By Deborah Herrin, OSA’s Director of Information Technology
Here are several very readable and enjoyable books about physics and the people who have shaped the science.
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love, Dava Sobel
A biography of Galileo, with lots of great insights into the politics of the time, the role of the papacy and the internal struggle Galileo faced between his own religious beliefs and his scientific discoveries. I was reading this book during CLEO one year when I was invited to celebrate OSA past president Tony Siegman’s retirement. One of the presenters noted that scientists’ ability to measure was improving to such an extent that certain constants might prove to be variables in the future. I was struck by this juxtaposition of past and present: long-held truths that are proven to be incorrect.
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Dava Sobel
Since Sobel had impressed me with Galileo’s Daughter, I went back to this earlier book of hers–and was not disappointed. She describes how determining longitude required a precise determination of time; yet the most precise timekeepers relied on pendulums, which failed to work accurately when placed on a ship crossing the sea. After reading this book, I toured the U.S. Naval Observatory just up the street from OSA on the grounds of the vice president’s house. During the tour, you learn about time-keeping issues that the U.S. faced and how Western Union played a role; you see the atomic clock and the Internet clock, which shows how many computers are connecting to determine time every second; you visit a beautiful library where you’ll see OSA’s journals displayed; and, weather-permitting, you climb into the observatory to take a look through the telescope. After that, I was fortunate enough to take a trip to Greenwich, England, where I visited the observatory, saw many of Harrison’s timepieces and straddled the prime meridian.
Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
OSA fellow Barry Masters turned me on to this book when he gave a brown bag lunch talk to OSA staff on one of the women in the book. This book presents the stories of 15 women who either won a Nobel Prize in science or played a significant role in Nobel-Prize winning research. The stories serve to highlight not only the science, but also women’s role in science and society as a whole. As an aside, when Maria Goeppert Mayer won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963, the local paper reported “La Jolla Mother Wins Nobel Prize.”
E=Mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation, David Bodanis
This little book provides lots of information about physics and the people involved in the science leading up to nuclear physics. Did you know that Maxwell’s equations weren’t written by Maxwell? Or that several Nobel gold medals were dissolved in a solution in Denmark to avoid discovery by the invading Germans during WWII? The medals spent the war suspended in a solution and, after the war, the gold was recovered and made into new medals. One important tip as you read the book: read the notes at the back of the book as you go.
Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, Robert Jungk
The previous two books, plus interest in learning more about Los Alamos, where many OSA members are, led me to this book. If you’re interested in this topic, you also should check out the play/movie “Copenhagen”, which deals with a meeting between two of the scientists–Bohr and Heisenberg. The controversy surrounding the play resulted in the Bohr Archive releasing early documentation related to that meeting.
Right now, I’m reading Measuring the World, by Daniel Kehlmann (translated from German). It’s a novel based on two Enlightenment-age scientists: Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, the latter played a key role in optics.
Next up: The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, by Natalie Angier. I heard the author and her husband (both science journalists and local residents) speak at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academies of Science in January. The premise of the book is what key concepts scientists wish the general public understood. I’m also reading Color, A Natural History of the Palette, by Victoria Finlay–this was a find at the Phillips Collection one lunchtime.
If you’ve read a good book related to science, please post a comment here to let us know about it!
By Patricia Daukantas
Several interesting news stories recently crossed my computer screen. One involves a useful optical illusion and another an LED landmark.
First comes an Associated Press story via CNN.com about a test of fake speed bumps that look real to oncoming motorists. The pseudo-bumps are really flat plastic with embedded glass beads to make them reflective at night, but they are colored to look like three-dimensional pyramids sitting in the middle of the road. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is testing these and other “calming” devices to see if they really do slow down speeding cars. You can read about the “Heed the Speed” program on NHTSA's Web site (the details are in this section).
Second, a public television station in Boston, Mass., is having trouble with its giant outdoor LED screen. Last September, WGBH-TV installed a 30- by 50-foot (9.1- by 15.2-m) LED video screen on the outside of its headquarters, where it would be visible to passersby on a major highway. However, the Boston Globe reported that some of the LEDs go dark when the screen gets too warm. Repairs may take a couple of months.
Finally, several news services have reported that dozens of partygoers suffered partial vision loss from a laser light show gone awry near Moscow, Russia.
By Patricia Daukantas
This year’s OSA congressional caucus briefing covered an extremely timely topic: solar energy. Last Friday, several policy analysts and industry representatives touted the benefits of both photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies to congressional staff members.
Doug Hall, director of PV technologies for Corning Inc., explained to the Capitol Hill audience how PV devices work and how they have evolved from wafered silicon to thin-film panels. Nanotechnology, organic materials and flexible substrates—all of which have been described in OPN over the past few years—could eventually bring greater efficiency and lower costs.
CSP, on the other hand, uses reflecting troughs, reflecting dishes, Fresnel lenses or similar devices to direct incoming solar energy to a single place such as a power plant. The technology makes it easier to store the energy for use during cloudy days or at night, according to Chuck Kutscher of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Other speakers addressed federal and private-sector investments in the various types of solar systems. OSA, who co-hosted the event with the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, has posted the viewgraphs from the congressional briefing on its Web site.
By Patricia Daukantas
For the September issue of OPN, I’m writing a feature article on the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. To that end, I recently attended a series of “Media Day” events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, home base of the space telescope’s operations, located in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Right now, most of the instruments and tools that will be loaded onto the space shuttle Atlantis for the October 8 mission still sit in one of the world’s largest clean rooms at NASA Goddard. Transport to the launch site at Cape Canaveral starts in a couple of weeks.
Four of the astronauts who will step out of the shuttle and do the instrument repair and replacement work on Hubble visited NASA Goddard this week to familiarize themselves with the tools they will be using on the mission. From the clean room’s observation window, reporters could see the astronauts swathed in protective garb and face masks, but with blue caps to distinguish themselves from the technicians. The spacewalkers have also trained in NASA’s neutral-buoyancy water tank in Houston.
One thing that’s astounding about Hubble, launched into orbit in 1990 and outfitted with its first set of corrective optics in 1993, is its scientific productivity. Over the years, 7,724 different authors have used Hubble data for peer-reviewed papers, and 8,821 scientists are registered users of the Hubble data archive.
The versatile space telescope has imaged everything from the nearby planets in our solar system to some of the most distant galaxies ever seen. Hubble pictures have had a big impact on popular culture, too. Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, noted that some of the most striking Hubble photographs are now on display at the Walters Art Museum in that city. “It’s the people’s telescope,” he said.
Watch for my article in the September issue of OPN and for periodic blog updates during the October mission.