Einstein's General Theory of Relativity vs. Moore's Law
According to general relativity, the observed gravitational attraction
between masses results from those masses warping nearby space and
time.
Moore's Law states: the number of transistors that can be
inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing
exponentially, doubling approximately every two years.
Based on past trends, I should be discussing Ampere's Law. But lets face it, it was a shutout, he lost, and no tears were shed. The Nobel prize for Medicine/Physiology was recently awarded for the creation of knock out mice; we will be discussing this instead.
What are they you ask, good question. Despite the name, they have nothing to do with boxing. Knock out is used more like in the phrase here from UrbanDictionary.com "Svetlana knew how to dress to perfectly complement her tall, athletic frame. By virtue of her bright eyes, silky long hair, and a smile that could stop a revolution, people widely regard her as a knock out."
The scientists found ways to remove certain genes from the mouse embryos. This allows them to research what the genes do by observing what happens whey they are no longer expressed. The technology can be used to create mice prone to cancer, long life, immune disorders and advanced maze running abilities as well as knockout mice by removing the 'ugly genes.'
Knock out mice are used as a non lethal form of mouse population control. For example, in a cage of 10 normal male mice, 9 normal female mice, and one female knock out mouse, the male mice will strive to mate exclusively with the knock out (unless their water bottle is spiked with ethanol, at which point the ugly mice can "get lucky"). By neutering, or is it spaying, the knock out prior to release into the wild there is no subsequent generation of mice. Luckily there is also no real chance of this effect wiping out the entire mouse population, which could be bad for animals which eat mice. This is due to what is called the "King Kong Corollary." King Kong had a thing for that hot chick, and many of the animals, such as owls, have the same inclinations for the knockout mice and will selectively remove them from the breeding pool. This effect is exasperated by the fact that, in mice at least, the same genes which code for ugly also code for smarts, leaving the mice to stupid to escape from their captors and return to causing discord in the mouse colony. It is presently unknown if the traits are tied in humans as well, although anecdotal evidence from Hollywood starlets and many blonds would definately support the claim.
So, give it up for the knockout mouse, and all the genetic prowess that led to its creation.
Newton's Laws of motion vs. Coulomb's Law
Newton's Laws of Motion:
Briefly stated, the three laws are:
1. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by a net force.
2. Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration.
3. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Coulomb's Law states: The magnitude of the electrostatic force between two points electric charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of each charge and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges.
Bernoulli's principle lost, but was well covered in the comments. So instead we will humor tommyp who said "If y'all are so good at making stuff up, you would think you could come up with something interesting for universe building blocks." This ones for you, tommyp. String Theory is complicated, but luckily I am a really smart guy, as evidenced in my many publications on this website.
Gravity owes its existence to an apple being in the right place at the right time (see Newton). String theory is here due to socks. That is right, the kind you wear on your feet. See, a bunch of physics majors, or professors, I forget which, could have been both really, but they were instructing one of their colleges on the importance of wearing matching socks to the hypothetical "date" or "going out on the town." The exact conversation, which is said to have occurred in a particularly difficult dungeon in D&D, is lost to antiquity, but at some point the conversation turned to socks disappearing in the wash (several of the participants were unable to participate as their moms still, to this very day, do their laundry for them).
Two facts were focused upon in connection to the disappearing socks. First, socks are composed of matter in the form of strings. Second, according to Einstein E=Mc^2. It was proposed that the driers were acting as a low speed particle accelerator, converting the socks to pure energy. Plugging the mass of the socks into Einstein's equation proved that this would be an unhealthy amount of energy for the drier to absorb. However, the idea did not die, instead it shifted to the theory of the socks being converted to really small strings, still mater, not engergy. Some of these strings would be open, others would be closed, others could be stretched into 'branes. I would call that "pretty interesting" tommyp.
Currently string theory is composed of at least 6 different partially conflicting partially overlapping theories, as well as the one string to rule them all; M-Theory. Theories were generated to use cool, but otherwise worthless things, such as Calabi-Yau manifolds. These theories include up to 11 different dimensions, including the possibility of a second time dimension. These additional dimensions allow for realms where nerds and/or geeks, and/or dweebs, and/or dorks, and not jocks are at the top of the high school food chain. Thus allowing the possibility of moving the hypothetical "hot date" in to the realm of reality, which would have prevented that fateful conversation from ever taking place.
For more specifics on the different theories beyond the limited scope available here search the web, there is a convenient Google tool bar on this very page, near the top. In closing I would just like to say I am grateful that the initial conversation dealt with socks and not 'unmentionables' which also disappear on more rare occasions. A sub-atomic particle named the "skid mark" would be bad for business, not that a "gluon" is a poster child.
Hooke's Law vs. Ampere's Law
Hooke's law of elasticity is an approximation that states that the amount by which a material body is deformed (the strain) is linearly related to the force causing the deformation (the stress). Materials for which Hooke's law is a useful approximation are known as linear-elastic or "Hookean" materials.
In physics, Ampère's circuital law, discovered by André-Marie Ampère, relates the circulating magnetic field in a closed loop to the electric current passing through the loop. It is the magnetic equivalent of Gauss's law.
Poiseuille just didn't come to play last week, but I'm sure his mother still loves him all the same. Poiseuille is a very important guy in the sprinkler business. Without his equations it would be next to impossible to get all of your sprinklers working properly. His law equates the flow of the system to pi * R^4 * |Delta P| divided by 8 * the viscosity * the length. In fact the only easy "solution" is to over engineer the system, like mine. See, most home use sprinklers work from 25 - perhaps 40 psi. My system (using the same previously mentioned sprinkler heads) runs at full city water pressure, about 120 psi. This gives me plenty of flow, enough to blow the tops of some of the sprinklers if I am not careful.
Enough about me, lets talk about Poiseuille and why he lost. I see two main points (not counting him being french). First, Poiseuille's law requires Newtonian fluids, which don't exist. Enough discussion has already been made in comments about the significance of this in the context here. Second, his law only works on laminar flow.
Laminar flow is when the flow if the liquid occurs in paralell streams; the layers being undisturbed by each other. Nice and predictable, even for many non-Newtonian fluids. This is typically the case for a Renoylds number below about 2100-2300. Above this turbulent flow occurs. Turbulent flow, as you may surmise from the name, is violent(read the footnote here to see why turbulence is good at propagating violence ). Some may argue that laminar flow is required for planes and helicopters to fly. To them I say "you just need more thrust."
Archimedes principle vs. Bernoulli's Principle
Archimedes' principle, or the law of upthrust, is: "When a solid body is partially or completely immersed in water, the apparent loss in weight will be equal to the weight of the displaced liquid."
In other words, when a body is partially or completely immersed in a liquid, then it experiences an upward buoyant force which is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the immersed part of the body.
Bernoulli's Principle states that for an ideal fluid (low speed air is a good approximation), with no work being performed on the fluid, an increase in velocity occurs simultaneously with decrease in pressure or a change in the fluid's gravitational potential energy.
This principle is a simplification of Bernoulli's equation, which states that the sum of all forms of energy in a fluid flowing along an enclosed path (a streamline) is the same at any two points in that path. It is named after the Dutch/Swiss mathematician/scientist Daniel Bernoulli, though it was previously understood by Leonhard Euler and others. In fluid flow with no viscosity, and therefore, one in which a pressure difference is the only accelerating force, the principle is equivalent to Newton's laws of motion.
Carl Friedrich Gauss was a pretty smart guy. That is why he got a law named after him. There are really only two ways to get a law named after you. First, do or state something first, as did Gauss, Ohm (who recently beat Gauss as we know), Fudd, or Godwin. Second have something bad happen to you, such as Murphy, or Megan.
So what do you need to do to get a law named after you? Good ol' Carl helps us here as well. See he also worked on what is called the Gaussian distribution. That combined with Google can give us that answer. A Google search for "laws named for people" yields almost 6 million hits; half of the first page (5 of 10) seem relevant, so lets say 3 million laws. Most of these will not be commonly used, like perhaps someone makes their own law. Like you could make a "Beanholio's Law" where some arbitrary assessments are made to determine "coolness." But that will never last the test of time. So, lets be generous and say there are 600,000 valid laws named for people; just to make the math easier. With 6 billion people on the earth that leaves 0.1% of the population with a law. However, most of the laws are named for dead people, so we should take them into account as well. There are a lot of dead people so really you need to be like 1 in a million to get a law named after you.
Back to the Gaussian distribution with the x-axis going from unlucky to first. Those who are greater than 6 sigma below the average have a very high chance of having something so unfortunate happen to them that they will get a law named after them. Those six sigma above the average will most likely do/say something really cool and get a law named after them.
So, here's to you Gauss, for being one lucky SOB. Wait, actually you were on the other end of the scale, good for you all the same.
Fick's Law of Diffusion vs. Poiseuille's Law
In the mid-1800's, Fick introduced two differential equations that quantified the above statement for the case of transport through thin membranes. Fick's First Law states that the flux, J, of a component of concentration, C, across a membrane of unit area, in a predefined plane, is proportional to the concentration differential across that plane. Fick's Second Law states that the rate of change of concentration in a volume element of a membrane, within the diffusional field, is proportional to the rate of change of concentration gradient at that point in the field.
Poiseuille's law is the physical law concerning the voluminal laminar stationary flow Φ of an incompressible uniform viscous liquid (so called Newtonian fluid) through a cylindrical tube with constant
circular cross-section. Poiseuille's law is also sometimes called the Hagen-Poiseuille law including reference to Gotthilf Heinrich Ludwig Hagen (1797-1884) for his experiments in 1839.
Despite the relevence of the laws in the cage the past few weeks, I would like to assure you that the parings were completely random. Assuming that Excel's random number generator was not biased, which looking back may not have been such a good assumption. Good thing this ain't for a grade.
