Mr. Hood’s World-Wide Whatsit

Thanks to Alexandre Borovik for this tip-off about the new four-part TV series on BBC Four starting next week. Professor Marcus du Sautoy introduces The Story of Maths. In Egypt, he uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand, while in former Mesopotamia he discovers that the way we tell the time today is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system. This programme promises to help us understand a little more of what Galileo called “the language of philosophy”.

I’ve been off work this week, partly due to being monumentally inconvenienced by the criminally wasteful Scottish Legal System and partly due to being expectorant.
Thanks to jonesieboy, I was directed to this brilliant site full of puzzles and challenges for people who are not actually afraid of (a) thinking a bit, (b) anything called mathematics, (c) trying out a bit of programming, or (d) learning something new. The site’s called Project Euler. Why bother? From the site:

The motivation for starting Project Euler, and its continuation, is to provide a platform for the inquiring mind to delve into unfamiliar areas and learn new concepts in a fun and recreational context.

My only warning is that, as jonesieboy points out, it sucks you in. Enjoy.

Like other physics teachers, I have been sought out this week to answer this question as the first proton beam injection at the LHC is due on 10th September. I personally have found it hard not to laugh out loud when asked, “Why are we setting targets if we’re all going to die next week?”. I even gave my sincerest reassurance to a first-year class that it was all perfectly safe and that nothing bad is going to happen, only to reveal that I had my fingers crossed behind my back.
Let me reassure you that the experts have looked at the risks (which are all to do with theoretical things that have never been seen) and concluded that “there is no basis for any conceivable threat from the LHC”. The concerns arise because of the extraordinarily high levels of energy that will be reached in the tunnels under Geneva when the proton beams are switched on. The popular media have done a brilliant job of winding everyone up about the safety of the LHC experiments. You can read a rational and calm description of the risks at the CERN website.
Despite the reassurances, lawsuits continue to be filed to stop the LHC being switched on. All of them have been thrown out of court so far.
So, are you feeling safer now? Well, for those with an interest in such things, you might be interested in this quatrain from the early sixteenth-century French apothecary and (so some say) prophet, Michel de Nostredame:

Migrés, migrés de Geneue trestous,
Saturne d’or en fer se changera,
Le contre Raypoz exteriminera tous,
Auvant l’aruent le ciel signes fera

which could be translated:

Leave! Leave Geneva, all of you!!
Saturn will be changed from gold to iron,
The Anti-positive ray will exterminate everything,
Before the coming the sky will show signs.

What do you think? Answers on a postcard, please, no later than the 10th September. Well, there’d be no point in being later, would there?

All this week around the old capital, Dunfermline, we are celebrating the living legacy of the town’s famous philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. There are festivals of politics, film and science and innovation. If you can, get along to something and share in the feel-good factor of being a part of such heritage as we have in Scotland. Better yet, be a part of it. Did you know that Physics contributes more than eight Billion Pounds per year to the Scottish economy?
Carnegie made his fortune in the steel industry in the USA and left a legacy for us to enjoy many years later. Check out what’s happening at http://www.carnegiefestival.com/. The picture shows skeletron, the rope-climbing robot trying to beat the queue for a window seat in Debenham’s new coffee shop.

Here’s my tarted-up new desktop. “Gor blimey”, I hear you say. “It looks like my mate’s six-million quid new Mac!” Yeah, yeah, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but I was bored with the fugly Hardy Heron desktop. Reminds me a bit of the Peugeot advert, don’t you think?

Pimp your Hardy like a Leopard by following these steps.

We’re talking about Newton, the man, his laws of motion, and the unit, in Higher Physics at the moment. Newton’s first law, from Wikipedia, is:

Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.
Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.

The second law is more succinctly stated as the equation but I wanted the class to see more clearly the relationships of nature which are obfuscated by such certain statements as “this is equal to that”. This is a man-made thing to salve our uncertainty in such great things as the nature of the universe. I showed the class that the equation only works when the (man-made) units of measurement are consistent throughout. We struggled with the small challenge of converting 28 pounds furlong per fortnight squared into newtons* but the point was well made: the unit of newton implied by the Standard Grade and Higher statements of Newton’s second law is misleading and unhelpful when stated without pausing to consider its meaning. Better for us to say that the unit of force is the kilogram (pause) metre per second (pause) per second. In this way, we keep a closer mind’s eye on the physical things we are talking about: mass and acceleration, or the time rate of change of mass and velocity

Newton himself was not disadvantaged by confusing interpretation by educators. His original:

Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae, et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur.
The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction.

Good students would do well to keep an eye on the foundations of the science they are taught. For my own students, notice the key element of “rate of change” here. Think back to our discussion on what velocity and acceleration are.

* 28 pounds furlong per fortnight squared is a force of 1.75 x 10^-9N. Check it here.

With the change of timetable at our school tomorrow, it’s time to remind ourselves that safety in the laboratory is of paramount importance. As well as being reminded of the specific rules, you will also be given five basic rules for a safe and productive experience in science. Here they are for you to refer to and think about.

• Work Safely.
• Listen to and follow all instructions first time.
• Treat people and property with respect.
• Be prepared.
• Take responsibility and do your best!

The Education Minister, Fiona Hyslop, has announced this week the Scottish Language and Science Baccalaureates. The Baccalaureate is an advanced qualification designed to build upon the success of Advanced Higher (it says here).

The proposed structure of the Science Baccalaureate is:

• Interdisciplinary project at Advanced Higher
• Maths at Higher
• 2 sciences at Higher
• 1 science at Advanced Higher

The successful candidate will have passes in all courses making up the Baccalaureate. A Distinction will be awarded to students who attain B passes at Higher and A in Advanced Higher courses.

What does this mean? Well, if you’re starting Highers this week, the Baccalaureate could be yours. The first awards will be made in 2010.

New codes of conduct for teachers have been published this week. For the time being, this means that it is a bad idea for teachers to have any contact through sites like Bebo with pupils. As the exams are now over, I have deleted my Bebo account.

I will continue to try to help anyone who asks me to through this site. I think it is my duty to do so if I can.

The NASA-University of Arizona spacecraft Phoenix makes it landing on the surface of the Red Planet Mars tonight, around 2 a.m. Monday UK Summer Time. What’s different about this mission is that the lander will be exploring the Arctic region of the planet, where water has been found by previous missions. Why is this important? Well, we know of no life form that can live without water: in order to understand our own planetary environment and the development of life on it, it helps if we understand the processes involved. If we can learn about water on other planets in our neighbourhood, we may be able to unlock a lot more of the mystery of life on our home planet. Ultimately, we are trying to establish whether life has ever existed on Mars: and this question goes to the heart of our lonely existence… are we alone here in this vast universe?