Saturday 19 July 2014

Teachinghttp://www.marinewatchnsw.com/library/images/harrison4.jpghttp://www.marinewatchnsw.com/library/images/harrison4.jpg Science from a Science Perspective

Introduction to basic units


Educational Philosophy:

The normal approach to teaching Energy and Force goes along the ideas of "Proximal Development" (ZPD) and concept teaching strategies.
Fundamentally this requires the student to leverage past experience and make common sense steps to grow in understanding. It is possible to get students to replicate the teacher's common sense, received wisdom which often contain some common widely held flaws in thinking. They are

1) confusion between Mass and Matter / Weight and Mass
2) Believe that atoms are largely empty space (no supported by Quantum Mechanics)
3) The belief objects can not occupy the same region of space  (no supported by Quantum Mechanics)

It is common to see the use of the 

1) Drude model
2) The Bohr Atom
3) The Bohr liquid drop nucleus (as opposed to the Woods - Saxon Potential)
4) Requirement for wave particle duality (as opposed to a full quantum mechanical treatment)
5) The classical point electron

In short education technique has driven the propagation of bad science. People are simply not aware of the scope or seriousness of the situation. They have become comfortable with a network of misconceptions and don't perceive there is any long term problem that "can be fixed, for those luck one's who go on to study it seriously.

Scientific literature away of quality control by direct editorial intervention or by general reduction in citation, Education has a far more folk lore approach. Once an error is published it generates a cohort that propagates the misconception.

In an unusual move, it has been decided to teach Energy rather than the constructive concepts of Force,  Motion and Mass. This means we have to explore the concepts in Energy from a factual rather than a constructive frame work.



The Origin of the Second

1 second is defined to be  9192631770  (approximately 9 billion) pendulum periods of a metal gas Cesium.  Your microwave oven works at about 2 450 000 000 cycles per second.



To avoid doubt, it is Cesium with 133 protons and neutrons in the nucleus. The gas is stationary, and at absolute zero.

The pendulum swing is with microwave resonating with the swing of the Cesium.

In reality millions of atoms are held in a laser light cursible and thrown up much like a tennis serve.
Imagine the microwaves like a tennis racket, and if timed right they hit the atoms and get them to change shape.  The atoms on return (about 1 second ie about the height you throw a tennis ball) the number hit is scored.  High score means the right microwave.

The idea of a clock is analogous to flipping a coin in a sound wave and checking the frequency has hit the resonance of the coin



So it is not the rise and fall of the coin or atom but rather this is acting as a target that is only hit at a specific frequency.  Therefore time.

In the United States, the standard of time is regulated by the US Naval Observatory's Master Clock (USNO) which checks a fleet of atomic clocks circling the earth, that then keep time on all GPS and ATM

Here is an article on GPS atomic clock use http://www.gps.gov/applications/timing/

It is interesting it is used in the Hollywood film slates.

The internet references state that the electrons in the atoms "Jump" from one quantum state to another.  This is a common lose description. In our space electrons have a large physical extent typically > 1/20 nm. However they have distinct resonant shapes, and if the energy of these shapes are plotted they correspond to a single point tagged by their quantum numbers.  The microwave does cause the electron to move to new points absorbing or adding to the microwave energy. But they do not vanish only the energy levels get shifted by the radiation and the electron deforms in harmony.

Here is a picture of it happening





What happens in terms of radiation is that the Magnetic field vector which is normally in sync with the Electric field vector shifts pi/4 and the light gets trapped in the atom. It is important to remember that the stationary wave states are for the atom unperturbed by the EM radiation.

It is interesting that Australia was discovered as a Science bonus for the transit of Venus

Now for this Cook needed a very accurate clock. The greater the time difference of transit between London and Tahiti, the greater the parallax so the closer one is to the Sun.


Having an accurate clock meant basically a GPS for Cook.

The second red journey was with Harrisons watch number 4 the size of a bread and butter plate and kept accurate to seconds in a year.  The cost of this clock was several million dollars in todays terms.  To set the clocks ships would anchor in the Themes to see the "time ball" drop a 1 pm




"Shannon the Cannon was replace by Harrision the Garrison" Though out the british empire the gun rang out at o'oclock"
The French are kept in the dark about Cooks longitude work.







Odd facts about Cook

His Chronometer the K1 was a ripoff of the H4 a real Rolex story

He took his prized Goat on his voyage of discovery to Australia the first female to circumnavigate the earth

The use of the plate size watch sent him to scour the pacific for the great southern land, Australia wasn't it and not worth a second visit.  There is a new accuracy of his voyage with this.

Music is the answer

Phythagoras - Universal music, Planets, People and Instruments but we discovered the music of atoms.