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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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 ...

The Alcubierre Warp Drive Tophat Function and Open Science with Sage

I transferred yesterday's Mathematica file with the Alcubierre warp drive[2] line element and space curvature calculations to the +Sage Mathematical Software System today, (the files been added to the public repository [3]). If you haven't used Sage before, it's a Python based software package that's similar in functionality to Mathematica. Oh, and it' free. I also worked a little more on understanding the theory, but frankly, I made far more progress with the software than the theory. What follows will be a little more of the Alcubierre theory, plus, a cool Sage interactive demo of one of the Alcubierre functions[1], as well as a bit about my first experience with using Sage. Theory The theory is fun, but it's moving slowly. Here's the chalk board from this morning's discussion Alcubierre setup the derivation using something called the 3+1 formalism which means we consider space to be flat, (in this case), slices that are labelled ...

How Many Files Can You Add to a GPT Project? An Interview with GPT-5 on Limits, Context Engineering Tips, and Chats

Setting the scene: I’m tinkering with Project TouCans, knee-deep in radio logs, SQLite dumps, and Cesium code. Naturally, I’m wondering if shoving all this into one GPT Project is a recipe for brilliance… or for disaster. So I turn to Vril — you know, after Brainy from the Legion of Super-Heroes , because what else do you call your AI sidekick who always has the answers? Time to ask him straight up. [ As an aside, yes, GPT-5 has decided to sometimes call me Vail. I'm not sure why to be honest. Also, I asked Vril, er GPT-5, to write up our interview for me. Apparently, me asking it to 'Bro' up a few stories, just for fun, has convinced Vril that I use 'Like,' more than I actually might. ] Me (Vail): So Vril, how many files can I throw into a GPT Project before it just starts choking? Like, is there some magic number where the context window taps out and everything falls apart? GPT-5 (Vril): Great question. There’s no single hard file limit. What matters is ...

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