Chaos Theory and Consciousness

Apparently I haven't posted on this blog since the end of June, apologies I didn't realise how long it had been. I seem to have lost track of the time since then. But then again; what is time?

No we're not talking about that today, maybe another time, though the current theories are certainly very fascinating.

Instead we're talking thermodynamics, or more specifically entropy, the chaos theory. Now the title also says we'll be talking about consciousness, also true. But how do the two link together?

Recently I came across a newly published paper by a little known physicist, I forget his name now, that did exactly that. Of course this might not be correct and may be completely and utterly wrong, however it is definitely food for thought.

This paper proposed that entropy is the reason that we have a conscious mind, that we are aware of the mind we have and also how we apply it. The chaos within the particular law of thermodynamics would mean that a non-conscious being would have a more ordered state and that because chaos has ensued, we have formed more neural connections within our brains, resulting in our current state of conscious and intelligent life.  It is due to the entropy and the continued state of it that we have developed our understanding so that we are 'no longer at the mercy of the reptile brain' but can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space.

That's all I have for now, as I'm at an engineering course next week you may get something interesting then.

For anymore information that you may want on  Thermodynamics, the only popular science book that I've managed to get hold of on the subject is 'Four Laws that Drive the Universe' by Peter Atkins. It's very informative, though not particularly engaging so it can be a bit of a struggle to retain interest if I'm honest.

Till the next time

-M

Beautiful humour

I've just read a comedy physics book on the multiverse, it's pretty funny therefore I recommend any of you that are remotely interested in quantum physics of the many worlds interpretation, or just anyone that finds physics slightly interesting to go and read 'Doughnut' by Tom Holt. It is honestly hilarious.

As well as this, I just came a across a brilliant physics joke that I feel the absolute need to tell you so here it is:

Einstein, Newton and Pascal are all playing hide and seek.It's Einstein's turn to count so he covers his eyes and begins. Pascal runs off to hide, meanwhile Newton draws out a 1m by 1m square on the ground in front of Einstein and then stands in the middle.
Einstein finishes and uncovers his eyes, immediately seeing Newton he exclaims "Newton, I found you, you're it!"
Newton then smiles and replies "You didn't find me, you found a newton over a square metre, you found Pascal!"

I just had to share that with you sorry, you may now all continue with your day.

How will engineering solve the issues of the 21st Century?

Hello again,

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I was hoping to upload something a little more interesting today, but then I went and broke my elbow so you will have to deal with a cop out. Well I say cop out I did technically spend around three days editing and writing this, so it was a lot of work even if it was done three weeks ago. Essentially I wrote a report on engineering, full title is that of the current post and basically as typing a lot is going to kill my arm, I'm going to upload that and see if anybody actually wants to read it, just a note, this essay did just win me £1000 overall so it can't be awful.

Here it is: Engineering report

Enjoy

Warp Speed

So I've officially given up on that centrifugal force post until next week as my laptop is refusing to let me format any equations whatsoever.

Therefore I am stuck as for what to talk about.

Wait Star Trek...
...No I'm not insane, okay so I was talking to somebody the other day about the scientific issues with the Star Trek films, don't get me wrong I am a huge fan of them.

So the main problem that we thought of, not the Fermi paradox, teleportation or anything like that, was warp speed. And not just due to the fact that we can't travel as fast or faster than light for reasons that I can't be bothered right now to explain, basically we have mass.
We figured that once the warp speed had been activated they would never have been able to report back to Star Fleet Command, as they always have been able to. This is mainly because, Command would all likely be dead by now. As the starship would have been traveling at warp speed,time for them would pass slower than on Earth by a considerable amount, like being in a stasis state, therefore leaving them alive whilst the remainder of Star Fleet would age at a 'normal' rate on Earth.

Basically that was our conversation, and now you know.

Live long and prosper.

Not so normal

So I've been trying to create a rather informative post on centripetal and centrifugal forces, however the formatting has decided to go funny on me...

Therefore that post may have to wait till next week though the research into the backgrounds of the equations took aaaaages, oh well.

Anyway I thought instead I'd give you an article that just came through on my feed:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/05/06/181613582/our-very-normal-solar-system-isn-t-normal-anymore 

I'd recommend reading it, it's rather interesting.

Sorry this is so short, oh and just to say if anyone wanted to know there won't be anymore lab notes from extreme physics as they are currently stapled to a display board in my physics lab...

Code Academy

Okay, since I cannot be bothered to leave the comforts of my bed and reach for the remainders of my extreme physics booklet, you will once again be given an off topic blog post. Almost as interesting though, I assure you.

