Jacks of Science is a bit of an experiment.

I hypothesized that the site would become a flourishing group science blog as far back as 2006.

To observe this desired blog state I devised a simple theory. I would mix a solution from a staff of student bloggers in different fields such as Physics, Biology, Geology, and Chemistry.

Would I be able to find reactants that formed a homogeneous mixture or a highly reactive substance on the brink of explosion?! Even if I found writers that worked coherently together, would I continue to get decent results over time? 

I figured that the greatness of Jacks of Science would be directly correlated with post diversity. Many authors would lead to diversity in post subject matter, writing style, humor, complexity, geekiness, and length. However, in theory, things are much different than in experiment. As you may have noticed, this diversity of authors ended up just being a diverse range of posts authored by me. I didn't follow through on my original plan of finding other writers since I was busy trying to become a better blogger myself.

The original intention of the site has been lost but, 102 posts later, as my domain renewal date draws nearer, you're looking at the results of the Jacks of Science experiment. Full of random art doodled on my class notes (which now includes my 1st and 2nd year!), to pro-piracy open science discussion, to science DJ mixes, to my most popular article: Science Valentines.

So I'm trying to draw some conclusions about the data so far. As far as the traffic indicates the site is growing in popularity but I'm just not sure if things are working out. Blogging is a lot of fun, but the Jacks of Science initiative, as originally imagined, has been stagnant for some time. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere for a variety of reasons off the top of my head.

• No clear audience that I'm writing for!
• No incentive for new writers to be part of the site!
• I can only post once a week by myself (quality over quantity)!
• Science is boring (and thus cannot reach a wide enough audience)!
• My single column blog theme is too narrow!

If you play any video games from racing to first person shooters to plain old pinball, you'll appreciate realistic physics simulation. "Serious business" gamers often fork out wads of cash for top of the line video cards for their PCs, but would it be worth it to fork out a few more Benjamin's for improved game physics? Graphics card developers aren't afraid to take the chance that people will...

Last year, Intel decided to acquire Havok, the developer of a toolkit called Havok FX which designed to make special use of ATI and NVDIA graphics processing units for optimizing physics. Not to mention, Intel is rumored to be moving into the graphics card business in 2008.

Last February, NVIDA decided to acquire Ageia Technologies, the developer of PhysX physics acceleration cards, to incorporate their technology with GeForce graphics cards. Simply put, the standalone PhysX cards act as a dedicated physics processor for computer games which are intensive on all the things we love about games, like realistic explosions, pretty looking water, and precise car crumpling as you collide at 160 into a road divider. To add to the excitement, NVIDIA recently opened its PhysX platform to all graphics card developers! Sweet, sweet physics for all.

As processing power increases, it makes sense that as games develop richer lighting and textures that the physics should also have improved realism. I believe that it's only a matter of time until similar attention will be given to calculations for simulating complex chemical and biological systems.

It is bound to happen with games like Spore on the cusp of release, which incorporates at least some form of evolution from multicellular organism to land creature. The educational merit of such games has been noticed by NASA who is exploring the possibility of a massively multiplayer online game where:

Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity.

I can't wait for some sweet science games to play, because Peggle is only fun for so long...

My torpid blogmate Kieran and I often partake in the act of blowing our feeble minds with science. You too can share in this simple pleasure as I touch on one of life's under appreciated wonders: the reflection of light.

Here's la grande illusion: light doesn't actually "bounce" off mirrors like a ball bounces off a wall. The incident light that hits the mirror is actually completely different than the reflected light that you see!

People gaze upon their mirrored visage at least once a day but are too self-centered to notice anything but themselves. The mirror is a glorious example of photon and electron interaction but everyone seems to be concerned with trivial matters such as make-up, pimples and facial hair.

Thanks to advances in internet technology we now know how mirrors are created. (Pro tip: It's just a sheet of aluminum/silver with glass in front).

To effectively blow your mind, you need to know the following:

• light is made of photons
• photons vibrate at different frequencies
• stuff, such as sheets of aluminum, are made of atoms
• atoms have electrons
• electrons absorb or emit photons

You can sort of guess where I'm going with this. Glazing over some quantum-level details, here's a finer description of what's going on while you're busy poppin' zits in the mirror.

You start out by flipping on the bathroom light. Photons leave the bulb and hit your face. Your skin cells, which are made of various organic compounds, which have electrons, absorb most of the light and your face heats up slightly. The portion of the light not absorbed causes the electrons to move to an excited state. The excited state causes the electron to eventually "get tired" and fall back to normal energy state but in the process it releases a brand new photon of the skin-tone variety.

