24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Scale Analysis VS Magnitude Comparisons
There are some subtle facts about scale analysis that make it more powerful than simply comparing orders of magnitude. A most remarkable example is that scale analysis can be applied, through a systematic use of dimensions, even when the precise equations governing the dynamics of a system are not known. The great physicist G. I. Taylor, a character whose prolific legacy haunts any aspiring scientist, gave a famous demonstration of this deceptively simple approach. In the 1950s, back when the...Folksonomies: quantification
Folksonomies: quantification
Giulio on how this technique was used to estimate the power of a secret nuclear blast from a photo.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Suburbs are the Result of Fear of Nuclear War
The Federal Civil Defense Administration determined that the country that would win a nuclear war was the one best prepared to survive the initial attack. Achieving this required a homeland mobilization on an unprecedented scale, and our children needed to know what to do when nuclear war came. They commissioned a nine-minute film called Duck and Cover that showed Bert the turtle pulling into his shell to survive a nuclear explosion that burns everything else. The film exhorted millions of sc...The government encouraged migration from cities to the suburbs to move people away from kill zones.
12 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
What is a "Law of Nature"?
Our modern understanding of the term "law of nature" is an issue philosophers argue at length, and it is a more subde question than one may at first think. For example, the philosopher John W. Carroll compared the statement "All gold spheres are less than a mile in diameter" to a statement like "All uranium-23 spheres are less than a mile in diameter." Our observations of the world tell us that there are no gold spheres larger than a mile wide, and we can be pretty confident there never will ...Many laws of nature are conclusions drawn from the larger "interconnected system of laws."