Doug Osheroff

We went to Doug Osheroff's interview at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, California, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, M317594586859 Universe, Universe.

In 1976, Doug Osheroff experimented with superfluidity in Helium. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1996 for his work on superfluidity in Helium 3. We went into the auditorium and got one of the best seats as it was really close to the mike. First, a lady introduced someone who in turn introduced Doug Osheroff. Then, he was interviewed and he told his audience about the Columbia space shuttle accident and said something about how to be a good teacher and climate changes. But, he barely talked three sentences about Helium-3 and superfluidity in this interview. But, he talked about his father and mother who were from Europe and about his wife who said "Don't you do that" for investigating the space shuttle Columbia accident.The piece of foam was going at 877 km/hr and it damaged the left wing. This caused the shuttle to heat up on re-entry killing the seven astronauts inside the shuttle.

When the uninteresting interview was over, I went to Dr. Osheroff and when I was about to ask my question, Daddy asked it instead. The question that he asked was on a NOVA program that said that you can cool atoms using lasers. How can do that since lasers are usually used to heat things and not to cool them? He said, "If you tune the frequency of the laser to be a little higher than the atom's frequency, you can slow the atom down."

We came back home.
THE END

"How Mathematics Changed Us" Talk by Keith Devlin

This time, in January, we went to Keith Devlin's talk at Cubberly Auditorium at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, M3 universe, Universe. We were so late that out of the four revolutions he was going to talk about, we missed one revolution already.

He talked about Fibonacci who was the son of an Italian merchant who sometimes traveled to Asia and told Fibonacci about the new Hindu-Arabic number system which used the base 10 system (it was still the 12th century, when people in Europe commonly used the base 5 Roman system). In 1202, Fibonacci wrote Liber Abacci (book of calculations). He said, "Fibonacci uses two or three pages to explain what would be explained to a kid in kindergarden in one sentence." He talked about Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat as they tried different approaches to solve the problem of the points.  The problem of points is: Two players are playing a game which has 5 rounds. When one player is leading 2 to 1 then the game has to stop. How will the pot (the prize for the winner) be divided? Read "The Unfinished Game" by Keith Devlin to find out! This problem was one of the early problems of probability.

Keith Devlin said, "Until now mathematics was developed by physics. Now, we expect it to be developed by biology." After the lecture was over, I put on my rain boots and splashed through the watery parts of the road we had to go on. Just as we were leaving, I called Mummy and I stayed on the phone until we came home.

Dirt to Dinner: The evil squirrels are not so evil anymore

Jan 23, 2010.

I looked towards the front yard, disappointed that all there was near the pea bed was a bundle of bamboo sticks wrapped in grower's cloth. I went inside the house and asked Juli why my greenhouse was dismantled.


Juli said that the wind was so strong that it pushed all the bamboo sticks and growers cloth over the fence and into the sidewalk. She picked them up from the street and put them back in front of the pea bed.


Everyone was drawing something for Mackenzie because this was the last class for Dirt to Dinner. But I drew for just 5 minutes and went out into the front yard to work on my greenhouse.
This time, Daddy suggested that we should first tie the greenhouse to poles that we could stick deep into the ground. We found two metal poles which were exactly the same size we needed. But, we needed two more poles. I found a gigantic metal pole which was 8 feet long. I picked up a large shovel and tried to cut it in half. But, I couldn't cut it. Then, Daddy suggested that we could use blocks of wood for the two additional poles. When we tested the wood block, the results were that the wind could move the wood block. Because the wind could move the wood block, Daddy suggested a different idea. He said that we could use bamboo sticks for the two additional poles. I got two bamboo poles and we stuck them deep in the ground so that the greenhouse will be secure. Then, we asked Juli for some cord. With the cord, we tied the greenhouse to the poles. We wrapped the greenhouse with grower's cloth and secured it with binder clips and clothespins.

Now, the squirrels cannot eat our peas and destroy our soil experiment anymore. Just before we finished building the greenhouse, I realized that the bed wasn't for the soil experiment but it was for the greenhouse. The fertile soil mixed with the non-fertile soil, so the soil experiment couldn't answer the original question it was designed to answer.

Also, in the class, I made fruit leather. I ground apples and pears and added some pieces of pineapples, 2 raspberries and 2 strawberries to give it some flavor. I was forced to put my mixture in a food dehydrator.
It did not make sense to me because it takes two days to make fruit leather with the food dehydrator!

In her blog, Juli wrote, "... and Shreyes kept the evil squirrels from eating the peas." Goodbye, Dirt to Dinner!