The Jazz of Teaching

Quite awhile ago, a former student suggested I write a piece on the physics of jazz. I decided not to, because a session with that title was scheduled at a then upcoming American Association of Physics Teachers national meeting. But his suggestion started me thinking.

I’ve listened to jazz for a long time. Take a look at my music collection, and it’s obvious I like jazz, and the more I thought about the student’s suggestion, the more I came to believe that I might be a jazz teacher; that is, I think I approach teaching the same way a jazz musician approaches music.

When I began teaching so many years ago, I always prepared lecture notes, but I’ve always encouraged questions from students. Today, I use notes for just one lecture a semester. That’s when I show students the solution to Schrödinger’s equation for the hydrogen atom. The math is too intricate to me not to use notes.

Duke Ellington Big Band
CREDIT: Unknown

I liken lecture notes to a musical score, but just because there’s a score, doesn’t mean a musician must play the notes as written. 

One of the oldest forms of jazz is swing.* When jazz was becoming more popular in the 1920s and became of mainstay of dance bands, it became necessary for arrangements to written down, but improvisation remained an integral part of the numbers.

Listen to Duke Ellington’s band play Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue. Catch tenor sax player Paul Gonzales’s solo.

CREDIT: Columbia Records

Hard bop is probably my favorite form of jazz. Hard bob arose from bebop. In bebop, musicians improvise on the chords instead of the melody. With hard bop, there is usually a well-defined melody, many times a quite simple one. The rhythm section were released from keeping time.

What I usually do in class is come in with an idea of what I want to cover that period; that’s the melody. The depending on what students ask, I can deviate from that. Even get entirely away from the topic and discuss other related physics.

When it comes to hard bop, you can’t get any better than Miles Davis.

John Coltrane
CREDIT: Francis Wolff/
Mosaic Images — Corbis

Occasionally, I’ll come into the classroom, and students will start peppering me with questions. My favorite time. In my Physics 120 course, Physics For Everyday Use, I feel free to completely ditch my plan for the day. So when the students start throwing off-the-wall questions, I can go right off with them.

When you listen to avant garde jazz, you will have trouble differentiating what is composed and what is improvised. In fact, many listeners might not hear music; avant garde is an acquired taste. Listen to John Coltrane’s Ascension.

Jazz Professor.

* My source for the musical discussion is the All Musics Guide: The Definitive Guide to Jazz.

Live Chemical Free Now

I did a quick Google image search for chemical free. Here are some products that advertise themselves as chemical-free.

And if you want somewhere where your children can play free of chemicals, there is this park.

This is all simple fear mongering. Chemicals are BAAAAAAAD. Except the good ones. Here's an image that has popped up on the internet showing all the chemicals that naturally occur in a banana; no evil corporate chemist needed.

I came across a scientific paper entitled A comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products available from Nature Chemistry.* The abstract for the paper states

Manufacturers of consumer products, in particular edibles and cosmetics, have broadly employed the term ‘Chemical free’ in marketing campaigns and on product labels. Such characterization is often incorrectly used to imply — and interpreted to mean — that the product in question is healthy, derived from natural sources, or otherwise free from synthetic components. We have examined and subjected to rudimentary analysis an exhaustive number of such products, including but not limited to lotions and cosmetics, herbal supplements, household cleaners, food items, and beverages. Herein are described all those consumer products, to our knowledge, that are appropriately labelled as ‘Chemical free’. 

This paper is incredibly easy to read. No prior knowledge of chemistry is needed. I encourage everyone to download a copy here.**

*In the interest of full disclosure, the paper comes from the blog The Skeptical Chymist published by Nature Chemistry.

**If you don't wish to download the paper, I'll let you in on the joke. It consists off two blank pages.

Entire State of Oklahoma is Quarantined for Ebola Outbreak

An Oklahoma teacher traveled to Rwanda. Some parents want her quarantined for 21 days before she can return to the classroom.

You see Rwanda is in Africa. So is Liberia, Sierre Leone, and Guinea where the outbreak is located. But let’s look at a map.

Rwanda is 2500 miles from Liberia. It’s only 3000 miles across the United States.

I think we should quarantine the state of Oklahoma. Look at this map. Oklahoma city is just 190 miles from Dallas.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. You still have zero chance of contracting Ebola. Now cover your mouth when you sneeze and wash your hands. I don’t want a cold this winter.

