Small Science

Live blogging

2008-06-18T18:22:00.000+01:00

Bij deze Live geblogd vanuit Jaspers kamer. Dus.

Word

2008-02-29T19:53:00.001+01:00

sindonologist - an expert on shrouds

Read today

2008-02-23T18:15:00.001+01:00

Auto-omphaloscopy: Staring at your own navel

Dicta

2007-12-23T21:32:00.000+01:00

A sheep is like a pseudovector: if you rotate it 360 degrees, it picks up a minus sign

Another Sinterklaas poem

2007-12-09T17:48:00.000+01:00

Toen Zarathustra dertig was
en al een beetje raar
toen pakte hij zijn weekendtas
en werd hij kluizenaar

A Sinterklaas poem

2007-12-06T09:57:00.000+01:00

Beschouw een sferisch kado
Met ladingsdichtheid r
Integreer het boeltje nu
Dan krijg je de lading Q
Zo bereken je het veld
Wat vervolgens weer vertelt
Van de potentiaal en die
Geeft gelijk de energie
Die je steekt in je kado.
Ergo, vriendschap schaalt met r.

Writing writing writing

2007-12-03T20:08:00.000+01:00

In the next 72 hours, I have to write the following:

Outline for my research report
Several poems for Sinterklaas
Copy for the new EPF website
Piece for the next DLF almanac
Two pieces for the RINO almanac
A report about Show Physics 2007

And I have to comment on the following:

One draft for a research paper
One article about EPF

Small world

2007-11-07T15:17:00.000+01:00

I just gave a bunch of lab tours to some highschool kids who came to visit the university today. Halfway through the second tour, one of the kids asked a question about Rino (which has nothing to do with what I was talking about). Aparently, I have been to their school 2 years ago.

it's a small world....

Strings

2007-11-01T14:34:00.000+01:00

Your daily WTF-dosage:

String theory and the end of man
Future influence of LHC

Mandelbrot

2007-10-27T12:49:00.000+01:00

This has been in my head all week: Mandelbrot Song

It gets an infinity of style points for using the phrase: 'Badass fucking fractal'

Pathological monsters! cried the terrified mathematician
Every one of them is a splinter in my eye
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set
And the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry
And a million miles away a butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day a man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born

His disdain for pure mathematics and his unique geometrical insights
Left him well equipped to face those demons down
He saw that infinite complexity could be described by simple rules
He used his giant brain to turn the game around
And he looked below the storm and saw a vision in his head
A bulbous pointy form
He picked his pencil up and he wrote his secret down

Take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z's should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set

Mandelbrot Set you're a Rorschach Test on fire
You're a day-glo pterodactyl
You're a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You're one badass fucking fractal
And you're just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way

Mandelbrot's in heaven, at least he will be when he's dead
Right now he's still alive and teaching math at Yale
He gave us order out of chaos, he gave us hope where there was none
And his geometry succeeds where others fail
If you ever lose your way, a butterfly will flap its wings
From a million miles away, a little miracle will come to take you home

Just take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z's should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set
Mandelbrot Set you're a Rorschach Test on fire
You're a day-glo pterodactyl
You're a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You're one badass fucking fractal
And you're just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
And you're just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
Go on change the world in a tiny way
Come on change the world in a tiny way

Small Science is BACK!

2007-10-27T12:41:00.000+01:00

Well, hopefully.

Pi-em

2007-02-18T20:00:00.000+01:00

Everyone who is in the sciences knows the mnemonic for remembering the first dozen digits of the mathematical constant pi:

Oh how I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lecutres involving quantum mechanics.

This kind of mnemonic is known as a pi-em, according to wikipedia. They exist in all kinds of languages, as limmerics, rhimes, or just nonsensical sentences.

Anyway, a man called Mike Keith has written one that is 3834 words long! To give an idea of how rediculously many digits this are: anyone who memorizes this poem would, given the radius of the universe, be able to calculate its circumference with the accuracy of the size of an atom.

The poem is called Cadaeic Cadanza, and not only is it a pi-em, it also contains the parts of the narratives of various famous English works of literature, such as the Rubayat of Omar Khayyam, the Raven, Hamlet and the Yabberwocky. Mike gets extra style points for implementing the Feynman sequence (the 762th to 767th decimals of pi, which all happen to be 9) as:

"'Something's wrong', I murmured. "Despite Ravenesque timbres, so mesmerizing (the echo

'nevermore
nevermore
nevermore
nevermore
nevermore
nevermore
...'

survives, for example), my intellect detects wrongful alteration. This imitation, simulated Raven!...'"

Some might ask: why would any sane person spend months of his working life writing a poem to memorize pi to unworkable accuracies? The answer is, obviously: "because he could". Please, Mike Keith, keep the geekery coming!

Belgablog

2007-01-30T15:25:00.000+01:00

It turns out Celia from Denmark has a blog as well. It's called Belgablog (there is something of a long story behind that name) and you can find it here.

I am organizing a conference on show physics to be held in Leiden in March with Celia; In general, she is the person who reminds me not to work to hard. This is important, because if people don't remind me of this once in a while I would explode from stress at some point.

R.I.P.

2007-01-14T23:09:00.000+01:00

RIP Momofuku Ando, inventor of the instant Ramen noodles.

Higher and Deeper

2006-12-19T13:42:00.000+01:00

You now that there is something wrong with you when see todays Phd Comic and you realize you were planning to do the exact same thing today.

Overheard

2006-12-19T13:39:00.000+01:00

Overheard conversation at the lunch counter #42:

"Last week, there were all these people around who had formulas named after them"

Kristian Mølhave's Wikibook

2006-12-18T16:03:00.000+01:00

Kristian Molhave started a wikibook about science shows. This is something that should have been done a long time ago, and I am very happy to see that it has been done now.

The book is a bit empty at the moment, but given the amount of content in the danish version I am sure this one will fill up soon as well.

Book

2006-12-15T11:27:00.000+01:00

I just got my hands on a copy of Jo Hermans' book "Can you see better in the dark?" He was kind enough to give it a handwritten dedication: "That it may inspire"

I'll be reviewing Jo's book as soon as I finish the one I'm reading now, which is about Einstein and his letters to children around the world.

Beamsplitter Attack

2006-12-13T12:28:00.000+01:00

I attended a talk yesterday about quantum cryptography protocols. Halfway through the talk the speaker mentioned that some of them were vulnerable to what he called 'beamsplitter attacks'.

All I could think of after that was an immage of a guy looking fiercely, brandishing a beamsplitter, yelling "BEAMSPLITTER ATTACK!"

For some reason, that kind of ruined the talk.