This is basically another of those: IFOUNDANAWESOMETHINGYOUNEEDTOGOANDCHECKITOUTOTHERWISEYOURLIFEWILLBEINCOMPLETEUNLESSYOUALREADYUSEITINWHICHCASEILOVEYOU kind of posts. Have fun deciphering that one.

So on Friday lunch time my physics teacher (all praise go to you Miss) told me about a computer coding site that she uses/used. This was after we were discussing my abysmal attempts at mathematics. As I want to hopefully go into the field of physics I obviously need maths and I was informed then that it may be useful to take computing A-level as well, now we don't have a computing GSCE option but we do have an AS one. I didn't take this suffice to say. Thus Miss gave me the name of a website that helps you to teach yourself both basic and advanced programming, I was given this a long with the warning of: 'It's fairly addictive' very true says I though this at least is a lot more productive than spending consecutive hours on 9gag.

Soooo here's the link to the webpage, tell me what you think of it
http://www.codecademy.com/

Don't forget to comment and check out my main blog at:
http://howstheskull-mycroft.blogspot.co.uk/

Super cool(ed)

So essentially this one's going to be a minor break in the extreme physics write up and be more about one of my little musings that I have during chemistry.

Now I'm not entirely sure whether this comes under Chem or Phys but hey here we go:
As I'm in GCSE science, we were today covering covalent bonding, how truly fascinating.

And as most of our chemistry and physics lessons seem to do we went a little off topic and started talking about the conductivity of H2O (water), we were discussing why it was that water does not conduct electricity, fairly simple to be honest. However I then went into my mind palace... Yes; and remembered a lecture I attended this year on super-cooling. This process makes most elements and substances more conductive so I was wondering whether it would be possible to super cool water as we do with liquid nitrogen and the like. Anyway if anybody happens to know the answer to my perplexion or give me any info about it that would be great.

Thanks for reading guys, please comment, follow and check out my general blog at www.howstheskull-mycroft.blogspot.com 

Challenge 4- Galaxies and Exo-planets

So in this task we basically had to create an exo-planet system, which was fun...

We had to produce a scale model of the solar system, calculate the 'Goldilocks zone' and decide which planet was most likely to sustain life.

So these are my notes on this challenge:

Goldilocks zone:



sqrt{Lx0.7}=sqrt{1.47}x0.7=0.848704895

sqrt{L}x1.5=sqrt{1.47}x1.5=1.818653348

We found that using this, none of the planets within our given solar system were in the habitable zone.

Habitation:

We found that none of our planets were able to sustain life because:

• They were all gas giants
• None were in the habitable zone
• Carbon concentration may not be high enough for carbon based life forms
• Mass  of all planes was too high as the gravitational force would be too strong
• Luminosity of the star is not bright enough to counteract the distance of the planets
• Planets may not be able to hold an atmosphere due to weak magnetic field
• The mass is big enough that they could attract material like the asteriod belt due to Jupiter.

Mass of planetary objects.

Star: 84g

Planet D: 0.5g

Planet C: 0.5g

Planet B: 0.42g

Distance from star.

Scale: 40cm=80AU 

Planet D: 12cm

Planet C: 19cm

Planet B: 34cm

Cheers to reading guys please comment and out my general blog at: www.howstheskull-mycroft.blogspot.com

COMMENT!!!

Challenge 2- One man and his sheep

Our second challenge was communication.

We had to devise a system of clicks, claps and the like to navigate three blindfolded people around a course this was our system:

No. of clicks- no. of steps forward
High whistle- left 90
Low whistle- right 90
Clap- stop
2 claps- all stop
1 stamp- sheep 1
2 stamps- sheep 2 etc...
3 claps + 1/2/3 stamps- 2 sheep simultaneously
 Cough- obstacle

We also decided it would be good if beforehand we devised a test track so here it is:

I'll be back soon, probably update again tomorrow if there's time though I'm fairly busy... Check out my other general blog: www.howstheskull-mycroft.blogspot.com 

Challenge 1 -One minute timer

Okay so this was the first challenge we had to complete during the competition. We had a box of limited supplies and had to create a device that would measure exactly one minute and give a clear signal that said minute was up.

This was the basis of ours:
1) Sand runs from funnel into cylinder.
2) The cylinder increases in mass thus falling and pushing the other side of the balance uo.
3)The crocodile clip attached to the mass will touch the foil and complete the circuit thus switching the light bulb on.

Equipment:
We seriously didn't have much so DIYed some of it.
We used blue tac to attach the cylinder to the balance.
We used a ruler as the balance pole
We used a glasses case as the balance base.
We used rubbers as masses.
We used tin foil as wires.

Diagram:

done on paint so it's not great sorry.










