Physics – Page 3 – The Finch and Pea

A theoretical basis for ornithopter research

There is a lot of seductive technology in the Dune novels. While you might like the stillsuit, I have found that my imagination was most captured by the ornithopters (perhaps the idea of recycling my urine, feces, and sweat into drinking water doesn’t capture my imagination).

It’s pretty obvious to me that the engineers in the Dune universe would not discuss the design of the ubiquitous ornithopters using metrics designed for fixed wing aircraft like we, apparently, do now. Phillip Burgers and David Alexander have taken a stab at creating a new measure of lift¹ that is readily applicable to fixed wing aircraft, lift generating rotating cylinders, and things with flapping wings (i.e., ornithopters and bats): Continue reading “A theoretical basis for ornithopter research”

Don’t ask a biologist to explain the behavior of the solar system

After reading a string of disheartening reviews on the supposedly important future directions of biological research, I’m convinced that the older generation of biologists, those who made their careers in heyday of molecular biology during the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, have turned biology into an innumerate outlier among the natural sciences. Continue reading “Don’t ask a biologist to explain the behavior of the solar system”

I can’t decide whether Quantum Man is the best Feynman biography

Along with Gleick’s outstanding biography, Lawrence Krauss’ Quantum Man is now one of the essential Feynman books. While Gleick’s book is biography at its finest, Krauss’s is the best picture of Feynman’s position within the physics community, which is obviously something that could only be written by a serious physicist, like Krauss. Krauss, better than anyone else, has explained why Feynman was seen as a great scientist by physicists themselves, who are not the types to be swayed by the anecdotes that made Feynman popular with the public. Feynman was a great public communicator, and purposely developed a particular public persona, but his physics accomplishments were completely equal to his fame, as Krauss makes clear. I learned more about Feynman’s style of doing science (including its weaknesses of insularity) from this book than from any other.

So here’s how I would categorize the existing Feynman biographies: Continue reading “I can’t decide whether Quantum Man is the best Feynman biography”

Watch out for that Sun!

I’m not sure this is really a comet (mostly made of ice and dust – but I really don’t know what I am talking about here), but we do have video of something small crashing into the Sun thanks to the Solar Dynamics Observatory. And that is cool.

If you are having trouble seeing the object in the video, the picture below will help you figure out where to look.