An Excursion to the 19th Century
Starting this blog in the paleolithic era was almost an afterthought. In retrospect, I’m glad because the questions I’m examining here are very important and will become a point of reference for the entire project. Questions like, “What is technology,” and, “What are human beings in the first place?” Nevertheless, it has gone kind of slowly and I don’t like feeling stagnant so early on (or at all). For a while I’ve been considering grabbing a task from later on in history, just to mix it up a little. A recent Nerd Fun outing has inspired me pick the task: build a phonograph!
Gerald Fabris, Curator of the Edison Historical Site in West Orange, NJ, gave a demonstration of wax cylinder recording and playback at the Boston Public Library on Tuesday. It was a fascinating presentation. It turns out the phonograph was preceded by a device called a phonautograph. This worked similarly to a traditional seismograph: a moving stylus draws a waveform on a long, scrolling sheet of paper. In this case, the stylus is attached to a diaphragm which vibrates with the compression and rarefaction of the air. So the stylus is drawing sound waves. The inventor of the phonautograph, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, had no way to play back his recordings, but quite recently the documents were scanned into computers and turned back into sounds for the first time. The sounds were played during the presentation. It was very muddled, but it definitely sounds like a human voice!
Thomas Edison’s phonograph worked the same way, with a diaphragm vibrating with the sound waves, but instead of drawing back and forth on paper the stylus pushed in and out against a rapidly spinning, slowly advancing, tinfoil covered cylinder. In this way, the stylus digs a helical grove into the tinfoil with varying depth. The pattern of changing depth, of course, encodes the sound wave. The process is reversed for playback. A more blunt “needle” presses against the groove as the cylinder spins. The needle, in turn, pushes a diaphragm. As the needle is pushed in and out by the varying depth of the groove, so is the diaphragm – and the recorded sound is reproduced.
Through the years the material of the recording surface and many other details of implementation were altered and refined. I’m not going to attempt to replicate any particular historical phonograph. I’ll pick what I see as the most practical way to prove the concept. I’ve found several guides on the internet for how to build a simple phonograph. I’m going to see how well this one works for me: http://www.creative-science.org.uk/RS2phono.html.
I’ll try to interleave my work on this with the throwing spear discussion. For the paleolithic era, I plan to make my throwing spear, finish watching Becoming Human, and possibly visit a museum or two. Then I’ll move on until the weather gets warmer. Then I’ll go back and finish some of the outdoor paleolithic activities such as fire-making and shelters.
Thank you for reading!
Beef Tongue
Back when I was on that paleolithic diet, someone asked if I would also try eating some organ meat. I said yes. A coworker of mine, Pascale Pigeon, happened to be cooking beef tongue and was thoughtful enough to save some for me. And then it stayed in my freezer for over a month. But today I finally ate it! Thankfully, it escaped the fate of freezer burn.
Here are some photos for you…
Pascale sent me this image of the tongue before cooking to provide a sense of scale.
Frozen.
Ready to eat! It came with lentils and Pascale said it would taste best with mustard.
And here’s the recipe that Pascale used: http://www.wasabibratwurst.com/pickled-tongue/
It was delicious! I admit I was a little freaked out about eating tongue, but it wasn’t all that different from any other meat. It had a distinctive texture and flavor, but at least in this preparation, it was surprisingly tender. Thank you Pascale!
And, of course, thank you for reading.
Nerd Fun Boston at the EVA Lab
I’d like to introduce those of you who live in the Boston area to the best meetup.com group ever: Nerd Fun – Boston. This group gets together for all kinds of nerdy fun in the area. Earlier this evening, I joined them for a tour of the Extra-Vehicular Activity research facilities at MIT’s Man Vehicle Laboratory. The tour was great! They’re working on new kinds of space suits to resolve some of the problems astronauts have been having with EVAs since the days of Apollo. It’s a shame I’m not up to space flight yet. That’s a topic near and dear to my heart, so you can expect some very prolific writing about it when the time comes.
In any case, check out the group and see if you find any events that interest you. You probably will and maybe I’ll see you there!
