omenti

the genesis of the iPhone

Six months ago one of my closest friends died unexpectedly.  Norm happened to be brilliant, but you could probably say the same of most people with an  Erdös number of one. What set Norm apart was his warmth, a bit of craziness and his natural storytelling ability.  He was a walking storybook of some of the most important developments at Bell Labs from the mid 1970s to 1990s - developments that touch nearly everyone.  

 

Arguably the iPhone is the largest innovation of the 21st century - so far and today marks the tenth anniversary of it's release.  It has changed businesses and the behavior of an enormous number of people on the planet.  To celebrate, the Computer History Museum had a discussion with four of the principal people involved in it's development.  Of course an important voice was missing, but one of the guests happens to be like my friend Norm - a natural storyteller.  Scott Forstall also happened to be one of the people closest to Steve Jobs.

 

The event ran about two hours.  I'm guessing those with a deep interest in the history of technology have already seen it.  Scott's segment is a delight and probably interesting to everyone else.  Plus it's only about thirty minutes long.  What project led up to the iPhone and why did it start?  When and how did Apple know they are on the right track?  How did Steve Jobs scam his old company for lunch money, the compassion of Steve Jobs for his friends...    It begins at the 1:26:00 mark 

playful thinking

There is this dairy farmer with a problem.  He's tried everything he can think of, but milk production from his herd just won't budge.  The dairy new online push hormones, but no ..  it was time for something unconventional.  He hired three consultants - a mechanical engineer, a psychologist and a physicist.

A week went by and the engineer came back with a stack of papers.  The problem, according to the engineer, is the farmer's milking machines don't develop enough vacuum and the tubes to the storage tank have too many bends.  A special machine is proposed, but the farmer decides to talk to the next consultant.

The psychologist takes a lot of photographs and makes some sound recordings.  He compares these with those of benchmark barns and after a week reports the barn is too disorderly and the sounds from the nearby highway make things worse.  The recommendation is to hire an interior decorator and subscribe to Moozak.  

Nope .. time to listen to the physicist.

The physicist listens to the farmer describe the problem.  "hmmm..." she says as she pulls a half used Fieldnotes pad, pencil and slide rule from her backpack.  Gazing up at the sky focused on nothing in particular she says...

consider a spherical cow

 

You've probably heard some variation of this.  I like it as it describes how a lot of physics is done.  Physics and the other sciences are usually poorly taught - it's anything but facts and equations to memorize and somehow apply.  Rather it's mostly play at it core - at least how you think.  You strip away anything that isn't necessary and see what you can learn.  If the answer doesn't make sense you try a different approach.  The trick is knowing how much to strip away and what to leave in and how to mix in other questions along the way.  Ideally you're left with new insight.

 

A regular reader told me he was curious about my thinking process and asked if I could describe it.    At first I ignored the request, but then decided to give it a try with a little real time play. Using the spherical cow joke as a seed I took a walk with a very smart friend as a sanity check.  This isn't a transcript, but here's roughly how it unfolded.

 

First let's draw a picture of a cow.  Consider a spherical cow of radius 1.  I don't care what the units are and for now a sphere is the simplest shape to get started with.

Now draw another  sphere of radius 2 - this will be our gigantic cow. What kind of milk production can we expect.  Any linear dimension will be twice as big so we can see if barn door heights and widths will work.  The udder will be part of the sphere.  It will be 8 times as large as the regular cow ..  the volume of any part of the cow scale as the radius cubed - it doesn't matter what part of the original spherical cow I choose, as long as the part on the larger sphere has the same shape, its volume will be r³ or 2³ = 8 times as much.

Already a problem looms.  What is the pressure in the udder?  Pressure is just a force spread over an area (think pounds per square inch).  The force in this case is the weight the udder has to support, which increases as the cube of radius. The area of a section of the sphere is  4πr² times the fraction of the sphere the udder takes up.  Now the udder fraction and the  4π are the same for a spherical cow of any radius.  We'll be comparing the two by dividing so they'll cancel out.  The pressure will be proportional (a physicist would say "goes like..") to r³ divided by r² -- or just the radus r.  Our giant cow has twice the pressure on it's udder as the standard cow.  This may be a serious cow design problem and we would need to know more to make progress.  But it gives a hint of another direction.

 

Now draw a more accurate picture of a cow and giant cow.  A small sphere connected by a cylinder to the larger sphere. What about the force on the neck?  The important innards of the neck are the spine and muscle. Strength goes as the cross sectional area.  So if the double sized cow is a perfectly scaled version of a regular cow, it's neck will be r² or 4 times stronger.  It must support itself and the head, both of which will see their weight go up by the cube.  The ratio of weight to strength is simply r or 2 in this case.  Another design issue for giant cattle breeders.