The photon flies out of your face at 300 000 km/sec at the aluminum in your mirror. Aluminum was a good choice because, as most metals, it doesn't absorb very many of the frequencies of light we care about, like skin-tone photons. In a process exactly like I described in your face, the electrons in the aluminum get excited and vibrate. Who wouldn't be excited after meeting a photon that got to touch your beautiful face? They eventually drop back to normal energy levels and emit a new photon based on the vibration caused by the skin-tone photon.

Thus, the brand new photon created by the electrons in the aluminum leaves the mirror at an angle equal to the angle of incidence. The photon flies through the air avoiding dangerous dust particles and gets absorbed by photo receptors in the back of your eye which register as an image in your brain. Now repeat this process for as long as necessary, for every single photon in your field of view, and congratulate yourself on successfully popping your zit.

Tell me your mind isn't blown!

Of course, there are many unanswered questions. Like, where did the photon actually come from? If it's a brand new photon then why does it have to come out exactly at the angle it came in as? Why is it that some photons can pass through glass and some can't? What about those pretty multicolored reflections I get off the pools of gasoline on my driveway?

There could be serious zombie consequences if I attempted to answer any of the questions posed above. If you're at all interested, I highly recommend you go directly to the source and read Feynman's QED which was written for the general audience!

Also, most of what I said above is outlined in greater detail here.

I've read A Brief History of Time, A Short History of Nearly Everything, and even The Cartoon History of the Universe but none were as brief/knowledge-packed as science humorist (!?) Eric Shulman's "Wiki History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less". Check it!

Sometimes seminars can be a little dry. Don't you find it's easier to sleep in a comfy lecture seat while your monotone-voiced professor is speaking than at home in the quiet of your home? The formula is something like:

(Earliness * Unenthusiasticness of Speaker)^(Interest/Sleep Depravity) = Number of Z's Caught

Although, Feynman's lectures always seem engaging! That's why I wasn't sure if adding backbeats to one of his famous lectures was such a good idea. Well, I thought I would give it a try anyway.

I was careful to mix instrumentals that weren't too heavy on the sampling and keep the volume on the low side so as not to distract from the concepts. Listen for hip-hop classics by DJ Premier, J Dilla, RJD2, Nas, Madlib, Ghostface, and much more.

Download the mix here(48mb) or stream it with this:

Note: Feynman's soul clap pictured above.

Yep, everyones favorite 248-dimensional Lie algebra E8 makes yet another stride in it's latest publicity stunt in this new video "Lights Get Low" by Freeway featuring Dre and Rick Ross. The trendy algebra can be seen repeatedly as a backdrop for much booty shaking.

Now if only Freeway would drop a shout out verse for Wilhelm Killing instead of just plain old killing.

First I missed Cafe Scientifique, then, before I knew it I'm missed the Toronto Zombie Walk! Thankfully I haven't missed Halloween because there is just enough time to throw out my sexy devil costume and start gathering the necessary materials for the ultimate terror of the netherworld: Zombie Stephen Hawking.

Take a look at the video below for an example of a decent ZSH execution.

Well, here's my step by step guide to being a Zombie Stephen Hawking for Halloween.

1. Obtain A Wheelchair. This is definitely the hardest part of the costume to acquire. If you know anyone who has a disability or you are conveniently disabled yourself, then you are in the clear. Don't be afraid to talk to the elderly. If you aren't ready to commit to that, I know I'm not, try checking your local Yellow Pages for "Medical Equipment and Supplies, Wheelchair Rentals, Hospital Equipment, etc". If you can't get a wheelchair consider zombify-ing a more able bodied scientist.
2. Obtain Hawking-esque Clothing. Stephen Hawking has been spotted in many comfortable garments so you are pretty flexible when it comes to clothes. A thrift store suit would be my personal choice, but I wouldn't turn away a nice wool knit over a collared shirt with some wool pants. Just make sure to ask the thrift store clerk how hard it is to get blood stains out of your garments. Don't forget that Stephen Hawking wears glasses, and not those retarded black plastic-framed ones, but classy thin-framed gold ones.
3. Obtain a Voice Synthesizer. This step requires the most technical know-how. Right off the bat, carrying a laptop around with your costume is an easy solution, plus you can check your email. Remember that a sinister black Macbook would appropriately compliment the zombie aesthetic much more than a glistening shiny Dell (which happens to be scary enough as is).