Thanks for reading!
Swag
The Grok Project Store (on CafePress.com) is now populated with swag. Check it out!
I don’t mark up the prices at all. It’s just for fun and to promote the blog.
Thanks for reading!
On “Becoming Human” – Part 1
Part three of the Throwing Spear Saga is still coming. I promise. But … on Sunday I watched part one of the Nova documentary “Becoming Human“. Part one was entitled “First Steps” and it seems to tie very neatly into my own speculations from the Ancient Computing Revolution post.
The main question that “First Steps” attempts to answer is that of what evolutionary forces led the ancestors of modern humans to walk upright and then to become more intelligent and to create tools. The documentary focusses on relatively recent hypotheses. Namely, in the case of bipedalism, that it is simply more energy-efficient to walk on two feet. The energy savings might not seem like a big deal, but this idea makes a lot of sense to me because of my own personal experience. I have a permanent foot injury that prevents me from putting a lot of pressure on my right heel. Although many people don’t notice it until they’ve been around me for a while, I always walk with at least a slight limp. When walking at a comfortable pace, this doesn’t make much difference. But when I start running or jumping rope it becomes obvious that I’m not doing it the way it’s normally done. I’m quite fortunate that I’ve been able to adapt and that I can still walk, run, and jump when I need to, but I don’t do it as efficiently as I would without the injury. When I’m walking and tired I know I really miss heel strike and I imagine it would matter even more if I were struggling to get enough food.
“First Steps” cites a change in our ancestors’ natural habitat as the driving factor for that change: they needed to walk farther each day to stay alive. The changing environment is also cited as the catalyst for our increased brain size and intelligence. Geological evidence shows that at the time when homo habilis (the first tool-making ancestor of modern humans) emerged, the climate was frequently and drastically shifting. Ordinarily, when the environment changes, natural selection would produce creatures whose physical traits and hardwired behaviors were well suited to the new environment. But that takes many generations to occur. If the climate is changing dramatically every few generations, then biological evolution can’t keep up. What it can do is allow a new kind of evolution to emerge – one that can adapt much faster. To put it in the terms of my earlier post, they needed software which can be upgraded faster than hardware.
I look forward to watching the next part of this trilogy. Part one was very informative.
Thank you for reading.
Cartesian Divers
This post is for everyone who might want to play with Cartesian divers, but especially for the Fast Track kids from Arisia 2010. For a hands-on science session this year, I showed some of the kids how to make Cartesian divers, but the materials we used made it difficult to do it with so many kids and so little time. Not everyone got theirs to work, and they were very prone to leaking. So in this post I’ll explain some easy ways to make Cartesian divers at home.
But first, the matter of the name. There is some confusion out there on the internet about whether they are called “Cartesian divers” or “artesian divers”. For a while, it had me confused too. Cartesian divers are named after René Descartes, so the correct name is “Cartesian divers”, but the spread of the confusion is understandable because “artesian“, as it happens, also has a meaning related to fluid mechanics. There used to be a province in France called Artois where a lot of the water under the ground was under pressure. If you drill a well in such a place, water will flow up through the well without any pumping. In Artois many such wells were drilled to take advantage of the effect. Wells like that came to be known as “artesian”, named after the province.
Next, I’ll explain the way I learned to make a Cartesian Diver when I was little. It involves two test tubes (one little, one big), a small piece of sheet rubber (e.g. cut from a rubber glove), and something to hold the rubber on the big test tube (recently I used a rubber band and duct tape). You fill the big test tube with water and put it aside. Then you filled the little test tube with water leaving just enough air so that it floats when you put it upside down in water. You either have to flip it really fast, use a tiny test tube so the water stays in due to surface tension, or use a straw to fill it with the right amount of air once it’s in the water. You put the little test tube upside down into the big test tube, with the air bubble still in the little one so it floats. Then you attach the rubber sheet seal to off the top of the bigger test tube.
