Tygue Luecke-Week 10-Plasma is Boring
Assuming that honesty is invited in these blogs (and I hope it is, considering some of the personal opinions I have expressed through them over the course of the quarter), I just have to admit that Wednesday’s guest lecture nearly killed me. The speaker was clearly a very knowledgeable man who does very important work, but I can honestly say that I would have preferred his work to remain behind-the-scenes, or at least to be shared only with other scientists. He didn’t start off too bad, but by about 11:15, I swear I felt my soul trying to make its great escape from my body. Yeah, it was pretty bad. However, I was able to pull out a few tidbits of semi-useful knowledge of which I would like to speak… now.
I was glad to hear that our lecturer made at least one reference to art and science- that being the fact that artistic renderings of data sets are much easier to view and evaluate than is an incomprehensibly large set of numbers. On the other had, after saying that, he dropped into that endless explanation of plasma using measurements which were just as incomprehensible as the number sets he had discredited earlier. Needless to say, I was very pleased when Professor Vesna finally began a discussion about the supposed/attempted comprehension of such insanely small measurements, but became confused again when her questions were met by an answer that seemed to support the comprehension of such outlandish things as a hundred billionth of a second. I’m sorry, but no one is able to comprehend such nonsense. And what would be the point in being able to, anyway? I surely can’t find a reason for it. Unless I intend to study plasma, I suppose… but I’m not seeing that as a likely situation at the moment. Not very likely at all. Excuse me, I have become sidetracked. Now, where I was intending on leading this was toward the discussions of a changed perspective of people who are constantly forced to think in unfathomable scales. Unfortunately, my research of this topic has led to naught, but it is my personal belief that such people would cease to be shocked by any statistic thrown at them. I am no plasma physicist myself, and even I find it hard to be shocked sometimes when I hear that ten people died in some kind of an accident, when I have heard so many times of the thousands upon thousands of deaths that occurred during the Holocaust. And to hear that the earth houses a mere six billion people just seems ridiculous. Even after Wednesday’s lecture, I was thinking about how barely anything could shock me after hearing about billionths of seconds and millions of degrees. Seriously, Death Valley will ever seem impressive again. I cannot even imagine if I worked with such numbers on a routine basis. Life would never be the same.
Okay, so plasma may just be the most boring thing on the planet, but it sure does make some pretty pictures! Check this out:
http://images.google.com/images?q=plasma+images&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&um=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title
I was glad to hear that our lecturer made at least one reference to art and science- that being the fact that artistic renderings of data sets are much easier to view and evaluate than is an incomprehensibly large set of numbers. On the other had, after saying that, he dropped into that endless explanation of plasma using measurements which were just as incomprehensible as the number sets he had discredited earlier. Needless to say, I was very pleased when Professor Vesna finally began a discussion about the supposed/attempted comprehension of such insanely small measurements, but became confused again when her questions were met by an answer that seemed to support the comprehension of such outlandish things as a hundred billionth of a second. I’m sorry, but no one is able to comprehend such nonsense. And what would be the point in being able to, anyway? I surely can’t find a reason for it. Unless I intend to study plasma, I suppose… but I’m not seeing that as a likely situation at the moment. Not very likely at all. Excuse me, I have become sidetracked. Now, where I was intending on leading this was toward the discussions of a changed perspective of people who are constantly forced to think in unfathomable scales. Unfortunately, my research of this topic has led to naught, but it is my personal belief that such people would cease to be shocked by any statistic thrown at them. I am no plasma physicist myself, and even I find it hard to be shocked sometimes when I hear that ten people died in some kind of an accident, when I have heard so many times of the thousands upon thousands of deaths that occurred during the Holocaust. And to hear that the earth houses a mere six billion people just seems ridiculous. Even after Wednesday’s lecture, I was thinking about how barely anything could shock me after hearing about billionths of seconds and millions of degrees. Seriously, Death Valley will ever seem impressive again. I cannot even imagine if I worked with such numbers on a routine basis. Life would never be the same.
Okay, so plasma may just be the most boring thing on the planet, but it sure does make some pretty pictures! Check this out:
http://images.google.com/images?q=plasma+images&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&um=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title
posted by Tygue Luecke at
5:26 PM
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