Last Wild Pages – 10/30/2024 (note from Bets: Wild pages are what they call the weekly assignment to write whatever comes to mind so the topics change freely from one to another)
Up before dawn again today. The waning crescent moon catching my eye coming in and out of view through the softly moving clouds. A hint of mysticism permeates the sky, as if a message yearns to make itself known. Perhaps a chill omen of leaner times to come as the moon shrinks away. Perhaps just my predawn dreaminess slipping lazily into its comfy shell for the day, exchanging work shifts with the ever eager buzz of my let’s-get-a-move-on-there’s-lots-to-do daytime self. In fact, the day holds ample opportunity for action. Amid the circadian chores and scheduled society lurk the myriad tasks of preparing for winter on the farm. Summer lawn furniture stored, lawn mower fuel emptied, garden hoses drained and coiled, chimneys inspected, cleaned and readied for fire, firewood gathered, food put by. Lots of pears and apples this year, gleaned peppers of all varieties, a dubious bounty of tomatoes. Freeze-proofing the plumbing, a perennial challenge, requires inspections of the insulation on exposed piping, checking whether shutoff valves are working, testing the light bulbs and heaters that supply just enough heat to ward off frozen well pumps and updating what to do in the event of freezing weather, flooding and/or power outages. They come singly and in combination. It all gets done eventually and we still have time to enjoy walking the fields on both the crisp chilly sunny days and the soggy atmospheric river event days. Each has its charm. Autumn is my favorite time of year. I find peace in the waning frenetic pace of summer. Time to hunker down, catch up on the inner musings that have been kept in check with busy-ness for so long. I champ at the bit to enjoy the suffusing heat of a fire in the stove while reading , playing games with wife and friends, or just plain resting.
We acquired an electric car a year and a half ago. All electric. I was skeptical. The physicist in me says you aren’t saving energy. It takes the same amount of energy to move the car down the road no matter how you generate it. And the complicated computer controlled technology required to operate the vehicle takes it out of the hands of most people to work on, fix, and maintain. When the battery eventually fails it can cost nearly half the value of the car to replace.
And yet, I love not having to ever stop at a gas station. Yes, our electric bill is larger, but not like you might think. We find that it costs us roughly four dollars of electricity to go 160 miles, that’s 40 miles per dollar, which is about what a quart of gasoline costs. Now I’m not saying that the car is using less energy than an efficient gas car. Most of that discrepancy comes from the economics of selling and taxing gasoline. When the electricity to drive cars is taxed equivalently, the price will even out between gas and electric. Until then, I will happily pay less to drive.
There is a debate within the science teaching community whether or not lectures should be structured to surprise the students with the important result at the end, or whether the result should be given up front and the rational development of the ideas leading to it developed and supported after. Several factors come into play. Maturity of audience, level of material, teacher ability to tell a good yarn, time of day. But I believe there is a third better alternative. Demonstrate the principle and engage the students in figuring it out..
As Halloween approaches and the weather destabilizes toward winter, the spook in me wants to scream BOO! We went with friends to a haunted house on Saturday. I initially balked but in order to save face with wife family friends, I finally demurred. What the hell, how corny could it be? We waited in line, listening to screams, howls, chain saws, and various other racket emanating from the eerily throbbing glow of the building. I trailed the other three as we wended our way into the labyrinth. Not ten steps in a window slammed open and a woman screamed bloody murder not three feet from my ear. I practically jumped out of my shoes. Not expecting that. Startle reflex in spades. Now I’m ready. What’s next? Throw it at me. Then things were pretty tame for a while. Still trailing, I rounded a corner and someone shouted, “You better run!” and this chainsaw ignites right behind me, roaring and chasing me. Criminy!! Got me again. OK, that’s good, I paid 13$ to be scared and there it was, my money’s worth. None of the other 3 were even remotely scared. Simple pleasures!
Planets have orbital velocities that depend entirely on their distance from the sun. Size doesn’t matter, mass is irrelevant, distance only. Closer in, faster. Farther out slower. Put another way, the time it takes to go around the sun increases the farther away from the sun the planet is. Kepler’s third law. The square of the orbital period is proportional to the cube of the distance from the sun. A useful formula for determining the size of the solar system if the proportionality constant could be calculated. How do you measure the distance from here to Mars anyway? No tape measures are that long.
It turns out that careful determination of the times each planet takes to go once around the sun gave us enough to calculate the relative distances from the sun to each planet. What was needed was the distance of one of them from the sun or the distance between any two of them. In the end, astronomers were able to determine by careful observation and a whole bunch of trigonometry the velocity of Venus as it orbited the sun. This amazing feat, coupled with the already known orbital period, allowed determination of the distance of Venus from the sun. From there, the rest of the planet’s orbits were calculated and the immensity of the solar system realized. The next step would be the distances to the stars, which would have to wait until an accurate determination of the speed of light late in the nineteenth century.
Watershed moments in science occur unpredictably, usually arising from experiments gone awry. Take for example the Michelson-Morley experiment in the late 1880s. They had set out to determine the mechanical properties of the luminiferous ether, the theoretical substance permeating the universe that functioned as the medium for light waves to travel in. Invisible and elastic enough to support extremely high frequencies, the ether was necessary to the prevailing theories of the propagation of light as a wave. The experiment would use the relative motion of the Earth through the ether to determine the speed of light as it traveled with the ether and in the opposite direction of the ether. Sort of like how a plane flying into the wind moves slower relative to the ground than a plane flying with the wind. The result of the MM experiment showed without a doubt that the speed of light was independent of its direction of travel relative to the presumed ether. The only possible conclusion was that the ether did not exist, which meant that all electromagnetic theory of the time needed to be reconstructed. This was the famous “null result” that Einstein used to build his famous theory of relativity on. We no longer believe an ether necessary to the propagation of light through the vacuum of space. No less mysterious fundamentally, but theoretically more useful.
I’m older now. And softer. I catch myself desirous of things I eschewed as a youth. Hot baths instead of quick showers, shoes instead of barefoot when outdoors, dessert before vegetables, TV instead of interactive life. Did I make a wrong turn somewhere? Is it just age?
Halfway up the hill, legs burning, lungs screaming for air, feet pounding the gravel road. Only a couple hundred feet to go. The voices in my head keep telling me I’m foolish to make this kind of effort. No one else cares anymore. They’ve all stopped pushing. Various aches and pains chilling the fires of ambition, claiming now the vicarious thrills of family and televised sport as sufficient. I can’t let go. It’s not for them. It’s not to look good or garner laurels from the masses. Beyond the voices of lesser deeds I hear the clarion words of my mother’s stern admonition to make something of myself, to rise above my own and the world’s expectations. That was truly her strongest gift of love to me. Affection? Paltry. Time spent together? Minimal. Meaningful holiday and birthday gifts? More like perfunctory. A deep sense of respect for the mystery of life and the universe? In spades! Even she found the stress too great near the end, letting others define her path, collapsing into an abyss of wine and crochet art in a retirement mecca in the desert. I’m not there yet. Just one or two hills left to climb before returning to the cloistering hearth to rest.