Being Philosophical, Doctor ?

I finally made it.
After 6 years in the works I finally graduated and am now a Doctor of Philosophy.
And what better way to celebrate than being a bit (or maybe more than a bit) philosophical about science.

As a chemist, quantum mechanics is a fundamental building block, and as such Schrödinger's name comes up quite often. But many people who did not study quantum mechanics have still heard the name Schrödinger thanks to a thought experiment which includes a box, radioactive material, a bit of poison and one unsuspecting cat. This humble feline became to be known as Schrödinger's cat.

The idea behind the thought experiment is to explain how quantum mechanics works. I won't go into the thought process in depth (that can be found here) but rather I want to touch on the bottom line of what it tells us. That is - we need to 'change' our system in order to 'observe' what is happening.

In the experiment, the box is closed and we can't tell what is happening inside. To know the fate of the cat, we need to open the lid, thereby changing our system from a 'closed' box to an 'open' box.

This change may seem subtle to most of us. What's the big deal? I "just" opened the lid. (you might say). But in fact, the key point I wish to convey is that the reality of the cat changes once we become part of the system. The cat's probabilistic state (being described by a statistical function of both dead state and living state) is transformed into a single definitive state which is strictly living or (the more unfortunate and bordering animal cruelty) a strictly dead state.

The idea that reality is altered by our presence, or lack of, is not a new concept. Every child starts live accepting reality as only the things which are within their sensory reach. Only at a later state, a child acquires Object permanence which means they know things exists even if they cannot be seen/heard/felt/etc. This means that before reaching this development stage, we accept the fact (and sometimes are not happy about it which makes us cry) that things cease to exist once they are walking out of the room.

Now lets take it one step forward (or backwards, depending on your perspective).

What is the sound of a tree falling in the woods when no one is around?

This is a very old question , for which most people would just assume that the falling tree would sound the same whether there is someone to hear it or not. But is it so? (caution: going on a philosophical rant again)

Let us break down our system. What is sound? a disturbance in the air, propagating in space from its source until it reaches the ear drum. So if that is the case, when there is no ear drum around, all we are left with is a disturbance. It can potentially transform into sound if an ear drum was available, but without one, it is merely a potential sound. 

But, you might say, I can put a microphone and record the sound. So there you go. Sound exists even without the ear being around. However, a microphone is just a "middle-man". The microphone doesn't know its sound. The microphone senses the disturbance and translates it into electricity, storing it temporarily. Only when the recording is played through a speaker, does the electrical information (or magnetic if you want to be nostalgic and use audio cassettes) is transformed into a new air disturbance which reaches the ear. So in effect, the microphone only enables you to store the existence of the disturbance, only to be reenacted at a later time, and most likely in a different place.

The bottom line - no ear to hear - no sound - merely disturbance.

This is parallel to the cat story. Isn't it? Our presence in the system is required to "observe" the existence of a phenomena.

How about vision? Clearly light exist without us being around to see it. Right?

Not so sure.

Let me start by asking a question similar to that of the tree, but this time using vision.

What is the colour of a red chair in dark room?

Did you say without a moment to pause "of course its still red"?

How do you know? What is 'red' anyways?

This is a good point to note that this whole blog has been floating in my mind for the past few months ever since I considered applying for the Flame Challenge, whose current question is "What is Color?" (note the American spelling. Yes, this is an American initiative which I think is absolutely fascinating). When I started looking into what is colour, my first point of reference was that of my chemist training - colour is a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation. 

But electromagnetic radiation doesn't know its red, green, blue or pink. Its just an oscillating field (two fields for that matter, an electric field and a magnetic field). So where does the colour come from? In order to understand colour, we need to consider the entire system.

We have a light source which emits electromagnetic radiation. That radiation hits objects, which then interact with the radiation. The two obvious options for interactions are: absorbing and reflecting (there are more, but lets keep it simple). So, some radiation is absorbed, and will never be seen again. Some is reflected, and if chance would have it, and our eyes are not too far away, then the reflected radiation will hit our eyes. Once inside our eyes, the electromagnetic radiation stimulated our visual nerve system which sends a signals to the brain, which interprets them as colours.

