Daybreak and Real Physicists

The new AT&T internet serial Daybreak is awesome! I watched the first three episodes last week after I heard about it from the Chief Engineer of the New Yorker Hotel. The story, so far about a race to find one of Nikola Tesla's lost inventions, portrays physicists in an exciting light if nothing else. But is it real? Here's a check of how the physicists in Daybreak compare to real life physicists. Since I'm not too bashful, I'll serve as the real life physicist, (well physics student).

Do Physicists Really Live in Trailer Parks?

Daybreak	Real Life

Of Course they do! Have you ever checked rental prices near Brookhaven National Laboratory? Ideally, your trailer should fit easily behind your car so you can move from laboratory to laboratory with ease.

Do Physicists Drive Motorcycles?

Daybreak	Real Life

Yup! Although ours tend to be wired for data acquisition.

Do Physicists Have Access to Desert Hideouts Full of Barrels?

Daybreak	Real Life

They do! You have to have a home base. It should be noted though that the barrels are for making the wood burning heaters that are essential for cold desert nights.

Do Physicists Really Own Pea Green Double Ovens?

Daybreak	Real Life

As it turns out, desert hideouts don't come equipped with great ovens. However, if you've got $20 and you watch craigslist, you're all set.

What about those shiny dials?

Daybreak	Real Life

Might I direct you to the masthead for this blog? We're all about shiny dials! The masthead photograph was taken during a tour of the basement of the New Yorker hotel. More about that later... I don't want to give too much away.

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The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in...

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain ...

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:...

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