11 January, 2009
Yet more proof that maths can be funny, this time from the comments left on a Slashdot article - Or just more reasons for a couple of friends to ridicule my sense of humour? You decide…
Why did the mathematician have complex numbers on his telephone?
So he could call all his imaginary friends.
And because physics is just bastard child of maths and the real world here are a couple more jokes for the those who like me believe that maths/science is not without it’s funny bits.
Whenever I’ve gotten a speeding ticket, I’ve thought about arguing with the Judge that the cop was lying on the ticket. He noted both where I was and how fast I was going, and since he can only measure one of those things, he’s clearly lying about the other.
—–
There’s an old joke about a guy who got a ticket for running a red light. He argued in court that the Doppler Shift made the light appear green. The judge agreed with him that the original ticked was no good, and then fined him… for speeding.
What makes the last joke so good is someone else then did the math to work out what speed you’d have to travel at for this claim to be true. Have a quick guess how fast you’d have to be going for a red light to look green due to the Doppler Effect. Here’s the answer:*
Lambda(red) = 620nm
Lambda(green) = 520nm
f = c / L
f(red) = 4.84*10^14Hz
f(green) = 5.77*10^14Hz
Assuming that he observed the light over a distance of 50m, there are this many waves of light in the red spectrum:
50 / (620*10^-9) = 8.0645*10^7
In order to “greenshift” that, he needs to cause this many waves to incident his retina:
50 / 520*10^-9) = 9.615*10^7
So he needs to travel at a speed such that he only views 8.0645/9.615 oscillations he otherwise would if he were stationary.
The redshift formula is:
f(final) = f(emit) + f(emit) * v/c
So:
f(final) = 5.77*10^14Hz
f(emit) = 4.84*10^14Hz
c = 3*10^8m/s
v = c * ( ( f(f) - f(e) ) / f(e) )
= 3*10^8*((5.77*10^14 - 4.84*10^14)/4.84*10^14)
= 5.76*10^7m/s
= 207,520,611 km/h
In English that’s a speed of about 128,947,329 mph or about 1/5 of the speed of light - Which would have to be worth more than a few points on your licence.
*I’ll admit that I haven’t done the calculation for myself, but if it were wrong someone on Slashdot would have pointed it out - It’s that kind of place.
17 December, 2008
I suppose you wouldn’t have to worry about hairloss ever again if something had already caused you to lose it all…
16 December, 2008
Last week was the Christmas party, however being the sort of person that makes Scrooge look festive, I was not in attendance. As a result I missed out on an awards ceremony where I didn’t win anything.
It sound like it was a close call though, as today when I came back to work after my long weekend in Cornwall one of my superiors came over to me and said they had something for me - Expecting it to be a list of people to phone or some other form of work, I was surprised when they instead gave me the cheapest plastic medal imaginable and informed me I had come as a runner up in the awards ceremony.
The question of course though is what award was I up for?
Apparently the award was for largest personality, however some subgenius had decided to give the awards monikers such as the ‘Monocle’ award for most professional - Following this logic the largest personality award was named for David Brent.
Now if the award was something like the ‘Brian Blessed’ award I might have been disappointed about not winning it, but as it isn’t, I am not. Especially as when you consider comparisons to David Brent are rarely intended as complementary, they might as well have called it the biggest tosspot or least popular award.
The plus side to looking at it like this is that someone else won the award and is a massive tosspot, of course the downside is that would still make me the second biggest tosspot at work and that’s not really that much better, is it?
11 December, 2008
Just under a couple of weeks ago, I was commenting how some people have had to wait until they die to achieve ambitions of treading the boards. A much more common occurrence however is for actors to die on stage, although usually it’s intended as a metaphor some thespians try a more Stanislavski-style approach.
Earlier this week in Vienna at the climax of a production of Schiller’s Mary Stuart the stage directions required for a performer to cut his throat. The audience thought they were being treated to a special effects extravaganza and only realised that something was awry when he didn’t get up to take a bow. Luckily for the performer, whilst it looked impressive for the audience it wasn’t quite as bad as it looked for the performer. Due to the one bit of good luck involved in the incident he managed to miss his carteroid - Not that he was ever aiming for it I imagine!
Also in the true theatre style, he wanted the show to go on and was back on stage the following night to do the scene again with a bandage around his throat and one hopes, a duller knife.
10 December, 2008
Not much has been going on with me recently and even less has been going on romantically for far longer, so here is a news story from China courtesy of the BBC, about a couple who got a got a bit carried away swapping spit.
Chinese girl gets ‘kiss of deaf’
A young Chinese woman was left partially deaf following a passionate kiss from her boyfriend.
The 20-something from Zhuhai in Guangdong province arrived at hospital having completely lost the hearing in her left ear, said local reports.
The incident prompted a series of articles in the local media warning of the dangers of excessive kissing.
“While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution,” wrote the China Daily.
The doctor who treated the girl in hospital was quoted in the paper explaining what had happened.
“The kiss reduced the pressure in the mouth, pulled the eardrum out and caused the breakdown of the ear.”
The chorus of warnings was echoed by the Shanghai Daily, which wrote: “A strong kiss may cause an imbalance in the air pressure between two inner ears and lead to a broken ear drum.”
The young woman is expected to regain her full hearing within about two months.
The story itself is funny enough, but my favourite part of it is the idea of the media warning of “the dangers of excessive kissing”. I mean I can think of a few prospective dangers of getting carried away when osculating, but until today temporary deafness wasn’t one of them.
Edit: The BBC has done a follow up article on this story asking about how likely it is to go deaf through kissing and it seems that whilst it is possible, for people with normal ears it is unlikely as to cause this to happen, “you would need to be kissing like a Dyson hoover“.
24 November, 2008