   On a Mac, open up System Preferences > Speech > Text to Speech and then select the System Voice "Fred". I simply checked the box "Speak selected text when key is pressed" and set it to something like Command+Shift+S. Then I opened up a Text Edit document and wrote up something like "Brains, Brains, I don't need your knowledge, I'm just hungry" or "At the beginning of the universe was the Big Bang, at the end of your universe will be a Big Crunch...of your brain".

   A similar approach can be taken on Windows using the Vista Ease-of-Access narrator or XP's Control Panel > Speech > Text to Speech feature. The best part about using a laptop is being flexible and typing new phrases on-the-fly. Be creative, for example: "In a Blackhole, No One Can Hear You Scream... unless you scream out Hawking Radiation, good luck with that".

   The problem with the laptop method is that the computer speakers are too quiet. Consider equipping your computer with a set of external speakers and mounting them on the wheelchair, especially for a louder Halloween party environment.But carrying around a laptop is not always ideal wandering around at night in strange neighborhoods. You can prerecord some phrases using an online text-to-speech generator like the one at AT&T labs. The problem with that site is that the voices are too smooth and uncharacteristic of Stephen Hawking. Either way, generate phrases and burn them to a CD for play in a discman with speaker set-up for a robbery-free night.

4. Zombify. There is no limit to how wounded and how hideous of a Hawking you want to be. Just follow some of the zombie guides on the internet but remember to be tasteful because you don't want people to lose sight of the fact that you are a distinguished British astrophysicist. You'll definitely need fake blood to splatter across your clothes and to drip on your wheels to leave nice wheel trails of blood.
5. Obtain Friend. Unfortunately, Stephen Hawking cannot wheelchair himself around, if you dare choose to wheel yourself you will ruin the illusion and therefore ruin the costume. You need to find someone willing to push you from door to door or from bar to bar. There's no easy way to do this one. Obtaining a friend can take years of tedious "listening" and "sharing emotions" but if you join Facebook and start looking up people from your highschool whom you barely know, you might be able to find someone twisted and desperate enough to help you. Who knows, you may even find a cute girl to dress up as Stephen's sexy zombie nurse / zombie wife, Elaine Mason!

And that's all there is to it! Click Google Ads if you liked the guide and post some possible Zombie Stephen Hawking quotes in the comments. I like: "Read my new best-seller, A Brief History of Time that it takes to consume your flesh".

1. Apply obscure math knowledge to something practical like economics.

That's all there is to it! The secret to a wealth of cash baskets is simply to contribute less to the scientific community and more to the money-making community!

Popping up for the first time in the mid-90's when we were all to busy with grunge music and seinfeld, this field has been gaining momentum ever since. It even has a cool buzzword nickname: Econophysics. It just rolls off the tongue so much better than Thermoeconomics. For even greater detail, a thorough document was recently submitted to arXiv for an upcoming entry in the Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science.

If you haven't already read the "Wikipediarticle" or the paper above, or given up on both because they have too many big words, it's all about Statistical Mechanics. Physicists and mathematicians love to use statistics to study of motion of a mass of particles. Along the way some broke physicist, down on his luck, finally connected the dots to the economic world and came up with a killer get-rich-quick-scheme. Well, it may not have made him rich, but it certainly spawned an interesting discipline of study.

So how are particles and dollar bills alike? Well, in nature we have the the law of conservation of energy which states matter cannot be created or destroyed. A similar law of conservation of money is argued in Dragulescu et. al. I did notice that the paper doesn't take into account the common practices of printing counterfeit money or the amount of dollar bills burned by magicians worldwide per second, but it does clearly state that the conservation of money is between individual transactions (a closed system).

The beauty of these parallels is that all the years of work physicists have spent pouring time into understanding the energies and distributions of particles can be applied to the monies and money distributions across the world.

And subsequently the lifestyles of the rich and scientific will be the hottest celebrity gossip of tomorrowland. All in all, thanks goes to the arXiv blog for pointing all this out to me because my financial future is now perfectly secure.

If you watch hit TV show Lost, I have some bad news. You have been learning about Electromagnetism this whole time. Lost is a weekly physics lecture taught to us by the Dharma Initiative so I hope you haven't been skipping class this last season/term! If, by chance, you didn't actually notice you were enrolled in University of Dharma Initiative's E&M 101 then let me recap some material for the final exam. Keep in mind: Lost is a work of fiction and could potentially be writhing with pseudoscience.

Caution: Lost Spoilers Within, if you haven't watched all of the episodes thus far turn back now and save yourself from this forbidden knowledge!

