Friday, March 23, 2007

Built Like A Brick Outhouse

So I left my cell phone charger at JM's about 3 weeks ago. He gave it to John, who forgot to give it to Ashley. John brought it home with him over Spring Break, but John's apathy and my own lack of urgency (as it turns out, my phone holds a charge amazingly well, and the family charger was available whenever I needed a few hours worth of juice) kind of reinforced each other.

I mean, it was like our phone charger apathy functions (everythings a function, guys) could be represented by electromagnetic waves of the same wavelength and amplitude, perfectly in step.

Still not clear? Okay, refer to the following diagram.So lets say that there's just one universal apathy wave (that would explain a lot) with wavelength a, and John and I are just slits in an opaque barrier, seperated by some distance d, and some distance L away there is another barrier, and some point on this second barrier represents the phone charger. The phone charger is just high enough along this screen that it forms an angle 0 with the horizontal line midway between John and myself such that d sin 0 is equal to ma, where m is some integer, resulting in a bright fringe of apathy right around the charger.

In any case, I finally broke out of the apathy pattern today and picked up my phone charger from the Valesano residence. It was warm and sunny and I played Sgt. Pepper's with the windows rolled down. Good times.

In a completely unrelated note, I also took a bike ride and picked up my physics book from BHS. While I was there I noticed a curious object outside: a Brained Daily Dispatch vendor box thing, painted bright yellow and covered with lots of inspirational messages (Commit random acts of kindness!) and plucky paintings, each one with a signature and an "07" next to it. Seems art club or something has slapped together a class gift of sorts. It was just sort of sitting on the sidewalk outside of H-Link, not bolted down or anything, so I'm worried/hopeful that it will be stolen, or perhaps hurled onto the roof.

P.S.:
Recipie for wonder:
1. Make a document in Microsoft word and save it as Vietnam.
2. Open a Firefox window and go to the Wikipedia article for Seven Dirty Words
3. Maximize both windows
4. On the bottom control bar thing, click quickly between the two windows
5. Watch the "W" in the title bars of both window and prepare to be amazed

Note: if this is not enough to excite wonder in you, you are bitter and jaded. Go hug a pug.

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11 Comments:

At 9:33 PM, March 23, 2007, Blogger 88 said...

AHHH DOUBLE SLIT DIFFRACTION>>>>> PHYSICS IS EVERYWHERE I GO AND ITS STARTING TO MESS WITH MY BRAIN> I NEED TO QUIT THIS MAJOR NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.

 
At 10:13 PM, March 23, 2007, Blogger constant_k said...

Tara-You're majoring in physics? Why? Isn't it kind of, like, hard and boring?

Man, we're all just slits in an opaque barrier, man, that's all we really are!

 
At 3:58 AM, March 24, 2007, Blogger Jason said...

physics is sweet, max. case in point: you're presumably majoring in art history, but write all sorts of thought-provoking things about physics. I, on the other hand, am essentially pursuing the field of Physical Chemistry, and you certainly don't see me holding any educated opinions about the history of art.

stick with it, tara. unless you don't want to. i realized pure physics wasn't right for me one night when staring at the night sky and only seeing giant, far-distant balls of brightly burning mass rather than the wondrous spectacle that is the celestial firmament. my romantic persuasion has since returned.

 
At 5:15 PM, March 24, 2007, Blogger Unknown said...

Kubas- Bring the ISAMF DVD monday

 
At 11:26 AM, March 25, 2007, Blogger constant_k said...

Well houle, I'm something of a renaissance man, unlike yourself, evidently.

But seriously, physics is conceptually very interesting, problem-wise very hard/boring.

 
At 12:26 AM, March 26, 2007, Blogger J0hn said...

Physics is similar to having a pug crammed up your ass. I mean why would someone want to put it up there? It's just fine where it is. It's cruel not only to you but the pug too.

 
At 9:43 AM, March 26, 2007, Blogger Jason said...

Wonderful analogy. Evocative, really.

Max, the trick comes when you have equations and methods that work but don't make the slightest sense, i.e. quantum theory. None of that gobbledegook would have ever found its way into pop science if there hadn't been a bunch of physicists chillin' and mathin' it out first.

 
At 6:52 PM, March 26, 2007, Blogger constant_k said...

And their welcome to math it out all they want.

I'll just sit back and eat up the popcorn science as they spew it out.

 
At 10:24 PM, March 26, 2007, Blogger Jason said...

Actually you may be interested to know this. I quote this fact (which I learned today) from my physics text:

"Furthermore, we note that Eq. 34-3 is known as Faraday's law, it was not written in that form by Faraday, who was untrained in mathematics. In fact, Faraday's three-volume published work on electromagnetism, a landmark achievement in the development of physics and chemistry, contains not a single equation!"

 
At 10:36 PM, March 26, 2007, Blogger constant_k said...

As a matter of fact I was interested to know that.


Sam was talking today about how you tried to get him to join tennis last year and how he almost did. So close, and yet so far away.

 
At 12:44 AM, March 27, 2007, Blogger Jason said...

What can I say, my powers of persuasion cannot overcome the resolve of the inertial Samuel Q. Walker.

 

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