Everyday Scientist

Science Fair

Last weekend I had the pleasure of judging middle school science fair projects. It’s always refreshing to see the kids interested (or at least pretending to be interested) in science. There were a lot of great projects. It was also nice to have a coordinator that wanted us to find a winner, instead of the “everyone’s a winner” approach I’ve encountered judging at some other schools. In honour of their efforts, I’ve put together my own science fair project.

Problem
How do glasses relax? This is important because glasses are important for people with bad site to see good.

Hypothesis
I think glasses will relax. I think this because if glasses didn’t relax, then we wouldn’t be able to see through them. But I’ve seen through a glass before, so it must have relaxed.

Materials
1) Paper
2) Pencil
3) Regeneratively amplified femtosecond Ti:Sapphire oscillator
4) Stopwatch
5) Notebook
6) Something to make things cold

Procedure
1) I ask 5 friends, David, Melissa, Lindsay, Billy, and Rainbow if they thought glasses relax.
2) I wrote down what they said, and averaged the results.
3) Make a liquid supercold.
4) Shine a lazer through it, and see what comes out.
5) Analyze your results.

My independent variable was the number of people I asked. My dependent variable was if the glass relaxed.

Results
These were my results.

As your can see, David, Melissa, and Rainbow all said that glasses relax, while Billy and Lindsay said glasses cannot relax. This confirms my hypothesis that glasses can relax, because more people think glasses can relax than glasses cannot relax.

Conclusions
My hypothesis was correct. If I could do this experiment again, I would see if playing different types of music would make the glasses relax faster. This experiment was important because it shows science works.

Bibliography
100 Great Science Fair Thesis Projects

Linear?

It’s not the worst figure, but I did laugh a little that only 2 out of 10 points fit comfortably within their respective error bars.

Source: J. Phys. Chem. B, 2005, 109, 15172-15177

molecular playbook

I’m reading this interesting paper (DOI: 10.1021/ja067068k) that explores the structural (in)stability of beta-hairpins upon arsenic binding to cysteins. I was enjoying and understanding the paper until I saw this figure:

Huh? Does this look like a football play to anyone else? Is this normal for NOE? Can someone enlighten me?

one-way mirror?

The Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed a reversible mirror (source), which consists of two pieces of glass with a small spacing in between containing a thin film of magnesium-titanium alloy. Allegedly, the film turns transparent when hydrogen is pumped into the spacing; reflective when air/oxygen pumped in. The idea is to use the glass as windows for building and reduce cooling costs (by turning the windows reflective on sunny days). Interesting idea. (But….)

This story was picked up by several blogs/websites (PhysOrg, SciFiTech, Geekologie, UberGizmo), but I was disappointed that no one pointed out an obvious flaw in the above figure: in the “transparent” frame, they’ve added substantial backlighting. Of course the mirror is more transparent when you supply backlighting! The direction of illumination is different between the two frames and thus they aren’t comparable. This is way worse than changing the bin size.

OK, I’m sure the mirror effect is reversible in this system, and that the effect is dramatic. Just too bad that they had to fake the figure!

And BTW, do we really want hydrogen and oxygen pumped thoughout high-rise buildings, contained in fragile glass? It’ll give “raging inferno” a new name!

oh, you mean wheelbarrow!

Ok, another contender in the worst-figure contest:

In case you didn’t know what a wheelbarrow was. No really, this is a real figure in the paper. (Hat-tip to MetaDatta. And Sujit thought that Tetrahedron Letters is a funny journal title, too. Back in undergrad, I thought it was a joke journal. Now I am a co-author on a paper in Tetrahedron, so don’t I look the fool.)

P.S. My favorite part of the figure is the triple equal mark.

the internets make you live longer

Proven: Using the internet makes you live longer. And, as a nice side effect, the internet reduces child mortality. Don’t believe me? See for yourself (click on the chart below):

(To manipulate the chart or see a map or make your own chart, click here.) Cool Google stuff.