Political Science

I haven’t been terribly prolific in my blog writing, but I did keep bookmarking items as I came across them. So in an attempt to clean up my bookmark folder, here is a run down of political science.*

Not the academic field of political science. I’m writing about what happens when politicians let their political ideologies override common sense.

So, in no particular order…

Former Massachusetts Senator and New Hampshire Senatorial candidate Scott Brown can’t seem to remember the research on climate change. In 2012 during the Massachusetts race against Elizabeth Warren, Brown “absolutely” knew that climate change was real and anthropogenic (man made). But now in 2014 in the NH contest, he’s sure that there is no climate change.

Instead of citing the scientific journals, Montana Congressional candidate Ryan Zinke referred to the Wall Street Journal when he declared that climate change is not settled science. On another issue, Zinke thinks that fracking is environmentally friendly.

Rep. Joe Barton is in the Hall of Fame of science deniers. In 2007, Barton shows his vast knowledge of climate by pontificating on the effect on temperature by cloud shapes. “Tall clouds or skinny clouds, short clouds, fat clouds, high clouds, low clouds.” Ignoring the nearly unanimous scientific consensus of climatologists, he opposes any legislation on climate, because "You can't regulate God. Not even the Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress can regulate God."

Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe says that climate change is really a harmless act of God.” This came during a debate on unemployment benefits. In a different debate, Inhofe cited a petition that proclaims that greenhouse gases do not cause climate change. Fortunately not everyone elected to the Senate is an idiot. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse noted that the petition includes future Nobel Prize winners, The Spice Girls.

Did you know that it’s all a complete hoax anyway. Rep. Dana Rohrbacher stated

Just so you know, global warming is a total fraud and it is being designed by—what you’ve got is you’ve got liberals who get elected at the local level want state government to do the work and let them make the decisions. Then, at the state level, they want the federal government to do it. And at the federal government, they want to create global government to control all of our lives. That’s what the game plan is. It’s step by step by step, more and bigger control over our lives by higher levels of government. And global warming is that strategy in spades.… Our freedom to make our choices on transportation and everything else? No, that’s gotta be done by a government official who, by the way, probably comes from Nigeria because he’s a UN government official, not a US government official.

So climate change is a hoax perpetrated by a Nigerian. Rohrbacher also thinks that a dramatic change in climate 55 million year was caused by dinosaur farts. 

The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith. Smith doesn’t understand a review of the scientific literature. “The IPCC does not perform science itself and doesn't monitor the climate, but only reviews carefully selected scientific literature.”

Then there’s Lenar Whitney, Louisiana state representative and Congressional candidate. She really thinks the Earth is getting colder and that a ten-year-old-child can disprove climate change with a thermometer. When a Washington Post reporter asked her to back up her claims, “she froze and was unable to cite a single scientist, journal or news source to back up her beliefs.

In Kentucky, state Sen. Brandon Smith was able to disprove the nearly unanimous consensus among climatologists. He knows that “the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody would dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”

Finally, there is Rep. Dan Benishek. “Well, I am a scientist. You know, I believe in peer-reviewed science. But, I don’t see any peer-reviewed science that proves there is man-made catastrophic climate change.” Let’s review his credentials. Benishek graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in biology. Okay. UM is a prestigious university. He went to Wayne State University’s medical school, received his M.D. in 1978, and has worked as surgeon. That’s actually pretty impressive. Except there no evidence he has any experience in climatology or any of the related fields.

What do real scientists say on the matter of climate change? A meta-analysis of the literature found that out of 11,944 articles published between 1991 and 2011, only 0.7% rejected anthropogenic global warming. Among the articles expressing a position on the issue, 97% of researchers in the field - not some ransom petition signed by the Spice Girls - are convinced that humans are a driving force in climate change. Of course, if you'd like to read some of the climatology literature for yourself, you should first visit the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Here’s a quick roll call of other non-scientists who openly ignore the vast research that conclusively shows climate change is happening and is man made.

• Sen. John Boehner
• Gov. Rick Scott
• Sen. Marco Rubio
• Senatorial candidate Joni Ernst
• Gov. Bobby Jindal
• Rep Michael Grimm

And the list will goes on. I wonder what other settled science these morons will dispute.*

*I have so many items bookmarked that I could only deal with climate change here.

Are Dinosaurs a Renewable Energy Source?

Greg Gutfeld is the guy on Fox’s The Five who supposed to provide jokes that are intentionally funny. More often I find him humorous when he’s not trying to be funny.

