Losing Track of Time

 

We like our categories definitive and our time uninterrupted.  Nature, however, doesn’t care about what we like to project onto it. Time is especially tricky.

I’ve written before about the relatively recent division of time we call minutes and seconds.  But once we wanted to use these arbitrary, definitive categories for time, it turned out our leap year system was no longer good enough to keep us perfectly lined up with the OG timekeeping device: Astronomical events (solstices and equinoxes signaling the start of seasons).  

(Side note:  you probably don’t actually know the rule for leap years (because it is not, of course, exactly 365.25 days in a year); the rule is: extra leap day occurs in each year that is a multiple of 4, except for years evenly divisible by 100 but not by 400.)

Since the invention of atomic clocks in the late 60’s, we have actually been keeping ‘universal’ (a misnomer if ever there was one!) time down to the second.  However, to keep things lined up to the second, we had to introduce the leap second.  Unbeknownst to most folks, we have actually quietly slipped in an extra second 27 times at midnight, either at the end of June or the end of December. 

The problem is, just like when 1999 was turning into 2000 and all these computers that were only keeping track of the last two digits of the year were about to get messed up, many modern computers that are rectifying things down to the second are now getting messed up when the leap second happens.

The solution has just been decided on (Thanks to Isabelle for pointing this out to me!).  We will now do for the second what the leap year system does for the annual drift of a few hours:  we will wait until enough seconds have accumulated to do a big leap hour with plenty of warning.  At least a few 100 years will be needed before we have to worry about it…

The Leap Second

1972 - 2027

Trying to keep up with the youths

Today at the end of class, I pretended to be a student and joined a group of my physics students who were clearly talking about the exam I just gave.  I eagerly said "Oh, do you think the teacher will scale the test?" and one particularly witty student said "Why don't you ask him for us since I think you guys get along.  You know, you are kind of similar".  I replied (after a lengthy pause during which I could feel the cogs of my slow brain turning, creakily) with "Oh, he's super-cool like me?"  

The dry, serious response was "I really admire... your capacity for self-delusion."

A few minutes later, after I had recovered (several creaky turns of the old noggin), I lamely said, "Self delusion is how we maintain happiness." SC quickly agreed and whisked out of the room.

Soon, I will no longer be able to joke around with these youth's - I just don't have the quickness like I used to...

... but then again, I do have remarkable capacity for self-delusion so I'll probably be okay.

Bed Project

 Step 1: Bring your great-grandmother's bed out of storage and assemble it:

Step 2:  Realize it has nonstandard measurements and fall into despair over not being able to find a boxspring that will fit.  Purchase some wood and cut it down to size:

Step 3:  Realize that this foundation is too thin and your mattress will sit too low.  Ruminate over possible solutions and the realize you can just lay down some spacers under the boards to pop them up an additional 4 inches:

Step 4:  Obtain a mattress of the right width but a few inches too long but still can just slip inbetween the headboard and footboard:

Step 5:  Make your bed up with new sheets and a quilt:

Hopefully my Mom, Nana, and Great-Nana all approve of my daughter's 'new' bed.  It may have skipped a couple of generations in storage but 5 generations is a pretty good run, right?

LLMs, Math, and being Human

LLM's have really been tearing it up in the field of math lately.  Really phenomenal stuff as my brother pointed out to me recently.

Here's the thing though, we tend to forget that math is actually a language invented by humans.  Sure, the most useful language - the language of logic, the language of science.  But just like writing clear prose, people who are good at it tend to be smart people. So, we feel especially threatened when LLMs sound human or do math!

However, since the LLM's already blew us away with their ability to write clear expository essays - of course math was next.  Those same underlying connections between the tokens of language that enable it to strip away the fluff and get at the foundations of the relationships between words and ideas in language is exactly what math needs too.

Now, we must think about what it means to be good at being human if some of our core skills are being eclipsed by machines.  Emotions, intuition, the absurd, the irrational?  Nick Cave has often written that music is at its most powerful in its original form:  in-person performances where the group of humans on stage is in emotional resonance with the audience.  

My role as a teacher has never been clearer (or more difficult).  I can't pretend like my primary job is to explain the physics cleanly and in a well scaffolded way.  Really, I am there to make sense of the relationship a person can have to physics:  the beauty of it, the way it can transform and sharpen your thinking, the impact it has had and will have on society.  In a way, share my own emotional response to physics with my students.  This was probably always true, but it was never as clear to me as now. 

A Primer for Today's Nobel Prize in Physics

 

1930	Pauli proposes the existence of an undiscovered subatomic particle to save the conservation laws (certain subatomic reaction appear to violate conservation of momentum and energy)
1930	Photomultiplier tube is invented.  Allows for the detection of single photons via the photoelectric effect and a cascade of accelerating potentials for subsequent generations of electrons which produces an electrical signal big enough to detect a single photon event.
1932 1938	Fermi names Pauli’s proposed particle a “neutrino” to distinguish it from the nucleon “neutron” which has just been discovered. Fermi wins Nobel Prize.
1934	Cherenkov discovers the radiation released by a faster-than-light particle (peaks in the blue).  Note: this is faster-than-local light, not light-in-a-vacuum speed (which cannot be surpassed; light in media travels slower than light in a vacuum).  Cherenkov radiation is like a sonic boom but for light rather than sound.
1945	Pauli wins Nobel Prize
1956	Neutrinos are discovered experimentally (with photomultiplier tubes detecting gamma rays released when neutrinos collide with a proton in a water molecule)
1970’s	Neutrinos are adopted into the Standard Model as a fundamental particle (not a composite particle) alongside quarks, electrons, and photons.
1988 2010	Halzen proposes building the IceCube detector where compressed ice in Antarctica is used instead of water.  A cubic kilometer is necessary to detect these high energy cosmic neutrinos. Drilling the array of boreholes with photomultiplier tubes embedded in Antarctica is finished.  Neutrinos are detected by photomultipliers responding to the Cherenkov radiation emitted by faster-than-light subatomic particles produced by neutrino-proton collisions.
2026	Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin”

For more:

https://icecube.wisc.edu/

Dreams, New School Years, and Empty Nesting

 I just started my 24th year of teaching last month.  Every year since the first I have had back-to-school inspired dreams.  Subconscious letting me know I am nervous or something I suppose. 

Not this year.

The trick you ask?  Well, spend August moving both kids out of the house and onto their respective college campuses - that'll do it.  

Instead, I had a dream that I woke up in a house somewhat like my parents' and, upon exiting the room I had been asleep in, I tripped over an unevenness in the ground.  Upon inspection, there was a toddler-sized Sebastien (Maybe 3?) sleeping face-down on the carpeted floor right in front of my door.  Looking around, I spied Isabelle lying a bit more comfortably with a pillow she'd brought out before she fell asleep keeping an eye on her brother.  I was just starting to wonder why they were so young and where we were exactly when I woke up to an empty-feeling house...

Home Repairs: A How-to Guide

 When I find something in need of repair around the house:

I do the following:

1.  Watch about 3-4 youtube videos that give you a false sense of confidence as to your ability to execute this particular home repair.  Now let those videos stew in your subconscious for a few weeks.

2.  Gather your materials - this phase usually takes me 2-3 months; you don't want to skimp on your mis-en-place!

3.  Once everything is set, revisit your favorite of the youtube videos.  Get nervous about the task now that it is right before you.

4.  Delay as long as honor and personal pride will allow.

5.  Do it quickly and move on without another thought.

(optional: 6. blog about it)