Counter-Intuitive Science

Talked with a WWII "Dollar-a-year man" (wealthy men who supported the war effort by working on goverment/military projects for a nominal salary -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar-a-year_men) who did civil engineering work on ports in the Caribbean. One of the things they did was make barges out of concrete.Concrete barges float, even when loaded.Coral does not blow up when explosives are applied to it, but rather it compresses. Or so he told us they discovered when they tried to blast shipping channels through coral reefs.Edited by dwise1, : That's a dollar-a-year, not a dollar-a-day

That should also implode the minds of those who argue that we're at just the perfect distance from the sun and that if we were even the least bit closer we'd burn up and the least bit farther away we'd freeze. In the dead of winter (around 04 Jan), we're 3 million miles closer to the sun than we are in the height of summer.Related to that -- and also used by him -- was Kent Hovind's solar-mass-loss claim, that since the sun is losing about 5 million tons of mass per second as it "burns its fuel", the sun's mass 5 billion years ago would have been so immense as to "suck the earth in". Seems intuitively correct, since 5 billion years of losing mass at that rate would result in a total mass loss of about 7.89 x 10²³ tons, equal to about 132 earths. Very impressive sounding, especially given the assumption also made that if we tip the delicate balance of the earth's orbit being at just the right distance from the sun, then we'd burn up.Turns out that that mass loss amounts to a few hundredths of one percent of the sun's total mass. And that the sun's original mass would have "sucked the earth in" by about 40,000 (forty thousand) miles. Well, we've already seen what a difference 3 million miles makes to temperatures on earth!The big numbers that science works with, especially in astonomy, can be counter-intuitive. Edited by dwise1, : just found my earlier calculations

From Hovind's article, Universe Is Not 'Billions of Years' Old, which was on his website (repeated reorganization has long ago broken the link I had):

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The shrinking sun limits the earth-sun relationship to less than "billions of years." The sun is losing both mass and diameter. Changing the mass would upset the fine gravitational balance that keeps the earth at just the right distance for life to survive.

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Hovind is just one of many creationist speakers and writers (of which Hovind is not one) who will point to a long list of things that are just the right size and at just the right distances, etc, to make life here possible and that if any one of those things were just the slightest bit off then life could not exist, therefore it all had to be designed intelligently, etc, etc, etc. And their listeners, readers, and followers have regurgitated that message ad nauseum in countless fora. While the originators of such pronouncements (themselves often also regurgitators of what they had been fed by others) are very rarely if ever clear of how much sloppage they could allow in all those "everything just right" items for them to still be "just right", their regurgitators clearly have no idea how much sloppage could be allowed and never (that I have seen in 3 decades in the trenches) give any indication that they are even aware that there could be any sloppage, such that they appear to indeed believe that even the slightest variance would negate the possibility of life. Is it a strawman to repeat what a near-constant parade of creationists have themselves claimed and insisted upon? Certainly, their claim is itself a strawman which establishes false premises with which to support their own claims of the absolute necessity for design.Now, the actual argument is indeed that earth is in our solar system's habitable zone (AKA "Goldilocks Zone"), where the temperatures are just right for liquid water to exist among other factors. But that is much more the scientific argument and not the creationist one -- the creationist argument is a simplified version which pays very little or no attention to what's involved.How wide is our "Goldilocks Zone"? There's not much agreement on this, but I've seen it optimistically estimated to extend from just outside Venus' orbit to out beyond Mars' orbit, and pessimistically at +/- 9.3 million miles from our average orbital radius.That is a lot of sloppage! Do creationists allow for +/- 9.3 million miles when making their claim? Would they even? Would they even allow for +/- 1.55 million miles of the earth's annual orbit? I believe that they would not, until they have been educated to the fact that that is what really happens. And even then they would most likely not accept it, judging by my past experience with creationists.A possible sub-text to this topic is that creationist plans for science education are that it must teach what is intuitively obvious and that teaching children things that are counter-intuitive is harmful to their mental health (I've read the late Dr. Henry Morris making just such an argument for barring the "counter-intuitive teachings of evolution"). But so much of science, of what really is, is counter-intuitive, as we have been demonstrating with our examples here.Edited by dwise1, : word choice: "counter-intuitive" instead of "not intuitively obvious"

But that is not what I was doing. Read it again, please: I was not refering to imploding the minds of those taking the more reasoned version, but rather precisely those who take the less reasoned and ignorantly literalist version. Because those are the ones we keep encountering.There are ignorati (those who are ignorant of the science, etc, involved) on all sides (there are, after all, not just two sides to this; the "creation/evolution dichotomy" is a false one created and promulgated by creationists). The main difference between pro-science ignorati and creationist ignorati is that the pro-science ignorati don't normally get involved in these discussions, whereas the vast majority of creationists who get involved are the ignorati. Most non-ignorati creationists know better and avoid such discussions, or else they do get involved, but because they don't toe the party dogma they often find themselves opposed by their own ignorati brethren.

