Nicholas FitzGerald | Terry* https://www.terry.ubc.ca Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:26:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 6265917 Climate Change Rap Battle https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2011/05/11/climate-change-rap-battle/ Wed, 11 May 2011 16:16:02 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=10202 Well, that’s one way to get the word out… Warning: Strong Language

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Well, that’s one way to get the word out…
Warning: Strong Language

The post Climate Change Rap Battle first appeared on Terry*.]]>
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Make Bananas, Not Bombs https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2010/10/14/make-bananas-not-bombs/ Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:08:53 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=8953 A friend of mine posted an interesting fact to Facebook today. Turns out that bananas give off a relatively high level of radiation compared to other…

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A friend of mine posted an interesting fact to Facebook today. Turns out that bananas give off a relatively high level of radiation compared to other foods. Many foods give off small amounts of radiation, but the level for bananas is particularly high, due to the presence of potassium-40. This has given rise to the Banana Equivalent Dose as a measure to compare the radiation found in foods following a nuclear accident. Specifically, the average radiation given off by a banana is 3520 picocuries per kg. A curie is 3.7×1010 decays per second, so 3520 picocuries (pico = 10-12) is a very small amount of radiation.

I wanted to put this number into perspective. Specifically, I wanted to compare the radiation given off by a banana to something more spectacular, like Little Boy, the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War 2. Doing so lead to some interesting and surprising results. Read on…

Disclaimer: I am not a physicist. Please do point out any mistakes I make in the following, it should be very interesting!

First of all, I wanted to know how many bananas it would take to equal the amount of radioactive material in the Hiroshima bomb. According to Wikipedia, Little Boy contained 65kg of Uranium. In reality it was only 80% enriched, but for simplicity I will round up to 100% Uranium-235, bearing in mind that modern nuclear bombs are much, much bigger than was Little Boy. The radioactive decay rate of this much Uranium can be determined by the equation:

Where:

  • A = the radioactivity in decays per second (Becquerel)
  • t1/2 = the half-life of Uranium-235 in seconds which is (703800000 years)*(31556926 seconds/year) = 2.22097645 * 1016 seconds
  • N is the number of Uranium-235 atoms which is (64000 g)/(238.02891 g/mol) = 268.875 mol * 6.022141*1023 mol-1 = 1.6192*1026 molecules

(thank you to Ben Keller for reminding me how to do this)

Therefore, the activity of 65kg of Uranium is:

(note the conversion from Becquerel to Curie)

Comparing this to the 3520 picocuries per kg for a banana gives us the mass of bananas required to equal the radioactivity of one Little Boy:

So approximately 38788 metric tons of banana to equal the radioactivity of one Little Boy. Given that Wikipedia list the average weight of a banana as 125 grams, or 1 eighth of a kilogram, this equals approximately 310 307 272 bananas. That’d feed alot of monkeys.

It may seem like a lot, but according to Wikipedia, the world-wide production of bananas in 2007 was 72.5 million metric tons. This means that the radiation held by the world-wide production of bananas is approximately equivalent to 1870 Hiroshima bombs! Good thing we never get all those bananas in one place.

When I shared these preliminary results with some of my friends, one common train of thought that resulted from our discussion was “I wonder if dropping 38788 metric tons of banana would do as much damage as dropping a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb” (This should give you a rather terrifying insight into how my friends and I think).

First of all, how much area would be taken up by that much banana? To figure this our requires knowing the density of banana. Through Google, I found the value of 1.14 g/cm3 mentioned in several places. I couldn’t find the original source for this, but it seems like a reasonable value, given that it is only slightly above the density of water (1.00 g/cm3). Using the density we can determine the volume taken up by 38788 metric tons of banana:

If we assume that these bananas are packed into a sphere with no space in between, we can determine radius by using the equation for the volume of a sphere and solving for radius:

So this would be a sphere with a diameter of 40.6 meters… that’s alot of banana.

But how much damage would this do compared to the nuclear bomb? Well, obviously unlike the the bomb, no nuclear reaction will occur when the bananas hit the ground. But, there will be a large amount of kinetic energy. How much?

