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MacGyver Physics
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun May 27, 2007 10:10 PM
from the hard-not-to-like-that-fellow dept.
from the hard-not-to-like-that-fellow dept.
counterfriction writes "This month's issue of Symmetry, a magazine jointly published by SLAC and Fermilab, is featuring an article that points out the sometimes extemporaneous and unconventional solutions physicists have come up with in (and out of) the laboratory. From the article: 'Leon Lederman ... used a pocket knife, tape, and items on anyone's grocery list to confirm that interactions involving the weak force do now show perfect mirror symmetry, or parity, as scientists had long assumed.'"
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Changes over time? (Score:5, Funny)
As compared to last week, when they didn't.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Changes over time? (Score:5, Insightful)
An experiment which isn't repeated again and again by as many people as possible is a meaningless experiment. That's one of the reasons why undergraduate physics students are given classic experiments to (re)confirm themselves in labwork.
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Re:Changes over time? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason undergraduates get those classic experiments is to teach them how to do experiments, the limits of their instruments, how to record all relevant data, the difference between accuracy and precision, etc. The big experiment being done is actually on the students themselves, to see if they've learned to do reliable experiments. You absolutely do not want to do sensitive experiments with students whose reliability and even whose honesty have not yet been tested in lab work with known expected results.
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Re:Changes over time? (Score:4, Interesting)
I might be going off the deep end here, but the fact of the matter is, the universe is expanding quite rapidly and there is nothing that says that physics constants can not change over time. One "constant" that has changed and actually is not a constant at all, is the fine-structure constant (Read this to mean: the electric charge. ) The coupling of photons to electrons change, effectively changing the electric charge with distance. Hence, the fine-structure constant is known as a running-coupling constant. There are experiments under progress right now that are trying to measure the fine-structure constant from very-far-away galaxies, or back in time. Ok, maybe I am talking about cosmological scales here, but it would be funny if humans evolved, and some billions of years later, someone reading about some experiment like Rutherford's re-did it and got different results...
Back to the subject: yep, it is pretty crucial to get undergrads to repeat old experiments, especially ones like P-violation, Moessbauer, optical-pumping, muon-lifetime, which have all contributed to our current understanding of physics as a whole. Afterall, if they continue in physics, they might be stuck on experiments like mine, where one does not get data for the next "n" years. (I consider myself a physicist now for 10 years and have not been on a running and data collecting experiment yet. I am very happy that I got to do all those old-experiments in my undergrad years. Good old junior lab... )
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Re:Changes over time? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a beautiful essay by Feynman about the classical rats-in-a-maze experiment, and how the scientist discovered that he had to change many conditions of the maze before the rats would learn how to run the maze themselves, instead of relying on other navigational information.
Feynman also comments that this scientist's work with rats was more or less completely ignored, and the rest of the field continued to run their rats-in-a-maze experiments the traditional old-fashioned way.
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Re:Changes over time? (Score:5, Informative)
And last week they most certainly didn't! The actual article stated the following:
Couldn't the author of the slashdot post have at leased used the cut and paste features of his computer?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry. That's not the mark of great scientists. That's the mark of self-important assholes despite the outcome.
Re:Changes over time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Great mind, horrible human being.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Changes over time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now there's a lot of "don't-knows" in that little story, but that goddamn student is in the lab at an hour that I wouldn't consider normal working hours (on the weekend, no less), so it's probably safe to say that he/she's been working on that experiment for quite some time or simply just having a bad luck of getting elbowed all the time so there's no other hours available. Imagine waiting for a time slot in a lab and then when you're finally can get some work done, it's suddenly getting ripped apart by someone who has already elbowed your time many times over. If I were in that position, I would be considerably pissed and very likely to do something about it.
The point being, even if you're Einstein and Newton incarnate combined, you have no right whatsoever to do whatever you please to anyone else. Lederman should have the decency of helping the student to put his/her experiment back to the way it was before, it's very plausible that he has the ability to. However, judging from his tone of no regret in the interview, most likely he didn't care and just left the student to pick up the pieces of his brilliant experiment.
Parent
Re:Changes over time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Genious is about using the spark when you have it. If you come in at 9 and take off just past 5 you're nothing but a corporate drone. I've worked both side and let myself be bogged down by administrativia to know that this is the best way to kill inventiveness.