Years ago I saw a sample test question from a poll measuring scientific literacy. It showed a spiral track and a marble rolling down it, about to come to the end of the spiral track whereupon it would roll off into free-fall. 3 or 4 pictures provided the possible answers. The one picked by the most respondents showed the marble falling in a spiral trajectory, having "remembered" its previous motion on the spiral track.And in one class, a West Coast Swing teacher did something spectacular-looking and counter-intuitive. He was teaching the guys to do a 270 fan turn -- we step into our supporting foot and bend that leg while keeping our other leg straight and describing a circle as we rotated on our supporting foot. It's a slow turn meant to take up two or three beats, as I recall. The second time he demonstrated it, he started out in a slow turn, but then he pulled his fanning leg in, which sped up his turn, and then extended it back out to stop his turn; instead of a mere 270, he added an extra 360 to his turn and did it in the same time as our mere 270. Of course, he was just using conservation of angular momentum, like a skater would do, but to most in the class it was magic. It even took me a moment to figure out what he had done.In fact, it's fun to watch a dance teacher try to explain why certain techniques work, such as turns and spins. Some of them try to explain it scientifically while they really have no understanding of the physics involved.

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Soy maestra de baile! Nada es sencillo!
("I'm a dance teacher {so I know that} nothing is simple!")
Geraldine Chaplin at the end of Hable con ella (Talk to Her)

Similarly, what had gotten me started researching solar-mass-loss claims was an email a young creationist had sent me:

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As any good scientist will tell you, the sun burns half of its mass every year. If you multiply the sun's mass by millions (even though science says it is in the billions) the sun will be so incredibly huge it will stretch out past Pluto. And if you say that the planets would stay close to the sun as it shrank, then why don't the planets still move closer?

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I gave him a rather thorough response in which I took each and every part of those claims seriously and demonstrated what complete crap it all was. For example, instead of an arithmetic progression (as he attempted by multiplying by the number of years), the mass loss he was describing would have been geometric. After first presenting the 1972 and 1991 masses of the sun, I demonstrated that those two published values did not differ by a factor of 19. Then I explained about geometric progression:

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I would tend to attribute the difference to observational error. But still, you would have expected the sun's mass in 1972 to have been 19 times greater, 37.81 octillion metric tons. It wasn't. Nor should your claim have expected it to be, but rather your claim should have expected it to be 512 times greater.

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You see, the math is wrong. If we were to assume loss of half of the sun's mass every year, then each year it would have been twice what it was the year before. You are expressing an arithmetic progression, whereas in reality it should be geometric (review Malthus).

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Here is the formula that expresses what the sun's mass would have been for any year in the past, according to your model:

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m₀ = sun's mass at present
t = number of years that we are going back (eg, starting from 1991 and going back to 1972 would be 19 years)
m = the sun's mass at that past time
m = m₀ * 2^t (past mass = current mass times 2 raised to the number of years)

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Therefore, given a 1991 solar mass of 1.96x10³⁰kg, your model would have predicted a 1972 solar mass of 1.03x10³⁶ kg.

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Of course, it was nowhere near that massive. Would you care to explain this discrepancy?

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To make a long story short (as I said, I gave him a very thorough response, more for my own benefit than for his, since most such creationists would either never respond to my thoughtful responses or damn me to Hell for eternity for "hating God", but this one was refreshingly different), he answered back, amazed at how incredibly wrong that claim had been. He was a high school kid who had just gone to a Christian summer camp. I had asked him for the source of his claim and he said it was one of the camp counselors whom he would never see again. I advised him of the importance of verifying all claims.Now, I'm sure that most creationist writers would not have come up with such a claim -- well, kinda sure -- , but a lot of the creationist movement is grassroots and filled with all kinds of claims being spread mouth-to-mouth. Like the game of "telegraph", each time the "message" is repeated to the next person, it changes a bit. That claim that the sun loses half its mass each year might have originally been that half the sun's mass is contained within its core, which is correct. Of course, I'm only guessing that's how it had originally started. What's written is only a small part of the crap that's out there, that gets deposited on our doorsteps here.

