 - 03:41 PM Families are funny things. Progeny follow father in some families for generations and in others what father did was the last thing any of his progeny would think of doing. I even met a Rothschild who was a scientist, doubtlessly the black sheep of the family. (Oh, no, we never mention him) |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 05 Mar 01 - 04:07 PM A further tidbit. At NBS GS 16 and above usually got called Doctor, everyone was on a first name basis. The ones that wore ties were the administrators, who working scientist avoided, because that always had some harebrained idea they wanted you to work on. (We usually had a sport coat and tie on a rack in the office in case we had to go out to lunch with a visiting fireman. The more contentious sent them to the cleaners every year or two, used or not. The big celebration each year was Secretary Day, when we would take her to a fancy restuarant and give her some presents to make up for all the crap she had to handle from 21 Ph. Ds, 2 MS, a machinist and data compiler. We tried to do it cheap one year when the boss was on travel and just made hot dogs on a hibatchi in one of the labs, but the smoke detectors were too sensitive and we soon had a big crew of unhappy firemen there. Actually I didn't want my work and degree to influence any one outside of work, and it was a moderately well kept secret until after I retired, and I still have friends that don't know that, so please don't tell.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 05 Mar 01 - 05:34 PM **BG** NOW ya have me laughin' in sympathy. When Control Data won SBC from IBM it was decided a party was in order. The Houston office was full of your "black ties" and the cadre of coders wanted no part of them at the fete. No one could come up with a legitimate reason to exclude them and my brother (now an Control Data employee) voiced his concerns to me a few days before the event. He was in charge of the thing and right in the middle of it all. He was the chief SA there. I suggested a "Cut Tie" party. Everyone had to have a tie and it was to be cut off after arrival to gain entry. A memo was sent out to all the brass in the traditional manner except it was delivered by hand AFTER the party started and timed and dated that morning (and people wonder how memos get "lost" that get them fired). It was a real treat watching the brass burn on this one. When the honcho put up too much of a snit, I'd hand them a 3 inch wide monster with polka dots in exchange for their Countess Mara originals (yes, I kept the ties) because the clincher was ALL the cut ties had to be knotted together and "flown" from the flagstaff out front for 7 days. Funny thing, none of the ties were reclaimed. I wonder why? And, I promise not to tell a soul. *G* |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 06 Mar 01 - 06:16 PM Lucky CDC. IBM, as is well known, stood for I've Been Moved. Their people somtimes got moved to places they liked but knew it was only temporary. Gray Rooseter, I think that since we stopped fighting the MUDCATTER'S have gotten bored with us. Got any ideas for a new one? Make it too subtle for me. This physicist has started to think about when does a chord become a non chord. For simple major CEG we have 264, 330, and 396 Hz for the frequencies. Play it short and all the notes become a distribution of frequencies as dictated by reciprocal spreading. [EE's derive it one way, but much more dirct and extremely simple is getting it from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle] How short a time do we have to cut it to in order to make it unrecognizable as a chord? Fortunately the ear hears on a logarithmic rather than a linear scale or all of our high notes would make muddy chords. I wonder whether Adam and Eve originally had linear ears, and evolution changed that as music developed. The Bible does't say that the serpent sang or played tunes to charm Eve. Just think, if he did that and Eve had a linear ear, we'd still be in the Garden of Eden, and as long as we didn't eat the apples we could stay there. I can't guess whether we'd have songs or music, though. We wouldn't have to worry about the universe disappearing, the devil take it, cause we wouldn't be in it.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 06 Mar 01 - 08:23 PM Yeah, the folkies don't want standard regression -- they want to see scientists draw blood!! It assuages their guilt... :>}< Just kidding. Bruce, it sounds like your approaching Keeley's resonant center there -- he had people buffaloed into believing he had tapped into an endless source of free energy using a bunch of resonant formulae obfuscated by Victorian musical nomenclature. Sounded so desireable until you tried to penetrate the obfuscatory language. A |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 06 Mar 01 - 09:21 PM Got my attention with those questions. Not even wondering if you know the answers. They generated other questions - see below. And, I've stifled the desire to run to some possible ready answer tomes. Because of my musical nature, I'm going to approach this from the empirical side first. I did a quick little test of my own. I can recognize a chord (Cmajor in this case, also tested minors and 9/6ths and augmented and diminished) if it is sounded for 100th sec. I have no apparatus to take it down to smaller degrees tonight. I'm also wondering about bone conduction which allows one of my deaf friends to discern major and minor chords with incredible accuracy (he used to be able to hear, I admit, but