Now, when you press in the rubber with your thumb, the little test tube sinks to the bottom. When you stop pressing, it floats back up! How does that work? By pressing on the rubber, you pressurize the water inside. Water is an incompressible fluid, so it doesn’t “scrunch together” when you do that. But air, on the other hand, is very compressible. So … you’re press on the rubber, the rubber presses on the water, and the water presses on that little air bubble that’s keeping the little test tube afloat. That compresses (“scrunches up”) the air bubble. It’s the same amount of air, but in a smaller volume. That means it gets more dense. Things that are denser than water sink in water and things that are less dense float. Remember how we made the air bubble just big enough that the little test tube would float? Well we just made it a little more dense by compressing it. So now it sinks! Release the pressure and it all goes back to normal and it floats back up.
For the kids at Arisia, I tried using balloons instead of bits of rubber glove because I thought they’d be easier to squeeze. They were easier to squeeze, but they leaked so much that you had to start over again every time you squeezed it! So after Arisia I searched the internet for the quickest, easiest, and most durable way to make a Cartesian diver I could find. The easiest method I found was so easy that I felt kind of sheepish for having bothered with test tubes at all!
- Get an empty, plastic drink bottle.
- Get a ketchup packet (maybe several different kinds – they don’t all work perfectly).
- Drop the ketchup packet into the bottle.
- Fill the bottle with water (all the way to the top).
- Put the cap tightly onto the bottle.
- Squeeze the bottle and the packet sinks, release and it floats!
Why does this work? They don’t fill ketchup packets all the way up with ketchup. There’s a little bit of air in there. So… squeezing the bottle pressurizes the water, the water presses on the packet which presses on the ketchup which presses on the air bubble trapped inside. It turns out that most ketchup packets have just the right amount of that compressible air relative to their weight to make them barely float! Sound familiar? Squeezing makes the packet more dense, so it sinks.
It’s unclear who first discovered this method, but here are some websites that describe it: http://littleshop.physics.colostate.edu/Try%20At%20Home/Cart.html, http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/homeExpts/diver.htm, http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Cartesian-Diver-with-a-Ketchup-Packet
Here are some other methods and explanations for how to make Cartesian divers: http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ScienceExCartesianDiver-WhyFallMO68.htm#, http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/education/activities/ts2hiac2.pdf, http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x392vn_cartesian-diver_tech, http://fatlion.com/science/cartesian.html
I know that I had a learning experience at Fast Track this year! As overwhelming as it was to try to help so many kids at once, I had a great time. I hope I’ll be able to try again next year with some new activities.
Thank you very much for reading!
Vote in Massachusetts!
I was going to write some quick additional thoughts about my last post, but then I remembered … I have to go vote! And if you are a Massachusetts resident eligible to vote, so do you!
That’s right: We’re having a REAL SENATORIAL ELECTION. This is not a drill! Go vote. Polls close at 8PM. ;-)
Thanks for reading!
Ancient Computing Revolution
NOTE: Don’t let the title fool you. This is a post about the nature of humanity.
Humans have built computing machinery for thousands of years, but in the 1800s an incredible transition began: programmability. Born for the purpose of more flexibly automating looms, the technology of machines that can execute arbitrary lists of instructions was expanded by the needs of mathematicians and then pushed even further to address the code breaking challenges of World War II. As time went on, it became more and more apparent how powerful a general purpose computer could be. Why spend time and money developing and debugging new hardware for each application when you could just change the software? Especially when you can even use the same hardware for many different purposes by running multiple sets of software on it.
These days, generalized computing hardware is everywhere. It’s in your television set, your laptop, your cell phone, your car, etc…. The process which began in the 1800s was the rise of software. Software has become more important than hardware in many ways. When you have a new computational task to perform, you don’t often buy a new computer for it; you create or buy a new piece of software. You’re not happy if your computer’s processor, RAM, or peripheral devices are destroyed. But you’re REALLY upset if the hard drive is destroyed. People will sometimes pay more to have data restored from a damaged hard drive than they would for a brand new computer. Why? Because the hardware is the same as tens of thousands like it. It was the unique information being stored by the hardware, both data and instructions for what to do with data, that was so precious.