But what of really big animals - like a dinosaur?   If the head is much bigger than the neck it will be the limiting factor.  Imagine something like a cow scaled up eight times in length.  The head would quickly become too heavy.  Something like a big dinosaur walking on four feet with a long neck would need a very small head.  

Now it's clear why the dinosaurs went extinct.

Their brains were too small. This handicap meant they never developed a space program and were unable to deal with the asteroid. 

 

Of course this is tongue in cheek, but this sort of playful approach is exactly how a lot of physics gets done.  As you proceed detail and more critical questions are added.  One gets to point where measurements of Nature are needed and then you see if you can predict -- if not it's just storytelling and not science.

 

Back to the example.  It's an interesting approach to begin thinking about sports.  What kind of body types are more suited to one sport or the other?  People on the list range in height from something under five foot zero to six foot eight.  One might consider gymnastics and the other basketball or volleyball.  Neither would be a good distance runner...  Soon you need to drill deeper, but the thought process stays the same.  As detail enters, calculations need to be more robust.  The observation and experimentation part can be very difficult to implement.  LIGO - the twin observatories for measuring gravity waves are simple to describe conceptually, but making it work took over thirty years of hard work and invention of new instrumentation and techniques (some of which has had impact in engineering and medicine).  This simple concept is a few minutes at a blackboard with no equations and a string of playful questions eventually led to an entirely new form of astronomy.

 

The approach works in many areas where there is enough information to form some kind of a question - often one that sets limits.  There are times when an hour of thinking gets you within a factor of two of a difficult problem that requires huge resources to answer to any precision.  This is a good way for picking paths to follow.  I've been called on to do this in scenario planning style exercises.

 

And for fun ..  what about the folklore that the breath you just took at least one molecule from Julius Caesar's last breath.  A minute or two of thinking gives the answer, but it raises some really interesting questions about the atmosphere..  The first time I thought about the problem as a teenager I was struck by the notion that the atmosphere for a plant is like a salty sea and the thirsty sailor.  That leads you to think about fertilizer and the enormous scale of the process - probably the primary reason for the planet being able to sustain more than two billion people.  Then you think about the energy costs and other natural limiters.  This style of thinking is a great exercise for anyone who likes to discover dot connections.

 

Clearly one doesn't do this all the time, but it's great fun and I encourage folks to try it out. When you do it with others it's not brainstorming - brainstorming doesn't work.  Rather it's a form of play.  It can get addictive and can be physically dangerous for those of us who can't walk and chew gum at the same time.  I naturally fall into this with one of you who has saved me from Manhattan traffic on several occasions.  

 

 

 

optimism and doing something

On the bus ride home Friday night I found myself thinking about my renewed optimism that we have a chance to do something about global warming.   I was on my way back from  the New York City Open on Pier 26 in lower Manhattan.  The crowd and the people I talked to had me fired up.

 

Beach Volleyball is a great sport.  Trust me and go if a tournament shows up nearby.  A rich and interesting game, great athleticism (try running and jumping in the sand for awhile), and friendly people.  And for those who are into such things there's a lot of interesting science to think about...  

 

A ball flew out of the stadium landing the Hudson river.  Looking around it struck me how young the crowd was.   What would the pier look like in a few decades when they're my age?  What would their world be like?

 

The situation can seem hopeless.  Ten years ago I started into an education effort thinking better public knowledge of energy was important.  I'm not an exciting speaker, but over time and a dozen talks I found an approach. People seemed positive and there were a lot of questions at the end.   I started writing a book, but it became clear that minds weren't being changed.  At the same time well-funded merchants of doubt were hard at work spreading pseudoscience as an industry and political party became tightly linked.  By 2011 it had become clear that education alone wasn't the answer.  I gave up on my effort and started  to think about how humanity might adapt.  I don't recommend that line of thinking if you're prone to depression. 

 

Times change and now I find myself  filled with hope and optimism thinking in terms of dozens of partial solutions that don't rely on new technologies.  Solutions that can be cost effective and don't degrade quality of life.  We won't get back to where were in the lifetimes of anyone now living.  There is a good deal of warming locked in as greenhouse gases have a long term impact, but we have the power to choose our path.  We can turn the knobs and keep things to a level we can adapt to. Life will be different, but it can be very good.

 

Most of the proposals you hear about are top-down requiring major investments by large (conservative) companies and governments.²   Fortunately there are other paths.   Doing some model based simulations you find that there's quite a bit that can happen at the personal, city and state level.  Some  industries will resist as the markets tend to be focused on the short term and exclude many externalities, but many others may find opportunity saving on their power bills for example.   Without a carbon tax, electric storage and fusion what might be possible?