CREDIT: Fox News

Last week during a discussion on climate change on The Five, he asked, "Isn't fossil fuels the ultimate renewable energy? It's renewed once. It used to be a dinosaur. Now it's fuel. How is that not renewable?"

Notice how the other four completely ignore Greg.

Now forget the fact that dinosaurs are extinct; petroleum doesn’t even come from dinosaurs. Both petroleum and natural gas was formed by the decomposition of phytoplankton and zooplankton   many millions of years ago. Coal on the other hand was formed by the decay of terrestrial plants during the Carboniferous Period 360 million years ago.

Can someone explain to me what is so difficult to understand about petroleum, natural gas, and coal being non-renewable energy sources?

The Impossible Is Still Impossible

I saw this article in Wired referenced on a couple of science pages on FaceBook. 

NASA validates 'impossible' space drive

Let me give you the short version of how this engine is supposed to work. Microwaves are beamed into a cone-shaped cavity. They bounce around the cavity and produce a force on the cavity in a direction perpendicular to the direction they were beamed in. Imagine  turning on the microwave oven and watching it push itself off the kitchen counter.

Why is it impossible? This violates one of the basic laws of physics. 

The Conservation of Momentum

The conservation of momentum isn’t your ordinary law of physics. It is one of the most fundamental principles in science. It is intimately related to spatial symmetry. Roughly speaking, the laws of physics here are the same there. You may know this as Newton’s third law of motion or for every action, there’s an equal but opposite reaction.

To obey the conservation of momentum, propellent is pushed out by the rocket and the rocket is pushed by the propellent. This engine is said to produce thrust without any propellent. 

So I was immediately skeptical. So I dug around a little bit. I found a short description of the experiment. One thing I found interesting is that the authors did not lecture on “”physics of the quantum vacuum plasma thruster.” All right, that’s fine; if the results were groundbreaking, the explanation might come later. Something similar happened in 1986. Researchers at IBM discovered ceramic materials that lost all electrical resistance (superconductivity) at surprisingly high temperatures. There is still no complete explanation for why this happens. What is different about these two cases is that the superconductivity ceramics didn’t violate any basic principles of physics.

What made me laugh however is the authors claim that their device may be “demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.” I have no idea what they mean by a quantum vacuum virtual plasma. 

I also found their paper. This made me giggle, too. They built two devices: one was designed to work, the other was designed not to work. Both versions produced the same amounts of thrust.

Phil Plait in his Bad Astronomy blog at Slate says this episode is reminiscent of the faster than light neutrinos and the mysterious force slowing down the Pioneer spacecrafts.

It reminded me of an article that caught my attention while I was in grad school. I remember getting all excited about this revolutionary paper published in one of the premier physics journals. The authors had data that showed that a gyroscope rotating in one direction weighed less than if it were rotating in the opposite direction. Finally, an anti-gravity device!

My research advisor wasn’t nearly as excited. His comment was something along the lines of “systematic error.” But still I held out hope.

Then four months later, my anti-gravity hope were dashed. Others trying to replicate the results found there is no anti-gravity.

KCAL 9 And The Supermoon

CREDIT: CBS

I was watching the KCAL 9 news at 10 p.m. They had a report on the super moon. (yawn)

But then Serene Branson said this:

And they say that with the full moon like that, that if you’re feeling a little tired, a little sluggish, that it’s because of the pull. Just like how the moon has an effect on the tides, it has an effect on us, because we’re mostly water. And that’s when the crazies come out.

Despite what Bill O’Reilly thinks, the tides have a well-known cause. The tides are due to the difference in the strength of the gravitational force on opposite sides of the earth. 

There is no measurable effect on the moon’s gravitational field on us. UCLA astronomer George Abell calculated that a mosquito on your arm would exert a greater gravitational force on you than the moon.

As to the supposed lunar lunacy, that too was debunked long ago. 

I thought that maybe KCAL meteorologist Amber Lee might correct her, but no. That got me to thinking about Lee’s credentials. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s in journalism. No degree but a certificate in  meteorology through Mississippi State University’s Broadcast Meteorology Program. To earn this certificate, she had to pass an online exam consisting of 100 multiple choice questions. 

Chuck Norris Doesn’t Need Facts

Last week, Chuck Norris in his column at the World Net Daily* claimed that the rise of allergies is linked to the use of vaccines. He even quoted physiologist, Dr. Charles Richet who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his ground breaking research on allergies (anaphylaxis).