Read the rest of this entry »

What's with the sun anyway? Always giving us sunburns and getting us sweaty and gross on the walk to class. Who needs it anyway? Turns out, it's pretty important for a lot of reasons, mainly life on Earth. So what if the sun was dying a little ahead of schedule, what would we do? First we'd watch this movie directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland!Sunshine is an action-packed sci-fi thriller about an epic journey to re-ignite our dying sun. The question is, can director Danny Boyle make a smooth transition from drug junkies to Leonardo DiCaprio to zombie plagues to space mission circa 2050? I'd say the transition works well, and, having watched 28 days later only a few weeks ago, I noticed similar themes between the two movies. 28 Days is all about the psychology of zombie plague survivors and it demonstrated how twisted the morals of people can be in life or death situations. Sunshine is a psychological thriller in the same vein. The feelings of loneliness and abandonment in space is only a few light-years (a pretty small distance in astronomical terms), away from the feelings of being abandoned in a city of flesh-eaters.I was waiting for this movie to be reviewed by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy, but he hasn't seen it yet! After I saw the movie I was desperate for some scientific critique but even the SEED review was lacking. So thanks to some Google-ing, Wikipede-ing, and IMDB-ing answers became clear.So I could talk about the character development, or the philosophical/religious discussion in the latter half the movie but what about the science? I have to admit, it was no 2001: Space Odyssey. I had pretty high standards for the science because CERN scientist Brian Cox, who is working on the Large Hadron Collider, assisted in the movie production as Science Director. Much to my disappointment, Boyle glazed over all of his cool science theories and focussed on his space thriller vision. Oh, but he made sure to keep in the hot fact that it takes 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach earth, I guess Brian Cox's PhD was put to good use after all! Honestly, if you have a reputable science director in the first place, why not include some of his ideas into the script? Luckily information via IMDB and online interviews revealed his input.I'm pretty sure Bill Nye first taught me that the sun was going to around for a long long time before it burns out, like 5 billion years. So if this movie takes place in 2050, what's with the hurry? Well, to quote a Telegraph interview:

"Our back-story for the Sun dying is that a large blob of supersymmetric particles called a Q-ball has drifted into the solar core, and is slowly eating it away," says Cox. "This has been suggested as a possible explanation for gamma-ray bursts," he says, referring to the beams of gamma rays sent out by the most powerful bangs in the cosmos, thought to be created as black holes are born. [Although,] "Our Sun is not dense enough to stop a Q-ball: it would fly straight through," he says.

These Q-Ball's that Cox mentions are the real deal and they hope to actually discover some at LHC when it gets up and running. Wikipedia gives you the scoop on how to construct a Q-Ball, but if one starts eating our sun how do we destroy it? From the Sunshine Blog:

Q: HOW WILL THE STELLAR BOMB DESTROY THE Q BALL?The bomb creates the same super-heated conditions in which the Q Ball was made. To be specific, Q Balls were formed at a particular time after the Big Bang: 10 to minus 35 seconds. The heat at this moment of the Big Bang was 10 to the power of 32 degrees.By recreating these conditions, the Q Ball will split up, separating it into squarks. Squarks on their own decay quickly into normal or stable (benign) supersymmetric particles. Put simply, the Stellar Bomb makes the Q Ball fall to bits.Q: WHAT IS THE STELLAR BOMB MADE OF?Dark matter and Uranium. In the same way that an atomic bomb uses normal explosives to trigger uranium into a nuclear explosion, the stellar bomb uses uranium to trigger the dark matter.In the film Sunshine, mankind has been able to construct two of these Stellar Bombs. The fact that the Stellar Bomb uses uranium is the reason that mankind is limited to only two payloads because Earth does not contain enough uranium to build a third.

If only they had discussed the previous information in the movie then my roommates, also Physics majors, wouldn't be so disappointed after I promised them a scientifically accurate space movie! To worsen my situation, the spaceship in the movie didn't explain any source of artificial gravity. Rotating spaceships have some handy centrifugal forces to simulate gravity for passengers but I think they chose a cool looking ship at the expense of science. From IMDB:

The ships originally used rotating sections to provide artificial gravity. This is not used in the movie, so people experience normal Earth gravity everywhere while aboard the ships. An early storyboard shows the crew boarding the stricken ship and finding that the only gravity is "sideways", towards the bomb.

Another little tidbit I wasn't sure about was the exposure to the vacuum of space without a space-suit on. According to NASA, this is fine for a short period of time, assuming you don't have lungs full of air. If you aren't convinced NASA did a nice study here: The Effect on the Chimpanzee of Rapid Decompression to a Near Vacuum and no animals were harmed in the process (unlike some of the other attempts to fire monkeys into space).All in all, a good 6/10 type movie, but if you're interested in science you might be better off reading Jacks of Science!