Nutty Science

You can say that I really like physics and math and I like physicists and mathematicians stories too. Over the years I've read a few of them and experienced some of them too while studying.

So just to lighten the forum a little bit i'll use this thread to tell some stories that are interesting, funny or whatever! But one thing I can't do is to tell you that if they are all true. At least not the ones I saw developing.

Sit back and enjoy the ride:

Lev Landau was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th year and he had quite the sharp mind. In principle nothing could go past him if some kind of rationality was to be expected. Fortunately for us he also had many quirks. Anyway here is a story about him. Back in the Lysenko days real science was really restricted in the USSR If you don't know who Lysenko was and the evil that he did to real science at that time in the USSR my advice is for you to look it up. Anyway this guy was a real douchebag, a dimwit and pretty much full of himself. On a seminar he was giving he was trying to preach a theory of inheritance of acquired traits. At the end of it Landau puzzled by such nonsense asked: "So according to you if we cut one cow's ears, then her offspring ears, and the offspring offspring's ears and so on and so on that will come a time that the descendents of the first cow will be born without ears?" And quite proudly Lysenko answered: "Yes!" but then came the zinger from Landau: "In that case how do you explain the virgins still being born?"

🙂

Walter Raleigh weighed tobacco smoke. Weigh the tobacco, smoke it, weigh the ash. Subtract.

Originally posted by adam warlock
"So according to you if we cut one cow's ears, then her offspring ears, and the offspring offspring's ears and so on and so on that will come a time that the descendents of the first cow will be born without ears?"

Originally posted by zozozozo
this is not true🙂

Originally posted by adam warlock
http://www.farfromneutral.com/exodus/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/o_rly.jpg

Originally posted by zozozozo
http://www.farfromneutral.com/exodus/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/y_rly.jpg

Another great physicist was Julian Schwinger: I don't really know any funny story about this man (this is what I find funny about him), but I have the greatest admiration for him as a physicist.

He was a contemporary of Feynman and they shared a nobel prize with him and Tomonaga for solving the problem of the Lamb shift. Feynman did it in an absolutely new and radical way, Schwinger did it by continuing in the normal reasoning of Quantum Mechanics and Tomonaga did it even before the problem was found.

Schwinger was very bright guy! At 16 he published his first article on quantum mechanics and at 21 he already got his Phd thesis made. Which, by the way, was already completed by the time he was 18 but couldn't be presented earlier due to burocratic problems! 😲

One of his teachers had a great problem with him: Schwinger was a night person. Early morning classes simply weren't made for him so in this class, I forgot which one, he didn't show up much and the teacher had to flunk him but on the other hand that would be strange cause the teacher was the first one to say that Schwinger knew more about the subject than himself. In the end some sort of agreement was agreed between the teacher, Schwinger and Rabi (some one like Schwinger's mentor at the time)

One other thing that strikes me about Schwinger is his propper look. On all of the pictures I've seen from him he always has this really secure poise.

One other thing about him is that this Nobel winning physicist is that he also was a very good teacher. His lectures are still talked about today. Very clear and logical. His former students say that after his classes the conclusions seemed inevitable. And apart from that he orientated several Phd students and something like 4 or 5 of them ended up being Nobel prize winners too.

🙂

Originally posted by adam warlock
😉

But the page barely even exists... 😕

Originally posted by adam warlock
In the end some sort of agreement was agreed between the teacher, Schwinger and Rabi (some one like Schwinger's mentor at the time)

Originally posted by zozozozo
So, what was the agreement?😛

and isnt rabi like a jewish kind of priest?

Nice thread, adam.

Originally posted by Palynka
Nice thread, adam.

Originally posted by adam warlock
Yeah. It's lighter in tone that most threads that have been around lately. Feel free to add something that has to do with the spirit of the thread. 🙂

Originally posted by Palynka
If I think of something, I will. Don't forget that I'm working in the "dismal science", though... 🙂

This happened to me and a couple of friends of mine but no names will be revealed to protect the innocents.

Anyway, exams were over and people needed to lighten up and get some non-physics conversation going. So we figured out that a night in Bairro-Alto was a pretty good plan. I'm no regular at Bairro-Alto but my friends knew it very well so we had no problems. We went to a few tascas, talked, drank, got flirted by some girls, flirted with some other girls, laughed. The whole lighten up deal. So when the night was through we had to go home. One of us was relatively ok so he could drive. But you know what happens when alcohol flows to freely. People start to philosofy too much. At when point, even though the conversation probabibily started in the discussion of laws of physics (I have a very vague recollection of this 😵 ), we ended up discussing the good things in life. One of us said that there wasn't nothing quite like beer, silence and the beach. In the back of the a car a very snide voice made just one remark:

"Virgin!" and that was it. The whole house went tumbling down. It was laughter for a few minutes. And I mean heavy laughter. Even the focal point of the joke was laughing his pants off.

Anyway, it isn't much funny telling it this way but if you had been there you'd get the point. Anyway a lot of it probabily was the alcohol.

🙂