omenti

the fundamentals

mini-post

The Standard Model of Physics dates back to the mid 70s and is far and away the most complete and accurate description of three of the four forces of Nature.  Add General Relativity for gravity you have the basis to  answer fundamental questions like what we're made of and the forces. That's the bedrock of physics.    (the Standard Model with General Relativity tacked on is sometimes called Core Theory)  It's something that almost every physicist wants to see fail as there are hints of something deeper.

It's very elegant physics with beautiful mathematics, but good enough non-technical descriptions aren't easy.  Here's the best short discussion I've seen.  

 

I should note that while physics can describe all of these interactions, there's a problem with calculation.  Our mathematical techniques are often too weak so we have to resort to clever and not so clever approximations.  A lot of physics turns out to be applied mathematics.

 

an olympic-scale audio uncanny valley

a pre-Olympic minipost

An hour into the first of last year's AVP beach volleyball tournaments a warning clickthrough page appeared on the event's Amazon Prime Video page. Amazon had been covering the AVP tournaments since 2018, but the pandemic forced a strict spectator-less bubble.  During the previous two years they hadn't spared any expense. Now they had to keep viewers engaged.  Rather than using sampled crowd audio and cutout spectators, they they focused on highlighting the event's audio.  A sports audio specialist was brought in and dozens of microphones were installed on the main court, players chairs, coaches, referees,  along with a number of moving microphones.   The first match immediately was sprinkled with some rather colorful language - enough to trigger Amazon's warning clickthrough.  

 

Watching the matches was something of a revelation. Sounds of the game ranging from sound normally masked by crowd noise to coaches discussing tactics with players during timeouts.  The announcers had been coached to work around the new sound field. By the end of the first tournament the viewer experience was excellent.  Similar things happened in other sports that took the "honest" route. Viewership often increased, while many of the major sports saw drops.  Now NBC and other large networks around the world have to deal with an Olympics with empty stadiums.  How will they react?  A miscalculation could damage viewer engagement.  It's a very interesting social technology experiment.

 

It turns out a lot of work has been done over the past sixty years.  Sports like football (not the American variety), tennis, rowing, past Olympic games, and online games have driven innovation.  Seven years ago 99% Invisible aired a radio documentary produced by Peregrine Andrews on the sound of sports.  It's fascinating and worth the hour.  Listen with stereo headphones or earbuds.  

Roman Mars · 99% Invisible-127- The Sound Of Sports

There's another fascinating question.  How do athletes react to empty stadiums? That experiment has been underway for a year now.  It's not simple.

 

beyond the swimming obstacle course and horse long jumping

A pre-Olympic minipost

 

Early on rope climbing, tug-of-war, and shooting live pigeons were Olympic events.  Over time there's been both churn and growth as audiences have changed and grown.   The International Olympic Committee recognizes a number of sports federations which government Olympic sports, potential Olympic sports and sports that would never be candidates (non-physical sports like chess and bridge and sports like auto racing and aerobatics that motors).   Getting a new sport into the Olympics involves politics and the television target market of the games.   The IOC has been worried about attracting a younger viewership so we have several Winter sports, BMX biking, skate boarding, sport climbing and surfing appear in recent years.  

 

Many of the new events are interesting from an amateur science point of view.  I was going to write about surfing, but there are a couple of key points that are better communicated visually.   This video does an excellent job covering the basics of why it is possible to surf including how you can travel faster than the wave.

 

 

beyond the peloton

a minipost

 

A few days ago I forwarded the first of what promises to be a series of pieces of a cultural study of Peloton users by Anne Helen Petersen. It’s interesting - she’s certainly an enthusiast and she’s making interesting observations.  There was some interesting feedback- mostly on how big it might get, where Apple fits in and so on. I have some educated guesses where it sits in the home exercise stack and where Apple is as well as a very different direction they may take, but I think there’s something more interesting.

 

Around the world many found themselves isolated for a good deal of the past 15 months.  Exercise equipment became an item for those with the money and time.  Now that people in the US are coming out of isolation a good deal of that equipment, perhaps kit not as engaging as the Peloton,  is turning up at yard sales.  There are reports of more engagement in outdoor activities - amateur sports.

 

Over the years I’ve come across several social science papers on the sociology of exercise and amateur sport. Robert Putnam (the author of Bowling Alone way back when) pointed out that communal exercise - particularly amateur sports - creates a meeting ground where people of different beliefs and ideologies come together regularly.   While they may not become close friends, many become familiar faces you look forward to seeing and chatting with.  They're part of the 50 to 150 Robin Dunbar identifies as friendly familiars.  More recently Putnam and others have talked about the service groups, amateur sports, etc that became popular during the Depression and persisted through about 1965.. a period of high social cohesion in the US (Putnam documents this more recently in his perhaps overly-optimistic book Upswing). Apparently it’s still true that social cohesion is high in these communal events - running, cycling, softball leagues, etc. etc.  It’s certainly in evidence in pro-sports fandom worldwide - BBC's Why Factor had an excellent piece on the subject:  Why do we care so much about games.

