The Art of Particle Physics 125
PhysicsDavid writes to tell us about an article in Symmetry magazine. Jan-Henrik Anderson, a designer with a background in architecture, has collaborated with several particle physicists to develop visual representations of particles based on their physical characteristics. It is the closest most will ever get to 'seeing' a top quark.
Working for Me (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, look at that rendering of a photon: it has a tube down the middle? What's in that tube? Shouldn't the most base substance of the universe be spheres? Can't think of a simpler structure...
Again, with the I'm not a physicist.
Re:It must just be me (Score:4, Insightful)
From the website:
Leonard Shlain proposes that the visionary artist is the first member of a culture to see the world in a new way. Then, nearly simultaneously, a revolutionary physicist discovers a new way to think about the world. Escorting the reader through the classical, medieval, Renaissance and modern eras, Shlain shows how the artists' images when superimposed on the physicists' concepts create a compelling fit.
I haven't read this particular book, but I read his other two: Sex, Time, & Power, and Alphabet vs. The Goddess. They were fascinating reads!
Re:"Most"? (Score:1, Insightful)
I've heard advanced mathematics described as "silent music" - in every way as interesting and pleasing as Beethoven, except impossible to "hear" directly.
Nobody will ever need more than 6 types of quarks. (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems awfully shortsighted to me. I would hope that as we learn more about the quantum world, we will be able to develop more accurate visual models of it. Or am I missing something?
Re:So is at least 20% of every science class (Score:3, Insightful)
The Fluid Dynamics I was talking about wasn't just lacking in applicability, it was completely misleading as to the true behaviour of fluids. If you want the specifics, it was along the lines of: second year FD teaches that a fluid can flow in a uniform fashion down a pipe - every bit going at the same speed. Third year FD teaches that that can't happen cos viscosity (friction) stops the fluid dead at the wall of the pipe. The second year version was a complete lie - but it was a necessary simplification if they didn't want us to get confused and bored and start skipping lectures.
Again, the Set Theory I was talking about wasn't just useless for applied mathematicians - I'm a pure mathmo myself, so I find plenty of use for that sort of stuff - it was actively wrong in places. I'm afraid this time I can't remember the specifics (that was first year and I haven't had the third year course yet) but I can remember being horribly disillusioned when, while proudly spouting off to my third-year friends, I was kindly informed that the theory I was relying on was only true in about half the variants of Set Theory floating around.
We all lie to students. How's a rainbow formed? Well, raindrops refract light, y'see, so... why doesn't it smudge out in a disgusting blur? How does a braincell behave? Well, you draw a bunch of lines going into the cell, and a bunch of lines coming out, and assign a matrix to your "cell" to estimate the level of synaptic firing. Shame it doesn't work like that in real life. I'm currently doing an entire course that reformulates Quantum Mechanics in a pretty way, and I'm feeling slightly depressed cos I know we throw most of it away when we hit Quantum Field Theory next year.
There are a lot of examples of bull out there. Many of them have beneficial side-effects because they allow you to construct a mental framework of what's going on that you can then graft information onto. Eventually the original framework may be trashed, but the process will be slow enough that you can avoid having to rebuild your intuition as to how the system behaves from scratch. I'd tend to place these pictures in that class.