Oh why not look at something that's completely bat-shit? And of course Kent Hovind played a supporting role in it.EXACT ILLUMINIST TIMETABLE FOR PRODUCING ANTICHRIST HAS BEEN REVEALED TO CUTTING EDGE MINISTRIES! at http://www.cuttingedge.org/NEWS/n1260.cfmWe know that we could view Jupiter as a failed star in that has about a tenth of the mass needed to start a thermonuclear reaction in its core (one source they cited was that its mass is 1/80'th of what's needed). So they wondered whether it could be ignited by a "huge nuclear device", namely the nuclear generator on the Galileo probe, which was set to crash into Jupiter (and actually did). This, they were convinced, was an Illuminati plot to turn Jupiter into a star, thus heralding in the AntiChrist. They asked astronomers whether a "huge nuclear device" could ignite Jupiter and got responses such as this:

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"Jupiter could not be ignited. The central temperature is the determining factor. A self-gravitating mass of hydrogen 20% the size of the Sun, or smaller, does not have a high enough central temperature to induce nuclear fusion. Temperature equates to average kinetic energy of particles; it takes a very high temperature to get even a small fraction of hydrogen ions to overcome their electrical repulsion and fuse." {Guy Smiley dated 2/2/99}

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Which they could not understand. But then they finally got a "straight" answer from a Christian "scientist" named Kent Hovind:

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The answer we received from a Christian scientist, Dr. Kent Hovind, { Dinosaur Adventure Land } explained the science to us so we could understand. In the NASA excerpt, quoted above, we learned that "most" of the mass of Jupiter is Hydrogen and Helium, a most explosive mix, if it is mixed with sufficient oxygen in order to burn this mixture. Dr. Hovind says Jupiter does not contain enough oxygen in order to sustain the type of continuous burning that would be needed to produce a star. Now, we understand and now it all makes sense. No matter how large the initial explosion might be, the lack of sufficient quantities of oxygen would snuff out any resulting fire rather quickly.

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Which brings us back on-topic. It appears that to the scientifically illiterate, all of science is "counter-intuitive". Of course, we know that NASA had given them the straight skinny, that is all about the ball of gas having enough mass to drive up the temperature of the core to the point where nuclear fusion can occur. But the intuitive answer is that a star burns just like a campfire burns, by combining chemically with oxygen. That intuitive answer is also completely wrong.The irony is that in his seminar tapes, Kent Hovind would repeatedly boast to his audience that he understands all the math and science because he taught both subjects for 15 years. He might have also mentioned that it was in a high school. But I don't think he mentioned that it was in a Christian school that he had founded and was running. And it was this "scientific expert" who thinks that a star burns by combining hydrogen with oxygen.But for the real batshit, check out that cuttingedge.org link. It'll make Buzsaw look completely sane.

As Dr. Adequate demonstrates in Message 52, there are several creationists who say something even more stupid (I think), that varying the earth's orbit by only a few inches would either burn up or freeze this planet. And over the decades, I've seen many creationists make the same claims, though I don't remember them giving actual distances like Dr.A's quotes. For that matter, the only times I've even seen creationists refer to the earth's distance from the sun, it has been to make the claim that varying it even slightly would make it uninhabitable. I cannot say that I have ever seen a creationist make a reasonable statement on this subject.I am not surprised that you are not familiar with this claim. As I recall when you first joined this forum, it was your first foray into discussing creation/evolution. You come from a different culture and a different language. While I know that there are US-type fundamentalists and creationists in Canada, they are apparently more prevalent in other provinces. You have not been exposed to the rhetorics and claims of actual real-life creationists, unlike us who have had to deal with them directly for several years, even decades, either on-line or in person or both. You're kind of like the new soldier who's just been shipped to the overseas war zone: all you know is what you've been told back state-side, so you find unbelievable the accounts told to you by long-time veterans about what it's really like in the trenches. We are no telling you wild stories. We are telling you what really happens. I felt the same way about that particular old canard. It is so utterly ridiculous that it must a strawman exaggeration. Nobody could be that stupid. So when I first heard actually used in earnest, my jaw dropped. And I've heard it a few more times as well. Around 2002, Answers in Genesis published an article in which they listed several claims that they wanted creationists to stop using. "Why are there still monkeys?" was one of those claims, so even they could see it being used often enough to motivate them to say "Stop it!".The sad truth is that there is no claim too stupid for creationists to want to use. They don't understand any of the science. Now, I've been a big fan of science all my life, as I think you have been as well. I cannot imagine anyone being so abymally ignorant of the most basic science, and yet I repeatedly see evidence of it from creationists. Not from all of them, but from most. It boggles my mind, as I'm sure that it does yours, but it happens.Now as for the "creationist literature". What exactly is that? There are books and magazine articles, many of which are written by creationists who do have some education, some even having something to do with science -- ie, some have degrees in a science (does food science really count?) and several have degrees in some form of engineering. Most of those would be unlikely to use such a blatantly stupid claim. Such claims are mainly being generated and circulated and recirculated about on the grassroots level, by the vast body of creationist followers.But then you have a lot of self-publishing going on, especially on-line. Anyone can put up a website or run a blog or post on a forum. Which means that those grassroots followers are publishing their own claims and versions of claims, including such rubbish as "Why are there still monkeys?" and "if the earth's orbit were off by inches ... " (not that they would know to use the subjunctive there). Isn't that part of the "creationist literature" now? The more respectable literature had extremely little quality control and all this self-publishing has absolutely none. Anything goes, any claim can be made, no matter how false, no matter how blatantly stupid. And other creationists will gobble it up and regurgitate it all over the place.{FOOTNOTE: Which brings to mind a segment from one of Dr. Seuss' animated Army training films about Pvt. Snafu. Rumors build up in soldiers minds, which start churning out baloney and pretty soon their mouths open and start shooting baloney all over the place. Which the animation depicted quite literally, with soldiers diving for cover.
} And you missed my point. In a serious discussion of the subject, we find some realistic estimates of how much the earth's orbit could change and still keep us within a habitable temperature range. My point was that creationists do not give realistic estimates any consideration, but rather assume very small variances, probably not even as great as how much the earth's distance from the sun does actually vary each year. Dr. Adequate has supported my point in that many think it's a matter of inches (Message 52).

