And the neon lamp bulb smashing champion is . . . Well, I don't know his name, but you can see for yourself. I do worry about cracking those bulbs when I change them, but I never thought about using them as weapons in a sport. I wonder if they have little leagues too? Still, my favorite Japanese sport is this one.
If you dip your hand in iodine, then take an x-ray, this is what you'll get. That's what Surfactant did. Cool effect.
As I promised, I have visited the Periodic Table Table on the penultimate floor of the Wolfram Research building. This is a fairly tall building for Champaign, IL and contains some serious brains. We walked in, rode up to the top floor, and asked to see "The Elementary Mr. Gray."
The receptionist chuckled, made sure that I claimed to have an appointment, and called down to the co-founder and interface designer for Mathematica Software, Theodore Gray. We were escorted down to his spacious office area, in which samples of every element in the universe are kept. Many on open display.
I had budgeted 2 hours, and had to tear myself away after 3. There were huge samples of some things like 99.999999% pure silicon and a massive block of magnesium. There were pretty and ingenious samples of others. The pictures he took for PeriodicTable.com are excellent, but seeing them and holding them is an order of magnitude more impressive.
I got to hold a nice chunk of depleted Uranium (kept in the safe with the gold and platinum and antique samples). Heavy stuff, and almost as big as my sample of equally heavy tungsten. Maybe I should mention the layers of security and cameras, in case anyone gets acquisitive.
Notice the lead pipe over by Hydrogen? It was last seen on my patio, and now is part of this collection.
I hadn't realized that this brain trust is where Hollywood went to get correct math for the TV show Numb3rs. Wolfram staff may not criticize the inaccurate applications, but at least they make sure the formulas written by the actors match what they say they are doing and look cool.
I often regret not having gotten a job at a brain trust back when I was young and quick. It was nice to visit such a place and to be made to feel a collegue.
So, how shall I spin this as a serious post? Real science is a matter of playing with reality and seeing what makes it tick. To understand matter, one should see what there is of it. To understand the mathematical models on which our standard of living depends, it is good to know some real math. I find comfort in knowning that those who really know the math have fun with it.
Are you fed up with the world? If so, see if this video helps to dissolve your frustration. It features Kylie Minogue & The Wiggles in what clearly seems to be a dangerous earworm.
In Darwin's dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, Daniel Dennett describes Darwin's idea as the "best idea anyone has ever had."
In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and a physical law. But it is not just a wonderful scientific idea. It is a dangerous idea.
What exactly was Darwin's dangerous idea? According to Dennett, it was "not the idea of evolution, but the idea of evolution by natural selection, an idea he himself could never formulate with sufficient rigor and detail to prove, though he presented a brilliant case for it." (42) Dennett considers Darwin's idea to be "dangerous" because it has so many fruitful applications in so many fields above and beyond biology. When Dennett was a schoolboy, he and some of his friends imagined that there was such a thing as "universal acid,"a liquid "so corrosive that it will eat through anything! The problem is: what do you keep it in? It dissolves glass bottles and stainless steel canisters as readily as paper bags. What would happen if you somehow came upon or created a dollop of universal acid? With the whole planet eventually be destroyed? What would it leave in its wake? After everything had been transformed by its encounter with universal acid, what would the world look like? Little did I realize that in a few years I would encounter an idea-Darwin's idea-bearing an unmistakable likeness to universal acid: eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks are still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.
(63) Darwin's idea is powerful, indeed. Many people see it as having the power to ruin the meaning of life.People fear that once this universal acid has passed through the monuments we cherish, they will cease to exist, dissolved in an unrecognizable and unlovable puddle of scientific destruction.
Dennett characterizes this fear is unwarranted:We might learn some surprising or even shocking things about these treasures, but unless our valuing these things was based all long on confusion or mistaken identity, how could increase understanding of them diminish their value in our eyes? (82)