X-periment! 07

Here’s a taste of what you can expect at X-periment! 07 (Marina Square, Sept 1-2):

Guest-of-Honour RAdm Lui Tuck Yew (Minister of State for Education) trying out an experiment with spins!

An uplifting experience for Singapore Science Centre Chief Executive Chew Tuan Chiong

(More pictures below)

Much ado about nothing

The latest astronomy news is that there’s a giant hole in space.

“Hole” is a misnomer, really. What the radio astronomers at the University of Minnesota have found is a region of the universe where there’s absolutely no matter, either light or dark - just the cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang.

Here is an image of the hole. Does it remind you of the fever cams we have at the hospitals and airports? It’s essentially the same thing - hot objects like humans and computers give off infrared radiation, which a thermal camera can capture to produce a thermal map of whatever you’re looking at. The universe is a *lot* colder than this though, and its resultant radiation emission lies in the microwave region. That’s what those giant radio telescopes capture - the microwave radiation, which is then translated into a thermal map of the universe.

Visible matter like galaxies would show up as hot patches on such a thermal map. Dark matter - a catchall term that includes planets, black holes, and weirder things - will also show up as hot patches on a thermal map. But in this hole, there’s nothing but the frigid 2.7 Kelvins of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

It could be a Death Star testing ground. Or someone could be clearing the way for a new galactic bypass. Maybe we should start worrying…

Science Month 07

Science Month 07 begins today!

Some of the highlights:

• Sci-fi Movie Forum (29 Aug - 31 Aug, GV Marina): Two shows this year: An Inconvenient Truth^*, and The Island - plus a discussion with a panel of cool scientists afterwards!
• X-periment! (31 Aug - 2 Sept, Marina Square): Lots of fun hands-on activities by the universities, polytechnics and research institutes! The Lab Rat will also be manning a booth there…
• Eureka Symposium (5 Sept, Republic Poly): A full day’s worth of workshops and discussions on the theme “Managing our Fragile Earth”.  More details here.

^* How could they possibly put this amazing documentary under “Sci-fi”?!

Not easy being green!

Since being environmentally friendly is now seen as being the kosher thing to do, one of the local supermarket chains has decided to give a 10-cents rebate for every $10 spent whenever you bring your own bag. It’s definitely an improvement over the free bag giveaways on those bag-free days - I mean, you’re trying to encourage people to reuse bags, yes?

So anyway, it just so happened I was in the vicinity of a store the other day, and I figured I’d see how they’ll actually honour this rebate in practice. After racking up more than twice the required amount, I headed for the checkout counter.

No rebate.

Why? In the mind of one particular cashier, a backpack doesn’t count as a shopping bag.

Ah yes, the great Singapore intellect at work again. I love this country.

I now have the following grocery checkout and transportation experiments lined up:

1. Using a handbag.
2. Re-using older FairPrice plastic bags.
3. Re-using some rival supermarket’s plastic bags.
4. Using the FairPrice green bag, but dyed red.
5. Putting groceries directly into a wire granny cart.
6. Carrying out the groceries by hand.

These should yield some interesting results!

Wanted: More physicists

So says the new A*STAR chairman Lim Chuan Poh in Today, pointing out a worldwide trend of declining numbers of students studying physics. It’s certainly true in the UK, where physics departments have been forced to shut because of lack of students, although in the US, a reversal is being observed. I don’t know the numbers for Singapore, but from talking with JC teachers, it appears that with all the biomedical hype, they’re seeing a lot more students taking up biology and chemistry as their two science subjects, instead of a combination that includes physics.

Let’s face it, physics has an image problem. Much of it lies in the way that it is taught - labs still involve experiments like pendulums, wire voltage dividers, water heating. A lot of it is automated now, given the advent of cheap data loggers, but the experiments are still pretty much the same. Contrast this with biology and chemistry: Quite a few school labs these days are equipped with rather sophisticated pieces of equipment like photospectrometers and PCR machines (and sometimes even newer than what research labs have!). It’s a lot easier to learn how modern biology research is done if one gets to play with the tools in a classroom. In physics though, there’s a big disconnect between what is learnt at the classroom and what physicists actually do. Thinking that physics research is all only about inclined planes or esoteric mathematical equations would be a large turn-off to many students.

From the Today article:

[The Chairman] hopes that the establishment of CIRC will help reverse the trend. “One thing that we want to do when we open the centre, and even now at Bioimaging Consortium at Biopolis, is to make sure that enough students come and look at the capabilities and tools that we have,” he said. “When they see those images and know when they do physics they can contribute to making those images, I’m sure they will be very excited.” It will also help to know they can have a direct impact on healthcare and human life, he added.

Well, sorry, but seeing an MR-PET image isn’t going to make me enthusiastically and excitedly pick up the nearest physics book. A neuroscience book, more likely.  Again, it’s an image problem - where’s the physics?  How can “doing physics contribute to making those images”?  By the time I have a tool that can show me colourful pictures like these, I’d be more likely to be thinking about possible problems I can solve with the tool, rather than how the tool works.

We’re going to have to sell physics a lot better than this if we want more students to take it up.

This camera sure has a lot of nifty features!

The best part is that it’s less than $50!

(click for a larger image)

Text on the box:

Digital Camera
5 coatings glass optics lens,
validly prevented dazzles the light,
the reflection, makes the phantom
level richly, the coilor is lifelike!

(It’s definitely poetic. Which probably explains why a philistine like me can’t figure out what it’s trying to say)

The fine steel structure, the elegant
appearance, elegant is eteady

(Steel? More like elegant and eteady plastic and aluminium, really)

The entire direction, the entire angle
move the adjustments wilfully,
looked more scopes are broader

(And wilful it was. Some WD-40 helped.)

Construction Speacification
350K Pixels CMOS
Video data format: 12. 16. 24-bit
Mage resolution: maximum 600 X 800
Menu display/sec: 30 incif mode
Menu signal bit: 42 dB
Lens: 6.0 mm
Vision: +/-28
Foucus range: 3 centimetre to limitless
Data transit interphase: USB

(Mage resolution? Data transit interphase?)

At least the thing worked when I plugged it in.

Art vs science

Art is the ability to make up loads of bovine manure about your current project…

…Hey, that doesn’t sound too different from what scientists do!

As the old anecdote goes:

Junior scientist: I just got this data off my experiment and I can’t really explain it. *shows senior scientist a graph*

Senior scientist: *launches into lengthy exposition about the data, invoking multidimensional quantum field theory, the strong anthropic principle and the nesting habits of toucans*

Junior scientist: Erm, actually it’s upside down…

Senior scientist: Ah! In that case, there’s an even easier explanation!

I can’t even begin to tell you how often I’ve been in this situation…