Let me sum it up with less words so the message is clear - Colour is all in our heads!

Same as sound (where the disturbance hits our ear drum, sending signals to the brain which are interpreted as sound), vision and colour is the INTERPRETATION of our brain.

If that is the case, the answer is clear. If our brain is not around, then colour cannot exist.

If we are not there to "observe", if we are outside the system, then we are only left with a 'potential' colour, or a 'potential' sound.

What does that mean? Does that mean that colour is not "real"?

As for the question of "what is real?", I'll leave that for you to think about.

STEM outreach opportunities

Let's assume you are a scientist in Ontario, Canada.
Let's also assume that you think/believe/feel/know that STEM outreach is important and you wish to do something about.

What should you do? Where shall you go? Whom can you work/volunteer with?

If you're looking the answers to any of the questions above, I hope the list below can help you find some opportunities for some great outreaching. The list is in no particular order, and I can't say I have any specific recommendation (disclosure: I am currently engaged with a non-profit but I did try to create an objective complication of STEM outreach organizations)

The list is far from being complete, and will grow with time.
If you know of a STEM outreach organization, send me a message and share with me so I can share it back by adding it to the list.


Academic institutions:
(needles to say that universities are at a perfect position to offer such opporunities)

UofT Engineering Outreach
University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering's Outreach program offers many opportunities for both boys and girls, young and old (by old I mean high school).
http://www.outreach.engineering.utoronto.ca/Page4.aspx

University of Waterloo Engineering Science Quest
Started more than 20 years ago, this program has evolved to include camps and school visits.
https://uwaterloo.ca/engineering-science-quest/

Western University's Faculty of Engineering Outreach
Summer camps for the younger kids, summer academy for the older ones and dedicated girl clubs.
http://www.eng.uwo.ca/comms/outreach.htm

McMaster University's Engineering Outreach program
Offering summer camps for children, aboriginal outreach programs and more
http://www.eng.mcmaster.ca/engalumni/outreach.html

There are actually so many universities and colleges across Canada which offer STEM outreach programs that it would be a very long list.
Luckily, Acuta http://www.actua.ca is a charity organization whose members are post-secondary institutions which deliver STEM outreach programs.

Charities/ Non-profits
There are many private organizations, some charitable some non-profits, some working locally in specific communities, some all across Ontario and even across Canada.

Let's Talk Science
A national charity working for just over 20 years all across Canada engaging students and education in STEM programs.
http://www.letstalkscience.ca/

Youth Science Ontario
A non-profit which supports community-based regional science organizations. 
http://www.youthscienceontario.ca/

Scientists In Schools
A charity working for 25 years in Ontario and Alberta, providing STEM hands-on progrmas
http://www.scientistsinschool.ca/

Science Rendezvous
A national annual science festival that takes science out of the lab and into the street.
http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca

Pueblo Science
A non-profit providing science summer camp and outreach events to promote STEM learning.
http://puebloscience.org/

A Spotlight on Science Outreach

Technological innovation keeps on changing every aspect of our everyday experiences. Can you remember the time when there was no Internet or no cell phones? Devices like washing machines and microwave ovens have radically transformed our existence in freeing huge portions of our days. These technological revolutions were made possible by a solid understanding of materials and of natural phenomena. Because each enhancement to our living conditions seems like a small incremental improvement, we now take for granted the results of decades of scientific research in devices such as LCD monitors, ultrasound scanners and LED light bulbs.

Given how profound an impact science makes, how did we end up with kids who grow tired of studying it? Most children rarely get to make the connection between the science they learn in class with the real world they enjoy. It is only rarely that they get the opportunity to go to a science museum or a science camp, which are not affordable to all. Should we take some responsibility for taking all modern advances for granted, or for not publicising the importance of scientific research in new products and new companies that shape our economy? As scientists, have we grown to believe that what we do is too complicated for lay people – or a child – to understand and that we should leave the science teaching to the science teachers in the classrooms?