he's totally deaf now). Haven't tested him for duration though. I'll rev up my recording gear and try some samples at various rates for further empirical testing results tomorrow afternoon. I need some baseline on my hearing, which I'm sure is quite different from a thirteen year old's. In other words, I can only respond for myself. I think only inferences can be made at that point, but individual tests can then be made and duplicated (or not) by anyone willing to follow my experiment even though the answer they arrive at is going to be different for each person and only a PHYSICAL answer at that. As for the answer to the question, I suspect there's an eloquent outcome from this, and I state for the record (this isn't the answer yet folks): Regardless of the duration of Nonrecognition, the resultant will be (assuming one or more than one instance as in a "piece" of music combined and "played back") in the realm of subauditory expression or at the most recognizable only in the sense of say, a twelve tone row a la Webern and his ilk, played at threshold level, one note (tone, wave form) at a time. A music teacher would say it isn't a chord if I don't recognize it as such. And there are teachers out there that maintain a chord is simply an implied structure measured by the listeners ability to erect it. There are many "two note" (power) chordists out there in the pop field today. Webern would demand his works not even imply a chord - mighty hard to do if you are following any kind of music theory. A physicist would say it isn't a chord if the wave forms are not present to maintain the (harmonic) structure and frequency order (right , Bruce? - If not tell me now and I'll complain to Dr. Mills promptly). Sub to the above, could it be that failing the chord, the individual failed chords could be sounded together to make a "full" chord? Would a musician "build" a chord out of a non-chord row or individual non-chord? A non musician? A deaf person? Notes: On the true auditory level: Will subjective responses to testing result in misconceptions? Is it possible to entirely rule out subjectivity? The pure physical laws may not apply - brain noise (imagined noise)? I may be wrong, but it "feels" like that. And for you others reading this, I did say Old Fashioned Way first. I'll see what pure physics holds later. I want to see about an assemblege of failed chords in practice. Gawd, SPL's, constant wave forms analysis, harmonic theory, atmospherics, EDL's - sheesh! (cackling)(ROTFLMAO)! I contend that for practical purposes it doesn't matter to me as a musician unless it can be prepared and "played." If it indeed can be "played" it may have some interesting uses in regard to listener trends. The concept bears inspection anyway - what a neat thought you had Bruce. Removing myself far enough away from the question to be scientific about it ain't easy. I'm very curious about the result. I'll try my best to use no handy references. As I stated, this is an OFW experiment. I feel that just looking at the problem will bring out the Heisenberg in ME. *BG* For your question, you asked for subtle, so: In the newly theorized mirror order universe, are you playing a CEG chord to your opposites A#AD? What does he hear it as? What would he hear your chord structure as? Are you louder or softer? (Whoops - more than one question - or is it?) Last but not least, I think evolutionary ears is a distinct possibility. It would rankle me a bit to think Lucy had yours or mine (but I'd get over it). |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 06 Mar 01 - 09:26 PM Well every generation since Lucy has been told they have their parents' ears, but that doesn't make it so. I think human hearing probably moved into a different order of operation with the advent of vocal polyphony. There is nothing quite like it in the raw environment, even though the pieces are all there, I suppose. A. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 06 Mar 01 - 10:01 PM Gray Rooster. H have only the SOUND command of basic to experiment with and it Sound A, B A if frequency in Hz and B is time in seconds. It obviously doesn't really work right. I play 2000 Hz for 500 micro second (=1 cycle). I can play higher frequencies but for times smaller than 500 microseconds is just get a swishing sound. So I can't do much, and one can only get 1 frequency at a time so I can't make chords. I've been thinking about trying to find some software that can couple into a sound card, but that's just one on a long list to do someday. Sorry, I can't answer your questions, but let me mention a good, by a physicist, (practical, not a lot of long bewildering math equations, some short but relative simple math) Juan Roederer's 'The Physics and Psycho-Physics of Sound'. He explains how he ear works in considerable detail. And there's this long spiral tune that's a part of a logarithmic spiral, and each frequency excites it over a very short distance along the spiral. Frequency is converted to position on the spiral that way. There's more to it, of course, the hammer and anvil are at the end.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 06 Mar 01 - 10:13 PM Spiral tube above. **!??//|~~ Long reply vanished when I lost my internet connection. I'm nearly to the point of finding a new service provider. Against that is that there are lots of links to my website which would immediately die. Aagh, I took too long to add a couple of sentences and it happened again, but I didn't lose the main part this to so I hurry on with hope that I can get this posted.
