All of the Above

A Day To Remember

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah. I made some comments on this day last year. The sentiment remains the same. Today is the day to remember how precious human life is, to remember what it means to be human, to have compassion, to move one step father from the bias and cruelty of past generations, one step closer to a world-wide community. 

Today is not only to remember the tragedies and traumas of our own families, but of all those who suffered at the hands of ruthlessness, ugliness, and neglect and those who still suffer today. We are all survivors. 

The slogan today is often “remember six million.” But let’s remember the more than six million, not only our own families, who perished when people stopped being people and turned their eyes away. Let’s make a commitment to integrity and empathy in our daily lives. 

Let us celebrate the best parts of humanity and confront the very worst. It is only through our consciousness and cooperation that we transform ourselves from a coincidental assembly of molecules drifting through space into a collective something that is aware of its own importance. However you celebrate, celebrate today. Celebrate in every moment that you remember what it means to be human. No one is exempt and no one is excluded.  

Stand Up For STEM Outreach and Education

For me, a big part of my experience in grad school is the outreach that many of my colleagues have joined together to deliver to the community. We all understand the importance of better STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) education and how its current state is less than spectacular across the country. I think that most all forms of outreach/charity/volunteer involvement with the intent of inclusion and enriching the local and global community are valuable efforts towards a better world. STEM is my passion and the way that I wish to contribute to the overall effort. 

So it is not a surprise that myself and many of my friends and colleagues are shocked by NASA’s recent suspension of public outreach. Not only is the outreach directed toward inspiring future generations of scientists and engineers, it is also the public face of NASA, which means a long-term strategy for funding. Sure, when we think of the great achievements of NASA we point to the science and missions, but public exposure and carefully & creatively constructed explanations of these activities would not be possible without NASA’s public relations. 

But let’s be a little clearer about what we’re missing out on. It’s not only what we normally consider “education and outreach” projects that have been suspended. According to the memo suspended activities include:

- Programs, events, and workshops. 

- Permanent and traveling exhibits, signage, and other materials. 

- Speeches, presentations, and appearances, with the exception of technical presentations by researchers at scientific and technical symposia. 

- Video and multimedia products in development (and renewal of existing products). 

- Web and social media sites in development (excludes operational sites). 

- External and internal publications, with the exception of Scientific and Technical Information as defined by NPD 2200.1B. 

- Any other activity whose goal is to reach out to external and internal stakeholders and the public concerning NASA, its programs, and activities.

By the way, “programs, events, and workshops” include both educational and scientific ones. And this last broad point about “any activity” that reached out to stakeholders and the public makes me pretty uncomfortable. Could these short term cuts limit or discontinue NASA’s support and collaboration with private agencies (like SpaceX for example) and external contractors? This is not just about halting NASA facebook updates; the impacts are a pretty big deal and if this goes on too long it will come to affect many of us in astronomy and the greater STEM community. 

I don’t know how much signing this petition will help, but getting the government to pay attention is not a bad idea. 

I also recommend writing to the White House and other representatives about this issue and the sequester in general. I certainly will. 

I’m not trying to bash NASA here, more the lack of interest in pursuing and supporting STEM education. NASA is in an unfortunate position right now and we can hopefully help by putting some pressure on our representatives. 

Adventures in Equador - Part 2: Pressure!

On this trip we were staying mostly in the city of Quito, the capitol. Quito is at about 9k feet above sea-level. The city is carved into a chain of mountains, so there’s quite a bit of elevation change between the lowest and tallest points. 

Having a few scientists on the trip inspired some of the usual nerdy activity. During one evening we took cable cars up to about 13k feet, where we were literally above the clouds!

We took an open water bottle up on our ascent and closed it shut at the top (that is as after we got over the breathtaking view at sunset). Atmospheric pressure is lower at elevation, meaning the atmosphere is more diffuse. By closing the bottle we captured this pressure for our own quick experiment. We kept it closed all the way back to sea-level after the trip ended, and this is what happened:

Pressure is a force over an area. Back at sea-level where pressure is higher, there is more force pushing inward on the outside of the bottle than there is pushing outward from inside the bottle, so it gets crushed! Ecuadorians must make their Guitig bottles well, because it is still sitting in this same condition in my office. 

Adventures in Ecuador, Part 1-Revisiting the Coriolis Effect

I spent the end of the winter holiday and new years in Ecuador this year. It was a huge ton of fun and I certainly learned a lot. I got the chance to visit the site of the equator, which brings up some interesting physics… as well as some entertaining pseudo-science.

Talking about the northern and southern hemispheres always brings up the “Coriolis effect.” The Coriolis force is not a real force at all, just a consequence of living on a rotating body (Earth). The way we see this effect on earth is in storm systems that are oriented counterclockwise in one hemisphere and clockwise in the other. 

Take it from this weather expert who uses real phenomena to describe what is happening rather than describing fictitious forces (http://weatherquesting.com/hurricane-spin.htm):

Why does the air spin?  The air masses that make up a hurricane move towards the low-pressure area, pushed by surrounding higher- pressure air.  But, because Earth’s surface spins at different speeds (faster at the equator, slower near the poles), air doesn’t move in a straight line from high to low pressure. 

The best example of the Coriolis force is on a merry-go-round. When trying to toss a ball to your buddy on a spinning merry-go-round, the ball seems to curve instead of going straight. You could call this a force (Coriolis force) pushing the ball, or you could observe the toss from outside the spinning merry-go-round and see that the ball goes straight; The merry-go-round is moving. Likewise, our earth is moving, so anything moving along some slice of the earth will appear to curve. I saw a nice video made by some grad students from U. of Illinois here.

For water flowing down a sink/bath tub drain, however the difference in the speed of the earth between the top and bottom of this spinning vortex is minuscule. Just think about the size of the Earth compared to the size of a tiny sink vortex. This brings me to some demonstrations I saw at the equator. Our guide “demonstrated” the Coriolis effect by draining a tub north of, south of, and on the equator. Naturally, to our delight, water did not spin down the drain on their line for the equator, clockwise north of the equator, and counterclockwise on the south side. A real crowd pleaser!

You can see: “at the equator,” “north of the equator,” and “south of the equator.”

Now I had quite a bit of egg on my face after telling everyone days before that water did not flow differently down drains in the different hemispheres. And since this incident I’ve done very rough calculations for my own sanity check that lead to deflects on the order of microns or smaller (think shorter than the width of a human hair). It can be easy to force the water in one direction or another without much effort (it’s a small enough effect). But the middle step of draining the tub without any spinning really stumped me. I can only conclude that I don’t know enough about the container she used. Maybe there was some sleight of hand?

I know it seemed like a controlled demonstration, but we didn’t see it more than once. While it sounds like a cop-out, an experiment has to be repeatable. If published in a scientific journal this would be held under incredible scrutiny, requiring the elimination of all other sources of rotation. If only we could verify the necessary conditions for observing (or not observing) the Coriolis effect in a draining tub. Lucky for us, scientists are curious people. One Ascher Shapiro conducted this experiment at MIT in 1962. After eliminating any other motions, it took 12-15 minutes to see the effects of the Coriolis “force.” You can read about it here in an MIT tech review. Yes you can observe the Coriolis effect in a draining tub, but it is a tiny tiny tiny effect.

If you’re wondering how the guides at the equator accomplished the trick, there are people out there on the internet who have some hunches, like here, where you can find instructions for reproducing this trick under “do-it-yourself fakery”

And on that note, llamas: