The second looser, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Heisenberg was a German, and remained so his whole life; part of which included the second world war.  Being a scientist he could have left the country and joined the allies, like Albert Einstein did.  He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1932 for "the creation of Quantum Mechanics..." which when looked at in a historical context has been far less useful than auto mechanics as developed by Henry Ford.  

Heisenberg developed his uncertainty principle during his time of employment working for the Nazis.  Generally believed not to be a strong believer in the Nazi agenda, he did none the less work at developing nuclear technology for them.  However, no one is quite certain if he was really putting his back into the work.  Sometimes he thought a bomb was possible, but would require tons of material.  Other times he thought it would be impossible, and even thought that reports of the Hiroshima bomb were pure propaganda.  Claims also come up that he knew it could be done, but tried to slow the work to prevent its completion.  But it is also possible that those were just stories concocted to cover his inept abilities in comparison to the Manhattan project.  

As a result of Heisenberg's wishy-washyness (all reports indicate he never did in fact enter pollitics) he developed his uncertainty principle "which says you can't really know where anything is.*" Source

*A full discussion of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle may be found in the Appendix. Then again, it may not.

Round 1, Fight 3

Ohm's Law vs. Gauss' Law

Ohm's law states that, in an electrical circuit, the current passing through a conductor between two points is proportional to the potential difference (i.e. voltage drop or voltage) across the two
points, and inversely proportional to the resistance between them. In mathematical terms, this is written as: V=IR

Gauss Law states that the total of the electric flux out of a closed surface is equal to the charge enclosed divided by the permittivity. F=Q/Eo (pretend I used the greek letters (except for 'Q,' 'Q' can stay)).

Good luck with this one readers. Gauss has his "Gauss Canon," but an understanding of Ohm's law is crucial for developing rail guns, as well as Tasers. And there are documented cases of Tasers killing people, but I am unaware of any documented cases of gauss guns killing people.

Note: For your calculations, the human body can be modeled as a sphere with a density of about 0.98 g/ml, and an impedance of 1M Ohm for the skin, but only 100 Ohms if the probes are in contact with body fluids. (http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-50.html)

What is the Significance of Boyle's Law?

Well, I am glad you asked.  Actually you didn't ask, but I can imagine.

As we learned on Monday, Boyle's Law is a looser.  Let me explain why. 

First, Boyle's law (pV=K) is contained in the ideal gas law (pV=nRT), making it a redundant law.   This would be like making a law prohibiting men from forgetting their wedding anniversary.  Yeah, you could make the law, even get your name on it perhaps, but the fact is the wives will always do a better job on this one than the gov't ever could.  Yup, they are the judge jury and executioner.  Glad my wife doesn't read this blog.  I hope...

Second, Boyle's law only works for ideal gasses, and when was the last time you had one of those laying around; I'll wager never seeing as how they don't actually exist.

Third, this one is the real kicker, but I can't recall what it was.  But rest assured, it proved the point.

Mostly all Boyle's Law is good for is calculating the final pressure or volume of a fixed quantity of gas at a given temperature after perturbing the system equilibrium.  Or in letters (please imaging the numbers are subscripts), p1V1=p2V2.

Well, Boyle, looks like the only thing you have going for you is that your law came before the ideal gas law.  Good for you, and all the millions of chemistry books that now have your name in them.  I hope you are happy.

Round 1, Fight 2

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle vs. Asimov's Laws of Robotics

This one will be good. Oh so good. But first, I was rather disappointed in the quality of the trash talking for the first fight. I felt beanholio should have replied with a comeback, something like "I'll mellow your tune" would have sufficed.

But I digress. On to the deffinitions

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle gives a lower bound on the product of the standard deviations of position and momentum for a system, implying that it is impossible to have a particle that has an arbitrarily well-defined position and momentum simultaneously.

Asimov's Laws of Robotis

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Be sure to vote, and explain your vote in the comments.

A Tie???

In the event of a tie at Noon, the polls will remain open and more than one vote per person will be allowed. Polls will close at 1pm, or 2pm in the event of a tie at 1pm, or 3pm in the event of a tie at 2pm, or 4pm in the event of a tie at 3pm. In the event of a tie at 4pm I will pull a Venezuela (although in a few months this may be renamed to 'pulling a Putin') and remove democracy by declaring whomever I voted for the winner.

EDIT:
As elegant as this design is, it has a major flaw. Once someone votes I can't alter poll to allow for a single user to cast multiple votes. So, my condolences to those who voted for Boyle. You fought a good fight, but luck was against you.

Kepler wins.

What is a geyser?

I suppose gerontology is science, howbeit a boring one. Geysers are
old people, typically male. The female counterpart is typically
referred to as a crone.

Hold on, I thought you were asking about geezers. Its been a long day.