 

Norway has a unique approach to youth and adult sport and participation at the amateur level is much higher than any other country. The budgetary justification is two-fold: better health and better social cohesion.   There's much more going on there and in the Nordics in general that leads to social cohesion, but in many parts of the world it seems to be decaying.  Perhaps getting involved with others you don't know well at first is healthier for society than doing things by yourself or in your bubble.

 

are athletes getting better?

Olympic minipost

One of Simone Biles' floor routines as seen through a high speed camera. (go full screen)  Many sports have undergone dramatic changes in the past fifty years.  The introduction of springy floors and beams has allowed more dramatic routines that revolutionized gymnastics.  It's a sport where powerful muscles and a short stature are required. Simone's incredible acceleration combined with the strength to jump explosively and change her moment of inertia in mid-air give her claim to the great athlete of our time title.  At times she's experiencing g-forces usually found in aerobatic aircraft.  Here's a short video from Quartz (it won't embed) before the Rio Olympics  explaining a bit of what's going on as well as giving a sense of how far the sport has come. 

 

Three major innovations have changed elite sports - equipment, extreme specialization of body type to match the demands of specific sports, and a much larger gene pool to selection from.  David Epstein gave a nice talk about seven years ago touching on all three:

 

Many sports - particularly Olympic sports - lack the financial rewards seen in the top professional sports, but at the elite level it's clear the expanded gene pool has become important.  Of course none of this applies at the amateur level -  people find a sport or two they like and "just do it."  There's a lot of evidence continuing these activities has a huge positive impact on health - particularly as one ages.  It may be elite athletes encourage many of us to move.  Perhaps the endeavor is cost effective at the societal level - it's both desirable and part of the public health policy in Norway.

 

mother's day

She enjoyed having to wait.  People around her would become characters in stories she'd make up.  Story making was a hobby of hers.  Often she'd invite you to join in.  As you gained experience, she'd take greater leaps.  Simple things on the street would develop complex plot twists and even find themselves in other eras or places.  

 

She was a bit on the quirky creative side and some of that may have rubbed off on me and my sister.  Here are a few lessons I learned:

° It's good to have some boredom in your life. It encourages you to try something new.

° It's fine to not be great at something if you enjoy it.

° You need several very different interests because they'll have conversations with each other if you just listen.

° Don't worry about names and dates in school. "How" and "why" are better.

° chocolate is good, pie is good, ice cream is good.

° Your friends may turn out to be at least as important as your family.  Find the good ones.

 

We were never pushed to do homework school. My parents were busy enough that our upbringing was more semi-supervised free range.  There were a lot of books and trips to the library.  The reward for a good report card we'd get an ice cream cone from Dairy Queen.  Perfect marks scored a banana split or a milk shake.  And even if she didn't understand our interests, Mom would support us how best she could. 

 

When I was about fifteen I read Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland - probably the book that had the biggest impact on me until I went to college.  As I  described the world Abbott created, Mom ran with it and developed a richer story and asked some "how" questions.  Those questions started me down a path  that taught me a little engineering - subjects she was unfamiliar with.  I began to see the value of story telling - particularly those visual stories.

 

Besides stories she enjoyed drawing and painting.  She wasn't very artistic, but spent a lot of her free time at it.  I wondered why as my sister's art was much better.   Then I went off to collage and found myself drawn to sketching.  I'm terrible, but it's a form of play that can take me to a state of flow.  I realized she was probably doing the same thing.  My sister became an accomplished artist - some her pieces have been described as snapshots of quirky short stories.   She obviously picked up a lot from Mom too.

 

We celebrate those important ones through memories and  recognition of how they helped create who we are.  Even now I find myself watching people and imaging stories when I'm waiting.  She would have laughed at how unimaginative smartphones are.

 

Happy Mother's Day Mom.

 

the power of the liberal arts

a minipost

Tomer Hanuka of the School of Visual Arts in New York asked his third year illustration students to create a post-pandemic New Yorker cover.   Some of the pieces were so moving that he posted them on Twitter where they quickly went viral.   So viral that an article appeared in The Washington Post.

 

The power of art never ceases to amaze me.  I'm clearly not an artist, but think visually.  The few beginner art classes I had in school as a teenage played a big role in how I think abstractly.   I don't understand why art, and for that matter liberal arts in general, are on the cutting block these days.  Somehow they're not seen as relevant for the job market.  I think they're necessary if the student is preparing for life long learning.  Of course I'm biased as I was a liberal arts major (physics and math are liberal arts).

 

I've spent some time trying to link art and physical science programs in a couple of colleges. No details as it's been political and was interrupted by the pandemic, but I'm still enthusiastic.  The fact that one of the physics professors is in a rock band helps..

