Heightened interest
Our hats, of which we have very many, are firmly off this week to FrĂ©dĂ©ric Bouquet and fellow inhabitants of the 15-metre-high Laboratory of Solid State Physics in Orsay, France, for their paper â61 ways to measure the height of a building with a smartphoneâ ().
We are reminded of an urban legend about a physics student who later turned out to be Niels Bohr. When challenged during an oral examination to describe how he might do something similar with a barometer, he came up with several indubitably correct answers that contributed to getting him failed.
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These included lowering the barometer from the roof to the ground on a long piece of string and measuring the length of string plus barometer, and throwing the barometer off the roof and timing how long before it smashed on the ground. The traditionalist within us is pleased to record that both of these methods appear on the teamâs list, although this does suggest that measuring the height of a building with smartphones, plural, would be a more accurate description.
A mere cavil. We canât fault the comprehensiveness of the research, which employs methods involving free fall, giant pendulums and various acoustic and optical techniques, as well as a section of the most interest to physicists, âmethods that only work in theoryâ. Nor can we fail to be impressed by the range of values recorded for the buildingâs height, from zero (âGiant pendulum, using the accelerometerâ), to 800,000 metres +/- 100,000 m (âVariation of the Earth magnetic field between the top and the groundâ).
The method âVariation of gravity between the top and the ground, determined by general relativity time dilationâ also returned a value of zero, although with a margin of error of 3 million kilometres either way, leading the researchers to conclude, perhaps ruefully, that âon average, the simpler the method, the more precise the resultsâ.
Not consistently, however. Some methods were unable to deliver an answer at all, among them number 61: âPhone call to the buildingâs architect.â
Lower!
ââ, reports a headline on Sky News. Feedback is disappointed on further reading to find that this wasnât a result of the common doctorâs injunction of people presenting with problems down below â âjust cough for meâ â one that always puzzled Feedback until we mindfully noted the muscular spasm that passes through those areas when we cough. It seems it was actually positron emission tomography that led to the breakthrough, which is real science, but far less fun.
Bone of contention
A delightful exchange ensued on Twitter after reported that his wife had fallen foul of software being used to censor language in submissions to a question and answer session at a conference. âOne of the words it is censoring is âboneâ,â he writes. âItâs a palaeontology conference.â
Happily, the organisers of this yearâs Society for Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) meeting , tweeting: âHi all, youâll be pleased to know that âHellâ and âboneâ are now permitted on the Q&A function #2020svp Please use responsibly!â The tweet included a smiling face and three bone emojis.
Courtesy of our man with the old bones, Jeff Hecht, Feedback has been able to view a full list of words that the software blocked â all, we presume, included in participantsâ submissions to Q&A sessions.
Largely of a putatively sexual nature, they provide insight into the palaeontological mind. We can only assume that anyone enquiring about âerectionsâ in that context would have unimpeachable intentions, but we are less sure about âenlargementâ. Also appearing on the list, eliciting varying degrees of polite nodding and smiling on Feedbackâs behalf, are âstrokeâ, âstreamâ, âknobâ and âflangeâ.
That last one causes us to wander down a byway of wondering how words can assume sexual connotations simply by sounding as if they should have them. Perhaps some expert in acoustolinguistics, a research field that we have just made up in hope, can enlighten us as to the quality of these words that makes it so.
But this is by the by. The whole thing reminds us of the recent story reported by the BBC of the Canadian seed and garden supply company whose picture of onions was rejected by Facebookâs algorithms for being .
AIs clearly arenât going to make it far in the saucy seaside postcard industry, but more generally, following recent discussions about artificial intelligence taking our jobs, we are glad of further evidence that, actually, our future jobs will be correcting the job that the AI did.
Not (yet) in the bag
Allen Young writes in with an advert from our own esteemed organ for the 51¶ŻÂț shop, and a special offer of a free tote bag on all purchases over ÂŁ20. (Good offer, that, and the bags are very fetching.)
Too late, however â possibly. âOffer valid until 31st Octoberâ, the advert trills, âor until stocks lastâ. Well, it is past 31 October now, Allen, so we can only suggest you enquire whether stocks have begun to last yet, and if they havenât, claim your free bag. Just donât tell anyone we sent you.
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