Physics 1000: Day 3 Pseudoscience, Atoms & Sizes

1. Physics 1000: Day 3Pseudoscience, Atoms & Sizes “The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.”- Erwin Schrödinger

2. Pseudoscience • How can we tell the difference between a good scientific theory and pseudoscience? • How can we tell the difference between a scientific hypothesis and pseudoscience? • A decent definition of pseudoscience is: A body of knowledge, methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific or made to appear scientific, but does not adhere to the scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, or otherwise lacks scientific status.

3. How many of these are scientifically valid? • Playing Mozart to your baby during pregnancy positively affects their brain development. • The FDA insures that vitamins and herbal remedies are safe and effective. • Humans typically use about 10% of their brain. • Chicken soup is an effective treatment for a 'cold'. • Crop circles contain patterns too complex and perfect for humans to create. • There is a link between autism and infant vaccines. • A polygraph ("lie detector") reliably detects lies.

4. How many of these are scientifically valid? 1 2 3 or 4 5 or 6 7

5. Pseudoscience: UFOs and Aliens • Sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects are common… and often declared to be aliens. • Discussion questions: • Could UFOs be alien craft? • Can all UFO reports be explained by science? • What are reasonable/unreasonable expectations about and actual alien contact with humans?

6. Seeing What We Want/Fear • "The U.S. Air Force collected 30 UFO reports in 1968 when a satellite reentered the atmosphere and broke into burning pieces in the night sky. Of these, 57% reported that the objects were flying in formation, implying intelligent control, and 17% claimed the glowing objects were attached to a black "cigar-shaped" or "rocket-shaped" object, sometimes with glowing windows." • - Hobson, Page 26

7. Pseudoscience: Astrology • Started in ancient Babylonia. Very common today. • Current zodiac developed in Roman times. Not accurate for modern dates. • Far more plausible when you think you are the center of the universe. • Newton's ideas (~400 years old): The planets influence is utterly negligible compared to those of the baby's parents, doctors, nurses, etc. • Worldwide there are probably more astrologers scientists of all disciplines put together!

8. The sun's position in Aquarius on Feb. 1, 6 AD The sun's position in Capricornus on Feb. 1, 2006

9. Pseudoscience: Astrology • "Many tests of astrologers have been made since the 1950s but only recently has a coherent review been possible. A large-scale test of persons born less than five minutes apart found no hint of the similarities predicted by astrology. Meta-analysis of more than forty controlled studies suggests that astrologers are unable to perform significantly better than chance even on the more basic tasks such as predicting extraversion [sociability]. More specifically, astrologers who claim to use psychic ability perform no better than those who do not.""Is Astrology Relevant to Consciousness and Psi?", by Geoffrey Dean and Ivan Kelly

10. Pseudoscience: Therapeutic Touch • More than 80,000 health professionals have been trained in TT. Offered by 70+ hospitals in the US. • Practitioners claim they can feel and manipulate a patients "energy field" in order to help them heal nearly any ailment.

11. Pseudoscience: Therapeutic Touch • The Journal of the American Medical Association published the research of a fourth-grade girl. • For a science fair project, Emily Rosa of Loveland, CO persuaded 21 touch therapists to submit to a beautifully simple test… • In 280 trials, the 21 practitionersscored 44%.

12. WarmUp: Regulating Pseudoscience? • Should government regulators be involved in issues like Therapeutic Touch? Explain why or why not in a few sentences. ~35% → Yes ~65% →No

13. WarmUp: Regulating Pseudoscience? • “I would say no because there is little evidence that therapeutic touch works. There should be some small involvement in case there is some evidence that I works.”

14. WarmUp: Regulating Pseudoscience? • “I think the government needs to require that any health facility that uses Therapeutic Touch as a means of medicine needs to have some sort of disclaimer saying that the effects of Therapeutic Touch are not scientifically proven.” • “i feel that people might be getting ripped off or paying for really nothing at all. With government intervention that kind of thing can be avoided.”