So we were 40s over as the funnel was mis-positioned when we did it but came top in our room as we actually scored! I'll try to upload challenge 2 soon.

Check out my other general blog: www.howstheskull-mycroft.blogspot.com

And they say you can't make physics jokes...

So when I can be bothered to rifle through nearly 50 pages of paper work to find interesting physics for me to post, I will do so, I promise.

But until then this may amuse a few of you. If any of you don't understand any of the lines, just leave a comment and either myself or an equally nerdy person may be able to explain...

One day, all of the world's famous physicists decided to get together for a party (Ok, there were some non-physicists too who crashed the party). Fortunately, the doorman was a grad student, and able to observe some of the guests... 

• Everyone gravitated toward Newton, but he just kept moving around at a constant velocity and showed no reaction.
• Einstein thought it was a relatively good time.
• Coulomb got a real charge out of the whole thing.
• Cauchy, being the mathematician, still managed to integrate well with everyone.
• Thompson enjoyed the plum pudding.
• Pauli came late, but was mostly excluded from things, so he split.
• Pascal was under too much pressure to enjoy himself.
• Ohm spent most of the time resisting Ampere's opinions on current events.
• Hamilton went to the buffet tables exactly once.
• Volta thought the social had a lot of potential.
• Hilbert was pretty spaced out for most of it.
• Heisenberg may or may not have been there.
• Feynman got from the door to the buffet table by taking every possible path
• The Curies were there and just glowed the whole time.
• van der Waals forced himeself to mingle.
• Wien radiated a colourful personality.
• Millikan dropped his Italian oil dressing.
• de Broglie mostly just stood in the corner and waved.
• Hollerith liked the hole idea.
• Stefan and Boltzman got into some hot debates.
• Everyone was attracted to Tesla's magnetic personality.
• Compton was a little scatter-brained at times.
• Bohr ate too much and got atomic ache.
• Watt turned out to be a powerful speaker.
• Hertz went back to the buffet table several times a minute.
• Faraday had quite a capacity for food.
• Oppenheimer got bombed.
• The microwave started radiating in the background when Penzias and Wilson showed up.
• After one bite Chandrasekhar reached his limit.
• Gamow left the party early with a big bang while Hoyle stayed late in a steady state.
• For Schrodinger this was more a wave function rather than a social function.
• Skorucak wanted to put everybody on his web site.
• Erdos was sad no epsilons were invited.
• Born thought the probability of enjoying himself was pretty high.
• Instead of coming through the front door Josephson tunnelled through.
• Groucho refused to attend any party that would invite him in the first place.
• Niccolò Tartaglia kept stammering throughout the evening.
• Pauling wanted to bond with everyone.
• Keynes was keen to question the marginal utility of this party.
• Shakespeare could not decide whether to be or not to be at the party.
• John Forbes Nash wanted to play a n-person zero sum game.
• Pavlov brought his dog; which promptly chased after Schrodinger's cat.
• Zeno of Elea came with two friends - Achilles and the tortoise.
• Bill Gates came to install windows.
• Bertrand Russell kept wondering if the cook only cooks for the guests, who cooks for the cook?
• Witten bought a present all tied up with superstrings.
• The food was beautifully laid out by Mendeleyev on the periodic table.
• Riemann hypothesised about who would arrive next; to which Newton retorted, ' hypotheses non fingo.'
• Chadwick was handing out neutrons free of charge.
• Everyone was amazed at Bell's inequality.
• Watson and Crick danced the Double Helix.
• While Fermat sang, 'Save the Last Theorem for me.'
• Maxwell's demon argued with Dawkin's friend, the selfish Gene.
• Russell and Whitehead insisted on checking the bill for completeness and consistency. Godel said it was incomplete and it can never be proved otherwise.
• Epimenides the Cretan announced that only non-Cretans spoke the truth.
• Rontgen saw through everybody.
• Descartes cogitated, 'I think I am drunk. Therefore I am at the party.'

extreme physics

So, I'm going on a school trip competitiony thing next week. And you guessed it, it's for physics, title didn't give it away at all did it?
So it's called extreme physics and focuses on just that, so we're doing indoor sky diving, a bit of astrophysics and some other stuff that I don't know about yet.
As it's science what I'll probably do is babble on at you all either each night or one HUGE  update once I get back with anything interesting and worthwhile that I found over the week.

Until then live long and prosper. Thanks, Sage

Scishow

So as I said these posts are really going to be small until I have time to lengthen them. So today's is just a link  to a You-tube channel. It has loads of great science videos and explanations of almost anything 'sciency' you can probably think of: https://www.youtube.com/user/scishow
Go check it out...