By generalizing the hardware components, we can take advantage of redundancy to make our systems more resistant to failures. If the processor fails, just put in a new one – the same kind that is mass produced for many other purposes. The RAM? Same deal. The hard drive? Replace the hard drive with one just like it and restore from a backup of the unique information you need. This can even be automated, as in RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) data storage.
What does any of this have to do with the paleolithic era? Why would I call it ancient? Because it is in the very ancient paleolithic era that humankind seems to have gone from something we’d see as just another type of animal to something we’d see as human beings. I’d like to suggest to you that this transition from relying on specialized hardware to relying on generalized hardware with specialized software is exactly what has happened, and is continuing to happen, to our own species.
If we call our brains a kind of hardware, then the software is our minds. What we see as an increase in intelligence may be rooted in more heavy reliance on software. Our brains become less and less “hardwired” as we have greater capacity to learn complex behaviors from our parents, our cultures, and our experiences. The obvious advantage of this over biologically hardwired behaviors is that behavioral adaptation to changing environments can occur very quickly. It would take many generations for the same adaptations to occur genetically.
This software-mind concept can be seen in our attitudes towards ourselves. The concept of “self” is sacred to us, and it is almost universally focussed on the brain. We sorely miss any amputated limbs, but in most cases we’d sacrifice any limb to save our minds from destruction. Stories are found throughout human lore of minds swapping between bodies, demonstrating the idea that the mind may be somehow separable not only from the rest of the body but from the brain – that the software may be run on other compatible hardware.
This idea is showing up more and more in science fiction. The most recent prominent example I can think of is Joss Whedon’s television series Dollhouse. The idea that the human mind can be transferred into an artificial computer, and that the “self” will not be lost in the process, is becoming more and more popular. It is one of the major components of transhumanism. And so I see this as a trend, begun slowly in the distant past, ever accelerating, and echoed in the technology that we ourselves create.
I’ve written this post because I don’t want to neglect the question of how we became this tool-making, abstract-thinking creature in the first place. Several people have pointed out that PBS recently made a documentary about that very question: Becoming Human. Watching that will be my next step in pursuing the matter. A review will be forthcoming.
Thank you for reading!
LINK: Review of part 1
Arisia Report
I am home from Arisia! It was great, but exhausting. This is the first year I did any panels and I had two of the them the same day as the Grok Party.
The Grok Party was much fun! Thank you to everyone who stopped by! And a very special thanks to my friends Polina and Jay who helped out tremendously. I’d especially like to thank Polina for lots of driving, cleaning, help with shopping, and mad libs.
For the hands-on science, I ended up helping the kids to make Cartesian divers. About half of the kids got one working, largely due to a poor choice of materials on my part, but most of them seemed to have fun anyway. I’ll try to post instructions on how to make them at home soon and get the link out the parents/guardians of the Arisia kids.
My other two panels were “Sports for Geeks” and “Destination Moon at 60″. Both were interesting and enjoyable.
To those who have never been to Arisia, I assure it is well worth it! There is so much going on there and the people are wonderful. If you have any geeky tendencies, you’ll almost certainly enjoy it thoroughly. The registration price goes up throughout the year, so if you want to go, it’s best to register early.
Right now, Arisia rages on, but I rage toward my bed. An affectionate sort of rage.
Grokking shall continue tomorrow. Thank you for reading!
Grok Party at Arisia!
Although it’s been difficult to gain momentum so far, I have to say that I’m loving The Grok Project and I’m so grateful to everyone who has helped me with it. I think it’s time to celebrate. You’re invited to a Grok Party at Arisia 2010!
WHAT: Good food, good company, and geeky amusements.
WHEN: Saturday, January 16th, 2010 (this coming Saturday) at 7:00PM.
WHERE: The Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, MA – room 926 (on the 9th floor right near the elevators)
The party is free, but you have to be registered for Arisia to attend.
Information about the party will be listed on the “party board” next to the elevators in the lobby.
Thanks for reading!
The Grok Project by Ian Keville Schleifer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