 

Electric cars, at least as we know them today, won't have a huge impact.  They still need a lot of energy to make and run. They're still better than a car with an internal combustion engine.   If you're getting a new car and want one go for it, but it isn't the best use of money if you're interesting in impacting global warming.  And inside of 15 years they''ll probably be cost effective without subsidies in most market segments.  Here are a few suggestions:

  

° cut back on meat consumption - particularly beef.  If cattle were a country, it would be the world's third largest carbon emitter.  The US is already seeing a reduction in beef consumption.  Going vegetarian or vegan a few days a week can have a major impact if millions do it.  

° Use your car less even if it's electric.  Walk or bike when you can.   Electric bikes are an incredibly efficient way to get around in cities, towns and suburbs and very practical if your tip is five miles or less.  A regular bike can improve your health, but you may not use it as much.  

° If you are getting a new air conditioner or refrigerator make sure the refrigerant in the old one is disposed of properly.  The gases  have anywhere from 5,000 to 11,000 times the impact as the same amount of carbon dioxide and remain in the atmosphere longer.    The refrigerant in a home air conditioner has the greenhouse gas impact of several thousand miles of driving in the average family car. If you can, hold off getting a few AC or refrigerator until 2019 when much better refrigerants are mandated.¹ About 90% of these refrigerants are improperly vented worldwide so there's major room for improvement.

 

Here's an ordered list from a series of models that assume modest adoption of new paths that don't hurt standards of living. The order is how much greenhouse gas is prevented from being released - cost or externalities like politics are not represented.  

 

proper control of refrigerants

wind turbines

reduced food waste + a plant-rich diet (80% improvements over current levels by 2050)

tropical forest management

education and opportunity for women/family planning

photovoltaic farms

rooftop solar (home and industry)

silvopasture (trees + farm animals rather than pasture)

temperate forest management

peatland management

nuclear power

clean cookstoves

offshore wind turbines

concentrated solar

district heating

electric cars (downsized) - note that walkable cities and bikes/electric bikes can go even further

 many more items.  some that are technical, many aren't

 

Electric storage and smart grids don't show up at this scale.  Some, like nuclear power, are very expansive, some are overly political and even violate local religious norms, many are regional.  The point is there are no silver bullets, but rather lot of silver buckshot.  You don't have to use all of it and they don't have to be perfect.  All will have a positive impact.  There will be some new technologies, but we don't have to count on them.

 

We have been faced with a false divide between urgency and agency.  It has been too much us versus them and we talk in terms of goals like decarbonization and 2°C.  In fact both might be considered problem statements and then we can intelligently approach them.  We need to rethink communication - something that is happening in science and perhaps will take place here.  We can get started now.  

 

America has never been a leader on climate change.  Some of the best science and technology is American, but don't count on top-down leadership.  The Paris Accord wasn't that good and was just an agreement, but now many of the important players are pissed and will do things on their own.   Canada and Finland have banned coal. China's five year Ecological Civilization plan, California and other states are teaming for joint action,  companies like Apple have made enormous changes in the past few years and regular folks like you and me can make an impact.

 

By the time I was walking home from the bus stop I was thinking about volleyball again...  the curious ball trajectories that illustrate a certain bit of physics better than any other sport...  Hopefully the quality of our choices will improve and the beach game can still be enjoyed close to where it is now by people with a good standard of living.  And maybe a tournament in Moscow can even see a bit of late Spring snow as one did a few weeks ago.

__________

¹ If you thought last year was a disaster the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol is a counter-example.  The Montreal Protocol regulates gases that attack the ozone layer and has been an enormous success.  It has real teeth with trade sanctions against violators and companies that make the gases in question ended up doing well making replacements.  170 countries met in Kigali, Rwanda to create a path towards climate-safe refrigerants. In 2019 it begins to turn on in advanced countries and moves towards others over the following ten years.

² Largely variations on the Princeton slice model. 

 

finding paths forward in education

 

If you had unlimited funds for a philanthropic big bet in education - a real game-changer - money is not object - what would it be?

 

About a week ago a friend posed the question.    I asked about the scope ..  American education and a few examples were given.  The requirements are daunting.   People need to be able to reason and solve challenging problems rather than just recall information in a narrow space.  They need to identify and handle false and biased information. To be flexible and creative. Schools around here are doubling down on the basics and increasing their emphasis on science and math.  They're using technologically updated, but old techniques --  steam engines to run the sails up and down on sailing ships.¹   Many of the approaches I've seen aren't up to the task.

