Planet HUMBUG

January 27, 2012

Sarah Smith — Scientific embarrassment

I'm listening to a Ted talk by a chap who says we don't always know what we think we know. To prove it he says, he asks 4 questions of science educators, producers of science TV shows and even of 7 year old children.

I've stopped the video of his talk at 1:55m where the 4 questions are displayed and I'm going to try my hand at answering them. I'm not going to refer to Google, or the internet in anyway - I'm going to draw purely on what I already know (or think I know).

If you want to follow along - stop reading here, click the link above and prepare your own answers to the "Science Pop Quiz" and see how you do.

Don't scroll down if you are following along!

Really!

Ok...

So here goes:

1. A little seed weighs next to nothing but a tree weighs a lot. From where does the tree get the stuff that makes up a wooden desk?

My answer: from the air. Specifically the tree-stuff is mostly cellulose and that is a complex molecule which the tree gets by binding carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere using photosynthesis. The tree knows how to do this due to the genetic codes stored in the seed.

2. Can you light a little torch-bulb with a battery, a bulb and one piece of wire?

My answer: you can. You touch one pole of the battery to the terminal on the base of the bulb, and use the wire to connect the other pole of the battery to the conductive housing of the bulb. This question seems to talk about 2 bulbs - if that is not a mistake, then you might be able to connect them in series by touching the terminal to the housing.

3. Why is it hotter in summer than in winter?

My answer: Because the axis of rotation of the earth is tilted with respect to the plane of its orbit around the sun. In the height of the southern hemisphere summer, the south pole is partly pointed toward the sun by this tilt, exposing a lot more of the earths southern aspect to the sun for longer.

4. Could you scribble a plan diagram of the solar system showing the shape of the planet's orbits?

My answer: Hmm tough one. I drew elliptical orbits with the planets around the sun, starting from Mercury (closest), then Mars, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (furthest away). I don't think the elliptical orbits all lie in the same plane.

How sure am I about my answers?

I'm most unsure about the planets one, but I think I probably got it about 80% right.

Ok. Now to click "Publish" and embarrass myself, by playing the rest of the video and seeing how I did.

January 27, 2012 03:00 AM

January 25, 2012

Adrian Sutton — The Business of Standards

Recently I’ve been getting spam from the “standards organisation” OASIS inviting a company that I don’t work for1 to join a new standards initiative. There’s no pretense that I’m being invited because of my clearly superior knowledge of the area involved, merely that the company could get great advertising exposure by participating – including being listed on a press release! Naturally we’d need to become OASIS members and pay the appropriate fee, and to be in the press release you’d have to be at minimum a “sponsor level member”.

On the one hand it’s nice that they aren’t pretending to be anything other than a for-profit marketing company, but isn’t it a bit sad that we think standards are just a marketing tool?

1 – yes, they’ve done so much research into how much I have to contribute that they’ve got the company wrong ↩

January 25, 2012 09:25 PM

January 22, 2012

James McPherson — Need to work on the heart rate

Did a shortish ride around the district with Tim this morning. Rather than going over Arrabri Ave and back via Mt Ommaney Dr, we headed left up Mt Ommaney Dr so we could freewheel down the hill to the Jindalee boat ramp. I really noticed my lack of fitness – had to stand all the way up to the summit, and my hr didn’t recover to my normal spinning level for about 90 seconds. I’m going to have to do lots of this before I start trying to train up Mt Coottha.

January 22, 2012 10:28 PM

January 21, 2012

Ben Fowler — Speedcubing using the Fridrich Method: transitioning to a 3LLL

I haven't timed myself for a few months, but I'm definitely getting faster. I now can confidently solve using the Fridrich method with a four look last layer, but I'm now attempting to reduce that to a three look last layer (two looks for the "orient last layer" step, and one look for the "permute last layer" step). Moving from a 4LLL to a 3LLL requires memorising an additional set of 15

January 21, 2012 03:30 PM

James McPherson — Happy to knock a minute off

Last weekened I did a 40k ride into town and back. Rather than stopping for coffee at Cup in West End as I frequently do when riding with friends, I thought I’d see how I went without any more stops than required for traffic lights and intersections.

I did almost the same ride again today (less 80m), and was interested to see that I was faster over that distance by about 100 seconds. Also, while my pace was better (22.4 vs 22.1 km/h), I burned fewer calories.

For a giggle, I looked at the last 4 rides I did along that course, where I’d ridden more than 40km, and then the last 4 rides I’d done over that course with at least 39 km. That covers 7 weeks or so, from 1st December. I’m intrigued to see that while my average pace has improved a little (19.5 to 22.4), my calorie count has decreased. I don’t feel like I’m more fit, and my weight is still fluctuating between 87.5 and 88.5kg on a daily basis. I still need to move more (note to self, GET ON THE TRAINER DURING THE WEEK), and I am trying to eat less.

[Those grabs are from my Garmin page, in case you were wondering]

January 21, 2012 01:05 PM