Rem Amos's 'perpetual source of energy above. Personal experience: There's no guards at the gates or building entrances at NBS/NIST during working hours, so anyonce can walk in. Some carrying a strange looking contraption headed for the nearest lab or office and demanded that NBS certify his perpetual motion machine. The display of course didn't work because he didn't want the government to steal his idea, so he'd left out a couple of simple but ingenous little pieces. Nevertheless, he want his certification document right NOW.
The other is the guy with the little bottle that allegedly contained his secret formula of a combination of enzymes and bacteria that would eat all the salt out of sea water and turn it into fresh water at minuscule cost. There didn't seem to be any cold fusion involved to get rid of the sodium and chlorine, and he didn't know where they went, they just went. That one was awkward because there weren't any biological science people around, and none of us had studied up on how enzymes and bacteria did their shitting. We thought that was probably the answer, but an inventor who's certain that he's on the threshold of fame and fortune is never going to buy that. So we just confessed our ignorance, and picked someone we had a bit of a grudge against and sent said inventor to him for more expert evaluation (no on had name badges so he never knew who had sent him on). I've been f--ing around here for days now, so if there's no interesting fight brewing I'm going back to folk songs and music. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,VO Knudsen Date: 06 Mar 01 - 10:17 PM The reverberation times of the Garden of Eden are also much different than your tiled shower, Dr. Olson, I'm guessing! We always have 2500 at our Garden of Eden shows! Optimum reverberation time and all! |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 07 Mar 01 - 12:48 AM DON'T CALL ME DR.!!! Or we may have another fight here. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 07 Mar 01 - 11:00 AM Bruce, some quick notes. I had a few minutes this morning before a long session and this little break time. I decided to test first for sample interrupt recognition. I have a sound recording device by Digidesign that is a standard in the industry. It would qualify as a lab grade testing device for most of the things I'm going to try. The sound card I'm using is another matter. It is an SB Live card and it is subject to some fields I can't isolate and remove. However, at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, I can disern a distict sound sample pattern interrupt difference over a four sample range. Possibly only three, but I knew what I was looking for then and remember what I said about brain noise in my last post. It SEEMS to have been there at a three sample range. Method: I recorded a 440 Hz tone for 30 seconds and repeated this action onto three separate tracks. I then amplified each resultant randomly (with software) until all tracks reached 105dB at at least three points on the scale. I then moved one of the tracks in one sample steps around the 105 dB points until I could disern a difference. The difference being heard to me as a "click-buzz" (a non-specific to the 440 Hz test tone). Then for grins, I looked at the resultant "click-buzz" at high resolution and analyzed the form using Fourier's method. The result was "not a note" registered at 440 Hz but a complex form did appear that had MANY attributes of MANY "notes" and this complex could be adjusted with little effort to "sound" at several nearby frequencies AND frequencies MUCH further away as a "pure tone" (frequency) mode, ie.: 336, 338, 442, 448, 650, 890. So much to do. This suggests a chord may exist anywhere and nowhere, depending on the defined parameters of the test and the "ear" listening and judging the result. Three notes were indeed "found" in the test result, but I needed a visual cue to "see them." This first pass at finding my ears leads me to believe I was correct in my basic assumption last post. I'm speaking on a personal bias about auditory level only. You'd really dig this if you were here. Next pass I'll go ahead and lay down a diminished chord (less chance of pre-formed ears, more chance of brain noise), a major chord (reverse of the parens above), and a two note stack with octaves (invite the brain in). I'm reminded of my clarinet teacher talking to his buddy in the hall back in '56 about Pete Fountain's ability to sound "non- notes" on his clarinet. The gist was "it's still music if I say it is - a note doesn't have to sound "good" to me to be right for the piece. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: John J Date: 07 Mar 01 - 11:27 AM Physics, songs, music, beer, life. Not always in that order. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 07 Mar 01 - 11:56 AM d-n, did it again. I had a long comment explaining that in the real world there's always noise, just from fluctuation around the average number of photons per second that pass the energy that pass the energy (or fluctions about the average of arrival times of electons at the end of the connector wire for resistors) then lost my internet connection. Off to get breaksfast and see if I can get an oscilloscope to put directly across the speaker terminals in my computer to see what BASIC sound command really sends it. Then I'm going to dig out an old fast Fourier transform program I wrote and the BASIC programs that generate data points to feed it. The heart of the the output graphics display program for it is in the in the two programs on my website.