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By Christopher Moore
Here is an interesting article about biofuels posted at Functionalism In Action by Ian Conrad:
There is so much hype, today, about biofuels. They are seen as the savior of our nation — especially corn-ethanol; especially if one were to compare the subsidization that goes on here. But is this the right approach?
The article continues, making the following point with regards to a new process af turning corn sugar into good old fashioned gasoline:
To compare, the most effective gallon-per-acre biofuel crop right now is palm oil, which hovers around 680 gallons-per-acre. So this is more than triple the amount — and it’s good ol’ fashioned gasoline to boot! Here comes the number crunching. In 2004, the US used approximately 318 billion gallons of oil. At 2,000 gallons per acre, that comes out to roughly 159 million acres of arable land — and this is assuming that the cellulosic starch problem can be overcome — for which there are no hypothetical solutions yet available. According to the CIA’s “World Factbook”, the US has 9,161,923 square kilometers of land, 18.01% of which are arable. That’s 1,650,62 square kilometers. 1 acre = 0.00404685642 square kilometers, so the US has 407,739,281 acres of arable land. To maintain the energy usage levels of 2004 purely from biofuels derived from this process would require ~40% of all arable land in the nation.
The question Ian asks is an important one, considering a slew of would be presidents are busy interupting the breakfasts of Iowans: “What the devil is the justification of the subsidization of corn-ethanol production?”
Read the entire article here.
By Christopher Moore
I was almost fooled by a Nigerian scam. The method used is actually interesting and shows how sophisticated scammers have become. I post this here to alert others in a position similar to mine. The summary: if you receive an unsolicited email asking for you to send some item to Africa, then RUN, RUN, RUN away.
Last month, I received the following email:
Dear Mr Chris,
I am very glad for your effeorts on your website.
I am a Head of Science Department in a high school and I need your guidiance on how I can get Video cassetes and CDs in Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics and Geography) that covers High School syllabus to back up the teachers efforts in the school.
I would be obliged if I can be refered to or assisted in this regards.
My best regard
Dr. George Robinson
H.O.D Sciences
First, I receive these types of emails a few times a month. Generally they come from students but every now and then I get an email from a high school or college teacher. Initially, I thought nothing of the request. However, a few key markers in the email should have tipped me off:
1) Why would the head of a science department at a high school who holds a doctorate have such a terrible grasp of the English language? I assumed “Dr. Robinson” was at a school in the UK, since he was using a UK Yahoo account, which brings us to …
2) Why would he send the request via Yahoo instead of via a school account? And …
3) Why in the world would he be incapable of finding this information on his own. Afterall, he supposedly has a Ph.D. and enough sense to be promoted to the head of a science department.
Anyway, I was in a generous mood. I send the following reply:
Hello George.
I’m sorry to get back to you so late.
I’m afraid I can really only help you with materials for physics.
Paul Hewitt has a really good series of videos:
http://www.arborsci.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=20
I also highly recommend his Conceptual Physics textbook for conceptual courses at the high school level.
Some really good video demonstrations can be found online for free. Specifically, Colorado State University has a good collection:
http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/video_demos/
The Wonders of Physics is a good series by Clint Sprott:
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/wop.htm
We are currently developing our own video series for ilovephysics.com, though this project will take about a year.
I would like to point out that out of the three recommendations, two were completely free and available online. This will be important in a minute. Usually, with these types of unsolicited requests my initial response is sufficient for the person doing the requesting. However, over 1 month later I receive the following email:
Dear Mr James, (notice I went from Mr Chris to Mr James)
I have visited the sites recommended to me by you, I am finding it a bit difficult to communicate with them because they have not been responding to series of e-mail sent to the customer care services of their organization. his is neccessary so that I can arrange a money transfer for the payment of the DVDs since I am not residing in the United States and credit card payment is not really reliable from africa countries.
