July Patreon video
Coffee and also Coffee and the problem.
The problem is me. ha.
Comments (79)
After the "Moby Dick" video, maybe you could do a video on "Bartleby, the Scrivener". But if you would prefer not to, I'd totally understand.
I love a cute little shop. I go to lots of bakeries and diners for this reason. Many of them offer espresso drinks. My partner and I have a shared note where we collect our thoughts on them, and after being burned several times, made a new category for places that offer espresso drinks but really just have a version of the Speedway robot you showed. Along the same lines as the bit you touched on at the end, with restaurants offering coffee that is actually liquid from a Keurig, I feel this is a void our language fails to account for. I hate that there is an element of horse shoe logic between this feeling and the conservative "why can't I just order a coffee anymore?" thing. Coffee internet is exhausting, but a point it will make frequently that you also touch on here, is how important it is to use a thermometer, a scale, possibly a timer, and follow instructions as written. I feel like this sort of basic instruction qualifying as expert advice extends to general cooking as well. I subscribe to America's Test Kitchen, and it is astonishing to me how many people comment behind the pay wall on a recipe coming together poorly, only for it to be revealed in discussion with the recipe developer that an insane substitution had been made (subbing an oil that is solid at room temp for one that is not is an urge people seem to struggle suppressing when baking). I like the idea of a coffee video a lot, just the range of supply chains from farm to cup, level of tech, and price points "making coffee" operates at are fascinating. Finally, fwiw, as a working engineer who regrets not taking school more seriously from time to time, I always enjoy watching you work problems at the level of the one in this video, for the reasons you state. That feeling of "oh yeah, I remember that physics!" and the bit of study I will ride it to are nice!
Babe just start talking and edit into 30 to 45 minutes. Do it as a low fi patreon video as a test audience and go from there.
don't think this video was a a failure, it was a pretty fun watch. but listening to you it kinda sounds like you need a producer, someone irl who can overview and discuss your stuff with and lets you know when you are going overboard for a video and keep you on a schedule.
oh man.... my wife would absolutely love to have a full convo with you about this topic lol. Shes a former competition barista turned-roaster turned-greenbuyer turned-auditor/CPA and has her degree in International Relations. Her biggest passion in life is the goal of helping coffee farm workers build their own businesses, with the aim of having them earn more than the pittance that most of them are paid right now. She regularly talks about how we (the global "We") are not even remotely prepared for the reality of what will happen to coffee plants in the extremely near future due to climate change (and how that climate change is also causing more diseases amongst coffee plants). Eventually we're going to have to just be satisfied with lab-developed caffeine drinks that are designed to taste like an analog of coffee, and true coffee beans will be reserved only for the richest people in the world. Pretty crazy to think about.
Banana pandemics killed off earlier species of them. I think we're on our 4th banana plant, with a projection to maybe need a 5th pretty soon. I don't think this was due to our recklessness, but it's sad. The substitute is never exactly the same. & We're reckless without regard to our deleterious effects. Sometimes our beneficial effects are also deleterious, is what I mean. Like, big oranges that don't taste as good as the little ones.
I paused the video and did the problem and got 11 minutes, thought i must have messed up somewhere because 11 minutes is a long time boil 2 cups of water.
(Michael J. Anderson voice) "mug!"
As many others have said, You do you Angela! I appreciate how thoughtful you are about what and how you are producing things. It's good to see that you have projects in the pipeline. On a personal note, I'm going through some mental health challenges, and feel like I need your videos to laugh every now and then, and keep my head straight. I long for your coffee video... Looking forward to Moby Dick!
I'd pay for an acollierastro whale sweater! I LOVE that design!
Love the shout-out to Technology Connections as much as the shade to Keurig!
Hi i dont usually comment on stuff like this because i always assume that someone else already answered it but if youre in the ipad notes app and click on the three dots top left theres a math results setting you can turn off, that should fix the annoying red boxes and suggested solutions (atleast it did for me many months ago, i hope im not lying and it was a different setting i forgot about, if i was im sorry) About the video itself: I think you do a great job with your videos to the point im surprised youre so worried about them (seriously, i subscribed to this patreon recently and i think you asked "is this video boring" in all three videos i saw which is totally fine, but everytime i just thought to myself this is the most interesting thing ever lol) discovering your channel sparked a newfound interest in physics, specifically these small videos you do about (in my head) small physics stuff like the faraday effect or the einstein-bose condesate video, so for me if its a topic you have fun talking about its a topic i enjoy watching about, as your passion shines through which is just fun to watch! The comments suck, saying you should just deal with them feels rude, but it would be a shame for some sore loosers to ruin fun ideas that you would enjoy making videos about, i wouldnt personally even be upset if you went as far as disabling comments. Thank you for the good work and for inspiring me to learn more about physics!