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 07 Mar 01 - 03:56 PM Man, my ears are hearing everything in the room now. I cut off all gross noise makers and isolated myself in a pretty fair booth, but my brain is too trained at the moment. Method: I laid down the chords indicated with an electronic piano (Roland JX3P - not the cleanest but sufficient) running them for 5 seconds. Then I started clamping them in a loop, starting at .5 sec. intending to diminish the time .1 of a second each move. After reaching .1, I was hearing things "not there." I stopped for a period of 10 minutes and continued, starting at .09 sec. At .05 sec. I had to quit. My brain turned over active. Note: the pre-roll (3 sec.) and post-roll (3 sec.) at 0dB started to sound tone-like to me fairly quickly. I think I need someone else to initiate the loops on their cue instead of mine. This will keep my brain out of it as much as "expectation" allows. Back to it this evening - I too need my music. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 07 Mar 01 - 05:15 PM Let me possibly qualify that logarithmic ear ( and maybe withdraw Eve's linear ear). I can't find ear response data for very, very low sound levels. Nature gives quite a few logaritmic response levels. The eye is linear at very, very low light levels, but by the time there's enough to make out, roughly, the edges of an illuminated object you've passed it intto the logarithmic range. Photo detectors, quantum rate and thermal devices are linear which is great for quantitative rediation ower measurement for absorption spectra. Emission for gases however give lines of intensity that can run to 4 orders of magnitude. A cheapie silicon diode has a short linear response for voltage across it then goes into a logarithmetic response that is pretty good. A photomultiplier tube doen't put out voltage, it puts out current. Feed it into the silicon diode and you can get all the emission lines on the same chart, as it's now except for the bottom 1% on a logarithmic scale. Frustrated with the yellow pages and the web I ran over to NIST. The ones I were looking for were in France, and elsewhere. Jerry (one of NIST's brighest stars) spared me a few minutes and xeroxed a few pages from the Cole-Parmer scientific supplies catalogs. The oscilloscopes they sell to universities for undergrad physics and EE lab courses are just the ticket. I'm trying to see if in can get one on a VISA debit card. You can order on a little form on the web quite easily, if you have a corporate or institutional account, but that stopped me dead. I'm waiting for a reply to the email I sent them. That simple experiment I did with Basic's Sound command isn't the only one I did, and there are several things that didn't work out. Running up in frequency by octave steps stopped at a much to low frequency (after sound command arrange to print frequency on the screen in the same loop while the note is playing, theoreticaly a crude way to estimate your hearing range. It's crude because you have no decibel control.)
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 07 Mar 01 - 06:55 PM Only because you mentioned it - There are several ear tests available in software for download - at least there were several years ago. I remember trying one out and it suggested my ability to be a little above the normal for a man my age. You might try a search for it out on the web. I'm beginning to think that the ability to discern sound levels in this case may indeed be predicated somewhat on dB as well. I mean, if the clamping is done at an incredibly swift level, increased volume may be called for. So, if I can't discern a chord at say, less then 100th sec. at street noise level (~ 80dB +/- 5dB), perhaps I can if the SPL is higher by a to be determined amount. I hope I can do all this at < 40 dB and come up with a familiar result. I don't know if I can take in-ear phones directing high SPL into it for long at a high dB level. Wish you were close. I have an old HP lab grade Audio Oscillator and somewhere I have a lab grade oscilliscope software package. You'd be welcome to use them. I might break them out after I get through with my empirical's and take another look that way. And I'm shocked at you 'Catters out there that haven't come to the fore yet with some wonderfully silly comment about Bob and me searching for the LOST CHORD. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,grad student Date: 07 Mar 01 - 08:17 PM What's your hypopthesis? |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 07 Mar 01 - 09:31 PM Hush! Let 'em roll!! This is the best fun we've had since Max learned javascript. I want to see if they come up with something reliable. I am greatly impressed and am enjoying the whole drama. A |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 07 Mar 01 - 09:33 PM A dedicated researcher sometimes just goes to it and finds out what's really behind something that looks a bit strange, and later, if deemed worthwhile, looks for a hypothesis to fit. All too often the data gets warped to fit the hypothesis if it's specific as to what might be happening. That makes one look good, but it isn't real scientific research.
