A Textbook Case

Published on

textbook and calculationsOur astronomer writes:

Now and then I come across an interview of some Nobel prize-winning (or otherwise distinguished) scientist with the inevitable question, “What got you started on your path to fame?” Almost always it was an inspiring teacher or mentor, a person who imparted a love of or excitement in doing science. Somewhere in the years between High School and Grad School, between the time when our differences were mostly potential and the time we’re on our way in a particular direction, someone lit a fire. Often there’s a quote something like, “He/She showed me that [insert science here] is more than just a set of results in a dusty textbook, but something that I really enjoyed doing.”

Similarly, in accounts of some part of the history of science it’s almost inevitable that I encounter a sentence like, “so science proceeds in sometimes a roundabout and uncertain fashion, not at all as the textbooks tell you.” Textbooks are not often held up as good examples.

The message, sometimes explicit but often implied, is that our job as teachers and scientists is to inspire and excite. Trying to impart “textbook results” is deprecated. Well, this time I am standing up for the textbook and the type of learning it represents. There is a time when it is just what we should be teaching. We need to ask the question: what are we trying to do? What is the outcome we want in our students?

Read More

Share Button

The Fashionable Twin

Published on

Our photography correspondent writes:

Rolleiflex TLR camera
Rolleiflex 3.5T

This time I’m singling out a type of camera that, while instantly recognizable and quite common in the days of film, was never ubiquitous. Most people preferred other kinds. But those who used them were very firmly attached to them and had definitely chosen them over whatever else might be on the market. This type found a particular home, among professional photographers, with those who specialized in portraits and fashion shoots.

This design is called the twin-lens reflex (TLR if you’re advertising to sell or buy one in the cost-per-word section of the photo magazine). “Reflex,” when used about cameras, means that there’s a mirror involved somewhere. “Twin lens” is obviously appropriate. But why twin lenses? It’s not a stereo or a panorama camera, a kind that takes two pictures at once. Well, the short answer is you need one lens to keep an eye on what the other is doing.

Read More

Share Button

How can you tell, if you’re not an expert? (2)

Published on

How far can you trust a scientist?

 

Astronomy book and page of equationsOur chief consultant writes: It’s time to take up the question again of how a non-expert can evaluate an expert. In a previous post I introduced paradoxers, people from outside the field who claim to have made some highly important advance. Paradoxers are interesting in several ways and we’ll return to them later. Today we consider the case of some undoubted expert, a renowned or at least established scientist, describing something in his or her field. How much of it can you rely on to be true? How far can you actually trust a scientist?

This subversive-looking question occurred to our astronomer a while back. To try to answer it, he looked into the specific case of astronomy over the period 1833-1944, and wound up writing a well-regarded book with his conclusions. It’s 300 pages long, so I’m not going to try to include the whole thing in this post. His depressing conclusion is that even the best and most conscientious scientists may make statements as known fact, that turn out later to be wrong. His encouraging conclusion is that this is very rare, and for almost all scientists almost all the time, their presentations are reliable. In addition, there are a number of clues that help indicate the reliability, or otherwise, of what you’re being told.

Read More

Share Button

Photography under control

Published on

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.

Read More

Share Button

“Calvin! Do something you hate!”

Published on

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.

Read More

Share Button

Unsophisticated photography: the Brownie Hawkeye Flash

Published on

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.

Read More

Share Button

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

Published on

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.)

Read More

Share Button

Big numbers in science communication

Published on

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.”

Read More

Share Button

Use that camera! . . . but why?

Published on

Kodak 1918 camera and iPhoneOur photography correspondent writes: We’ve just gone live with our Use that camera! service, showing people how to use their film cameras.  But why would anyone want to do that?

Well, it’s not that film is better than digital.  That’s been settled.  With possible very tiny, specialized exceptions, digital photography can do everything film can do, and plenty that it can’t.  Digital pictures are available immediately, can be sent from your phone, can be adjusted to match your imaging vision in amazing detail; you think up your own virtues.

I still shoot film, for reasons that aren’t relevant here.  The question is why you would want to.  I can think up a few possibilities:

  • It’s different. You want to distinguish yourself from the crowd, or maybe just want some variety.
  • It’s difficult.  You like challenges.  There’s also the fun of bragging about how you overcame them.
  • Operating a fine old machine.  There is a pleasure in using a well-crafted device, even apart from any results you get.
  • It’s there, so it should be used.  It’s a shame that any well-made machine should rust away uselessly.
  • There’s a special connection.  Your great-uncle used it to take those pictures in the old album, and when you look through the viewfinder you realize you’re doing just what he did.  (Our working title for the service was Your Grandfather’s Camera.)
  • You’re writing an historical novel.  You’re aware that a 1940 Leica does not work like an iPhone, but you’re fuzzy on the details and it’s important to the plot.

The most important reason is the one that motivates you.  It may not be possible to put it into words, and it doesn’t need to be noble and serious.  Simple curiousity is a wonderful thing.

So: why would you use that camera?

Share Button