Oh, Snap!

Remember a while back when some guy used fractal analysis to study Jackson Pollock paintings and made a world of bold proclamations, the most important of which was the claim that fractal analysis can be used to refute provenance? Not so much. Apparently all it takes to become the master of “the language of nature” is 5 minutes and photoshop.

Now all that needs to be done is configure our laser jet for a 10×15′ canvas, and I’m richer than L. Ron Hubbard. No flying DC-10 spaceships required.

(Xenu prefers fractional dimensionalities)

A first case study of homosexual necrophilia in the Mallard Duck

As promised, an oldy but goody.

Beyond the great title, the article is an even better read, and truly deserving of it’s Ignobel prize status.

fat = stupid?

OK, this one wins the worst-figure contest:

The authors of this paper (Cournot, M. et al.Relation between body mass index and cognitive function in healthy middle-aged men and women. Neurology 2006, 67, 1208–1214. or read the PDF: cournot_fat_stupid_neuro_2006.pdf) try to argue that there is a negative correlation between body-mass index (BMI) and cognative function (i.e. fat people are stupid). They report the correlations (such as -0.008 +/- 0.13) that are the equivalent of saying, “There are 3 people in this room … plus or minus 300.”

I swear to god, this is a quote from the paper describing that figure (this is not taken out of context, read it for yourself):

This cross-sectional association between BMI at baseline and cognitive scores persisted after adjustment for age, sex, educational level, physical activity, and region of residence and had a linear shape (figure).

Linear shape?!? Looks more like a big fat (pun intended) blob to me. Isn’t that awesome? The funniest part is that they worked so hard to adjust for all these different parameters, and still got a complete scatter. The authors must be fat, ’cause they’re pretty stupid. I can’t believe this stuff can get published! This is why people are starting to claim that most published research findings are false.

Too bad I already made the mugs for the Chemical Physics Journal Club this year, because that plot would have been perfect!

[I have to thank Spectroscope for bringing my attention to this travesty. I also have to thank Retrospectacle for reminding me why the softer sciences have a bad reputation; but my housemate thinks Shelley’s hot, so I won’t be too mean.]

Schrodinger’s CATion

SOURCE
I don’t think this illustration was taken from the original document, but seriously. While trying to illustrate the parity properties of singlet and triplet Cooper pairs, this illustrator decided the most appropriate representation for an electron was a cat (some reference to Alice in Wonderland.) Now we just need Pecora to scatter light off of it…

write-your-own caption!

From an article, Image scoring and cooperation in a cleaner fish mutualism, in Nature:

Whoever comes up with the best caption for this silly figure will win an EDS refrigerator magnet.

reading babies’ minds

This PNAS paper just freaked me out: Baby with wires coming out of the brain!

If that’s not a “Worst Figure,” then what is?

The point of the paper was to test the theory that extended staring means that the baby didn’t anticipate what it saw, a common method used to test the world view of babies and monkeys. But I didn’t actually read the paper, because the figure scared me too much.

Thanks, Andrew, for bringing this paper to my attention. Thanks also for the nightmares. Very H.R. Geiger.

etch-a-data

Some Data I took recently with David Pearson – cool, huh?

four data points is not enough

Here’s another one for the worst-figure contest:

This is from a paper on curved diffusion in Phys. Rev. E. The four data point are culled from other publications, because the paper mostly reports the results of some (helpful) theoretical calculations. But do those four measly data points help? Especially with those error bar, I have no idea how well the theory actually fits the data. In the text, the author tries to claim that the solid line fits the circle data. Riiiight.

more lit: penguin pooh

OK, when it rains it pours. I have another literature post.

This is a real article in Polar Biology. And it reports upon what the title promises. I mean, just look at this figure:

You can’t beat that. Nor can you make it up. Thanks to Ilya for this and the swimming paper. You know, I bet this research is sticky, too…