I tried to avoid such words. They sounded like hollow buzzwords in times of abundance, used by advertizers playing on fears. But our complacent world is taught a lesson, right now, at furious speed. I am following news as everybody else, I am reading about gloomy forecasts. An Austria paper mill has announced today it…
Tag: History of Science
Peter M. Schuster on History of Science
The late Dr. Peter M. Schuster was a physicist and historian of science. After a career in industry, he founded a laser technology startup. Recovering from severe illness, he sold his company and became an author, science writer, and historian. He founded echophysics – the European Center for the History of Physics – in Pöllau…
Computers, Science, and History Thereof
I am reading three online resources in parallel – on the history and the basics of computing, computer science, software engineering, and the related culture and ‘philosophy’. An accidental combination I find most enjoyable. Joel on Software: Joel Spolsky’s blog – a collection of classic essays. What every developer needs to know about Unicode. New terms…
Peter von Rittinger’s Steam Pump (AKA: The First Heat Pump)
Peter von Rittinger’s biography reads like a Victorian novel, and his invention was a text-book example of innovation triggered by scarcity. Born 1811, he was poor and became an orphan early. Yet he was able to study mathematics and physics as his secondary education had been financed by the Piarist Order. He also studied law…
Lest We Forget the Pioneer: Ottokar Tumlirz and His Early Demo of the Coriolis Effect
Two years ago I wrote an article about The Myth of the Toilet Flush, comparing the angular rotation caused by the earth’s rotation to the typical rotation in experiments with garden hoses that make it easy to observe the Coriolis effect. There are several orders of magnitude in difference, and the effect can only be…
A Sublime Transition
Don’t expect anything philosophical or career-change-related. I am talking about water and its phase transition to ice because … …the fact that a process so common and important as water freezing is not fully resolved and understood, is astonishing. (Source) There are more spectacular ways of triggering this transition than just letting a tank of water…
Carl Sagan’s Glorious Dawn: The Promise of Cosmos
Originally posted on Samir Chopra:
The YouTube video titled “A Glorious Dawn” starring Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking (their voices run through Auto-Tune), and snippets from Sagan’s epic Cosmos, has now racked up almost nine million views and twenty-seven thousand comments since it was first put up sometime back in 2009. (Mysteriously, in addition to its…
This Year in Books: Biographies, Science, Essays.
I hardly review books on this blog, but I mull upon specific questions – to which books may have answers. This is my pick of books I enjoyed reading in 2013 – and the related questions! Biographies I have a penchant for physicists’ lives in the first half of the 20th century. How did scientists…
Fragile Technology? (Confessions of a Luddite Disguised as Tech Enthusiast)
I warn you – I am in the mood for random long-winded philosophical ramblings. I have graduated recently again, denying cap-and-gown costume as I detest artificial Astroturf traditions such as re-importing academic rituals from the USA to Europe. A Subversive El(k)ement fond of uniforms would not be worth the name. However, other than that I…
May the Force Field Be with You: Primer on Quantum Mechanics and Why We Need Quantum Field Theory
As Feynman explains so eloquently – and yet in a refreshingly down-to-earth way – understanding and learning physics works like this: There are no true axioms, you can start from anywhere. Your physics knowledge is like a messy landscape, built from different interconnected islands of insights. You will not memorize them all, but you need…
The Twisted Garden Hose and the Myth of the Toilet Flush
If you have wrapped your head around why and how the U-shaped tube in the flow meter (described in my previous post) is twisted by the Coriolis force – here is a video of a simple experiment brought to my attention by the author of the quoted article on gyroscope physics: You could also test it…
Joule, Thomson, and the birth of big science
Originally posted on carnotcycle:
William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin (left), James Joule and the famous hand-operated pump. The Joule-Thomson effect is named after them, as are the SI units of thermodynamic temperature (kelvin) and energy (joule). Historical background In early May 1852, in the cellar of a house in Acton Square, Salford, Manchester (England), two…
The First Heat Pump Ever Was Built in Austria
I have confessed recently that I am from Austria. So the patriot in me wants to entertain her readers with the story of a milestone in the history of engineering thermodynamics – set by an Austrian! The development of the first heat pump is attributed to Peter von Rittinger [1]. (Note that [1] is by a Swiss author,…
Are We All Newtonians?
In my most recent posts I showed off: 1) Sandra Bullock killing a computer virus and ordering pizza online, 2) a cartoon making fun of all academic disciplines I refer to this blog, 3) images of cute furry animals – dead and alive. I will not be able to top that. Thus I feel free to bore you…
Einstein and His Patents
No, this is not about Einstein’s achievements as a moonlighting scientific paradigm shifter, while working as a patent examiner in his day job. Einstein is famous for the theories of special and general relativity, and for the correct explanation of the photoelectric effect that has been rewarded with the Nobel prize. It is not so common knowledge that he contributed…
111 Years: A Shining Example of Sustainable Product Development?
The centennial light bulb has celebrated its 110th birthday last year and the story has percolated the web. According to its web cam the bulb is still alive. This light bulb has caused quite a stir when featured in the documentary on planned obsolescence: The Light Bulb Conspiracy. Actually, the bulb technology is very different from modern incandescent bulbs (that are not so…
Physics Paradoxers and Outsiders
As I did – plain and straightforward – normal science, I do not consider to develop my personal Theory of Everything or to build my personal perpetuum mobile. I am pretty conservative with respect to the laws of thermodynamics and just understanding the main orthodox candidates for theories of everything today is already a a larger-than-life task…
I Did Normal Science
Finally I am reading one of the most influential books on science: Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Resolutions. I should have done so earlier, actually the book should be part of any science major’s undergraduate curriculum. Naive as I was, I had expected to work on solving earth-shattering problems in physics, or at…
Hansoms and Wires
I am reading the Sherlock Holmes novels on my Kindle, about 25 years after I have read them on paper. The stories are still entertaining. Conan Doyle is a great story-teller, although he re-uses ideas 1:1 in different novels, and once you are used to the typical plots you are able to guess the outcome….
I neither Met Newton nor Einstein
I am just reading The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin. I am not familiar with string theory, quantum gravity, and the related communities, so I cannot comment on Smolin’s main statement. But there is a section in the last chapter of the book that resonated with me. He describes his expectations and feelings when…
elkemental Force 