Articles for July 2015

Photography under control

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The Agfa Super Silette

Agfa rangefinder cameraOur photography consultant writes:

What most often strikes people now about this camera is the “retro” styling. What strikes the person called to operate it, however, especially someone used to simple things like the Brownie, are the controls. You can adjust the focus from about three feet to infinity; you can set the exposure to squint into the desert sun or gather the glimmer of late twilight, or anywhere in between.  (Our astronomer has used the camera for exposures of twenty minutes!)  These two controls may not sound like much, but suddenly you have enormous creative control in your hands. There’s also a remarkably good lens; add some versatile 35mm film and there is hardly anything a photographer cannot do.

The downside (and there is always a downside) is that you may not be a photographer, or at least not feel like one. There is no “automatic” or “program” mode in this Agfa: you have to set the focus and exposure yourself. There are things to help you, though, and ways to get decent results even if your photographic ambitions are modest.

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“Calvin! Do something you hate!”

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Old book and kerosene lampOur chief correspondent writes:

In the 1980s-1990s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, the six-year-old boy Calvin at one point caricatures his father’s attempts at discipline by swiping his glasses, striking a pose and admonishing: “Calvin! Do something you hate! It will build character!” Well, certainly childhood is full of rules and duties whose purpose, it appears, is only to make us uncomfortable or unhappy. Some people (even some kids) may enjoy classic literature, some do find working with numbers fun, some are found every weekend at the pick-up game of basketball; but everyone, as a child, is dragged through Moby Dick (or some equivalent), has to pass algebra, is drafted onto a PE team.

Of course adult life has its unpleasant duties (many among them connected with raising children), and they’re much harder to avoid or postpone than writing a book report. But we have more choices—that’s what being an adult means—and we can spend more time and effort on things we’ve chosen to do, rather than things chosen for us. We hang out with people who like the same things we do, do the same things, think the same way. Modern technology (including websites and blogs) supports a sometimes worrying fragmentation: we may not often be confronted with people who are different.

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Unsophisticated photography: the Brownie Hawkeye Flash

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Brownie Hawkeye cameraOur photography consultant writes: The Brownie Hawkeye is one of a long line of Kodak cameras designed to get everyone taking pictures (on Kodak film, of course). It was inexpensive to make, being mostly a plastic box of air, and simple to use—there are no adjustments to make. In the ‘50s and ‘60s this was the kind of camera given to kids as their first chance at taking their own pictures. No doubt there are still tens of millions of shoeboxes under beds filled with snapshots of family, pets, the neighborhood and summer vacations, all produced by this camera and its close kin.

These are now a half-century old and more, and were not constructed with longevity in mind. One would never repair a Brownie; it would cost less to buy a new one. But their very simplicity means there’s not much to go wrong, and there are still many of these around in excellent working order.

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How can you tell, if you’re not an expert? (1)

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Paradoxers

Our chief consultant writes: an occupational hazard of working in a Physics or Astronomy Department, or at an Observatory, is the occasional receipt of an unsolicited paper from someone outside these sciences. One of these typically presents a new theory, more or less sweeping in its results, that corrects (perceived) errors now being made by scientists.

Physicists and astronomers generally spend little time on them. It is highly unlikely that someone with a minimal or mistaken grasp of the sciences (as these invariably display) will stumble upon something useful that many very capable scientists have missed. It also requires a lot of time and concentration to get through an often torturous piece of writing. (It is a good exercise for teachers, however, in distinguishing poor presentation from genuine error. Sometimes they’re passed on to graduate students to hone their thinking.) In the nineteenth century the authors of this kind of thing were squaring the circle and disproving Newton. Augustus de Morgan made a study of them, calling them “paradoxers” (using the word “paradox” in a different sense than we do today), and Five Colors S&T has adopted this term. (It’s worthwhile dipping into de Morgan’s A Budget of Paradoxes if you can find a copy. The writing is dense, but often entertaining.)

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Big numbers in science communication

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table of astronomical numbersOur astronomer writes: In his book Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint Exupéry tells the story of a group of Bedouin from the Sahara brought to metropolitan France. This was in the days of the French colonies in North Africa, and the intent was to impress them with the greatness of the civilization of Europe (or at least its power) so they would stop fighting against it. On their return, they said Paris, iron bridges, locomotives, everything was “very big.” They’d learned that Frenchmen seemed to be satisfied by the phrase and used it to buy some peace. In fact they did not comprehend what their guides had tried to show them.

I find that, in explaining astronomy to the public (including students in introductory classes) there is a temptation to play to the “ooh and ahh factor,” to try to impress one’s audience with big numbers to show how different it is from normal experience. (Sometimes there is the unspoken subtext: “Look at me, how good I am to be able to work with huge numbers!”) But if we are not very careful we may, in the end, only leave the vague impression that astronomy is “very big.”

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