Only problem is that Dr. Richet’s work took place at the turn of the 20th century. He won his Nobel Prize in 1913. 

Does that mean Chuck couldn’t find any scientific research done on allergies or vaccines in the last 101 years?

Or did he conveniently ignore it?

*Sometimes this publication's title is misspelled as the World Nut Daily.

When I Say Something Stupid

Last night during class, I asked the students to imagine explaining something to their mothers. One student immediately asked, “Why mothers? Is there something special about mothers.”

Oops. So I quickly changed my statement. I said imagine explaining this to your parents. She shot back. “Isn’t that ageist.”  I was caught again. I love students with sharp minds.

Some of you readers might think this is about political correctness, but you would be wrong.

My Mother

My mother comment can probably be traced back to some advice I got when I was preparing one of my first presentations as a graduate student. I was told that I should make it understandable to a general audience and that a good rule to follow is to imagine giving it to my mother. 

Why my mother? I don’t know, but physics was mostly men when my advisors were in school, it was was mostly men when I was in school, and it is still mostly men now. That fact probably has much to do with it.

The term for this sort of thing nowadays is mansplaining, and it is hardly unique to physicists. Plus mansplaining, I think, can occur whenever one person regardless of gender assumes that another lacks knowledge of a subject because of some unrelated factor like gender or age.

I’ve said other stupid things in class, like the time I told a class that I was going to give them a softball question. A woman in class asked what that was. Now I don’t know if she truly didn’t know or was politely pointing out that I just said something stupid. 

I played some softball in grad school. There was this informal league of grad students from various departments. There were men and women of all sorts of athletic ability. The pitcher threw slowly and every effort was made to ensure that people hit the ball. Plus lots of beer was drunk. Lots and lots. Some of us would even run the bases with a cup in our hand trying very hard not to spill any.

That’s my idea of softball, so a softball question is just one that’s easy to answer.

But when she asked what a softball question was, the first image that came to mind was women’s softball, and if you’ve ever have seen a softball game, you know that there’s nothing soft about it.

I like the fact that I’m still capable of learning.

To Brian DeFacio

All of the professors in the physics department at the University of Missouri had a substantial impact on who and what I am. Three, however, deserve special mention, because they had an outsized influence on me both as the physicist and teacher that I am.

David Cowan, my research advisor, taught me to see science as one big picture. Henry White demonstrated much confidence and a lot of patience in a graduate student and allowed me to be one of the first two graduate students to teach an undergraduate course.

Brian DeFacio. I could always count on him for a conversation. In my acknowledgment section of my dissertation, I included a joke that that only those who knew Brian will get. 

I thank Dr. Brian DeFacio for innumerable conversations.

These never occurred in his office. Sometimes in the hallway, sometimes before or after class, but usually in the physics department lounge. Breaking news in physics? Brian would be all too happy to discuss it with you. An interesting problem in a course? He wouldn’t necessarily help you with it, but he would put his own special spin on it. 

Sometimes he would relate personal stories. A favorite - Brian was serving in the armed forces, Army I think, and stationed at a Nike missile facility. There was this young lieutenant who didn’t think too highly of Brian and often pulled rank. Brian was on guard duty one night when this officer came by his post. Brian challenged him, and the officer did not respond with the correct counter phrase. He then ordered the officer onto the ground and held him at gun point until others arrived.

What you should take from this story is how he treated people. Brian always treated us grad students as colleagues. He never used his position as anything other than teacher, mentor, and friend.

In the classroom, he was a wonder. No one could fill a blackboard like him. Room 305 held at most eighteen people, and it had boards on three walls. Brian would start at the front on the left, and after half an hour would reach his starting point, and we would then start the next lap. I remember inventing a DeFacio dictionary that I kept in my head. Note taking because much easier. So when I wrote “linear, isotropic, and homogeneous,” I just thought something like “the usual case.”

One day, halfway through the lecture, someone caught a sign error. After correcting it, he told my favorite story of one night while working at home, his wife asked him if something was wrong. Brian said that he was trying to find a missing minus sign. She asked him why don’t you ever try to find a missing plus sign.

Brian also had a way of making you come up to his standards. I was in his Condensed Matter I course. We had two homework assignments and a final exam. I didn’t do every well on the first homework set, but I did all right on the second. I missed one class that semester. He saw me the next day and said I had missed the best lecture he ever gave, one on Anderson localization.