 

Some thoughts came to mind, but they were too specific to my experience.  I took a walk and let my mind wander.  There was this undergrad course that made a real difference in my life and it was completed unexpected.

 

Friends recognize me as a maladroit with the additional feature of not being terrible at sprinting and jumping.  I hated gym class in Jr and Sr High school.  The focus was on those with athletic ability - high school football and basketball are big deals in Montana.  I showed up and came away with my gentleman's grade of C.  So I was let down when I learned I'd have a year and a half of PE in college.. pass/fail, but still...

 

The first day of class saw a physical assessment that even included treadmill workouts.  I learned that I'm not very good at team sports or anything  that required running and jumping.  My hand-eye coordination was in the bottom quintile.  The tests suggested I might have a high percentage of slow-twitch muscle.   I was assigned an instructor who knew quite a bit about rowing and cycling. In a few months I was doing the one hundred mile round trip from Pasadena to Irvine -  a century.  

 

The program was all about creating self-motivation. The magic was clueful coaching.  People with a knowledge of motivation and kinesiology took the time to give me something I would enjoy for decades. I can't say that for every class I took. 

 

The medical profession now recognizes exercise as a very powerful medicine with almost no side effects.  Finding ways to instill the habit may be an extremely cost effective form of education. Denmark and the Netherlands partly justify bicycle infrastructure as a mechanism to reduce healthcare costs.   I know of one high school that does it - there are probably more.  This is low hanging fruit, but the philanthropy is probably focused on academics. 

 

 

I've written too much on what I think should be taught.  Some of it is controversial - my suggestion that middle and high school science and math cater to pre-professional students attracted some criticism.  We need to sort out what should be taught - I've certainly written about that at length.   But rather than talk about that now I'll move to how teaching is done.  

 

Well - not yet.  There's more low-hanging fruit in middle and high schools.  Art, music and shop.  All of these can be fantastic aids to help you learn how to think and solve problems. I'm a terrible artist and a worse musician, but I couldn't do math or physics without the visual abilities that came with learning these -they help make me think the way I do.  And shop, properly taught, is pure lean-forward problem solving with an end goal and a bit of delicious danger. Ok --  back to the matter at hand.

 

The name of the college is no guarantee of quality instruction.  Until recently very little has been done to measure the ability to solve real problems.  It turns out traditional lecturing in non-major science courses, even at the best schools, leaves much to be desired.  Moving to other forms of teaching may be the way to go, but just what?

 

I'll plug a form of instruction that has seen a good deal of serious measurement - active learning.  Students prepare for class, but rather than lecturing the professor engages them to think by framing questions.  Here an example from a neuroscientist:

The same is true for active learning in first-year courses, in which the teachers often do supply the questions — but frame them in a way that asks for more than a rote recitation of facts. It is the difference between 'name the sensory nerves of the leg', and this:

You're innocently walking down the street when aliens zap away the sensory neurons in your legs. What happens?

a) Your walking movements show no significant change.

b) You can no longer walk.

c) You can walk, but the pace changes.

d) You can walk, but clumsily.

We usually get lots of vigorous debate on this one,  it's lovely to experience. 

 

The Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia and the University of Colorado had excellent results.   It has been replicated at other physics, chemistry and biology departments around North America.  An excellent summary is  Improving How Universities Teach Science: Lessons from the Science Initiative by Carl Wieman.   KQED has a good interview.

 

The SEI flavor of active learning has been shown to work in science classes and is spreading.  It seems likely it would work for engineering, the humanities and other subjects, but that is an open question.  Measured trials need to happen and that takes money, people and a good dose of pride swallowing, but the potential reward is high.

 

What about K12?   That is probably even more difficult.  A workable curriculum, the status of teaching, money and so on,...    This takes serious will.  I have ideas, but again they're probably not worth much.  It would be lovely to have a larger conversation with those of you with expertise.  

 

Circling back to the original question.  I think the best a philanthropy might do is fund the expensive search for answers.  The teacher as a coach may be part of it and perhaps there are computational tools to help.  The optimist in me tells me it should be possible to find the right mixes and approaches for most people at an individual level, but we need to understand how to teach effectively first.  Trying to find the game changer at this point is an underpants gnomes business plan.

 

This is worth thinking and talking about ...  and for those in a position to try things, maybe a bit of experimentation is in order.

__________

¹ The Kahn Academy strikes me as a steam powered sail winch.  It is great for today's schools.  The execution is excellent, but it is 19^th century training on 19^th century math when deeper problem solving skills are required.