For all these reasons, and more, we still need to showcase science to the public and explain its primordial importance through science outreach. Pueblo Science, a registered Ontario non-profit, was founded with the belief that delivering the value of science to both young and old, students and teachers, is best done through experimentation. I personally joined the organisation in 2012 with a focus on rural communities, where education is often neglected due to a scarcity of resources. This is true for both developing and developed countries. Since the organisation was created, three trips were made to the Philippines. In each trip, local science teachers gathered in three rural communities to host our travelling volunteers, a large number of whom are UofT alumni and graduate students. Our volunteers delivered a two-day workshop at each site to equip teachers with science experimentation activities for children. Through a clever design and choice of affordable and easily accessible materials, numerous teachers in rural Philippines can now perform science experiments with their students. It is estimated that 17,000 children will be impacted by Pueblo Science's 2013 trip.  

Pueblo Science's effort at raising awareness about the importance of youth science education struck a chord with the ABS-CBN global Philippine TV channel. A recent broadcast featured a volunteer recruitment show held in the UofT’s Department of Chemistry on January 27th as well as Pueblo’s Hart House Family Sunday on January 19, which attracted more than 50 Toronto families 

The Hart House event showcased Chemistry (red cabbage juice as pH indicator), Physics (disappearing glass vial in mineral oil due to refractive index matching), Biology (creating a life scale model of the internal organs of the human body) as well as Engineering (a climbing puppet using friction to produce upwards motion) experiments to elementary and pre-school kids.

Integrating science with a sports event has prove to be another effective strategy at engaging children in science. For example, Pueblo Science's outreach program called “Science on Ice” has been gaining popularity at school day events in Ontario University Athletics hockey games. The events, in collaboration with the University of Toronto, Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, the Toronto school Boards (TDSB, TCSB) and Waterloo District School Board, gathered around seven thousand students for this year alone. Pueblo Science provided interactive science demo tables and intermission shows for the hockey matches


and

    

 One of our explosive intermission shows recently got featured on CTVnews-Kitchener
(http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=283158 ).

Finally we also explored using art to ignite the kids' interest in science through our “Painting with Science” program. The event was held in collaboration with the Department of Chemistry, Chemclub and  the Institute for Optical Sciences (IOS) at UofT,  during the Culture Days weekend in September 2013. For this event, we chose activities which provided participants the opportunity to learn science while being creative. Dye separation through chromatography, pH indicator changing colours, as well as holograms provided by the IOS, are just a few examples of what numerous GTA families enjoyed.

I would like to finish with words of gratitude. Many of our accomplishments in the past few years would not have happened without the support and assistance we have received from the Chemistry Department, the Institute for Optical Sciences, the Impact Centre and of course all the many wonderful volunteers who have helped to bring science out there.

Our work is only beginning, and we invite you to support and join our fun activities!

(contact info@puebloscience.org )

The challange of understanding

I consider myself as an educator. Someone who teaches others, thereby bestowing knowledge upon them. For as long as I can remember, I always enjoyed explaining things to others. The biggest joy I get from the experience is the feeling that the more I explain things, the more I understand them.

You see, when we sit down and learn something new, we usually start with remembering it. This can be done through repetition. If I sing the A,B,C enough times, I am sure to remember them. The problem is that just because I can remember something, doesn't mean I understand it. To understand, I need to be able to apply what it is I can remember.  But even applying the knowledge can sometimes amount to nothing more than a technical skill.

However, when you try to explain it to someone else, that's when your knowledge is really put to the test. When you are being asked "why is it like this?" or "why can't you do it another way?" is when you have to critically examine the extent of your understanding.

