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WEEKLY WHINE

Does your physics go too far?

When it comes to physics, are you a castaway in a sea of ignorance, or do you handle each passing wavefront like a double slit? Answer these ten questions to find out whether you're more physics-minded than a fermion.

1. You're watching the Olympics, and you see the second place swimmer on the side of her lane closest to the leader. The announcer says that she's trying to draft the frontrunner, and your friend says, "How does that work?" You say:
	"Swimmers have strong magnetic fields, so if she stays on that side of the lane, she'll be attracted more strongly."
	"At the crest of the leader's wake, the Reynolds number is highest, so it takes less effort to break through the water."
	"Her wake is pushing forward a little bit, so there's not as much drag. That's why birds fly in V formations."

2. You're spending a lazy Sunday morning in the newspaper, which says that Mars's seasons are more severe because its orbit is more eccentric. You:
	Start to think about vacations on Mars, because that makes summers longer than winters in its Northern Hemisphere.
	Know they're messed up. Everybody knows it's because Mars is farther from the Sun.
	Write an angry letter to the author, claiming he clearly didn't take into account Mars's axial tilt.

3. Your blind date turns out to be twice as hot as your wildest dreams. But halfway through the linguini, conversation comes to a grinding halt when he/she/it proclaims Armageddon a brilliant film. You:
	Thought it was a bore - not enough oil drilling.
	Haven't seen it. You avoided it [and Mission to Mars] on the advice of your pal from Caltech.
	Change the subject and hope you can escape the evening without having to explain all the technical errors.

4. To you, They Might Be Giants are:
	What you sing in the shower, aside from Eric Idle's "The Galaxy Song".
	Baseball wannabes in San Francisco.
	A poor man's Tom Lehrer.

5. You watch late-night movies on the Sci-Fi Channel because:
	You've already seen the one on TBS.
	You like to hear the jargon that they make up, like "temporal anomaly" and "solarium reactor".
	The special effects are usually good, if not accurate.

6. People are attracted to one another because:
	They want the same thing out of life.
	Their probability distributions interfere constructively.
	They're irrational.

7. Which of these Garbage song titles best describes your approach to the world around you?
	"Number One Crush": Your rainy days are spent with a box of jelly beans and Volume Two of The Feynman Lectures.
	"Special": You like the particles that make your body - you never go to a party without them.
	"I Think I'm Paranoid": Understand your world? You spend too much time hiding from it.

8. Knowing the age of the Universe is as important to you as:
	Knowing the value of the cosmological constant.
	Knowing your name.
	Knowing the depth of the River Thames, in case you fall off Tower Bridge.

9. How much money should the US government spend on research facilities like Los Alamos?
	Enough so that we're still ahead of the Russians.
	Enough so that we can start to develop quantum computers.
	How much has it got?

10. The most important field of study today is:
	Planetary sciences, so we can settle the Moon and the rest of the solar system.
	High energy astrophysics, so we can understand supernovas and quasars.
	Plasma physics, so we can develop safe, reliable fusion reactors as energy sources.

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