According to Wikipedia, Little Boy fell for 47 seconds before hitting the ground. Given that the gravitational acceleration on earth is 9.81 m/s2, this means that our ball of bananas will be travelling approximately 461 m/s when it hits the ground (ignoring drag, which will in reality reduce this speed). Plugging this into the equation for kinetic energy yields:

By comparison, Little Boy had a yield of 63 Terajoules. The nuclear bomb still does far more damage than our giant falling ball of banana.

Food for thought.

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Accidental Pilish: Unintentionally Constrained Writing in English Literature https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2010/03/26/accidental-pilish-unintentionally-constrained-writing-in-english-literature/ Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:21:19 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=7750 (mirrored from my blog) Background: This post is a little late for Pi Day, but it’s never a bad time for discourse related to everyone’s favourite…

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(mirrored from my blog)

Background:

This post is a little late for Pi Day, but it’s never a bad time for discourse related to everyone’s favourite mathematical constant. Twas on Pi Day of this year that I somehow came across this site, which describes the Constrained Writing task of Pilish, in which the length of each word in letters corresponds to the digits of pi:

The first word in this sentence has 3 letters, the next word 1 letter, the next word 4 letters, and so on, following the first fifteen digits of the number π. A longer example is this poem with ABAB rhyme scheme from Joseph Shipley’s 1960 book Playing With Words:

But a time I spent wandering in gloomy night;

Yon tower, tinkling chimewise, loftily opportune.

Out, up, and together came sudden to Sunday rite,

The one solemnly off to correct plenilune.

Michael Keith, the author of the above website, has created several works in Pilish, including a full-length book covering the first 10,000 digits of pi!

Trying to write under such constraints can feel extremely awkward, but this made me wonder: How often would strings of words adhering to the constraints of Standard Pilish occur unintentionally? Afterall, with the amount of text out there – the sheer rate at which words are being put together by people all over the world every second of every day – it is to be expected that these things should occur with some frequency p > 0. Such is the Law of Large Numbers.

In order to determine this, I would need a large data set. Luckily, such things are readily available. I settled upon the Project Gutenberg ebook catalog – specifically the union of the July 2006 DVD (17,000 books) and the March 2007 Science Fiction Bookshelf CD (most of PG’s Sci-Fi titles). Altogether, this gave me almost 9GB of text (although I later discovered this contained many duplicates, it’s still a hell of alot of words!)

Next I hacked together a small python script which would find, for each file, the longest string of Standard Pilish. Code for this can be checkedout from my SVN repository: http://svn.nfitz.net/pilish

Results:

Somewhat disappointingly, the longest of any Pilish string was 8 digits of pi. The vast majority of books had a longest Pilish string of around 3-5 words. See the histogram below (note the logarithmic scale in the y-axis).

Five books achieved this 8-digit benchmark, listed below, with the section of Pilish text bolded:

Dismounting and throwing the reins over his horse’s head he came to her smiling, sombrero in hand. “Buenas dias, Senorita. Please may I have a drink?”

“Certainly, Mr. Holmes ; help yourself.” She pointed to the olla hanging in the shade of the ramada.

I was weary of the humdrum life of idling on shore or aimless sailing up and down the channel. The admiral’s was a peaceful mission, and no fighting was expected, but I felt a great curiosity to behold new scenes.

And I have a great Objection to firing with powder only amongst People who know not the difference, for by this they would learn to despise fire Arms and think their own Arms superior, and if ever such an Opinion prevailed they would certainly attack you, the Event of which might prove as unfavourable to you as them.

One was part of the empire, the other was enclosed in Poland, and they were separated by Polish territory. They did not help each other, and each was a source of danger for the other. They could only hope to exist by becoming stronger. That has been, for two centuries and a half, a fixed tradition at Berlin with the rulers and the people. They could not help being aggressive, and they worshipped the authority that could make them successful aggressors.

With the most ambitious of the longer poems–“The Four Monarchies”– and one from which her readers of that day probably derived the most satisfaction, we need not feel compelled to linger. To them its charm lay in its usefulness. There were on sinful fancies; no trifling waste of words, but a good, straightforward narrative of things it was well to know, and Tyler’s comment upon it will be echoed by every one who turns the appallingly matter-of-fact pages…

That last one is the only of the five to have one word of double-digit length, thus covering two digits of pi (‘straightforward = 15 letters = ’15’).

Future Work:

I would like to do a similar analysis of an even larger dataset of more modern language. One possibility is a full archive of Wikipedia. I wonder what is the longest string of unintentional Pilish ever produced?