Science can be hard to understand. Like any field of knowledge, science can be understood in many levels, and the higher you go, the more complicated it becomes. And the more complicated it becomes, the more assumptions you make, or take things as is, to allow you to understand the even more complex ideas.

Confused?

Here's an example.
We now know today that all matter is made up of atoms.
But what is an atom?
Is is a particle made up of smaller particles. The nucleus, positively charged, and electrons around it, negatively charged.
The nucleus is actually made up of protons, positively charged, and (except for Hydrogen) neutrons, without any charge.
We can go on and on, dissecting the particles even further, BUT, even before scientists discovered the existence of the electrons, the concept of atoms was still being used to explain what is matter. It was just assumed that there is this basic element called "atom" which has so and so characteristics, and with this assumption knowledge was formulated. Once electrons and protons were discovered, they became the fundamental elements used to explain, and so on and so forth.

In today's complex scientific world, the depth of knowledge is so great that scientists sometime forget that there's a huge canyon between the general public and the specialists. Which is why I find "The Flame Challenge" to be such a great effort to bring science back to the ground.

In a nutshell, the idea is this - you think you understand something really well? now try to put it in simple language so even an 11 year old can understand.
The first challenge was to explain what flame is. The second, what is time. The current challenge - what is color.

The challenge is not an easy one, because as we become more and more informed, more and more specialized, more and more knowledgeable, we tend to take a lot of concepts for granted, forgetting that most people either don't understand them or don't even know about them. We take our point of view as the obvious one, which may or may not be what other people might think.

Let's take color as an example. Without going into what color is, lets explore the various ways we can think of color.

Color is something we see. Objects appear in different colors. We may explore the property of matter, and why different things have different color.
Color is something we experience. We can explore how we perceive color. How does our eye register color and how does our brain interpret the signal coming from the eye.
Color is a form of energy. We can explore the meaning of color from a pure physical point of view.

There are probably more ways to think about color, and I didn't even start to explain any of them.

So what do you think? can you explain what is color to an 11 year old? 

Damme, I broke the laws of Physics again!

Are you one of the 60 millions (!!!) of people who watched Volvo's "Epic Split" ad featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme?

If not, here it is, with its majestic feel:




It is a beautiful ad. Very elegant, extremely impressive performance, and above all, amazing engineering by Volvo to allow such high precision steering of their trucks.

But, one thing it is not - defying the laws of physics.

I'm sorry to be a stickler for details, but with all due respect to Jean-Claude Van Damme (and much respect I do have for his mastering of the body and mind), physics is not the least surprised by this ad.

Which "laws of physics" did the screenwriters think of when they wrote this line?

Were they thinking of Newton's law of universal gravitation? 
Are we to expect that Jean-Claude Van Damme should fall to the ground due to gravity, and surprisingly he does not? of course he does not fall, his legs are resting on the trucks' side mirrors.

Were they thinking of friction ?
Were we expecting Jean-Claude Van Damme's feet to slide off the side mirrors? obviously, he chose proper shoes which provide enough friction, as well as being able to control his balance such that he doesn't looses his foot hold.

What other 'Laws of Physics' could they have been thinking of?
Under "Major Laws of Physics" we can find a few others:

- E = m c²
(clearly Jean-Claude Van Damme does not transforms into energy)

- Conservation of momentum
(not colliding into anything, and with the trucks not breaking, momentum doesn't change anyways)

- Laws of thermodynamics
(its hard to say what is happening to Jean-Claude Van Damme's internal energy or his entropy, so I cannot comment on these ones)

- Electrostatic laws
(having no wires connected to him, nor a light bulb, I don't think Jean-Claude Van Damme is generating an electrostatic field)

- Theory of relativity
(the trucks are traveling at a speed far slower than the speed of light, so this can't be the right one)

- Quantum mechanics
(with a body mass of a human being, Quantum mechanics are just as accurate as classical mechanics)


So, to sum things up, do I think this is an amazing ad? YES!
Would I have thought it was an amazing ad without having the "defy the laws of physics" in it? YES!