If you don't have the guts to risk a sleepless night and spend a week restoring the damage you have done to the lab, you don't deserve to find answers.
Your self-righteousness is the true mark of self-important bureaucrats.
Parent
Re:Changes over time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Them destroying the ongoing work of another person just to save themselves a little bit of work shows a supreme lack of not only ethics but of decency.
Science is more than just a result on a data sheet. It's also the path you take to get there (if you decide it is proper to go there at all).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Person (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Changes over time? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a matter of being an asshole, genius or not.
I agree with you about the 9-5, and the need to grasp inspiration on the spot to keep creativity alive.
But that is no excuse to trample over other people's work without asking for their permission / collaboration.
You may be very convinced of your own genius and inventiveness. Good for you.
But you might as well be destroying more important, time-consuming, work by other geniuses in the room.
If you don't have the guts to work the extra sleepless night setting up your own experiment, or (gasp) actually asking for the help if needed, then you really didn't deserve to find the answer.
Parent
The "mysterious" grad student's name. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Changes over time? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3)
Sorry. It annoys me.
Typo in summary (Score:3, Informative)
s/now/not/
Though I like the parent's suggestion better . . .
But what happened to the... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But what happened to the... (Score:5, Funny)
You can prove this with two polarizers at right angles if you crumple up a piece of chewing gum wrapper and stick it between them. When held up to a light source, only the light that goes through through the chewing gum wrapper makes it through the second polarizer- the rest is all dark. And since the rotation is frequency dependent, the chewing gum wrapper is glowing in multiple colors. Especially if you do a good job when you crumple it up. It would look great on TV.
Parent
Doctor Who (Score:5, Insightful)
So I think to myself, "How does this guy always get out of these crazy situations?
"He's like some time-traveling MacGyver," I think to myself as I switch over to trusty, old Slashdot, only to see that same name right off.
List of problems solved. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Doctor Who (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Doctor Who (Score:5, Insightful)
Blasphemer!
Dr. Who is not like some time-travelling MacGyver, MacGyver is like some temporally-impaired Dr. Who.
There's a hell of a difference.
Parent
The original hardware store experiment (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The original hardware store experiment (Score:5, Funny)
Or has it?
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Re:The original hardware store experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever wonder why the cat doesn't count as an observer? What does it feel like to be alive and dead at the same time? Do you have to have a soul to observe life or death?
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Re:The original hardware store experiment (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:The original hardware store experiment (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:The original hardware store experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The original hardware store experiment (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The original hardware store experiment (Score:4, Informative)
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big deal (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You know you're reading /. (Score:5, Funny)
Tells you something about the audience.
Parent
Re:big deal (Score:5, Funny)
All possible girlfriend wave functions collapsed instantly! :P
Parent
MacGyver Physics According To Engineers... (Score:5, Funny)
The Article (server /.'d) (Score:4, Informative)
Masters of Improv
Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab
World-class detective Angus MacGyver of the hit 1980s television show MacGyver could jury-rig almost anything with duct tape and a pocket knife. High-energy physics labs demand as much and more from technicians and engineers, relying on their creativity and intelligence to navigate technical quagmires. And when a problem demands it, they deliver--engineering tiny cameras mounted on bocce balls that snake through 10,000 feet of steel piping; rigging a 13-ton cement block to bash deformed brass into shape; or aiming a high-powered laser around corners to unblock water lines. Unlike MacGyver's fixes--such as the fuse he repaired with a chewing-gum wrapper--some of these devices last.
An improvised grinder
An improvised grinder sanded welds along the long, straight sections of 10,000 feet of pipe at Fermilab. The sander within the rotating silver cylinder cleaned each weld.
Photo: Fred Ullrich, Fermilab
Leon Lederman, the Nobel Prize-winning former director of Fermilab, is a legendary lab MacGyver. He used a pocket knife, tape, and items on anyone's grocery list to confirm that interactions involving the weak force do not show perfect mirror symmetry, or parity, as scientists had long assumed. Just as a watch hand always sweeps clockwise, nuclei of atoms eject electrons in a preferred direction as they decay, rather than spraying them randomly. The technical term for this is "parity violation."
