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This Week Archive
| Extra! Extra! Read what Science magazine, American Scientist, and others (including lots of other blogs) are saying about Quantum Diaries on our new "Buzz" page. |
Puzzles, inside jokes, and other enigmas
Tommaso
Dorigo and Claire
Gray post some puzzlers that have stumped several eminent physicists
-- one even briefly perplexed Einstein himself.
A couple of theorists give Sarah Phillips a bewildering
explanation about "moose diagrams" -- which come with antlers, tails,
and all. She then uncovers a paper entitled "Deconstructing
Noncommutativity with a Giant Fuzzy Moose." Is this for real or "some sort
of theorist inside joke?"
Peter Steinberg inherits
his father's Relativator, a slide rule designed to do calculations related
to the theory of relativity. Huh? |
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Taking turns
Someone's got to stay up all night with the detectors, so physicists, like physicians, take shifts.
Ursula Bassler discusses "owl shifts," which last through the night and conclude with her "favorite raspberry crepes" at the Pancake House. David Waller's experiment uses a creepier name: "graveyard shifts." "If there are any problems, you try to fix them," he writes. "Or call someone who can!"
José Ocariz reports that BaBar, in California, operates with a two-person crew at all times: "The Navigator is responsible for ensuring the quality of data, and the Pilot takes care of everything else: run control, communication with experts, liason with the accelerator crew..."
Finally, MINOS, the newly dedicated neutrino experiment at Fermilab, is beginning to work out its shift schedule. Besides writing instructions for the shift operators, "we have to make sure there are enough people to take shifts," writes Debbie Harris. |
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