Another interesting question is how the maximum length of Pilish sections in a document scales with the length of the document, and how well this can be modelled with a simple statistical model such as a Markov Chain.

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EVENT: Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2010/03/03/event-multidisciplinary-undergraduate-research-conference/ Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:21:27 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=7547 As part of UBC’s Celebrate Research week, a great event is happening this Saturday at UBC: MULTIDISCIPLINARY UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH CONFERENCE (MURC) Irving K. Barber Learning Centre,…

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As part of UBC’s Celebrate Research week, a great event is happening this Saturday at UBC:

MULTIDISCIPLINARY UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH CONFERENCE (MURC)
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Jubilee Room (4th floor)

Saturday March 6, 2010

MURC celebrates the contributions of undergraduate research at UBC.  The conference provides an opportunity for students in any discipline from across campus to present a research project they have been working on while engaging in scholarly debate amongst each other.  Students have the choice of giving an oral, poster or performing/visual arts presentation of their work.  Presentations are judged by graduate students, and prizes are awarded at the end of the conference day during a celebratory gala.  The conference is held every year in March as the kick-off event to UBC’s Celebrate Research Week.

There is a great variety of presentations spanning the full range of subjects from the Humanities and Science, from Literary Criticism, to Molecular Biology, all researched and presented by undergraduates from UBC and UBC-O. A full list of all presentations and posters, and a schedule of the day’s proceedings can be found here: MURC 2010 Program

Shameless Plug! I will be presenting my own research project entitled “ASSESS: Abstractive Summarization System for Evaluative Statement Summarization” at 4pm in room 355!

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Hark, A Webcomic! https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2010/02/08/hark-a-webcomic/ Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:21:01 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=7214 Since I can find no previous mention on Terry, I thought I’d share one of my favourite webcomics. Hark, A Vagrant!, by Canadian Kate Beaton is…

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Since I can find no previous mention on Terry, I thought I’d share one of my favourite webcomics. Hark, A Vagrant!, by Canadian Kate Beaton is in many ways to the Humanities what XKCD is to science and engineering (with suitably better illustrations).

In fact, one improvement is that Beaton, a History and Anthropology graduate from Mount Allison University, often accompanies her comics with a blog post explaining the obscure historical references sent up, so while laughing at her witty and hilarious illustrations, you can often learn something, too. Also, in true Terry spirit, she often pens works which deal with the history of science:

So if you’ve got some time after (or while) studying for midterms, why not start from the beginning? Also, post your favourite, if you have one. Here’s one of mine:

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The Music of the Stars https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2010/01/15/the-music-of-the-stars/ Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:31:15 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=6971 As the latest in our Terry obsession with Science-Inspired Music, check out Jim Bumgardner’s “Wheel of Stars” Image: European Space Agency/Hubble To make this, I downloaded…

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As the latest in our Terry obsession with Science-Inspired Music, check out Jim Bumgardner’s “Wheel of Stars

Image: European Space Agency/Hubble

To make this, I downloaded public data from Hipparcos, a satellite launched by the European Space Agency in 1989 that accurately measured over a hundred thousand stars. The data I downloaded contains position, parallax, magnitude, and color information, among other things.

As the stars cross zero and 180 degrees, indicated by the center line, the clock plays an individual note, or chime for each star. The pitch of the chime is based on the star’s BV measurement (which roughly corresponds to color or temperature). The volume is based on the star’s magnitude, or apparent brightness, and the stereo panning is based on the position on the screen (use headphones to hear it better).

Jim has a series of other fascinating projects blending mathematics and geometry with music, including the Whitney Music Box.

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The Conspiracy of the Century! … or maybe not. https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2009/12/07/the-conspiracy-of-the-century-or-maybe-not/ Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:57:59 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=6698 Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks (or buried in textbooks, as the case might more likely be), you’ve probably heard…

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks (or buried in textbooks, as the case might more likely be), you’ve probably heard about a the case of a group of hackers stealing and releasing emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. This has kicked off a ludicrous knee-jerk reaction from climate-change deniers who want so badly for there to be a conspiracy that, apparently, they neglected to actually read the emails. YouTuber potholer54 convincingly demolishes the only “examples of fraud” which have thus far emerged (linked here via Pharangula):