When the final came along, there were two facts of life. Because I did poorly on the first homework, I had to do well, and I had to know Anderson localization. I nailed that test. Perfect answer on Anderson localization. After checking with some classmates, I suspected I had the highest score on the final. So I was a little miffed when Brian gave me a B, but that lasted about 30 seconds, because he was right. I blew off the first assignment; he knew it, and I knew it. He wanted us to do the best we could at all times.

Toward the end of my comprehensive exam, Brian raised his hand to ask a question. Now I was prepared for this exam. I knew my research topic. I could have answered nearly anything the committee could throw at me. So what did he ask? 

Calculate the power output of a fly.

I haven’t seen or spoken to Brian in twenty years. Now there are no more opportunities for discussions, but in a way, that’s okay, because of all those conversations that were too many to count.

Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer

Remember this Christmas song?

Grandma got run over by a reindeer
Walking home from our house Christmas eve
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe 

She'd been drinkin' too much egg nog
And we'd begged her not to go
But she'd left her medication
So she stumbled out the door into the snow 

When they found her Christmas mornin'
At the scene of the attack
There were hoof prints on her forehead
And incriminatin' Claus marks on her back

So I got to thinking. What would happen in a collision between a reindeer and an elderly woman.

While the song seems to imply that Grandma may have already been lying drunk in the snow and was then trampled by the reindeer, I’ll assume a more violent interaction. She was walking, and the reindeer, running down the road, hit her from behind.

Typical Diagram Drawn by a Physicist

The physics here involves the conservation of momentum. To simplify the problem, I’ll assume that the collision is like the one between billiard balls, what a physicist calls an elastic collision.

Momentum is the product of an object’s mass and its velocity.

A fundamental principle of the universe is that momentum is conserved; that is, this quantity of motion doesn’t change. It is mathematically expressed like this.

In collisions like ones with billiard balls, the total kinetic energy also is constant.

Let’s suppose this reindeer weighs 400 lbs. and was running at a speed of 45 mph. Let’s also suppose Grandma weighs 110 pounds and was walking at 4 mph.

With a bit of algebra we can find what happens to Grandma. It ain’t pretty. Grandma flies forward with a speed of almost 70 mph.

CREDIT: coolthings

Now about this family that let’s an old woman drink too much and then let’s her trudge all alone through the snow. 

What Does a Physics Degree Get You?

Free food.

I woke up yesterday, and as I do everyday, I checked my email. There I saw that I had been tagged on FaceBook by Steve, a relative of mine. He posted the following:

Need some help from my academia family and friends! I need to present "in layman terms" how cold it would have to be outside to freeze 2 gallons of water @ -19ºC. 

Background: The product I sell has a moisture cured urethane in it and is activated by water. I am working in Canada where the lowest ever temp recorded was -60ºC (1947) so how long would it take to freeze a 2 gallon sprayer of room temp water which is about 10ºC at -19ºC. 

1st person that can explain it (so my block head can understand it) win's a perfectly smoked brisket delivered or shipped to "His or Her" home!!

Now he posted this at 5 am (7am Texas time), and I was still blissfully asleep. One and a half hours later, he wrote

So far my simple question is still unanswered! (Tick Tock) BTW when the west coast awakens my family physicist Vann Priest will have no problem with this so you all had better hurry!!

CREDIT: Steve

By the time I awoke at 8:30, Steve had already gotten some really good answers from Brian and Karen, so I was afraid I lost a chance at some Texas smoked brisket. I should make clear that Steve has this awful habit of posting his BBQ on FaceBook, and whenever he does, I drool all over my shirt. However, since he didn’t yet award it officially, I figured I might still have a chance.

CREDIT: Steve

A brief shout-out to Kevin who is quite an accomplished smoker. Kevin's brisket is also scrumdiddlyumptious, and I have been privileged to taste it on several occasions. It might be awhile before Kevin or I get another brisket though. He just became the father of twin boys.

So here’s my answer.

First the water has to cool to 0ºC. Newton’s law of cooling states that the rate at which the temperature of an object changes is proportional to the difference in temperature between the object and the environment. Fancy way of saying that if you want to cool something off really quickly, you put it in the refrigerator; if not, leave it in the kitchen.