I will like you to please rescue me from this predicament by getting me new or used DVDs in Physics, Chemistry, biology and Mathematics. Please send the bill via e-mail and how I can made that will get to you either through western union or any other way you might prefer. Please help select those you feel deem fit for high school student and maybe earlier part of their university programm. I will also enquire about the cost of shipping by DHL or any other Courier services and include the cash with the payment if you assist me on this.
I need this Dvds to back-up the teachers in their lessons.
I will be obliged if this can be done to assist me.
hank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Dr. G. Robinson
If the red flags weren’t a wavin’ after the first email, they sure as hell were after this one. In the first sentence, “Dr. Robinson” tells me that he could not communicate with the providers. First, I provided three links in my email. Two of those links were to sites that offered completely free online videos. Just for fun, I called Arbor Scientific about the Hewitt videos at their number posted on their contact page. I was speaking with someone within moments.
The second sentence lets me know that “Dr. Robinson” is not from the UK as I thought, but resides in an African country. Again, why would he be using a UK Yahoo account? Why would his school’s credit card be un-reliable? African countries (specifically, Nigeria) are hotbeds for fraud rings. US companies are leery of sending items to these countries without firm payment beforehand. However, credit card payments are the best means of payment in these situations.
And here comes the scam. The rest of the email asks ME to purchase the videos (notice he did not specify which videos), have them shipped to him in Africa, and he will pay me via some easily fraudulent method (such as Western Union). I’ve done sales on E-Bay, so I know that YOU NEVER accepts payment via Western Union from someone you do not know. If you do, you never ship anything until the payment clears. Oh, and you never ship anything to an African country, especially if they want to pay via Western Union.
The hard part is figuring out how he intends on making enough money off of me to make the scam worthwhile. The DVDs would be a few hundred dollars that, at best, he could sell for half their retail cost. My guess is that had I continued, more pieces of the scam would have come out.
Even if I wasn’t sure that this was the set-up for a scam, I wouldn’t do it. If some random physics teacher in Boise, Idaho emailed me asking about such a transaction I would refuse. In fact, I would find the request highly inappropriate from someone who should know better. Young physics students who I have never met ask me for all manner of things via email. But they do not know any better. A grown man with a supposed Ph.D. that heads the science department at a high school should know better.
After this email, I realized I was probably the target of a scam. Of course, “Dr. Robinson” could be real, so I simply responded via email that I found the request highly inappropriate. I received the following response within an hour:
Dear Mr James,
Thank you for your response, I actually got a response today (now precisely).
I believe I could also get more educational materials from you also been an educationalist like me. That is why I decided to also contact you for assistance and I will like to make payment with the method I feel I can rely on and will get to you also. I do not have access to international credit card, hence my decision to seek for your assistance in this regard. And I believe you can help since you are the USA and it will be easier to make purchases within US as I understand.
If the need arrises I will give you a call
Best Regards
Dr. R. George
Now I KNOW that “Dr. Robinson” (or is it Dr. George?) does not exist and that I am the target of a scam. We’ll see if he calls. That should be fun.
The moral of the story: If someone in Africa that you do not know asks you to buy them something, then RUN, RUN, RUN.
By Christopher Moore
I’ve decided to participate in the OneBillionBulbs project and have begun replacing my old incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving fluorescent bulbs. I encourage everyone else to join the ilovephysics.com group and begin saving money and energy.
The graphic will remain on the right side of the page.
Hat tip: Kn@ppster and Glen Reynolds.
By Christopher Moore
The battle between Sony and Toshiba is still raging. Last year during the International Consumer Electronics Show Sony unveiled Blu-Ray, while Toshiba launched HD DVD. Both formats are fighting to become the next generation of DVD technology, with the loser becoming this decade’s BetaMax. If you are old enough to remember, Sony’s BetaMax flopped hard in the early eighties when the more open standard VHS hit the market. Time will tell if Sony learned its lesson.
