From the Future to the Notebook

signs of new life emerge as images photonically flicker in the new logic forming apparatus

I had a dream….:)

Oops…. we’re on the wrong thread here….shouldn’t we be on the Bad Physics Jokes thread from a few weeks ago?

-cvj

Tricky minds here.

Rough summary:

- Scale-down runs up against the atomic structure of matter and its non-classical behavior at that scale.

- scale-up runs up against the ever-mounting effects of gravity and inertia, as compared with the growth of strength of materials. Consider trying to spin a very big flywheel, with the same proportions and composition of a smaller one, at the same angular velocity as the smaller one. A classic consequence of special relativity is that the rigidity of so-called rigid bodies is limited; otherwise some parts of them could be forced to exceed the speed of light relative to other parts. (Recall in this context that the strength of materials originates in the atomic and quantum structure of matter.)

Of course this actually has little to do with the aesthetics of same-scale visual comparisons of Christina Ricci and Uma Thurman (or, say, Charlize Theron or Queen Latifah) in evening gowns.

Like being an optician and an optometrist at the same time?

Or maybe better would be someone who has a MD, but is also trained as a medical physicist….. They would be a Physician and a Physicist….

-cvj

Curiosity provoked me into googling Nina Ricci. The second hit for her is the Nordstrom dept store website. It’s kind of ironic that these names appear in two worlds usually thought as being disparate - GR and in the world of high fashion.

If someone sells Mary Kay to earn support herself while devoting most of her time to Relativistic Astrophysics would she be a Cosmologist and a Cosmetologist? (I used the female pronoun as a convenience; it’s not meant to exclude people of any gender.)

cheers,

-cvj

-cvj

(Ok…I can’t resist… a small update…..)

http://www.cubepasses.com/services_photo.htm

the below link is for a photo retouch service that evidences just how much scaling is available to the graphic artist in remaking fashion for publication.
http://www.touchofglamour.com/Photo_Retouching.htm

and as an example of the controversy itself. Who is real??
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-06-16-covers_x.htm

Ken, Daryl, citrine :- On the scaling and physics issues mentioned by many…Yes, transport and diffusion are key processes which produce interesting limitations on scaling… surface area is so important, for example, as is surface tension, in fact…. you don’t get really huge pond-skaters……

It is a wonderful intersection of physics, chemistry and biology.

Kristin…. As to the logistics of cooking… yes! I agree that’s really interesting too…. and often frustrating…. transport and diffusion play a role there too (just keeping eveything hot when preparing lots of dishes…or lots of versions of the same dish…..but limited by not scaling up the over, stove, utensils…….) Oh…. scaling is on my mind a lot when having a dinner party……indeed.

citrine… do you think cats would scale better or worse than dogs? Maybe the n! gets enhanced or suppressed by the different personality tendencies? I can’t decide… On the one hand, maybe after a bit of a tussle, most of the cats would just go off into dark corners and under furniture and hide there, looking out at what’s going on from a safe vantage point…. but on the other hand they might just all fight endlessly….. but I feel the latter is more likely for dogs…… but then I’m biased a bit…..

-cvj

My point was that if heat dissipation is roughly K1 * L^2, and heat production is roughly K2 * L^3, then L is limited to be less than or equal to K1/K2. However, the numbers K1 and K2 are ultimately determined by quantum-mechanical effects.

Yes, I understand that limits on scale can be understood without quantum mechanics given parameters such as the strength of materials, but those parameters in turn are determined by quantum effects. Specifically, consider heat dissipation: Heat production inside an organism is roughly proportional to its mass, which is roughly proportional to the cube of its linear size. Heat dissipation is roughly proportional to the square of its linear size. Therefore, without a design change (more efficient way to dissipate waste heat), we have a limit to how large a particular organism can be:

Heat dissipation rate >= heat production rate
K1 * L^2 >= K2 * L^3
L

Clifford,
Do you suppose the normalization is a result of the MSM’s penchant for “balance” in reporting?

I’ve often thought about “pet maintenance scaling laws”. If keeping one cat requires w amount of work, how much work is required for the care and upkeep of n cats? Remember that having more than one cat presumably requires resolving cat fights and that n!/2 types of pairwise interactions are possible between n objects.

Well, Uma’s scale is mostly due to the Bohr radius, r = h-bar^2/(m e^2), where m is the mass of the electron, and e is the charge of the electron. So we could get a version of Uma that was about 1 cm tall by just replacing all her electrons by muons (207 times the mass, so 1/207th the Bohr radius). Frankly, I can’t think of a practical way to get a 600 foot tall Uma.