Intrigued by the experiments of Madame Chien-Shiung Wu, Lederman called his friend, Richard Garwin, to propose an experiment that would detect parity violation in the decay of the pi meson particle. That evening in January 1957, Lederman and Garwin raced to Columbia's Nevis laboratory and immediately began rearranging a graduate student's experiment into one they could use. "It was 6 p.m. on a Friday, and without explanation, we took the student's experiment apart," Lederman later recalled in an interview. "He started crying, as he should have."
The men knew they were onto something big. "We had an idea and we wanted to make it work as quickly as we could--we didn't look at niceties," Lederman said. And, indeed, niceties were overlooked. A coffee can supported a wooden cutting board, on which rested a Lucite cylinder cut from an orange juice bottle. A can of Coca-Cola propped up a device for counting electron emissions, and Scotch tape held it all together.
"Without the Swiss Army Knife, we would've been hopeless," Lederman said. "That was our primary tool."
Their first attempt, at 2 a.m., showed parity violation the instant before the Lucite cylinder--wrapped with wires to generate the magnetic field--melted.
"We had the effect, but it went away when the instrument broke," Lederman said. "We spent hours and hours fixing and rearranging the experiment. In due course, we got the thing going, we got the effect back, and it was an enormous effect. By six o'clock in the morning, we were able to call people and tell them that the laws of parity violate mirror symmetry," confirming the results of experiments led by Wu at Columbia University the month before.
Another giant figure in physics, founding Fermilab director Robert Wilson, is the hero of a widely circulated tale.
MacGyver-mania
MacGyver aired in more than 40 countries between 1985 and 1992, in some cases leaving a lasting imprint on the local language. In South Korea, for instance, call a knife a "Maekgaibeo kal" and people know you mean the Swiss Army-type knife the TV character carried. Malaysians call their pocket knives "Pisau MacGyvers" or just plain "MacGyver knives." In Norway and parts of Finland, duct tape is sometimes called "MacGyver tape."
Ernie Malamud, a physicist at Fermilab, remembers working with Wilson during his graduate studies at Cornell. The pair wanted to use helium gas, often used to fill balloons, to locate a leak in the glass vacuum chamber; but they discovered the hose from the
MacGyver and physics don't mesh (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously though. Why associate ingenuity with a tv show (even if it's a good one)? It's like describing math breakthroughs as "reminiscent of the TV show 'Numbers'". These shows are inspired by the real science more than they inspire it.
Re:MacGyver and physics don't mesh (Score:4, Insightful)
It's why Superman can fly and stop trains by standing on the tracks and letting them slam into him with his hands out in front. People don't care about E=mc2 when they want to be entertained. The opposite is also true. No one cares if MacGyver's physics were accurate, it just was like "Whoa all MacGyver and shit!"
Parent
Oblig Simpsons Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Dear MacGyver- (Score:5, Funny)
Enclosed is a rubber band, a paper clip, and a drinking straw. Please save my dog.
Re:Dear MacGyver- (Score:5, Funny)
Please find your dog attached. Don't thank me - thank the moon's gravitational pull.
Sincerely
MacGyver
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My schtick (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course. (Score:4, Funny)
Macgyver: The college years! (Score:4, Funny)
(warning: rated PG-13)
Episode 1 [youtube.com]
Episode 2 [youtube.com]
Bending spacetime in the basement (Score:3, Informative)
Bending spacetime in the basement" [fourmilab.ch]
Check out the timelapse movies at the bottom of the page to see gravity in action.
Of course there's always Dick Feynman... (Score:5, Interesting)
C-clamp: $1.79
Styrofoam cup of ice water: $.50
Watching the expressions on the faces of NASA scientists who had inconclusive data from millions of dollars of testing? Priceless.
Also he allegedly was the only person to see the Trinity blast - as he figured the auto windshield glass would protect him from the UV, just as long as he ducked before the blast wave hit the glass.
Plus the one about Enrico Fermi at Trinity: he put some pieces of paper on the ground, scraped their start and finish positions in the sand with his toe, and based on the distance moved, the paper mass, and the distance to the blast, estimated the yield pretty darn close for that method.