As reported by MSNBC.com, analysts had expected a clear winner to have already emerged. However, that does not seem to be the case. Sony’s Playstation 3 comes standard with a Blu-Ray DVD drive, and Toshiba is beginning to release HD DVD players.
“In an optimal world you would have one format,” Kevin Tsujihara, president of the Warner Bros. home entertainment group said this week. “But there are many industries where multiple formats have existed and flourished.”
However, many believe that only one format will survive.
“Consumers are aware there are two formats and they think ‘VHS versus Betamax,” said Phillip Swann, president of the technology-oriented Web site TVpredictions.com.
The competing videocassette technologies squared off in the 1980s with consumers eventually picking VHS as the winner.
“Consequently one of the formats has to go away, either via the marketplace or a negotiated truce.”
Both technologies are similar (at least to me). They both rely on GaN blue-lasers, which I will discuss more in an upcoming article. HD DVD currently has the edge in terms of price, with players retailing at around $500. Blu-Ray players cost about twice as much. However, both technologies will soon realize a dramatic decrease in cost. I’m hoping my research will one day play a small part. 
By Christopher Moore
Fuel cell devices directly convert chemical energy into electricity by electrochemical reactions, and have received recent interest due to their lack of moving parts and relatively clean operation. Various types of fuel cells are currently discussed in the scientific literature, though polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) show characteristics that would make them suitable for automobile engines that produce zero emissions. (For a discussion on fuel cells in general, see this article.)
Several problems currently exist that limit the commercial viability of PEFCs, the largest being the cost of catalyst material. Though Pt has historically been the optimum cathode electrocatalyst for fuel cells, [1] the use of expensive Pt and Pt-based catalysts in fuel-cell electrodes makes their cost prohibitive. Since Pt requirements scale with fuel-cell size, large-scale fuel-cell costs can not be reduced through efficient production and economies of scale. If the transition to a hydrogen economy is to be realized, reductions in fuel cell costs are necessary. Otherwise the familiar rallying cry “no blood for oil” may be replaced by “no blood for platinum”. Recent studies have been conducted on means to reduce the amount of platinum necessary for successful catalysis, as well as studies to eliminate platinum from the process altogether. Specifically, in this article I examine studies of platinum monolayers, palladium alloys, and cobolt-polypyrrole composite catalysts.
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By Christopher Moore
Among scientists the title of this post is not at all controversial. But among evangelical Christians, the topic is open to debate. I’m currently working on a longer article about what is an isn’t science, but I thought I’d take a quick break and jump into this topic. It is important, because there is a growing movement promoting the teaching of Intelligent Design along side evolution in public school science classes.
What is “Intelligent Design”? The Center for Science and Culture states the following:
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
Based on this statement alone, and without examining the implications, it is fairly easy to conclude that Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory. To begin, what makes a theory scientific? For any theory, hypothesis or conjecture to be considered scientific, it must be:
Consistent
Parsimonious
Useful
Empirically testable & falsifiable
Based upon multiple observations, often in the form of controlled, repeated experiments
Correctable & dynamic
Progressive
Provisional or tentative.
A good scientific theory is all of these things, but in order to be considered remotely scientific a theory must meet at least most of these conditions. Intelligent Design does not. Intelligent Design relies on accepting a priori that an intelligent designer constructed the universe. And since this intelligent designer is “outside” nature, there is no way to prove this assertion. This does not make the assertion necessarily incorrect, just unfalsifiable and therefore un-scientific. And since Intelligent Design is founded on an un-testable axiom (by definition neither provisional or tentative), it is far from dynamic.
