Anecdotes from science

[Genady]

A childhood memory came up from nowhere.

Our geography teacher was introducing a world map. She drew a big circle on the blackboard. "This is Earth," she said. A horizontal line in the middle. "This is equator." A vertical line. "Earth axis." A point on the top of the axis. "This is the North Pole." (The lesson was in Russian.) "To signify that it is North (Russian: 'Sever'/'Север') it is marked with the letter 'S'. The South Pole is marked with the letter 'N'." The last part went without any justification. IIRC, this led to my first confrontation with authorities.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Genady

[TheVat]

Would south, yuzhnyy, usually be abbreviated with Ю?  

So they are trying to turn the Amerikanski world upside down?

[Genady]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Would south, yuzhnyy, usually be abbreviated with Ю?  

So they are trying to turn the Amerikanski world upside down?

It's 'Yug' / 'Юг'. For whatever reason, Latin letters were used for North and South on maps and compasses, not Cyrillic. But the geography teacher did not know, which is which. Maybe she thought that 'N' looks like 'Ю' a bit. 

The story had a continuation. After she said that, I politely raised my hand and when she asked me what I want, I said that the letters should be the other way around. She was very upset and told me to bring my parents in. My father met with her the next day. Turned out they knew each other from school. So, I was not punished, but was forbidden to ever again correct her in the class.

And there were many opportunities. Here is another one I remember.

The day after Leonov conducted the first ever spacewalk, she came to the class very excited. She told us what a great achievement it was. In her words, "Just imagine, the spaceship is moving very fast. To let Leonov go out, Belyayev had to stop the spaceship, and it is very difficult at that speed. And when Leonov returned, Belyayev had to accelerate again..."

[TheVat]

Funny!  Hope she did not teach science.  

 

 

 

[Genady]

Saw this article, Computer Science Is No Longer the Safe Major - The Atlantic and realized that it was Not Yet the Safe Major when I decided to take it. It was then a brand new, just opened, never existed before major in the university I was applying to, and as I struggled to decide which major to take, this sense of adventure made it to stand out for me.

[Genady]

In the late 400s BC Democritus proclaimed that “atoms and void alone exist in reality.” He offered neither evidence for this hypothesis nor calculations on which to base predictions that could confirm it. (Weinberg, Steven. Foundations of Modern Physics.)

2500 years later:

Speculations must be backed up by evidence or some sort of proof. If your speculation is untestable, or you don't give us evidence (or a prediction that is testable), your thread will be moved to the Trash Can. (Speculations Forum Rules.)

[John Cuthber]

14 hours ago, Genady said:

In the late 400s BC Democritus proclaimed that “atoms and void alone exist in reality.” He offered neither evidence for this hypothesis nor calculations on which to base predictions that could confirm it. (Weinberg, Steven. Foundations of Modern Physics.)

2500 years later:

Speculations must be backed up by evidence or some sort of proof. If your speculation is untestable, or you don't give us evidence (or a prediction that is testable), your thread will be moved to the Trash Can. (Speculations Forum Rules.)

It's as if something changed in those 2500 years.
Maybe this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method
 

[Genady]

3 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

It's as if something changed in those 2500 years.
Maybe this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method
 

Yes, the method has changed. The WAGing has not.

[TheVat]

One of my favorite anecdotes is that Bacon died as a result of practicing his empiricism, conducting a scientific experiment.  He went out to stuff a fowl with snow in an experiment on meat preservation, contracted pneumonia and died.

I have wondered if that story is apocryphal but it's still a good story.

It is, however, true that his mother was Lady Anne Cook, so when she married Nicholas Bacon, she became known as....

[John Cuthber]

It's a remarkable story. Because snow does not cause pneumonia.

[Genady]

Something is off in this image on the back of an old British one-pound note, scientifically speaking:

Edited September 29, 2023 by Genady

[TheVat]

3 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

It's a remarkable story. Because snow does not cause pneumonia.

I think the story is that he was in weakened health, and the fowl experiment meant spending some time out in harsh cold, a condition often associated with snow, which caused further weakening and immune failure leading to pneumonia.  A thumbnail version of the story doesn't fill in those blanks.

[zapatos]

The design of Morton Thiokol's solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle was limited in size due to the width of a horse's ass.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-feet-85-inches-space-shuttle-horses-ass-william-batch-batchelder

[Genady]

31 minutes ago, zapatos said:

The design of Morton Thiokol's solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle was limited in size due to the width of a horse's ass.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-feet-85-inches-space-shuttle-horses-ass-william-batch-batchelder

Quote

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) were limited in width to 4 feet 8.5 inches wide

Were they?

Quote

Each is 149.16 ft (45.46 m) long and 12.17 ft (3.71 m) in diameter.

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster - Wikipedia

[Genady]

6 hours ago, Genady said:

Something is off in this image on the back of an old British one-pound note, scientifically speaking:

The Sun.

[TheVat]

The wildly askew orbits drawn around it, right?

2 hours ago, Genady said:

Were they?

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster - Wikipedia

I wonder if the horse's ass dimension was for separate motor segments.  I also wondered why diameter would be specifically limited to the rail gauge - some cargo is noticeably wider than the rails on many train shipments.  

[Genady]

7 minutes ago, TheVat said:

The wildly askew orbits drawn around it, right?

No, something else is wrong. (The orbits might be viewed at the angle.)

Hint: focus on the geometric drawing.

[Genady]

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

The wildly askew orbits drawn around it, right?

Sorry, if you mean the angles between the orbit's planes, you're right, they are too wild for the real planets in the Solar system. Still, there is something else, more fundamental wrong.

[StringJunky]

Not elliptical orbits?

[Genady]

9 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Not elliptical orbits?

It is quite elliptical:

[TheVat]

I was wondering about the orbits, but I wasn't expecting a banknote to attempt accurate renditions of orbital eccentricity.  If it's about orbital mechanics, Kepler should be sitting beside Newton.

The geometry drawing seems to be treating an ellipse like a circle?

 

[Genady]

12 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I was wondering about the orbits, but I wasn't expecting a banknote to attempt accurate renditions of orbital eccentricity.  If it's about orbital mechanics, Kepler should be sitting beside Newton.

The geometry drawing seems to be treating an ellipse like a circle?

 

Simpler, simpler. Where is the Sun?

[TheVat]

Well, the sun is not actually at the barycenter.  And Newton understood the barycenter lay outside the sun's sphere.  

[Genady]

Here is the Newton's original drawing, which the banknote artist has copied:

How is your Latin?

Anyway, the artist has added the background and in it, he placed the Sun exactly in the center of the ellipse, where the major and the minor axes intersect (the point C). This is where the Sun cannot be. By the Kepler's first law, and per Newton as well, the Sun is in one of the foci (the point S).

PS. In the earlier hint ("Hint: focus on the geometric drawing.") the word "focus" was the hint.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Genady

[studiot]

7 hours ago, Genady said:

Here is the Newton's original drawing, which the banknote artist has copied:

 

How is your Latin?

Anyway, the artist has added the background and in it, he placed the Sun exactly in the center of the ellipse, where the major and the minor axes intersect (the point C). This is where the Sun cannot be. By the Kepler's first law, and per Newton as well, the Sun is in one of the foci (the point S).

PS. In the earlier hint ("Hint: focus on the geometric drawing.") the word "focus" was the hint.

+1 for two fascinating pieces of information.

Although it is (was ) my currency I never noticed that discrepancy or knew about russian geography teachers.

 

Here is another quote from Ellenberg who has the ability to offer remarkably simple yet penetrating insights in his writings.