15. WarmUp: Regulating Pseudoscience? • Yes […] “The FDA usually only approves a new medicine when it can outperform placebos in a trial.” • “I think government regulators should be involved in things like therapeutic touch because there could be modern medicine, or even treatment that is proven effective and can physically change you, yet youre going to a doctor and paying good money based on trust. ”

16. Do you think there is a conflict between science and religion? Yes, absolutely. Yes, but there doesn't have to be. No, but there could be. Not at all.

17. Creationism & Intelligent Design • Is creationism a pseudoscience? • From Wikipedia: Intelligent Design is the assertion that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause.” • Is Intelligent Design pseudoscience? • Why is it important to bring up that creationism is (almost always) a pseudoscience?

18. Support for Creationism • If 700 scientists agree with creationism, how does (or should) that impact your thinking? • “By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science...” That would put the support for creation science among those branches of science that deal with the earth and its life forms at about 0.14%. (Newsweek magazine, 1987)

19. 2005 Court Ruling on I.D. • “Our conclusion today,” wrote United States District Judge John E. Jones III, “is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school classroom.” • Judge Jones, a conservative Republican appointed by George W. Bush said that science "rejects appeal to authority in favor of empirical evidence," whereas, "ID is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications."

20. WarmUp: First Atoms • According to the reading, the first to propose the “atomic” theory was • ~5% → Robert Brown • ~95% → The Ancient Greeks • ~0% → Albert Einstein • ~0% → The Ancient Chinese

21. Ancient “Atomic Theory” 5th century BCE: Leucippus of Miletus and his student, Democritus of Abdera. “What would happen if you took something and kept cutting it in half, over and over.” Clearly you can’t do this forever, thus there must be invisible a-tomos(literally “not-divisible”). A handful of macroscopic pieces of evidence…

22. Aristotle's Authority Aristotle did not agree! Aristotle: Four basic elements air, earth, fire and water. The world is made up of combinations. Aristotle: Two forces: gravity that pulled water and earth down, and levity that pulled air and fire up. Aristotle proposed a 5th element, Ether. This dominates western thought for ~2000 years!

23. Brown & Einstein 1827: Brown (botanist) observes that pollen grains in a his tea… 1905: Einstein publishes 5 papers, one explaining “Brownian Motion” using the kinetic theory of heat.(The other 3?) (animation) Einstein’s Explanation was that the motion is caused by the random jostling the pollen gets from the molecules of the liquid.

24. Modern Chemical Theory Today: There are 94 naturally occurring elements (117+ including man-made).

25. Modern Chemical Theory Today: There are 94 naturally occurring elements (117+ including man-made).

26. Modern Chemical Theory Today: There are 94 naturally occurring elements (117+ including man-made). But… we have “split” the atom! What are the “elementary” particles? One idea connects those earliest theories to our current view: Everything is made up of small, invisible, indestructible things. (Massively important, according to Feynman)

27. Ice Water Water, Ice and Life • Atomic theory helps explain why ice floats! • When bonded to form ice, water molecules end up further apart than they are in liquid form • An important (and strange) property of water. • What if this weren’t true?

28. Matters of Scale Scales vary hugely, from atoms to stars… Scientific notation makes the numbers easier 602000000000000000000000 → 6.02 × 1023 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000016 → 16 × 10-36 m Prefixes are shorthand for scientific notation. The most common are shown to the right

29. WarmUp: The Middle 10 • How many are there between the size of a person and the size of an atom? ~25% → 8-9 ~40% →10-11 ~5% →15 • ~30% → Stuck/confused

30. WarmUp: The Middle 10 • How many powers of 10 are there between the size of a person and the size of the sun? • ~5% →7 • ~60% → 8-9 ~5% → 10-11 • ~25% → Stuck/confused

32. Coming up… Wednesday (8/27) → 3.1 – 3.3 Homework 2 due today by 5 PM:Ch1: CE: 1, 4, 9, 10, 12, 21, 22, 24 WarmUpdue Tuesday by 8:00 PM Homework 2 is due Wednesday (9/3):Ch 3: CE: 1, 4, 9, 13, 16, 20, 22, 24, 33, 35, 39