HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: frank@rover.uchicago.edu (Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger)
Subject: Re: Can you figure this joke out?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Reply-To: frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Organization: Joint Center for Radiation Therapy
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 21:20:00 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.143506.12867@bcrka451.bnr.ca>, isupstud@bnr.ca (Wayne Hutton) writes...

>>of course the joke looses something when you show the integral properly
>                    ^^^^^^
> 
>	** The sign of a true physics major  (loses?) **

	Of course it's more fun loosely coupled!

   Frank R. Borger - Physicist    __       Internet:  Frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Michael Reese - Univ. of Chicago |___      Phone : 312-791-8075 fax : 567-7455
  Center for Radiation Therapy   | |_) _   
                                   | \|_)  An economist's guess is likely to be
    "Birthplace of Softball"          |_)  as good as anybody elses. Will Rogers
From: matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Nontechnical physics books (was Re: Stephen W. Hawking?)
Date: 16 Oct 92 16:27:44 GMT
	<1992Oct15.174200.2276@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
	<1992Oct16.163759.29856@alex.com>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: jon@alex.com's message of 16 Oct 92 16:37:59 GMT

In article <1992Oct16.163759.29856@alex.com> jon@alex.com (Jonathan Heitler) writes:

> |>     'Dancing Wu-Li Masters' is a horrible thing to be visited upon
> |>     defenseless non-science majors.

> Oh. If that is so, what advice, concerning what to read, would you
> give to those of us who know enough to know that we are interested,
> but don't know enough to know that we are being mislead? (Preferably
> a book that doesn't use words longer than 2.5 syllables).

My not-very-useful answer: it depends on what you are interested in.
Physics is a very big subject, I'm afraid.

I suppose my guess is that what you're interested in is quantum
mechanics, particularly the weird-seeming parts of it.  This, I'm
afraid, is a bit of a minefield for authors of non-technical books;
the problem is that there's so much of a temptation for the author to
just talk about how strange it is, without really giving the logical
foundations of the subject, or the experiments that lead us to believe
in it.  You end up with a lot of words that are never really defined,
and a lot of statements that can only be accepted on the grounds of "I
believe because it is absurd."  Inevitably, in such cases, quantum
mechanics ends up seeming like mysticism.

If what you're looking for is an introduction to quantum mechanics
that doesn't use much mathematics and that doesn't assume a very
extensive physics background, I've found a fairly nice one: _Quantum
Physics: illusion or reality?_, by A. Rae.  Two warnings: (1) It does
use some mathematics---but nothing beyond high school algebra.  I
think this is unavoidable, if you want to have a serious discussion.
(2) Rae discusses questions of interpreting quantum mechanics, in the
last half or so of his book.  You should be aware that there is not a
general consensus among physicists on these questions.  (In fact, I
would say that a great many physicists think that thinking about these
questions is a waste of time.)

--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!
From: matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Mcinnes B T (Dr))
Subject: Re: VERY fundamental question
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 02:01:34 GMT

ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering) writes:
: A: Would you explain something, please?
: 
: B: Certainly, what is it?
: 
: A: How does a magnet work? I mean, when I place a magnet close to, say,
:    a needle, the needles moves. What makes it move? How can the magnet
:    exert a force on the needle over a distance? It seems like magic to
:    me.

 B: We don't know. Yet. That's all. Now if you ask most people, they
will go into a long metaphysical diatribe and attempt to dismiss your
question as "mere" metaphysics: to which you ought to respond:
physician, heal thyself.  However, you do of course need to understand
what is meant by "explanation". As everyone knows, any series of "why"
questions can be extrapolated arbitrarily far. Contrary to popular
belief, however, this does not mean that "why" questions are outside the
province of physics. For in any such series there will come a point at
which the appropriate response is "why not?".
To Kepler it seemed perfectly reasonable to ask: why are there six
planets? Today, with our greater knowledge of the origin of the solar
system, we would not think this a sensible question. If I were asked why
there are 9 planets, I should respond: why should it not be nine? It
could have been 8, etc.
You could equally well have asked me: why does the Earth go around the
Sun. I would have replied: because there are no forces acting on it, it
follows a geodesic in the underlying geometry. Now, before you spring
another "why" on me , notice that I have answered your first "why". The
fact that I was able to do so at least proves that your "why" question
was not meaningless or unphysical. Now, you are going to ask me: why do
free particles follow geodesics? And I shall reply: what would you have
them do? Geodesics are the geometrically meaningful curves in a
semi-Riemannian manifold; thus I feel no surprise at the fact that free
particles correspond to geodesics. It is deviation from geodesics that
requires explanation.
Finally, to return to your original question. Magnetism is a
manifestation of the geometry of five-dimensional space-time geometry.
The motion of a charged particle in an electromagnetic field is
geodesic, though it seems otherwise to us because we do not perceive the
5th dimension. Now proceed as above. I must confess to you, A, that I
myself am not really sure that I believe this explanation. I put it to
you just to show that a physical answer to your question is by no means
inconceivable. All such questions seem unanswerable...until they are
answered. So the correct answwer to your question is as above: We do not
know, yet.
: 
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
From: jim@cs.UAlberta.CA (Jim Easton)
Subject: Re: How do you draw a straight line?
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 22:51:24 GMT

news@massey.ac.nz (USENET News System) writes:

>> >geg@beep.mis.semi.harris.com (Gregory E. Garland) writes:
>> 
>> >>Assuming I'm visualizing how this thing works; it will only draw
>> >>a line for a small arc oscillating back and forth.  Got any pretty
>> >>pictures of something that will turn continuous full revolutions into
>> >>a straight line?
>> 
>Lateral thinking is the answer! (If I can remember the question:-)

>Connect the arm which moves in a circular arc to a crank (via
>a connecting rod), If the radius of the crank is less than half the
>distance the arm moves, then the crank can do full circles.

>Terry Moore

I reckon that qualifies.

	Jim

Xref: sparky sci.physics:16405 sci.astro:10671 sci.math:13098 sci.philosophy.tech:3647
From: kevin@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.math,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: What is a wood-duck
Date: 13 Oct 92 19:19:14 +1000
Organization: Computer Centre, Monash University, Australia

What is a wood-duck?
Ans: In many amusement parks, there are stalls where you pay money to take
a gun and try and hit targets. Generally, these targets are wood-ducks. So
a wood-duck is a person who is completely incapable of resisting being
blown away by people who attack their absurd comments.
Kevin.
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: SPACETIME AND BEYOND 1
Date: 8 Oct 92 01:23:48 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Jack Sarfatti writes:
>The GOD(D) Drive of the most advanced Star Ships uses this psycho-geometric
>mode of propulsion - requiring an Omega class bionic man at the helm...
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Geez, Jack, all along I had this image of you as a harmless, and in
fact likable in a nostalgic way, San Franciscan boho holdout, with some
dabblings in bad physics, and Kabbalah (by the way are you sure Rashi
was nicknamed Zarfati?  Scholem's _Kabbalah_ mentions Reuben
ha-Zarfati but he is someone else entirely, different century even.)
But this sci-fi crap sounds Nietzschean at best and eugenicist at
worst.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: lemon-radio
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 17:53:12 GMT

In article <1992Oct10.205831.26892@u.washington.edu> whit@milton.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore) writes:

)>I don't think you'd need a battery at all, what you need for an AM
)>radio is a tuned circuit, a rectifier of some kind (which is where I
)>suspect the lemon could come in
)
)	No, you DON'T need a rectifier; what you need is a DETECTOR,
)and that is quite different.  In this case, one could use magnetostriction
)in the nail as a detector; old spark-gap era receivers sometimes used
)a remanent magnet which 'demagnetized' when the RF level got
)high enough.

Picky picky.  Well, I suppose that there are a broad class of non-linear
devices (square law devices come to mind) that one can use to detect AM, so I
suppose your correction is warranted.

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: scip1061@nuscc.nus.sg (Marc Paul Jozef)
Subject: Re: Open Questions - Was the FUQ List
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 06:33:12 GMT

I think you should add the question 

Is the standard BB model correct?

I refer to a very recent review article of Sandage
(a fan of the standard-model, and even inclined
to take inflation seriously), who examines the
conflicting observations:
Galaxy-counts favor a flat universe, magnitude/redshift
relation for elliptic galaxies favor a non-zero
deceleration-parameter, and optical size/redshift
measurements favor a static universe. The last
measurement constitutes `the most serious doubt to
date about the standard-model'.
  For those who do not know Sandage: He and Peebles
are the big names in global-scale matters.

Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.math,sci.philosophy.tech
From: matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: 1992 Nobel Prizes: a prediction
Date: 8 Oct 92 12:46:56
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
Distribution: na
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: ran@cbnews.cb.att.com's message of Thu, 8 Oct 1992 15:57:09 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.155709.7074@cbnews.cb.att.com> ran@cbnews.cb.att.com (Robert A. Neinast) writes:

> What I want to know is why Hawking hasn't won it, particularly since
> the Nobel is only awarded to living people, and every year he hangs
> on seems miraculous.

I used to wonder that too, shortly after I first heard of Hawking.  

What you have to realize about the physics Nobel Prizes is this,
though: everyone who wins one clearly deserves it, but there are also
a lot of people who clearly deserve it and don't get one.  There are a
lot of people out there who do exceptional scientific work---more
people who can be given this particular award.  