But even accepting as axiom (on faith) the existence of an intelligent designer (which I do), it does not necessarily follow that evolution is bunk, and that the Earth is 6,000 years old. This requires acceptance of a VERY literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, which would also lead one to the conclusion that the Earth is flat and at the center of the universe. In fact, Intelligent Design proponents come to varied conclusions about its implications — from those who claim that the Universe literally was created in six days, to respected scientists who simply believe that God created the universe in the manner modern science describes. I would fall into the latter camp, though I’m not sure how respected I am. Because of the wide disparity of conclusions that can be drawn from Intelligent Design premises, it fails to be useful in describing nature and is far from progressive (in that, say, Newton’s Gravitational laws cannot be reasonably derived from ID).
Although a theological argument can definitely be made for an “intelligent designer”, the claim that it is science is fraud. I personally believe God created the heaven and the Earth. My claim that there is an intelligent designer (God) is not a scientific statement; it is theological. A belief in God cannot be based on science, nor does a certain belief have to be scientific to be acceptable. But as a scientist I have to look at the data, and the data suggests that the Earth (and the universe) is much older than 10,000 years. And that life evolved. This doesn’t call into question my faith in God. The complexity of the natural world actually strengthens my faith. I would argue that the Big Bang is the manner in which God created the universe and that planetary and biological evolution was and is His plan. Dr. Moreland, author of “Love Your God With All Your Mind”, states the following:
Now, when it comes to the…flat earth and the rising and the setting of the sun: it was scientific evidence that caused people to say ‘maybe we’d better re-look at those passages.’ So now the question was raised by the church interpreters: ‘Is there anything essential to this passage that’s violated if we take the four corners of the earth to be metaphorical?’ Now, their answer was, in that particular passage, ‘no.’ That particular text can allow for that without violating the teachings of the scriptures in that particular text. Now, is this procedure risky in other passages? You bet. But does it follow that it should never be applied? No, you’ve gotta take texts–each text, on its own. So, the devil’s in the details, and you’ve got to be very, very careful.
If scientific evidence suggests that life evolved via natural selection, then Christians should re-examine their understanding of the manner in which God created man. Natural selection may have been His intention and plan. There is no need to create a false “science” to justify His continued existence and importance in our lives.
The world is as God created it. Who are you or I to question the manner in which He created it. We can merely explore that creation through actual science.
By Christopher Moore
 NFL teams are currently battling it out in pre-season games, and college teams are gearing up for the beginning of the season. The NFL Regular Season starts 9/7/2006 and ends with Super Bowl on 2/4/2007. That makes this the perfect time to ask football coaches for a job. That’s right. Every football team needs a physicist on staff. If John Fox of the Carolina Panthers or Frank Beamer of the Virginia Tech Hokies are reading this, then sirs, I am ready. Put me in coach.
I know Frank Beamer puts special emphasis on special teams, so I thought I’d help out by providing his punters a little physics lesson:
Rob Gross sent me an interesting article he wrote where he examines the optimum punting angle to maximize net yardage. Here is the introduction:
Using elementary physics, one can easily show that the optimum angle to launch a projectile in order to maximize its range is 45 degrees when air resistance is ignored. Thus when applied to a punt, the kick will travel the most distance when it is kicked at an angle of 45 degrees. However, the analysis is not the same when trying to fnd the optimum angle to maximize the net yardage of a punt. For instance, if the punt is kicked at a greater angle the punt will be in the air longer and will allow the kicking team to get closer to the punter and thus limit his return. However, kicking at this greater angle will also shorten the kick. I will analytically examine this compromise.
Click here to download the entire article.
In the article, Rob develops an equation for optimal punt angle as a function of the speed of both the defense and offense. By using some rough estimates of average player and punt velocity, he comes to the following conclusion:
The optimum angle to maximize the net yardage does depend weakly on the average speed of the punt returner and the speed of the football. However, for realistic speeds, the dependence is so weak that it is very close to 45 degrees and a punter does not have tolerance when kicking to distinguish these angles. Not only is the angle extremely close to 45 degrees, if one could actually kick at that angle, the angle has almost negligible affect on the net return. Thus, to maximize net yardage, the analysis is practically the same as the maximal range angle and the punter should punt at an angle close to 45 degrees.