 

natural conditions

a minipost

Natural conditions impact outdoor sports.  Tokyo in late July and early August is "interesting" - it's very hot with humidity rated as oppressive about 60% of the time.  Pleasant weather doesn't return until the Fall, but TV demands drive the Olympic schedule.  Some endurance events will probably be run at night and athletes will be adding high temperature conditioning to their training routines in the next month or two.   Excessive heat has important physics and physiology consequences and the understanding of physiology has changed a lot in the past decade (you can drink too much in endurance events and electrolyte drinks are ineffective).  Perhaps something for future posts, but for now let's stick with the wind.  

 

Tokyo, during the Olympics, will probably have consistent winds around 7 mph mostly from the South or East.  To establish a record events like the 100 and 200 meter sprint, 110 meter hurdles and the long and triple jumps record the wind velocity and require a trailing windspeed to be less than 2 meters per second - about 4.5 mph - measured at the track.  The wind doesn't matter much within a race, but qualifications can be biased if the wind changes much between qualifying events. 

 

You'd think a tailwind would always be advantageous for hurdlers, but they have to mentally adjust their strides and launch points for a variety of winds and only the best can handle a variety of conditions.  Long jumpers have to adjust their approach to launch as close to the takeoff point as possible and not foul. Assuming they succeed, a trailing wind can be a big advantage.  Except for record setting pole vaulting is similar.  The height they clear is related to the square of takeoff speed so a tailwind can be a big help.  Oddly there's no wind assistance limit for records. Perhaps an approaching hurricane would be useful in world record attempts.

 

Closed road course races are problematic.  One might think tailwind and headwind portions average out, but if the wind is at a constant velocity, the headwind portions are always slower (here's a simple explanation).  Of course there's the larger problem of shoe performance so maybe we're at a point where records aren't terribly meaningful in running.

 

For some sports the wind adds an interesting dimension.  The density of a beach volleyball is low compared to other most other sports balls, so the wind makes a big difference.  Additionally volleyballs have interesting aerodynamic properties in airspeeds between 14 and 17 meters per second - speeds commonly seen in the women's game and exploited by the better players.  Teams must to adjust for windspeed and direction, but events often go on in strong  and gusty winds - sometimes with heavy rain, which is not unlikely in Tokyo during the Olympics.  

 

Many other sports are impacted by the wind, but last Spring the final project in a science of sports class I taught got my attention.  An amateur bicycle racer/biology major proposed human powered flight.   You would charge a battery by frantically pedaling  generator.  After some amount of time you'd take flight adding whatever power you could muster with your legs to what the motor could produce. Finding the right limits for weight,  charging times, and allowable technologies would make or break the sport.  It probably wouldn't be much of a spectator sport, but would make a great project for engineering students. 

 

looking at the algorithmic economy

minipost

If you think about how society and the Internet, you probably know about Joan Donovan of Harvard's Shorenstein Center.  Among other things she's known for rejecting the notion of the "attention economy" as being somewhat gas lighting.  Instead she uses the phrase "algorithmic economy."

Andy Revkin of Columbia interviewed her this past Friday as part of his Sustain What series.  She talks about the possibility of a path to a public interest Internet while safeguarding speech.  Also how disinformation memes develop and need to be watched and how the current control of interests on the Internet fail.   You may or may not agree with her, but she's one of the deeper thinkers in this area and this is a particularly clear introduction to what she's about.  Andy does a great interview job, pushing back here and there to go deeper.  An excellent way to spend an hour.

leaps of faith

minipost

Yesterday I had my first jab of a Covid-19 vaccine - specifically the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.  Despite political, production, and distribution issues several vaccines appeared and more are coming.  Going from decoding the SARS-CoV-2 genome to first injections took only about a half year and a year later a few hundred million doses have been produced. While some corners were safely cut, the real story - at least for the new mRNA vaccines - began nearly thirty years earlier.  

 

Katalin Karikó's work will certainly win her a Nobel Prize next year.   Here's a good telling of the story.  A major point is the work was judged unworthy and finding support was nearly impossible.  After about ten years another player, Drew Weissman, entered and the two of them managed to crack the final bits of the problem.  He'll certainly be sprinkled with the Swedish holy water too. The mRNA approach is important well beyond the current pandemic - it may mark a fundamental change in medicine.  It wouldn't have happened - at least not as soon as it did - without a certain type of reserch.  

 

Curiosity-driven fundamental research requires a certain type of scientist, time and resources.  While much of it fails to produce an immediately useful result,  it has an established track record of changing the world.  Industries don't do this kind of work anymore.  Most universities shy from it - there's a tendency to want results-focused work.  When it's funded you usually find it in physics and astronomy  rather than the biological sciences and that's a problem.   These leaps are driven by hope and curiosity.  They open doors that often require more than a decade of work - usually by other people in different organizations.   Expanding this work is how you create radical change.  I'd never argue results-driven research should be cut - after all, that's where the next five to twenty years come from.  But I'd love to see the Katalin Karikós of the world given more of a space.  And then there are the spin-offs - a good deal of the instrumentation used in medicine came out of  fundamental physics - but that's another set of stories.