Peter Hill Explains

This podcast while driving looks as getting into the feel of the times, and behind the scenes. Most people think of illicit affairs. There were some of these but the reality of these are in fact more confronting and bizarre that anyone could accept. I think any off script fact like Einstein working on white goods is greeted with the retort of "What's the importance of that?" and about one millisecond before all listening stops. I am personally going to have to work through the vacuum of interest in any investigation that is outside the safety of accepted wisdom. The fulcrum upon which interpretation turns is the odd circumstantial gems that connect episodes. The young Einstein comes from a family that has white-good success snatched from them. He works in a patent office where the reason behind everything is obtaining and monopoly in exchange for disclosure. Then his student Szilard comes to him with a white good that forges a type of relationship which then lead to sparking of the Manhattan A bomb project. I suppose what I really find fascinating is the silence that follows the censure of following these secondary links. What is fascinating in not the silence after but the silence of thought before. Then we have Millikan, some one who hates Einstein. So deeply flawed. He holds onto the lumernifous ether like Macbeth in Shakespeare. Of nuclear energy is thinks it is a flash in the pan - baloney. I think the issue for us 90 years later is that there is still such negative energy at work and we seem oblivious to it. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

Millikan is the key founder of Caltech. He received the Physics Nobel prize for determining the actual charge on the electron, and a series of experiments in which electrons were ejected from metals by UV light. The later confirmed Einstein's genius. This is the surface layer story of heroic careful physics gently lighting the way for the human race. Deep in the recesses of my brain, I had the impression that he was anti-Semitic and had some radical racial views. Buried in the Wikipedia article this picture emerges and we see that the picture that the textbooks paint doesn't square with what he was thinking. You may have heard of the term Eugenics. It was a key doctrine and cog in the Nazi madness. Think of it like a road linking scientific thought with genocide. If you were on that road, surrounded by others of like mind you would tend to see the world and thought leading in the direction of a single race society. Now a surprising number of key Americans subscribed to this way of thinking. Henry Ford is one person for whom I saw the celebratory documentaries, went to his museum in Michigan, I think it was called Greenfield Village, then little by little odd things. Firstly it was standing on top of a lion enclosure and looking at concrete mock log cabins used to defend his Michigan homes. Then it was the site of places where police opened fire on workers. I have yet to formally research Henry Ford, so my impression is very impressionistic. I would ask for people's opinion first as it quite likely they knew more, and I would then see what they thought of what I had read. It is not a mission-critical must win point but equally one starts to see the thinking that is circulating in that era. Now the ideas about California been superior because it was more Nordic, raised my interest. Then there are quotes about all the scientists being men of religion. Then the Westinghouse time capsule was a bit of a give away. Then the motivation behind the thorough testing of Einstein's photoelectric effect was to disprove this new comer. It wound up more than confirming the effect and precisely nailing down one of the constants used. I am a little sympathetic here because history does confirm that the logic in getting to the key equations is definitely flaky. However, taking the Einstein's side he did say at the outset they were heuristic - what you would expect type - arguments. Then accepting the Nobel prize for, in you mind, failing to disprove and failing your goals is ... well quite priceless. The episode that is most disquieting is the deal he struck with his student that he, the supervisor, should take sole credit for the oil drop experiment. Well this is deception, and really can't fit with the due candor that powers science. As I get to know this ghost of history more, it brings into focus my own world that waves on a history founded on convenience. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

There is really nothing like reading and in your case listening to Einstein's letter to FDR. What grabs me is the not having to justify any particular point but the feeling the reader will think this means a genius is confiding in you, and you are an equal. It really has a certain tone I really want to analysis. There is the image of a ship entering a port and destroying it. This happened in Halifax Nova Scotia in world war 1. You really have to visit the place to connect with this. It really brought the war into American consciousness. There is so much said and unsaid in the letter, that winds up saying it anyhow. To join on to Einstein out of his natural setting I retell the quote about the telegraph wire like a cat with a very long tail, and radio the same except there is no cat. It is silly, probably not Einstein in reality but it it reality imagined. There is a take home message for me to generate para logical evocative explanations. (PLEE). I have registered this as an objective but have not a clue how I will do this. I read the cat quote in my typing practice so I don't credit it. However, there is a level of truth in being told so often it is methodologically true. A case in point with Newton's apple. We find out that it is only communicated after Newton's death by his sister to Voltaire. Not only do I think it not true, I think if even if it were true it would obscure the really mystical way Newton came up with Gravity and Force. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