Mathematically, Newton’s law is written

T is the temperature, t is time, TE is the temperature of the environment, and k is some constant. This is a straightforward first order differential equation.  The solution is

The problem though is that to find the time t we need to know both constants, k and C. There’s a lot of complicated physics that goes into k and C; however, to find C, we can set the time equal to zero. We know the initial temperature of the water and the environmental temperature. Punching a few numbers into my handy calculator gives me 3.37. We could do something similar to find k, but we would need to know the temperature of the water sometime later. I don’t have that information, so I can’t find the time it takes to cool down to freezing.

I’m not going to let that stop the analysis though. Once the water reaches 0ºC, it begins to turn into ice. The temperature stays at zero until all the water freezes. We can find how long it takes by knowing that the energy transfer happens by thermal conduction. Here’s the equation governing this phenomenon.

Q is the amount of energy that is being transferred (usually called heat), t is again the time, T is the temperature of the object through which the energy is being transferred, and x refers to the thickness of the object. There are two constants here too. A is the cross-sectional area of the object, and k (a different k) is called the thermal conductivity. (Once again, a lot of complicated physics rolled into a single number).

Here is a major complication. I can look up the thermal conductivity and figure out the area and the thickness.  The total amount of energy transferred in so problem; Q = mL where m is the mass of the water and L is the amount of energy required to change the state of the water per kilogram. But this differential equation is for one dimension only.  To do it in all three directions is some tough mathematics.

There’s no easy way to solve Steve’s problem.

Or is there?

I’m an experimental physicist. Let’s do the experiment. The freezer in most refrigerators is about -19ºC. Let’s put one gallon of water in the freezer and see how long it takes. The time it takes for 2 gal will be about twice as long.

Two hours into the experiment and the first thin layer of ice begins to form. In another hour, there’s a significant amount of ice. So Steve has about four hours before he needs to worry, and a Texas smoked brisket is on its way to California.

Pooping Gold Bricks

Did that get your attention? As in my last post, this is a story of bacterial action. In this case, Kazem Kashefi, a microbiologist, and Adam Brown, an artist, used Cupriavidus metallidurans, a bacterium that can metabolize gold chloride.

Gold chloride, also called liquid gold, is a highly toxic compound. The bacterium is an extremophile, a microorganism that thrives in extreme conditions like extremely hot or cold climates or in toxic chemical conditions.

The gold that is extracted is pure, that is 24 karat. In the photo below, you see the gold particles. The largest one shown is about 1.5 millimeters wide; the smallest one is about the size of a human hair.

For more infromation about the art project, visit The Great Work of the Metal Lover.

CREDIT: Adam W. Brown

Aspartame is Not Made from Poop

CREDIT: NutraSweet

Once during my time as a science education consultant, the fourth grade class was experimenting with yeast. One of the experiments involved putting a burning wooden splint in a test tube containing yeast to demonstrate that the yeast produces carbon dioxide. I told the students that the carbon dioxide was yeast farts.

Now I made sure the children knew I was kidding, and we went on to discuss how the yeast converted sugar into CO2.

When I saw the headline Aspartame is made from bacteria feces, patent confirms, I first thought that some PR person or editor was trying to grab the readers attention and having a little fun at the same time. But after reading this article and others, I realize that the authors and their editors must really think that aspertame comes from bacterial poop.

I can think of only one reasonable response. BULLSHIT.

The above article links to another article that helpfully links to the original patent. In the patent it describes very clearly - it helps to know some biology - how aspertame is produced.

Microbiologists insert a short strand of DNA into a bacterium. This bit of DNA instructs the cell to produce the protein (Asp-Phe)n. This protein consists of the amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine. The scientists later cut this protein into smaller parts consisting of 2 aspartic acid molecules and 2 phenylalanine molecules and then market this as the artificial sweetener, NustraSweet.

So the scientists are taking advantage of the same cellular processes that your body uses to produce insulin, antibodies, cellular receptors, collagen, and enzymes. So if aspertame is made from bacterial poop then so are you.

When you eat proteins, your body breaks it down into the amino acids that compose the protein. So when you ingest Nutrasweet it breaks down into the the two amino acids. The only people who should not use NutraSweet are those who suffer from the genetic disorder phenylketonuria.  These people lack an enzyme that converts the amino acid phenylalanine into the amino acid tyrosine.

CREDIT: Fiskeren

But does this basic biology stop some from shouting "Danger ! Danger!"? Google "aspartame dangers" and you will come across the name Joseph Mercola. Check out QuackWatch's article on Mercola. 

