Sara Does Science
Scientifically Accurate Ninja Turtles
Just as catchy as “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” but way, way creepier. Also, turtle junk is really weird and these turtles would make very inappropriate action figures for children.
Learning about electricity with an electric fence. I’m actually impressed by the narrator. I think most high school (?) aged students would just want to see their friends get a shock, but this one correctly describes the physics behind it. Enjoy!
Many of you reading this may be familiar with ArXiv.org and many of you may not be. ArXiv is an open access library where scientists, mostly of the physics, math and computer science varieties, put up papers or pre-prints for all the world to see. Many of these are not yet peer reviewed (and maybe never will be), so you can often find papers that are fun, pop culture based, or just plain crazy-pants (I’m going to suggest a search for papers with the word “god” in the title here.) Since I like to turn to ArXiv when I have some downtime and want to explore the lighter side of science, I thought I’d share some of my favorite findings here.
If you want to join in the fun, many of my most fruitful searches come from me poking around in the “General Physics”, “Popular Physics”, and “History and Philosophy of Physics”. You can see the week’s most recent submissions under each category.
So without further ado, here’s a round-up of some fun papers from this past week.
Piezoelectrics are a type of material where, when you apply a stress to them, they accumulate a charge. Additionally, when you apply a voltage to them, the materials contract or expand. Just look at this hypothetical piezoelectric in action!
Oh Steven Chu…I wish all physicists were this awesome
My group just got done with some beamtime at the National Synchrtron Light Source. Beamtime is when we have time to an x-ray experiment at a national lab and all work in close quarters for long hours for a week or so. This experimental involved a lot of long scans, so we really get to know each other during the down time. Here are some of the highlights from this round.
- We collected an x-ray map that reminded me a lot of a certain part of a lady’s anatomy (See similar type example here.) My adviser and I were discussing what it looked like. He insisted it looked like Yoda (?) and, not wanting to say vagina or directly reference lady bits, I told him it looked like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. I thought that was universally understood as the classy way to allude to the fact that something looks like a vagina. He said he didn’t know who Georgia O’Keeffe was. I neglected to expand on the topic.
- I told a post-doc friend that our data looked like a vagina (well labia technically) but I didn’t want to directly say that to my adviser. He asked if I used the Georgia O’Keeffe analogy, furthering my conviction that it’s the universal way to say something looks like feminine nether regions.
- My adviser started talking about how he thinks vitamin D and sunshine over break are starting to help him grow some of his hair back. I told him it was just migrating because he has a rather pronounced “neck scarf” (his words). He then proceeded to tell me us that he just never knows where to stop shaving and doesn’t want to be one of those guys that shaves all the way to down there.
- In all the talk about man-shaving, there may have been a lot of gesturing involved.
- My adviser’s dad is apparently the best ever at BYOB restaurants. He brings a rolling cooler with a variety of wines and beers so he can select the perfect drinks to go with the meal.
- I am apparently the group party animal. I take this to mean that I am very good at planning social activities (read: picking out bars) during conferences. I hope that future group members will hear about me and have to live up to my reputation.
- Also, I neglected to pay a lot of attention to our experiment because I was working on my thesis most of the time. At least I was being productive.
In addition to actually doing science, I’m on my department’s Quality of Life committee. We try to do things to brighten up the department and this involves planning the holiday party every year. On my end of things, I have been responsible for the “entertainment” at each part. For the past two year’s I’ve had Grad Students vs. Faculty vs. Post-Docs/Staff Jeopardy! games. Now only have they been a lot of fun, but I’ve gotten to see my adviser dominate celebrity gossip categories. He was also the only contestant to properly spell Snooki in a spelling-bee category.
I’ve decided to mix things up this year and take a cue from another classic game show: The Newlywed Game. No, no one playing is actually going to be married. And unfortunately I don’t think it will be tasteful to ask about the whoopie-making habits of those in my department (but I’m graduating in the spring so if I ever want to do so, now’s the time!). Rather we are going to have a graduate student/adviser pair-up and see which couple knows each other the best. I fully intend to spend the next week trying to come up with a groan-inducing pun for the name of the game, but right now I just have questions. So I thought it would be fun to share.
Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll on The Colbert Report. He discusses the Higgs boson, the LHC, and how those two things make scientists happy. I particularly like how he explains the Higgs boson and Higgs field without the use of too much jargon and in a fun way.
Even if it’s not true, my labmate has found the best way to advertise his dissertation defense.