This is an angle rich slice of history that keeps on giving. I think that the poor 30's Berlin family that got killed by their fridge would have no idea that their lose of life would lead to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fridge design is consigned to the oddities of technology that was never destined to see the light of day. I think it is of the look and feel of Lightburn a tiny South Australian company that did manufacture everything from cars to washing machines to fridges, heroic ingenious, key elements missing but so collectible. For Einstein it hit so many buttons taking him back to his childhood and a family prepared to stock German homes with DC electrical goods. To his Swiss patent office days, His former student. The connection to the US the land of opportunity and the business startup. So the pair, Professor and Student, moved on to tackle the big one of getting the President to get getting the bomb before Adolf. So as there was the German chatter of some middle class family at home with their first fridge on the block, a small but lethal leak sprung from some coil. This set a Professor who had become godlike in a benevolent adventure that lead to letters thoughts and eventually slammed an niaeve but self important planet into the age of the Atom. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

These experiments can so easily be done at school. It is a bit like Doctor Who in which ordinary objects are connected together and the Doctor mutters gibberish and then extraordinary things happen. The key one (of a few) here is the Bunsen in the centre of a 1 m copper rod. Heat is swept up the rod by an electric current. Down stream from the flame the temperature is lower than the corresponding point upstream from the flame. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

Another quick recital, a few mistakes in there I sense. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

I have this sense of calm in the chaos as I methodically go through the distant reaches of Einstein's work and add another dimension to understanding the limitations, which map fairly squarely with the limitations with people arriving into science. Teachers are wised up on the simple particle classical model that Einstein used. They don't come face to face with limitations that begat quantum mechanics as they connect with a constructed vibe of the golden age of Science where a few personalities filled the set of a pantheon of a mystic 'vibe'. Working through, Einstein and de Hass measured the push given to a spinning pendulum and got an answer consistent with classical theory of tiny little point electrons whirring around their atoms, which was a push a factor of two higher than the amount that would be predicted by quantum mechanics. Now it turns out that Einstein and de Haas put in a result twice as high as further experiments and quantum mechanics wrapped pretty well every thing up. Later the standard model produced a sea of virtual particles that enhanced the effect by a further 0.1%. Poor Albert was not to know, but things have taken on an almost religious feel and this chapter does not make the news. Its true and so vital to getting our baring in the new science. I hear peoples reaction about the show must go on, but upon humble reaction we don't have a show to watch, reputations to protect and culture to prop up. We have a universe to understand and come to terms with. Now there is a principle that if A causes B then B could cause A or there is something else to understand. In the case of Faraday and his field lines, this indeed leads to their unraveling and the emergence of Maxwell's light and Einstein's insight. This symmetry thinking lead to test for Aether, a search in vain. We found that we were looking for something else, and that something else was the full picture of a non-Euclidean universe that left school graph paper and gave us mind bending contraction, and the humble electric motor. In this case if a Magnetic field could induce a spin recoil could the spinning something up produce a magnetic field. Barnett from 1907 thought it could, and heroically showed it could. He got the right answer, but disturbingly it was not the Einstein answer. Even to day people would use cultural engineering to say that Barnett would have to be wrong or we would have to write do Disney to rewrite the cultural stereotypes we are addicted to. When it comes to science, what a difference 100 years make! Aerospace technology, bearings so divine, high pressure air (even for drying your hands after abolition) and wonder materials that make super magnets and mobile phones super. Go to your periodic tables and find gadolinium. It a rare earth that means it will react in hot water not cold. It is in F block, some 14 elements wide. Your periodic table probably has 15 which is wrong. If you are okay with wrong things you will probably get along with a lot of people in public relations. If not, be prepared to have people tell you that you don't fit in day after day. It is in F block, and this element is the absolute rebel element of the periodic table. It has 7 pair boxes for its 8 outer shell electrons. The would be 6 single electrons for making magnetic fields and 2 in a pair box. That is 6, one less that Europium that just has seven. But remember this is the rebel element, so what does it do? It grabs a D block box and lays out all its electrons 7 f and you wont believe it 1 d. Rebel. But respect seriously respect, this is going to out do the trends and do one better. It is the famous element teachers fear. In the staff room: "I was doing the trends lesson and disaster.." "No they didn't, they wouldn't, they did..." "Yep they use gadolinium, first they mumbled it, then I said what did you say, what did you say!?" Lucky for most people we haven't told them of electron affinity. Now getting back to excellent Japanese research "Barnett effec