A scientific statement on the safety of aspartame written by David G. Hattan, Ph.D., of the Division of Health Effects Evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is available from the FDA.

Why I Love/Hate Web 2.0

From the time I was born until I was about 16, my father owned a burger joint.  The Castle Burger. He opened every day at 11 am. For many of those years, I remember the local dentist, a nightclub owner, and two other men would take a booth and drink coffee for an hour or so.  They would sit there, sip on the coffee, and talk about current events.

That’s how much social commentary happened. Over a cup of coffee, a glass of beer, at the dinner table. Unbeknownst to everyone at the time that began to change in 1993.

That’s when the European particle physics lab, CERN, gave the world the World Wide Web.

I joined the Internet in the fall of 1994, and I created my first web page shortly thereafter. To do that, I learned some basic html at an American Association of Physics Teachers workshop and taught myself more advanced coding by examining the source code of pages I liked. Web page production became a hobby, and I changed the look of my pages almost annually – just because I could.

One had to be technically literate to create a page, or one had to have the money to have one created. The information was static and flowed one way – from the content creator to the viewer. For the most part, I think the Internet shared whatever credibility more established media enjoyed.

Then sometimes in the 2000s, the Web changed. We now had Web 2.0. Users became content creators without having to bother creating a web page.

Everyone could now contribute. MySpace and Facebook allows us to easily stay in touch; Wikipedia makes it easier for experts to share their knowledge; Tumblr, WordPress, and Blogger make it simple for anyone to share their thoughts.

The true democratization of the Internet.

I joined this democracy movement in April 2010. I created my FaceBook profile. I was motivated by my desire to reach out to my students at Rio Hondo College. I tell them what I think of them - they are the best students at Rio Hondo and they will be the best students at whatever university or college they transfer to, but despite their obvious interest and perhaps because of the times, they are not always aware of the scientific, engineering, and technological advances being made everyday.  I thought that I could do something to sneak in some learning.

Then I got a bit bored in July 2011. So one afternoon I signed into Blogger and started Oenobareus, my blog dedicated to science and reason written after a glass or two of Pinot Noir.

That is what I love. Both the blog and FaceBook let me share what interests me, and my expertise. Plus they give me a creative outlet. I try to be informative, occasionally funny, and every once in while, I let out some righteous anger.

Let me share some of my favorite blog posts:

Transformers 3 - Dark ofthe Moon: I applied some basic physics to calculate the gravitational effects of Cybertron on the Earth.
Don’t Ask Marilyn - parts 1 through 4: Marilyn vos Savant is a columnist in Parade magazine. In a 2011 column, she defends herself against a math teacher in a problem in probability. The post prompted several emails and three other posts where I patiently explain probability and entropy.
Santa Claus Science: Did you know it takes 11 million reindeer to pull Santa’s sleigh?
Flying Aircraft Carriers:Physics and Engineering in The Avengers: Another piece inspired by a movie. What I really enjoy about this piece is that I hope that students (and others) realize how one can do a quick calculation without sophisticated theories.
July 4th isHiggsdependence Day: Announcing the discovery of the Higgs boson. This was particularly fun as I have a brother-in-law named Higgs.
Twas the Night Before What?: A Newtonian twist on Clement Moore’s poem.
Au-some: There were many reports in the press how scientists had discovered the nuclear process by which gold was created. What I like about this one is I really had to delve into the literature. Nowhere in the article was gold mentioned.

These are some of my favorites, because I was sharing my expertise.

Why do I hate Web 2.0?

It all started late in 2011. I received a friend request from Aaron, an acquaintance of a former student. He stated he was interested in intellectual discussions. As it turned out he was a libertarian, anarchist, christian, young earth creationist.

I made a smart-ass comment about Bristol Palin when Aaron asked how to end teen pregnancy. That led to me educating myself on the issue and my post Making Babies. Which led to You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

And thus began my intense dislike for Web 2.0.

Through Aaron I found True Dinos, a Facebook profile of a Texas fellow who like dinosaurs. This young earth creationist (YEC) witnessed a pterosaur when he was 11 years old.

It was at True Dinos that I ran across Cowboy Bob Sorensen and The Question Evolution Project.

Here’s what you need to know about TQEP:

Welcome to "The Question Evolution Project". This is a resource that points to information showing the failings of evolution. We are also here to encourage people to speak out against evolutionary indoctrination.

Evolutionism dominates the media, education and so on. Pages like this are "equal time" to present information that is ignored and often suppressed. We attempt to help raise awareness that true science is not afraid to examine contrary evidence and allows alternative theories to the interpretation of the evidence (such as creation science). Specifically, evolutionists should not have the right to shout down, censor, censure or intimidate creationists / ID proponents.

I first earned the ire of Cowboy Bob, a biblical literalist, by insisting he confront his hypocrisy. I asked him if he was a geocentrist. Bob blustered about suing me for posting screenshots from FaceBook.

I mocked Bob after that by finding a photo of him and attaching this description: “Bob has read one book. It has made him an expert in biology, geology, physics, and chemistry.” Nine months later, Bob filed a Digital Millenium Copyright Act complaint and the photo was removed from FaceBook. But not for long.  I filed a counter-notification and a few weeks later, access was restored.

Another character is Kirk Hastings. Kirk has a few FaceBook profiles: What is Truth?, Freedom From Atheistic Scientism, and The Question Irreligiosophy Project. Kirk has a habit of pasting quotes. I came across one that I had to investigate.

Radio telescopes, linked with computers, simultaneously search millions of radio frequencies for a nonrandom, nonnatural, extraterrestrial signal—any short sequence of information. Yet, the long sequence of information in the DNA of every living thing on Earth is a signal from an intelligence—a vast intelligence—a Creator. Almost all those searching for extraterrestrial life believe it evolved naturally in outer space. If they ever accepted the DNA evidence for a Creator, the evolutionary basis for their search would disappear.

He credits a journalist for the journal Science and helpfully cites the volume, date, and page number.

I downloaded the article and searched for the quote. Even after calling him out for his dishonesty, he continued to claim that he was accurately quoting the journalist and insisted the quote from the very article I had in my hand. Only very recently has he deleted the post from his timeline. I’ll take that as an admission of guilt.

There is no shortage of creationists to joust with. There are also plenty of cranks out there who are willing to engage. Stupid politicians will continue to provide comedy gold as well as provoke anger.

But I reserve a special enmity for commenters. Even before Web 2.0, I never understood call-in radio shows, interviews with the person on the street, and the like.

Commenting seems to bring out the very worst especially behind a wall of anonymity. Just this past Friday night, the CBS affiliate aired a story that hits me rather personally.

For thirteen years – up to 2011 – I worked with students and teachers at a private elementary school. I coordinated the science program, developed science lessons with the teachers, and taught all levels from pre-school to 8^th grade. Until you’ve been in a classroom with these teachers, it’s hard to appreciate the job they choose to do.

So it was with deep sadness that I read this story. If true, a teacher violated the trust of a student, the parents and his co-workers.  If false, a man’s career is sidelined and his reputation is ruined. The article states that the teacher is forbidden by the California Department of Social Services from having any contact with any children in any facility licensed by the department. The Whittier police department closed its investigation and the District Attorney is not filing any charges

Let me read you some of the 863 comments [as of 9:20 am, Sept. 8.] These are not necessarily the worst of them.

• Should have identified the despicable deviant teacher by name.
Typical MSM and Union rats at work.
• Oh good, another liberal sicko exercising its uninvited deviant sexual desires on others, and once again, on a child. When liberals are not busy murdering children, or making it easier for others to murder children, they are busy molesting the children. They call it, "being progressive".
• No wonder he got in trouble...
He didn't say "Obama says".
• KILL the perv!
• On one hand you have the government brainwashing your children with communist ideologies and on the other hand they are being molested by these freaks. If god doesn't deal with these vermin then the people will. Soon. VERY soon.
• Another liberal pedophile who we have teaching our kids.He needs to be swinging from a tree at the end of a rope.
• sounds like black to me.
•  If I remember correctly, all pedophile teachers are sent to Kalifornia to teach. Kalifornia does not discriminate based on sexual preference. The zoophiles are sent there as well. What a wonderful inclusive place to raise a family.
• Not only are the Public School "teachers" Lefty Lemmings but they are also Pedophiles.
• I've never known a male to work as a preschool teacher.
• If it were a male of European decent or a Christian of any decent they would have blasted the face and name everywhere. I am gonna bet it was either a homosexual or a minority.
• Its now open season on Johnny's fartbox. Homosexual Sodomite Pedophiles are going to be raping children all over this nation this school year. You get what you voted for.
• only anal tongue darts are acceptable in California

And with that, thank you for letting me get all this off my chest.