About a decade ago, I tried to see what difference that 3 million miles would make. In our world atlas, I compared the winter and summer time average temperatures of regions the same mid-latitude north and south six months apart: ie, I compared our winter in Jan to their winter in July and our summer in July to their summer in Jan. And I chose what appeared to be roughly equivalent land masses, Australia and the US mid-west.What I found was that the Australian summer, which is at perihelion (04 Jan, closest to the sun) was on average about 1.9C (3.4F) warmer than the US summer, which is at aphelion (04 Jul, farthest from the sun). So the temperature difference that 3 million miles make is a few degrees.Of course, there are other meteorological factors that come into play which undoubtedly influence those results, so my findings are by no means conclusive. But I think that it does still give us some perspective.

I believe that motion detectors are much more common nowadays than pressure pads, which I don't think I've even seen since my childhood 40 years ago. Assuming that it requires detecting motion towards it, jumping vertically would not involve any motion towards it and so should not trigger it. As for why it didn't detect your initial approach, I don't know, unless you arrived in some time interval when it's designed to not look, such as when it has opened for someone, at which time a different sensor would keep it from closing until after the last person had entered. Did you approach from a highly oblique angle? Though when I do that to a door, it still detects me. Many even detect me walking past; must be my electro-magnetic personality.

Yes, signal loops.In an incident similar to Dr.A's, I was driving my Ford Fiesta (this was circa 1981) and was the only car in the left-turn lane. The signal loop never picked up on the fact that I was there. After being missed a couple times, another larger car pulled up behind me and we got the green arrow.Was my car too small to be detected? It had always worked at other left-turn lanes as well as at that one at other times. It was also in the dead of a North Dakota winter (Grand Forks, which would get the same Arctic air mass as International Falls, MN, commonly the coldest spot in the US), but I don't know whether that could have been a factor.Back to Dr.A's problem, Wikipedia describes three types of motion detectors: passive IR, active ultrasonic, and active microwave. The last two appear to use the Doppler effect, though they could also just be timing the returns to get the range of the strongest return and comparing it with the previous return. In either case, jumping up and down should have minimal effect on radial velocity.Edited by dwise1, : back to the problem ...

For my car story or Dr. A's story? I'll assume the latter.The information we're missing is: what kind of sensor was the door using?Everybody else seems to be assuming a pressure pad sensor, that would detect the weight of someone stepping onto it. Growing up, that's what I always saw being used at supermarkets. But to be honest, I don't recall having seen one in many years.Instead, I always see a sensor unit mounted on the center of the lintel pointing out towards approaching foot traffic. From what I've read, that sensor could be passive IR (which I deem unlikely) or some kind of active ranging sensor (much more likely) using either ultrasonics or microwaves -- I would deem ultrasonics to be more likely. I'm not really up on capacitive field technology, but I doubt whether it would have the range to be used for this purpose. None of those technologies would be affected by the weight of the person, but rather by his cross-section and reflectivity (for active ranging) or ability to emit IR radiation.Now, preventing false triggers is desirable, more so in alarm systems than in door openers. Sensitivity could have been turned down and he somehow slipped under that threshhold. Or else measures to eliminate false triggers could have been incorporated in the sensor and he somehow slipped through that algorithm.But knowing what kind of sensor that door used would help in figuring out what had happened.Edited by dwise1, : saw, not say

So then he wasn't describing an actual event, but rather presenting a contrived puzzle? OK, lost my interest.But seriously, where are all you guys still seeing pressure pad door sensors being used?Edited by dwise1, : but seriously, ...