Rob simplifies the real problem quite a bit. You also have to consider field position. You want to land the ball somewhere between the 20 yard line and the goal line, ideally right on the 1 yard line, to avoid a touchback. (See Frank Beamer, I know a thing or two about football. I’m available if you need me.) But overall, getting your guys to the other end of the field before the ball is caught will usually result in a “fair catch” call, and this is rarely good for the opposing team.
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By Christopher Moore
I have a pure policy piece today. It’s about energy, so I think it is fair game for ilovephysics.com.
Republicans are using rising gas prices to foist an election year gimmick on us, and Democrats are pulling out the “Big Oil” bogeyman to scare us into voting for them. Both camps are full of … methane.
From the Libertarian Party:
A group of Senate Republicans are proposing to give every American taxpayer a $100 rebate check to offset the cost of high gas prices … Republicans are hoping this election-year gimmick will translate into success in November. Giving out a $100 gas rebate check is largely symbolic and will hardly provide any relief to America’s motorists. With the average gasoline price at $2.90 a gallon, many motorists will spend close to a $100 in little over a week.
Senate Democrats think the way out of high gas prices is to accuse the oil companies of price gouging. Democrats are taking this position even though the last price gouging investigation conducted after Hurricane Katrina yielded no evidence of retailers inflating the price of gasoline.
I certainly wouldn’t mind a $100 check in the mail, but obviously $100 doesn’t fix the problem (if you want to call it a problem.) That takes care of about 1 week of average two-car-family driving. And blaming oil companies doesn’t help either. Nor does it make sense. Here’s a few questions who’s answers may shed some light as to why:
How much profit does the average oil company make on an average gallon of gas right now? The answer will surprise you — $0.09.
How much do you pay in taxes on the average gallon of gas? You probably won’t be surprised by this one — $0.50.
So if the oil companies, out of the goodness of their hearts, decided to go non-profit then the cost of an average gallon of gas would drop from $2.92 down to $2.83. You’d save an average of $54 per year. And millions of retirees and pensioners who’s fixed incomes depend on their investments in oil companies would be eating dog food. But we forget that corporations are comprised of individual stockholders when there is an election. Oil company profits don’t look that big anymore, and price gouging doesn’t seem to be the problem.
But what about tax gouging? Drop $0.50 from the price and you’re down to $2.42. You just saved an average of $300 per year. So if gouging is going on, then who’s the biggest gouger? ExxonMobil Corp. reported $10 billion in net income in the third quarter, the largest ever by a U.S. energy company. So a back of the envelope estimate would yield a government profit of about $50 billion over the same period. And the government didn’t have to drill for a single barrel of oil! So how can a politician rail against Big Oil profits when their own votes in congress and state legislatures lead to windfall profits for the federal and state treasuries at the expense of yours and my paycheck.
Oil company executives are no saints. They push for government subsidies citing “National Interest”. They’ve bilked us (via our congressmen) for years. So I have little sympathy when it’s their turn for a spanking. But high gas prices aren’t caused by greedy price gougers. They’re caused by government taxes, regulations, and foreign policy. They’re caused by the fact that a room full of 10 geologists asked the question: “how much oil is left?” will result in 11 different answers.
Anyway, Greens should be excited about high gas prices. Democrats who favor alternative energy solutions should hope for even higher gas costs. About $0.50 more per gallon of gas, and hydrogen will start to be competitive.
UPDATE: It’s hard to believe it took a Democrat to suggest it, but Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., has called for a 60-day suspension of the 18.4 cent federal gasoline tax and the 24-cent a gallon diesel tax. Finally someone proposing something that makes sense. Thank you Sen. Menendez.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The term “Tax Gouging” is growing legs in the blogshpere. Hammer of Truth weights in, see Neil Cavuto rip into Senator Durbin at Flashpoint here, and the Banty Rooster gives their take.
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