When The Shoe's on the Other Foot... Literally

As our 'just under OSHA's safe hearing limits' subway hummed to a stop, I felt a gentle nudge at my left side. Turning to find a kind but concerned looking fellow passenger, I raised my eyebrows quizzically. She pointed at the kids. "Ah," I thought, "she's about to comment on how awesome the kids are!" It was the obvious answer, but why did she look so concerned?

She leaned in conspiratorially. "Their shoes might be on the wrong feet," she whispered.

"Hunh, would you look at that? Cool! Thanks!" I replied with a big grin. Off the train went roaring through the tunnels of San Francisco again.

At the next station, the train doors slid open letting the bright platform lights flood in. I felt another nudge. This time my fellow passenger leaned back in contemplation, staring at the kids' shoes. For fun, I leaned back with her. We studied the footwear in question in some detail. She nodded her head, then leaned back in to whisper, "No, no, their shoes are definitely on the wrong feet." The doors on the train slid back shut.

I gave my best conspiratorial yet contemplative nod. It felt kind of like being in a spy movie. I whispered back, "I think your right. No, no, you are right. They're definitely on the wrong feet."

Our station was next, so I happily shouted "Next station is ours!" alerting my gang of three that they needed to jump up and run out of the train the next time the doors opened.

We all piled out of the train, and onto the platform where I hollered, "Hard left!" to direct the kids to the escalator we were headed up next. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just make out our well-meaning fellow rider, still gazing forlornly at the kids' shoes. Her face, pressed close to the glass of the train's window, was a palette of concern and confusion. Why, oh why hadn't their shoes been changed back?

Here's why:

'Cause it's so easy! The kids dress themselves. Woohoo! I focus on getting me ready!
It makes the kids happy! Yes, I've told them which shoes go where. They don't care.
And finally, we meet so many interesting people this way! Who would I talk to on the train otherwise? Well, probably everyone, but that's beside the point :)

Comments

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 concept very sim

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:

Copasetic Flow

Search This Blog