In the wash-up of everything Einstein had a great experiment that measured a angular momentum factor out by a factor of 2. It was ten years before spin was discovered and electrons inhabiting a 720 degree rotation universe and being twice as magnetic as their angular moment should allow them in a 360 degree world. This experiment has profound effects for me personally as so few people understand it. It is also profoundly simple to demonstrate in a school setting. I feel somewhat relieved that they use a resonant magnetic field This was a bit of a fragmented podcasts, interrupted by spider catching (x2) a headache, a trip to walk with someone, and finally not all the note pages printed out. It did however mean that I eased into the topic. It may be hard to listen to. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

It was interesting reading this from the perspective of a Quantum Physicist. There was a focus on the debate between Bohr and Einstein on Quantum Physics. The point is that neither had a strong handle on wavefunctions. It is like getting a very best cheese-monger and the very best butcher to have a debate on wine. I don't mean to sound disrespectful but Einstein is really from the pre-Quantum era and Bohr overestimates his own thinking. The real tragedy is that a fourth group of people have emerged that I would call the 'fascile reconstrutivists' who take sound grabs and images that have a certain currency and mash them together. They come up with the wave-particle duality and quantum weirdness, and have a metric of success on how well they have habituated the general popular scientific audience to respond to the echoes of incomplete explanations. So let's recap the four groups as I have sorted them out. The hip popularly sanctioned explainer definitely has to be included, most definitely, as all hale to them they have got the mike and control the play. So here goes: 1) The rationalist searching for compatibility (Einstein) 2) The irrationalists claiming the explanations that do work (Bohr) 3)) The fascile reconstructiveness that are more about signing people up to a explanation brand concept and keeping them hooked. (Think mobile phone plan) 4) The analyst that have understood enough to work out what next needs to be understood. The Einstein magnetic spin flip causing an angular momentum spin effect is such a classic and awesome experiment every one should know about it. It is profound. Is everyone plotting against me, distracting me a key points when this is not explained. It turns out that I have missed a few occasional things. In general, I have been deeply concerned and find out that indeed the original text book is had mucked up and I was scratching my head waiting for it to click. The macroscopic demonstration of electron spin just really takes your breath away. Imagine not being sure and seeing it, the chill that you would experinence seeing it. Now the Stern Gerlack experiment where a stream of neutral silver atoms are fired into a non-uniform field needs to be carefully explained or you are doomed to a basic conclusion that boundary of no explanation is mysterious close. Here it is the nonuniform field that is the clincher. Now Einstein's experiment with magnetization flip causing an angular kick is really believable. The only mystery to me is why isn't this a third year university experiment. I can imagine a micro torsion bar in vacuum, capacitor sensors and an oscillating magnetic field to see the driver in a high Q situation went the field frequency sweeps through resonance. I have to study this one. What is the Einstein Refigerator? Having seen Cooperative Spontaneous Emission in mirrorless lasers for nitrogen, carbon-dioxide and fluorine based mirrorless lasers, I can't get my mind around how this would work to bring down bulk temperature. I found the description of Einsteins last years of isolation from the broader Physics community just profound. The stage was set for the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force. We had experienced a point in history where a solitary genius could make an impact, then this impact reverberated creating such a wave so large and so energized that it left this poor soul behind. In the end he wanted to go, he had done enough. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.

The article moves on from the private, professional and political life of Einstein to cover his Atomic and Relativity theories. I think it is awesome that we have observed gravitation waves almost 100 years to the day after he predicted them. From my perspective I don't think people fully understand the folk science of Newton and his medieval "Angel time" It is also instructive to read how he followed up some dead ends and rise of the pseudo tensor. This is beyond the GR I studied, and I am puzzled by exactly what I have been taught. MP4 recording     MP3 recording -- -- Your browser does not support the audio element.