Would you have felt any different of the ad if 'laws of physics' were not "defied"? I'm guessing no.

(Dear commercial copywriters, I know you are being paid to deliver super drama. But seriously, if the theme is not science fiction, don't insult people by stating over dramatizing empty claims.) 




 

My Brush with Art

A lot of universities have a Faculty called "Arts and Science".

If the faculty segments its disciplines into "Arts" and "Science" does that imply that arts and sciences don't mix? are they mutually exclusive? or is there some overlap?

Such fundamental questions as "what makes something Art?" or "Can Science be considered as Art?" came to my mind as I was organizing a public event for Pueblo Science which was to be part of Culture Days weekend, held on September 28th 2013 weekend across Canada. I named the activity : "Painting with Science".

Luckily for me, I happen to have a friend who is an art curator, and who is better qualified to help me in my quest to understand where Art and Science meet, or whether they don't, than an art curator?

The short answer I got was: "it is art if you say so."
 Well that's easy then, I just say my science demonstration is art, therefor it must be art.

But will people believe me just because I said so?

So I kept on questioning, "but will people believe me? why should they?"

And here lies the profound boundary (at least based on my interpretation):

ART provokes your subjective FEELINGS

SCIENCE provokes your objective REASONING

In other words, art presents you with something to explore with your emotions, to think about how you feel about it, to like it or dislike it, or perhaps to be indifferent, and in either way, ponder about why is it that you feel the way you feel, and then perhaps change your mind, feel something else. You may feel differently every time you experience it. And every person may feel differently about the same art.

Science, on the other hand, is about understanding why things are the way they are, why things behave the way they do. Your emotions are not part of it. Like it or not, gravity will pull you down when you loose your balance. Love it or not, but a drop of food colouring falling on a piece of fabric will soak and spread. Science is about articulating an explanation (and later testing the boundaries and limitations of that explanation). Finding a 'general rule' which will allow you to predict how the world will behave based on how it was observed to behave until now. And it doesn't matter who is the observer, the science is always the same.

Wait, so does that mean art and science can or cannot mix?

My feelings about this is that they can overlap if you let them.
If you ALLOW yourself to both FEEL as well as REASON, you can enjoy both ART and SCIENCE.

Look at this painting we had both adults and children paint at the event:

You can clearly see a canvas. You can also see different drawings, using different colors, pink and green. You can think about how the drawings make you feel. What do they remind you of. How the collection of different drawings produced by different people combine or clash. It is art produced by random people who were presented with a fabric, paint brushes and paint, and the opportunity to draw anything they felt like on a nice sunny morning in Toronto.

Oh, and one last thing you can't see from the image. The paint they were given were all colorless, transparent liquids!!! Yes, that's right. Our painters used solutions which looked exactly the same, but produced different colors when they touched the fabric. What a surprise. Now another feeling comes into play, that of surprise. Amazement.

And now, once you've let yourself soak the feeling of marvel, you may ask "Why does this happen?"
And we can now search for an explanation. Are the liquids the same or are they different? Is it the paint, the fabric, or their combination which produces the different colors?

We've stepped from an artistic experience into a scientific experience.
And once we understand why things happen, does that diminish our feelings? or maybe it enhances them? personally, I prefer to think of it in a non-competitive way. Our feelings are different with the knowledge we gained, but feelings are still feelings, no right ones no wrong ones. No better, no worse.

Think of how your feelings change when you learn how a magic trick was performed. The first time you see it, you are amazed. Once you learn how it was done, you may feel admiration towards the magician who has mastered the trick so well. Instead of replacing one feeling for another, cherish them both. Both add up to make you who you are.

So, as I explore my personal feelings about the who event, I conclude that I've learned that I can appreciate the artistic merit of my science activity. And I liked it. 

Don't give up!

No, I haven't given up on blogging just yet.
No, I haven't forgotten either.
I'm just tied up trying hard to finish my thesis.

More to come, I promise.