I found the cards for computers to make them into oscilloscopes, but the mid-grade BASIC I have can't call outside of Basic. I used to have an audio oscillator I designed and built, but I doubt I could find the vacuum tubes for oscillator and power supply now. I tossed them a few years ago. I didn't hear from that oscilloscope supplyer today, and found Fisher Scientific, which used to be where I am tonight, moved away. If no results by tomorrow noon, I'll look up the local Hitachi sales rep. I found a Rockville company in the yellow pages that handles scientific optical instruments, Opthos Instruments - who used to be Joe B., an NBS lab technician, but he sold it to an atomic spectroscopist who never had a scope in his NBS lab when I was in it.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 08 Mar 01 - 02:40 AM Bruce, what Basic are you running? I have several with some type of BASIC, including versions back to pre-GWBASIC, ie., PC/MSDOS (v.2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.3, 4.0, 4.1, 5 and 6). I'll go look if you want. I also think I have an old C Compiler and may still have a DOS FORTRAN module. Also, are there any other universities up there with good caliber iron? You might be able to use some of their gear for the asking, from O'scopes to run time. Wish I still had my Cincinnati account. Lots of big iron there. Edmonds Scientific ought to have what you're looking for if you don't have any luck elsewhere. Thanks Amos - I did make some rather bold statements in the earlier post that our guest grad can take as preliminaries and I had a few pre-corollaries in the last one I think. Bruce is correct on the face of this however. I am trying to reach an empirical solution here first, using tools available to me and little or no reference material. An old fashioned experiment. I feel I sort of cheated using Fourier transformations. I could run the capture through the wringer if I wanted. I have enough tools here to make Seamus sound like Mary Poppins if I wanted to. I'll get back on the horse later on this morning. I had a long night with my students, one of whom is preparing a piece he hopes Tabasco will use in an advertisement. I asked him about the project here and he said it was a damn good question. He works for NORTEL in their computer lab and he said he might dive into this himself. He had some choice comments about it. One was that it was a curious thing to try to hear in any fashion because it has no bearing on the actual sound of the event (we laughed). |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 08 Mar 01 - 04:36 AM OK, I fudged. I have kept at it. I also reviewed my previous posts and found a glaring error I shall now correct. I meant to say 10th of a second for recognition with the available equipment that day. I apologise for my typing error. I also started fresh in the method of chord tone delivery to eliminate mental bias. Now, to some gross test results - Method: I chose a Martin Backpacker 6 string (steel, medium gauge) for my chord delivery. I captured the following chords: Amajor, Am, Adim and a "power" E chord. I plucked each chord several times and let it ring til the decay was evident (I was not timing the attack, sustain or decay). I captured the waveforms into SoundForge 4.5 through a SONY ECM-56F microphone after using a three second pre-roll. I was after a gross test value only, so I was not concerned with the exact time of the events or the SPL or dB levels or ambient noise levels in the environment. After capture, I then chose a chord form and enlarged the waveform view to include 100th's of seconds and played increasingly smaller segments from the beginning of each chord sample at a comfortable output (~ 30 dB +/- 3dB). Briefly: In each case, I was able to recognize the nature of the chord type down to a degree of three one-hundredths of a second. Notes: If I strip an electronic tri-tone series with the same chords down to the bare minimum required to maintain the integrity of the tonality, will the result be familiar with the gross test results arrived at with the acoustic instrument used in the previous test? At what dB/SPL will this event fail? Proceedings Future: Claim the gross test results as a baseline? Attach several "non-recognizable" samples from the recorded forms and test for tonal cohesion? Re-record and re-test with electronic means. Re-test at low and high SPL/dB. Identify the substantive elements of the structures that remained and were "identified as chords" in the gross test results. Correlate new data with sample recognition of previous test for interrupt recognition? New test subject for control purposes Visibility: I will, by request, place my test samples as waveforms into email for examination. The samples will not be identified as Major, Minor, Diminished, or "Power" in distribution to allow individual examination at arms length. A full and complete waveform capture can be sent after each participant has had time to make assessments on their personal time using any available means and methods at their disposal. (But remember, this was a "trial run" to see if things worked at all.) Direction: This gross test confirms my auditory abilities to a minor degree only. Next I need to set up a more controlled testing environment and place strict guidelines around which to refer and maintain the search for two things (a mistake in many cases): 1. The loss of chordal identity on the practical level and the mathematical level 2.Chordal recohesion from lost "parts" (for want of a better phrase because my musical nature demands the search). Note to the above: How to assemble the parts - rules? Sub to the above: Are the parts really lost? Is it a chord is a chord is a chord (fractal logic) or/and Heisenberg enters when EXACTLY. Can I hear the entry? (If ya