There are actually several similarities between the two however.
Geyser is Icelandic for "to gush." Which refers to water gushing
about. In geysers this is referred to as regularity, such as in Old
Faithful, in Yellowstone. In geezers this is called incontinence, and
is far less glamorous; there is some connection between geezers,
regularity, and metamucil, but that is not for today.

Geysers work by geothermal properties such as water percolation, hot
magma, and holes in the ground. See, the water percolates through
fissures in the ground The water then reaches hot magma, boils and
hemorrhages out of a hole in the ground.

Geezers on the other hand no longer work, and from here on out the
similarities are superficial. Geezers are retired and living longer
than ever, cashing Social Security checks. See, the money percolates
from tax payers through the system. The cashed check enters their hot grubby hands and then hemorrhages out of their possession into the casino.

The cycle of a geyser is kept in motion due to gnomes, or sprites,
possibly pixies, or even natural phenomenon. The cycle of the geezer
is maintained by the one-armed bandit.

Thank you, and good night.

Brackets round 1, fight 1

A brief description of the laws in the cage this week, taken from wikipedia.

Boyle's Law: For a fixed amount of gas kept at a fixed temperature, P
and V are inversely proportional.

Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion:
1. The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of
the foci. An ellipse is characterized by its two focal points; see
illustration. Thus, Kepler rejected the ancient Aristotelean and
Ptolemaic and Copernican belief in circular motion.
2. A line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas
during equal intervals of time as the planet travels along its orbit.
This means that the planet travels faster while close to the sun and
slows down when it is farther from the sun. With his law, Kepler
destroyed the Aristotelean astronomical theory that planets have
uniform velocity.
3. The squares of the orbital periods of planets are directly
proportional to the cubes of the semi-major axes (the "half-length" of
the ellipse) of their orbits. This means not only that larger orbits
have longer periods, but also that the speed of a planet in a larger
orbit is lower than in a smaller orbit. His third law is based on the
foundation left by Copernicus, because he uses a mathematical
expression to show the correlation between T (time for one revolution)
and D (distance from the sun).

Vote Wisely, voting ends next Monday at noon MDT, and feel free to
discuss your warped rationale in the comments.

The previous poll ended with 3 votes for "Very Yes."

New feature

Some of you, (2 at the time of this posting) had noticed the new feature on this site.  The poll.  Starting Monday you will be given the chance to vote on the best Scientific law or theory.  This is not to be based on elegance, or even benefit to mankind.  This is a no holds barred cage match.  Brackets will be coming soon. 

The proposed list of contestants was generated giving added weight to the physical sciences, as well as those named for persons, and is given as follows in alphabetical order:
Ampere's Law
Archimedes principle
Asimov's Laws of Robotics
Bernoulli's Principle
Boyle's Law
Coulomb's Law
Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
Fick's Law of Diffusion
Gauss' Law
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
Hooke's Law
Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion
Moore's Law
Newton's Laws of motion
Ohm's Law
Poiseuille's Law

Please send your e-mails in regards to possible changes in the lineup, as well as seeding for the top 4 contestants. 

Why does corn pop?

First of all, there are different types of corn. White corn, yellow corn, sweet corn, indian corn (or maize, as they call it), and candy corn. Not all of these types of corn pop. In fact, only two types of corn pop. "Popcorn" and the newer "microwave popcorn." Long ago, people could only eat corn on the cob, from cans, or ground into flour. Modern science has added frozen corn, as well as the corn that pops.

So, why does it pop? Well, have you ever been so mad you thought you could explode? Funny how it never happens, the exploding, not the mad. That is because you do not have pyrokinetic abilities. Corn does, well, just popcorn and microwave popcorn. It is possible to trigger corn into using it's ability on itself causing them to explode. They would continue to exert their abilities, but unfortunately they die after popping, and the activity ceases. At least that is how it is suppose to happen.

Every one has seen those few final kernels of corn, which never seem to pop. It is best not to try to make them. Things happen, bad things. See, those few remaining kernels have much stronger abilities than their popped counter parts. Triggering them to pyrokinese invariably results in them burning surrounding kernels. This is most prominent in microwave popcorn and always leads to unpleasant odoriferous results.

The only thing left to discuss is the trigger to get these guys going. For popcorn it is heat. They don't like to be hot. Microwave popcorn also doesn't like to be hot, but is additionally sensitive to microwave radiation as a heat source. This type of corn despises heat due to traumatic events in it's childhood. See, soon after being forcefully ripped off the corn stalk, heat was used to dry out the kernels of corn. The subsequent application of heat, either on the stove top or in the mictowave, triggers these repressed memories, causing them to snap, er, I mean pop.

Others may claim there is some moisture in the kernel which turns to steam as a result of the heat and the expansion of the steam causes the kernel to pop. This is almost correct, but it is the intrinsic pyrokinetic ability of the corn, and not the externally applied heat which causes the conversion to steam.

Thanks, and keep the questions coming.