Hawking certainly is a brilliant scientist, but (contrary to the
impression given in some of the popular press) he is by no means the
only brilliant scientist in the world.  There are a great many very
smart people in the field, and even a fair number of authentic
geniuses.  I don't think I'd have much trouble naming a dozen living
theoretical physicists whose work is of comparable originality and
importance to Hawking's.

And, as others have pointed out, speculative work isn't likely to get
the Nobel Prize unless the speculations are experimentally confirmed.
In some sense, it's a matter of who happens to guess right; if SU(5)
had been confirmed, then Georgi and Glashow would probably have gotten
the Nobel prize, and if supersymmetry is confirmed then Wess and
Zumino may well get the Nobel Prize.  But the Swedish Academy is
rather conservative, and they don't want to give the Prize for work
that is wrong, no matter how creative it is.

--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA AND REACTION TO PROVOCATION  
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 20:01:03 GMT

Let us estimate the crackpot index of Abian's latest post.  
I count roughly 83 capitalized words, leaving out Darwin's and Abian's
name just to be nice.  Minus the point credit we get 405 points.
Plus one point for a statement widely agreed upon to be false, namely 
the exponential decay of energy with time.  (Note that I am very lenient
about false statements, especially when the index is so high.  Most of
Abian's statements are not sufficiently testable to really deserve the
label "false".)  Also, Abian sets himself up as an equal to Darwin by
lining up his quote in capital letters right after Darwin's, and while I
had only singled out Newton and Einstein as folks whom crackpots like to
compare themselves with, we clearly have a case of the same syndrome
here, so chalk up another 10 points.  We also have a claim to have
revolutionized science with the discovery of a new key principle,
without any good evidence that anything new has been explained.  
Toss in another 30 points.  We don't quite have a conspiracy of
scientists here, only the "usual runaround" so I will be nice and only
add 2 points rather than the usual 20 for a full-fledged conspiracy
theory.  For repeated silliness in the face of widespread correction -
aggravated by claims of having supporters (who, however, are too
sensible to make themselves publicly known), add 5 more points.  

We get 452 points, if my addition is holding up.   Clearly Abian and the
Larsonites are neck-and-neck, with perhaps Sarfatti as the only close
contender for leading crackpot on sci.physics!  

I encourage others to calculate the index for various classica Beckmann
posts, etc..  My own crackpot rating probably soars to 20 or so when I
get annoyed and start using caps a lot.

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: a question about water waves
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 05:51:40 GMT

In article <1992Oct14.195818.16396@husc3.harvard.edu> mlevin@husc8.harvard.edu (Michael Levin) writes:
>
>      I have a question about waves. I was thinking about water waves,
>but maybe this has interesting applications in electromagnetic waves,
>etc. Here goes - sorry if it is a stupid one.
>     When an ideal wave moves across a surface of water, each
>individual water molecule moves only up and down - not laterally; thus
>it is the pattern of which point is highest that moves in the
>"direction of the wave", not any individual water molecule (am I right
>on all of this?). 

With water waves you are only approximately right, water waves being
nasty nonlinear beasts.  The individual molecules in a water wave don't
move exactly up and down; instead, they move in a roughly elliptical
pattern (assuming periodic waves moving due north, say).  Of course if
one counts the finite depth of the water it is clear *why* the water
can't move only up and down: there is conservation of water so if water
moves up *here* it must have come from *there*.

This is all rather a digression from your real question, but it's mildly
interesting.  

>My question is, suppose you freeze-frame a water
>wave that was moving due north at some point. You now have a peak,
>which during the next frame(s) will go down, and the next north-most
>patch of water will then move up. What exactly is it that determines
>that the next patch of water to move up is that north (i.e., in the
>direction that the wave was moving) of the previous peak? After all,
>looking at a frozen frame of a water wave, can you tell which way it
>was moving? It seems that there is a symmetry of what the water can do
>after any initial moment in time, and if so, where does the
>directionality of the wave's motion come from?
>    Does this make any sense or have I confused myself with poor
>intuition and a zeno-like paradox? Please reply to

It makes perfect sense and is a fine question.  The answer is simply
that wave equations are *second-order* partial differential equations.
This implies that what will happen in the future depends not only on the
position of things now, but also on the velocity.  This is in fact
typical in classical mechanics; ever since Newton wrote down his second
order differential equation F = ma there has been a profusion of models
in which one must specify both initial positions and velocities in order
to solve for what will happen in the future.  

It amuses me that Bertrand Russell claimed that science had disproved
the existence of such thing as a "state of motion" (which claim, by the
way, appears in his history of philosophy in the part on Zeno) - in
fact, both in classical and quantum mechanics, the "state" includes
information on position and velocity on equal footing.


Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
From: pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt)
Subject: Re: How do you draw a straight line?
Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 06:50:23 GMT

In article <jim.719006495@st-michael> jim@cs.UAlberta.CA (Jim Easton) writes:
>pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:
>
>>Your diagram is exactly the Peaucellier cell that Jim Reeds mentioned
>>
>>So Jim, what has the little industry of 3-space linkages in robotics
>>produced that will draw a straight line, other than those that already
>>work in 2-space?
>
>In the words of the great philosoper "I dunno".  If you replace
>points A and O in my diagram with ball joints I would think it would
>work.
>
>	Jim

Oops, sorry, Jim Easton, I meant that for Jim Reeds, he being the one
who mentioned said "little industry."

(I don't think your proposed modification produces a correct cell.
Leaving all else in the plane, swing O straight up out of the plane
containing all joints but O.  This plane is distinct from the plane
containing OA.  The point P will now move away from A, which I claim
you don't want.)
-- 
Vaughan Pratt   pratt@cs.Stanford.EDU     exp(n pi sqrt(163)/3) for n=1..30
From: Peter.Kocourek@p13.f112.n100.z60.wlink.nl (Peter Kocourek)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: STRUCTURE OF TIME
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1992 23:23:56 -0100

In a message of <04 Oct 92  11:23:33>, hporopudas writes:

 h> You should say that you has nothing to say about morality.? Then why
 h> you then make these stupid comments. ?

What on earth has this to do with physics? Have I accidentally stumbled in a newsgroup called alt.crackpot? Will you stop wasting bandwidth with your vacuous and infantile drivel?


YHS:QSI!

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: OQ (Open Question) on particles
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 20:21:20 GMT

In article <MATT.92Oct13104824@physics16.berkeley.edu> matt@physics.berkeley.edu writes:
>In article <1992Oct13.163540.27085@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
>
>> Hmm.  My definition was only intended to allow one to say "in this
>> theory there are the following elementary particles: electrons and
>> protons" or some such thing.  As soon as one has a 2-particle state it
>> is no longer an eigenvalue of the mass operator (since the relative
>> velocities can vary continuously, essentially).
>
>Actually, I've always thought that a decent definition of a particle
>is that it's an irreducible representation of the Poincare group.
>(With, again, the same caveat: unless you're talking about asymptotic
>states, it's hard to figure out what really is and isn't a particle.)

This is almost the same definition as mine, since every irred rep
is an eigenvalue of the mass operator.  Of course if one had two or more kinds
of particles around with the same mass, the eigenspace of the mass
operator would not be an irred rep.  So in that respect your definition
is better.  The advantage of speaking in terms of mass eigenstates is
that it gives you a way to start decomposing an arbitrary unitary rep of
the Poincare group into irred reps.  (One must then use spin and then
allow for multiplicities if one has several particles with the same mass
and spin around.)
From: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: CRACKED!
Date: 16 Oct 92 21:24:56 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc8.mcirvin.719270696
Distribution: sci

bwallet@apssgi.nswc.navy.mil (Brad Wallet) writes:

>In article <HAGERMAN.92Oct14233802@rx7.ece.cmu.edu>, hagerman@ece.cmu.edu (John Hagerman) writes:
>|> SO once again we have so-called INTILECTUAL SCIENTISTS attempting to
>|> paint the rest of us NORMAL PEOPLE as INFERIOR.  I see, for example,
>|> that the "CRACKPOT INDEX" makes NO MENTION of SPELLING, which is, of
>|> course, due to the fact that INTILECTUALS CANT SPELL.  Besides their
[...]

>We have a winner!  Please hold your Crackpot of the Year entries.

I propose a new rule: -1000 for entries that are obviously jokes!
We can't have pseudo-crackpots spoiling the game!  Kibo would probably
just post his .sig and set the world record.

(I suppose Scott has a point:  making an industry out of taunting
cranks probably just provokes them and makes us look mean.  But
it's so *easy* and *fun*...)
 
-- 
Matt McIrvin, posting nonsense again
From: burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca (Burt Voorhees)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Mattel Protest
Date: 7 Oct 92 04:48:35 GMT


  There is another way to look at the results of programming girls out of
math.  That is, that it is costing us a great deal.  How?
  Let's assume that there _are_ sex-linked cognitive differences which show
up in the statistics of large populations.  (And ignore, for the moment, the
stupidity of trying to apply statistical data to unique individuals.)  Then
consider the fact that because of social and cultural factors math has,
purely historically, been developed almost entirely by men.  (Yes, I know
there have been a number of excellent female mathematicians!)  Then it is
reasonable to apply statistics to the large sample of all past mathematicians
to infer that math, _as it now exists_ contains a built in bias toward those
cognitive skills at which men tend to excel, leaving skills at which women
tend to outperform men out, or puting them down as "not real math".  I would
argue that this implies that current mathematics has cut itself off from
much that might have otherwise been discovered.
Newsgroups: sci.physics