didn't smile at that, ya must be tired) |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Pete Peterson at work Date: 08 Mar 01 - 09:26 AM I'm trying to re-phrase what it is that you are looking at down to the point where I can understand it. The question seems to be: for how long must a chord be sounded before it is recognized as a chord? If the single note middle C at 256 Hz is sounded for only 1/100 second, this is only 2 full sine waves if a PURE tone, and overtones could be lost. Does the human ear recognize it in a short time? Some empirical observations from many years ago: WWV time signals included a 440 cycle (this is in the days before Hz!!) or 600 cycle continuous tone, with a "tick" alleged to be a 1000 cycle "tone" sounded for 5/1000 second. When I read this I tried to hear the 1000 cycle tone and never could, all I could hear was a sharp "tick". And yes, I know who to thank for WWV. Anyway, before proceeding further, have I understood the question? |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: harpgirl Date: 08 Mar 01 - 11:25 AM I have been following this with much fascination Pete, and I also thought that the reverberation in the room would affect what is heard...Is this not true? If so then the room acoustics would make a difference.... |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Pete Peterson at work Date: 08 Mar 01 - 11:35 AM Hi Abby-- nice to hear yur "voice". IF I have understood correctly (big if) we are talking of sounds of such short duration that they would not have time to get to the other side of the room and back. Sound = 1100 feet/second, if 1/100 second then the "wave" is 11' long, is all. Room acoustics make a BIG difference but they are talking about short sampling times here. I think. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O Date: 08 Mar 01 - 11:43 AM I think were talking about times much smaller than it take for the sound waves to get to a wall and back to an observer, vs direct to obsever unless you're in a very small room. Pete, if A is 440, the just intonation C is 264, C-B = 264,297,330,352,396,440,495- 2C=528 The fact that chords sound ok on a piano (12TET) means that the ear finds anything close quite acceptable. It's very forgiving of small errors (and they are % errors because of the logarithmic scale) |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 08 Mar 01 - 01:22 PM Pete, the actual question was "when does a chord become a non chord?" This implies attacking the problem in the reverse of your rephrasing. Also, having worked with pro level gear and software in recording situations that demanded concrete times and zero crossing points at absolutes, I had a fairly good idea what I could hear sample-wise. I rechecked anyway as part of the method. There are some super ears out there that I've worked with who can nail down things to incredible degrees. I am not one of them, so I need a baseline. I've never looked at the question from any angle until Bruce mentioned it. The question itself led me to others that I find much more attractive (see my earlier posts). In order to continue the search for these answers, I must determine the LOST CHORD point to the best of me ability in order to pursue them. And, I told everyone I was tired when I continued on early this morning. I erred because of it. When I played the sample chords, I used as many as six notes and as few as four only. I was trying to limit the test to three note examples. I'm sure most are well aware that a diminished chord consists of four notes unless you want to get into implied tonality. I feel a little sheepish. I did say I was quite wary of my ability to step outside the nature of this path. I'm so anxious to determine the next phases I lost track of the procedure. I'll still email the cut sections as .WAV files for anyone who cares to try a little pattern recognition. I think they still offer some valid inferences to the original pursuit. Back to it a little later after I clean up a track or two from some more obvious types of work. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 08 Mar 01 - 05:21 PM Room surfaces have 'absorption units' based on abosorption (total loss through an open window [i.e., negative reflection coefficiants] as 'a' (a weighted average, and it depends a bit on sound frequency, absoption generally going up at higher frequency). The reverberation time in seconds is:
T= 0.05V/[-S*loge(1-a)] where V is room volume in cubic feet and S is it's area in square feet.
Note that sound and music is not my specialty, I'm just another amateur in that field, so don't take much having to do with music from me. Scientists have often fallen flat on their faces in areas outside their specialty. A world class physical chemistry reseacher/ Prof. at U. of Wisconsin was a little worried about gaining some weight. He worked out a lo-cal wholesome and tasty diet that went into the trash can when someone pointed out to him that a nutritionist's calories were 1000 times larger than a chemist's calories.
I'm obsolete. 20 years with SI units and they haven't sunk in yet, so I still use cgs (except for watts in EE) and convert at the end. I love cps because I know the dimensions directly and the conversation to SI's Hz is done by a simple word processer find and replace command. I'm about ready to see if I can find an unlocked side or back door at the local Hewlett-Packard or Techtronix buildings for the oscilloscope problem. The front door only takes you to the receptionist, and if you aren't there to open a new corporate acccount or order something on an existing one they have no idea what to do with you. There are probably 20 places within 4 miles of me (which can put me at the center of 'biotech alley') that sell oscilloscopes. Water, water everywhere, but narry a drop to drink.