(incidentally, potholer54, who’s channels stated goal is to “explain in simple terms the conclusions of scientific research and correct some of the unsourced crap you get fed on the Internet” has a great series of videos on cosmology, biology, and climate change)

There is a larger question here, which is about the constant assertions of a “scientific conspiracy” which is so often levelled by anti-scientific types of many stripes: be it Climate Change deniers, Intelligent Design, or Anti-Vacciners. I’ve always wondered how these “conspiracies” are supposed to work. As the above video puts it, are we really supposed to believe that thousands of independent researchers are collaborating to fake results, hide counter-evidence, and tie all their “fake” data together in such a way as to tell a convincing story and beguile the unwitting populace? Add to this the fact that for a scientist, one of the best career moves you could make, to ensure your name would forever be entered in the annals of history, would be to convincingly overturn the dominant theory of your day. If there were really good scientific grounds by which to doubt these “conspiracies” we should expect researchers to be clambering over one-another to be the first to prove it, and the evidence to be pouring in. E pur si muove!

Also, I’ve always thought that if I were going to go to the trouble of orchestrating a giant conspiracy involving thousands of researchers and a monumental (impossible?) effort to suppress dissent and fake the evidence, I’d choose something a bit more… sexy than Climate Change, or Vaccines. Maybe I’d have my evil Ph.D-wielding minions brainwash the hoi polloi into believing that first-contact had been made with an extra-terrestrial civilization and we must begin colonizing our solar system – that would be a great way to kick-start the space program again. Or maybe I’d convince people that a new “super-caste” of humans had evolved, with superior capabilities in telepathy, empathy, and responsible fiscal policy, and that I was one. That would be a good way to ensure the continued dominance of my Evil, Science-Wielding Liberal Empire of Doom.

So I ask you, Terry readers, if you had control of a massive, complex conspirational network of thousands of researchers, what would YOU have them trick the unwitting populace into believing?

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Evolution in Two Minutes https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2009/11/10/evolution-in-two-minutes/ Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:54:10 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=6318 It seems like science-inspired music is a common theme around here. Discover Magazine recently announced the winners of their “Evolution in Two Minutes” video contest. Top-pick…

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It seems like science-inspired music is a common theme around here. Discover Magazine recently announced the winners of their “Evolution in Two Minutes” video contest. Top-pick went to this rock-anthem by Fresno, California high-school teacher Scott Hatfield.

The rest of the top-5 are here, along with a message from the contest’s judge, internet science-blog polemic PZ Myers.

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Julia Childs makes a Primordial Soup https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2009/09/23/julia-childs-makes-a-primordial-soup/ Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:33:52 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=5789 (via Pharangula, via This Blog Contains Caffeine) I haven’t seen Julie vs. Julia, but this is the best thing to ever appear on the interwebs. Julia…

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(via Pharangula, via This Blog Contains Caffeine)

I haven’t seen Julie vs. Julia, but this is the best thing to ever appear on the interwebs.

Julia Childs teaches about the possible conditions which created the so called “Primordial Soup” in contemporary theories of Abiogenesis. The video is from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Life in The Universe gallery which opened in 1976, but is now closed.

Abiogenesis is a fascinating topic. Another prominent theory is that some of the precursors of life were created elsewhere in space and brought here via asteroid or comet. This theory (sometimes called, panspermia) was recently bolstered by the discovery of an amino acid on a comet.

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An Apology for a Hero https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2009/09/10/an-apology-for-a-hero/ Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:13:28 +0000 http://www.terry.ubc.ca/?p=5695 It is a shameful story that few know. Alan Turing, known as the father of modern Computer Science, and largely responsible for the Allied victory in…

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It is a shameful story that few know. Alan Turing, known as the father of modern Computer Science, and largely responsible for the Allied victory in World War 2 thanks to his decryption of the Enigma code, was prosecuted by the British government for his homosexuality and forced to undergo chemical castration. This humiliating treatment ultimately led to his suicide at the age of just 42, a humiliating end to a hero who had given more to his country and the world than can possibly be measured.

_46284390_turing

Now, 55 years later, and in what might be the only recorded case of an Internet petition achieving anything worthwhile, British  Prime Minister Gordon Brown has released a statement on behalf of his government officially apologising for the treatment this great man was forced to endure.

Here is that statement in its entirety:

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

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