Follow BW Science Labs on Twitter

Often times I make a little something cool, like a small but powerful blue light, and I mean to post on it at BW Science Labs, but I'm just too darn busy, so BWSL is left without an update and I'm left with an unrecorded project or idea. Now, this problem has been solved with Twitter, which lets me post quick and easy updates on what I'm doing. You can see my recent "tweets" on the left sidebar, or better yet you can follow me directly on Twitter.

So, if you ever check BW Science Labs, and find it not updated, be sure to check my recent tweets!

Math and "Mathemagic"

Arthur Benjamin has been a long time hero of mine, ever since I first saw his TED Lecture on how he does mental math. Today, I managed to convince my science teacher to let me skip some class and see Benjamin speak on campus at the High School. Much of his talk was extremely similar to his lecture at TED, sometimes even word for word, but this time he had some very cool never-before-seen tricks.

For his first trick (if you can really call it that), Benjamin had a student come on stage where he produced an imaginary deck of cards. He asked the student to pick an "invisible" card from anywhere in the deck. This seemed strange, as there were really no cards at all, however the student pretended to take a card, and then to flip it up-side down and place it back in the imaginary deck. Benjamin proceeded to pretend to place the cards in his pocket, then withdrew a real deck of cards. Benjamin fanned them out and pointed out that one of the cards was facing backwards, as if the student had placed it there. He then asked the boy what card he imagined he was holding when he took the pretend card. "A seven of hearts" was the student's response.

We were all skeptical as to what was going to happen next, but it really was remarkable what he was able to do. He pulled out the card and showed it to the crowd, a seven of hearts.

I was blown away to say the least. Arthur Benjamin seemed to know ahead of time what card would be in the student's mind, as the real cards he took out of his pocket were arranged neatly inside a box. One theory is that Benjamin used simple probability to accurately guess what card the student was going to imagine. Seven is often times what one thinks of when asked to choose a number between one and ten. Perhaps with cards, people had the tendency to usually pick a seven of hearts. However, this would leave a large margin of error as the volunteer could be thinking of a different card just as easily, making it only probable that Benjamin would be correct.
However, he is a mathematician, so there may be some way to calculate what card the person would be thinking of when pulling a card out of a certain part of the imaginary deck. For instance, if the student had pretended to pull out a lower card, then he may subconsciously be thinking that the card he is choosing is a King or Queen. However, this too leaves a large margin of error, as the volunteer could be thinking of an ace of clubs while imagining to pull a card from the top half of the deck.

To be honest, this one really stumped me. There are a number of theories, most of them are possible, but not necessarily probable.

I was amazed by Arthur Benjamin's math abilities, so much so that hours later I bought his book, Secrets of Mental Math. I don't think his card trick will be in there, but I will hopefully have a more interesting concept of math when I finish reading it. And hey, maybe I'll finally be able to square three digit numbers in my head...

Astrobiology Interview

Yesterday I interviewed Dr. Darlene Lim, a NASA Ames scientist who heads a project called PLRP, or the Pavilion Lake Research Project. PLRP studies organisms called microbialites that are believed to be the only living things on early Earth, about 2.5 billion years ago.

PLRP's data also will have a huge effect on future Mars and Lunar missions, and also will provide the perfect way to train astronauts.

All this, and more, in the upcoming Edition of Science Quarterly.

Building Programs like CompuTalk in PYTHON

Today, I built a program in PYTHON ( which is now my favorite programming language of all time) as a fun little experiment. Inspired by the movie "War Games" I built a simple program that would allow the user to communicate with his or her computer as if it were a person. There are a small number (I don't want to sit all night typing line after line similar code) of preprogrammed word and phrases that the user can type in to get a response. For instance: "hello" would output "Greetings. How are you?", "fine" would output "Fascinating. I am neither good nor bad.", and so-on and so-fourth.

The Program is called CompuTalk (click to download), and you can download it via The BW Files.

From Passion to Action Science Lecture

Today I gave a lecture on how I went from my passion to action. I discuss both BW Science Labs and Science Quarterly in a two part series.

And no, my voice does not sound like this in real life.




You can also watch this video here.




You can also watch this video here.

This lecture was given in front of about 200 or 300 people, and hopefully many more online.

Here are the slides (click to enlarge):













A very special thanks to Nancy Fortman for her support for the past three years, and to David Mugglebee for making this presentation possible.

Now Launching BW Files

One of the biggest problems with BW Science Labs is that this site does not support uploading Files. So, I finally built a new site to house Science Quarterly Files, BW Science Labs files, and more. You can visit BW Files here, though it will be a little while until all of the files are properly uploaded.



Let me know if you think this is a good idea by posting a comment below.

I'm currently out of town, so as usual I will mention some articles coming soon:

1. I'm nearly done configuring the computer the size of your fist, so it will make its debut within a few weeks or less.

2. Quite a bit more on soldering, I've set up some fun little projects that will hopefully lead to more advanced ideas.

3. Some experimentation with DIY Technology from 1983.

4. Hopefully more info of both BW Science Labs iPhone apps (yes, there are 2).

4. And as always, much, much more.

Building Applications for the iPhone

Today, I finally got back to developing applications for the iPhone. I've been a bit reluctant, to say the least, because Coca Touch is an annoying programming language to learn, and isn't very useful to me aside from developing iPhone apps. Coincidentally, only hours after working on my BW Science Labs RSS reader app, I found this article about a nine-year-old boy named Ding Wen created an application called Doodle Tools. Apparently, Wen is already fluent in 6 programming languages, certainly better than most professionals can say.

I've registered my iTouch for testing however I also need certification to test my app, so my certificate has to be processed and accepted. Assuming my application ever makes it to the app store, it will be free. Unfortunately this is the worse of the two versions I've built, however after far too much time trying to figure out how to make the UI Web View controller work in Xcode, I decided to go ahead with my original program. I may later use my second version as a Pro version or an update.

I have no idea how long it will take for me to be able to test my app on my iTouch, however I just hope it doesn't end up crashing my iPod.

In the meantime, I've ordered a book on DIY lasers written in 1983 (not exactly the safest guide to follow) and a soldering kit. I look forward to building more fun things.