Pete, that 256 cps for C is very common in old books, but A=440 is widely taken as standard now for Western music, so old C=256 is gone. That A=440 isn't all that great as a standard either, unless everything you play is major or minor. There are quite a few key-mode combinations in just intonation that demand A=445.5000 cps. C, F, or G would have been much to standardize on. Everything on my website is amateur, too, because I even learn the programing for the computer programs there on my own from a book. There is a way to call outside procedures from my Truebasic Silver Edition, but it looks like I'd have to fake the outside one as a Truebasic compiled program, and I don't know if I could in the outside program accept the parameters that the main program passed.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Pete Peterson at work Date: 09 Mar 01 - 09:33 AM Thanks. Thinking. (or trying to) |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 09 Mar 01 - 05:19 PM Pete, classical major chords have freq's in ratios 4:5:6 amd minors as 10:12:15. Starting with A=440 one can get the whole 7 note diatonic scale from that. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 09 Mar 01 - 09:26 PM Should have added FACEGBD major chords start with odd numbered letter and minor with even. However, if you want minor D1FA you have to have D1= 293 1/3 cps, instead of D=297, then it's:
D1FACEGBD and odd and even are switched fom that above. Nearly went to hell for scope today. Went to Tektronics and expaline what I wanted, an the man gave me a scope brochure with an 800 number to call. He didn't tell me they no longer made scopes like I asked about, and lowest cost one now was $1195. 2 hours on the web took me to Tektronics, Hewlett-Parkard (where I couldn't get to ordinary scopes), Hitachi (looked good on one until I clicked on pricing page and that blanked my screen and locked up my computer, and I had to cut power to restore), and Leader. Finally in a scientific supplies catalog (they wouldn't sell to me) I got mfr. name, Instek, and between manufacturer's and dealer's websites I got specs, and a place to order from on VISA card. So in a week I hope to have a scope, 35 Mhz, 2 channel (or trace).
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Gray Rooster Date: 11 Mar 01 - 11:31 AM Great Bruce, glad you're getting what you need. when you test, what are you going to use as your signal generator? Are you going to try pure tones, scrubbed signals, or are you going to allow acoustic harmonic properties into you group? I've been trying to layout a protocol here. I've also been thinking that I may run into a signal extraction problem when I start looking at the smaller bits of data I'm collecting. I've run a few quick tests and realize the extraction process I'm trying is somewhat subjective. I look, pick a sample and go. (SMILE) I wish I'd paid more attention to Silverman's translation of the Wiener-Kolmogorov theory of filtering and prediction of stationary random processes and sequences. And, detection of signals of known form in the presence of noise. I'm wondering if I might also be better able to test if I'm GIVEN a form and asked to derive or parse it, not knowing where the form originates from. Plodding on. Will clean up my baseline this week with more accurate input. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 11 Mar 01 - 11:55 AM Have just started thinking about a signal generator. I don't want the modern type where they RC integrate on a square wave and try to filter out the harmonics, because there's a lot they don't filtered out. For noise and filtering theory I've go Goldman's book. One and only once I managed to measure a noise power spectrum (1/f noise from a photodetector). You've got to interpolate through 120 and 60 HZ. You never get rid of it out unless your whole setup if run off of batteries and you've got it all in a Faraday cage. Your voltmeter for measuring output has to be accurate square-law so reading is proportional to power. For the the bandpass you've got the problem of getting the the bandpass right for power, so you can get transfer funcetion powerwise. Power and voltage tranmsfer functions aren't the same. 3 db points work approximately for voltage, but aren't even close for power. I had one course in noise and filtering at the U. of Wash. It got offered by the Physics Dept. But nobody at the U could teach it, so it was a night class given by a math-EE from Boeing. I have C. Shannon's orig. edit. of Information theory (1954), but that's basically all digital.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: gnu Date: 11 Mar 01 - 12:34 PM Yeah, ok, I think I ....naw... I don't have a clue. And now for something completely different - this is what I think of when I think of physicists thinking........ Exam Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following: "First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing with time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions, and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell. Because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities: 1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose. 2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year-- "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you."-- and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then #2 cannot be true; and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze." THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A" GIVEN Now, I can relate to that kind of physics. gnu |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 11 Mar 01 - 02:41 PM Hell can't be all that hot; some book of about 1518 (which I put on some thread here a long time ago). Said Rumbelow was only three miles away, and as near as I can figure out Rumbelow was about the next best thing to heaven (17th century Rock Candy Mountian, and much earlier Land of Cockaigne (now Cocaine), and that sort of thing.) At any rate Boyle's Law is only a rough approximation to real gas behaviour. Vander Wall's equation is a lat better but not 100% accurate (that triple point does in any purely analytical expression), and with computers now that cubic equation is a snap to solve. Speculators like to cogitate about entropy's relation to information and noise, but always forget that the sign is different. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 11 Mar 01 - 02:48 PM I forgot to ask gnu if Terresa ever got cold enough to sleep with him. Talk about complex physics, it's hell to model horizontal folk dancing, and describing in either words or numbers that outcome. It's doesn't get really erect, whoops, hard, until after the out come. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: gnu Date: 11 Mar 01 - 02:59 PM Of course, discussing hard facts, you meant during the coming out, the prelude to the out coming. After the out come, the theory gets all soft and fuzzy...er...fuzzy number theory sets in. Yeah, that's it. confusedgnu |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 11 Mar 01 - 03:15 PM That's limber theory. I'm sure that's a just a typo. I'm always doing that kind of thing. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 11 Mar 01 - 03:24 PM Anixously awaiting that scope, and not being able to settle down to do anything useful or educational while I wait. The devil has work for idle hands, but he only told me about thumb twiddling, and after I got that down pat, it got pretty boring, so I've here turned to see what an idle cerebellum can come up with, and found there's a mountian of trivia stored there that I'd never dreamed of (or off). Freud never got to first base cuse his drug habit dulled his senses so bad he didn't recognize much of anything up there. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: gnu Date: 11 Mar 01 - 03:56 PM Drugs, drugs, drugs... it seems everybody was/is on drugs. It's not that I judge people who did/do drugs, but hey, why do so many people allude to the fact ( ? ) that this or that person did/does drugs ? My favourite artist, M.C. Escher, did a mountain of drugs, as can be seen in his works - he made no bones about it ! However, when I try to instill appreciation for his works in someone who has never seen his works, I do not show them the self portrait first ( the one with the pipe and bowl prominently displayed larger than life )...I show them the intensely mathematical works of art for which he is famous. True works of art and provoking of mind and perception. When you taint the perception of any arguement/discussion with "facts" which are not persuant, you detract from your analytical rigour and lose credibility....no, I'm good....put it out. gnu |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 11 Mar 01 - 04:37 PM There's no denying that some people did marvelous things while high on drugs or alcohol, but my judgement was it was the people and not a boost from drugs or alcohol. I think it usually is the opposite, not that they don't fool you into thinking you have heightened awareness and perception. Geniuses sometimes used alcohol and drugs to drown out the 'reallity' that they have to put up with that us dullards contrived to make the 'norm' in our arbitrary culture. But I've also seen MENSA people that made the 5 minute attention span of a top administrator seem like infinity. They hopped from one advanced perception to another very quickly, but couldn't stop themselves from that, to get any one of those developed into anything at all usefull. Real geniuses learned how to contol that. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: gnu Date: 11 Mar 01 - 04:45 PM Would that be a controlled substance ? gnu |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 11 Mar 01 - 04:55 PM Usually, but what culture you're stuck in determines who does the controlling, and some don't seem have much sense about contolling it from our perspective. It's bad for babies some places, and soothes them elsewhere, and all that sort of thing, so it's all sort of relative to imponderables. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 11 Mar 01 - 05:16 PM Altzheimer's again on that last one, but not too bad yet, because it only took about 20 minutes to figure out who I was. But enough now of phyics and associated imponderables for a while. I'm going the try to find something productive or educational to do now if it kills me. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 21 Mar 01 - 12:49 PM I've started off on Sound cammand in BASIC, and what you actually get from it in a new thread BS: Hearing ABCs |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: mousethief Date: 21 Mar 01 - 01:23 PM You know, the things you guys are saying about controlled substances make some sense. Consider someone whose mind is racing a million times faster than us normal bozos. Maybe taking some controlled substance enables them to slow down long enough to actually carry out some of the crazy schemes their brains come up with. After all, the drug you give to someone with Attention Deficit Disorder is a stimulant. When I worked at the Sylvan Learning Center, the boss had just been diagnosed with ADHD. When I asked her how she got an advanced degree with ADHD, she said, simply, "cocaine." Why did Sherlock Holmes do coke? For the clarity of thought it produced. Methinks maybe he was hyperactive, no? I doubt very much that drugs induce creativity. But they may make exercising it possible for people who just spin faster than they are able to otherwise make use of? Just some thoughts. Alex |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 17 Apr 01 - 09:35 PM Please join us for Part II of this scintillating scietifistic conversation over here. Regards, A |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,fe Date: 04 Apr 02 - 05:51 AM they think about the color of the universe and if it is beige |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST,JTT Date: 04 Apr 02 - 06:33 AM www.thinkgeek.com. That's what physicists think about. |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: GUEST Date: 04 Apr 02 - 11:58 PM Got w00t? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. w00t! when you frag. w00t! when you die. w00t! when you lava-jump. It's all good, and it's all w00t.
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: harpgirl Date: 03 Nov 03 - 02:51 PM reverberate |
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Subject: RE: What DO Physicists Think About? From: Amos Date: 03 Nov 03 - 04:39 PM This thread is now a Moebius Loop -- it went on over to Part II as above and then came back here suffering from the angst of extreme temporal displacement. :>) A |
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