Dr Collier asks us questions bc she's scientifically trained, not to take away from her excellent personal qualities. She believes in the necessary experimental connection from nature to math. A mere math fact (like the flexibility of an O-Ring outside the range it was tested to might or might not change, resulting in blow-by, we just don't know if we don't ask the question & test it), isn't a physical fact if we didn't test for it. Dr. C's videos are never boring to me, but sometimes the exact physics she's covering are in my wheelhouse. Not always. I took the classes the problem she's doing might've been covered in, a long time ago. I don't always remember how to do what I could do back then. Maybe that's what I learn. Or I didn't get that back then & am learning it for the first time. Maybe she's doing an EM problem that's SR, & I haven't forgotten, & also took GR & didn't forget that either. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the problem. The main reason (by my own attribution) that I think I know that I won't be bored is that it's an experimentally proven fact. Yes, DrC contributes to my enthusiasm for this subject I'm a fan of.
Hi Angela, I can't get the video to play. I get a "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" when trying to play the video (on librewolf,, firefox and chromium browsers). Clicking through to youtube just gets me to my youtube landing page. Not your problem, but please consider alternatives to youtube. EDIT: please post a direct link to youtube in you description (like the one mykey6375 replied with below). The embedded video links do not work for me. If any other patreons have solved this problem, please let me know. /Erasmus
I worked around the problem. I went into the Inspector. Found the direct link to the YouTube URL inside the NOSCRIPT tag section. It's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41DohsaEErQ
Hi Angela , any chance of a 1) Ball Lightning video or 2) Heaviside and Gibbs Vector Calculus invention There is an interesting contrast in that Heaviside was very poor and Gibbs very rich also Gibbs worked at Yale without pay for many years.
Hi. Not that I'm against patron topic suggestions in comments, but technically that's a higher-tier privilege. Just saying. That said, I like your topic ideas just fine. 🙂
You often talk about “why would anyone watch a video about X” but I’m here for anything you want to post about. They are always well researched and I learn things every time. It makes me want to make videos about things I’m passionate about even though maybe no one will watch it.
Hi! 1. I think a coffee video would be good! Your style of making videos really benefits from you being passionate about a topic, and while I hope that you're passionate about all of your current video ideas, coffee is clearly a natural topic for specifically you to explore 2. I'm returning here after seeing the LaTeX video. I'm expected to publish physics papers from time to time, and I actually use Overleaf for the collaborative element of it. I wouldn't pay for it myself, but I'm sure that my institution is paying big bucks for the premium version, maybe that's their business model? I find it easier to edit and comment the manuscript that way instead of passing a tex file between multiple people. That said, I should probably backup my past projects locally, thanks for reminding me! 3. Unfortunately, this won't help you, but I trust you over myself when trying to explain photons mediating the electomagnetic interaction to a layperson. QED/QFT is sort of hard in my opinion.
You know, of course, that the best coffee is french press. :-)
Heads-up that I was regularly using LaTeX in computer science decades ago, we pronounced it “lay-tech” to rhyme with “paycheck”, rather than “law-tech” to rhyme with “aw heck”. But not sure at this point which pronunciation is correct, neither prescriptively nor descriptively.
It is indeed law-tech.
The physical problem was quite nice, but I was off an order of magnitude. Even at 240W it shouldn't take 2h, so I quickly found the error. 240W is not a lot for a coffee maker, and I assume most to be at least a kilowatt.
IIRC, a "60W bulb" actually consumes 60 KW hours in an hour. Someone please correct me if that's wrong.
Oooh love these parasocial hangouts :) I would like to encourage you to just do what you want and not listen to the pedants in the comments. They live sad lifes... And yey for ceramics! I used to do blacksmithing as a hobby and maybe the physics of ironworking would also be interesting as a topic? I am fascinated especially by the interplay of ancient crafts like pottery and ironworking and such with the modern understanding that science brings to it (and yet the craft often stays the same). If that means you will do a blacksmithing course: It's super fun and I swear you get used to the burns ;)
Eh, well I like paranormal hangouts? And I like sick burns.
I know that people judge content creators very harshly and all that but you really should not pay that much attention to them. I feel like you are giving them too much of your energy. I'm not saying that you are wrong in feeling that way!!! But you could be the best video maker out there and people would still find something to hate on. On another note, I wanted to say that your content is really beautiful and I truly love the way you explain science even if I already know a specific topic all too well. I like the fact that you talk about the science that goes into every day things like coffee (or glass, that is one of my favorite videos). I also liked the Einstein-Bose and scientific debate videos, very cool!!! I hope we get to watch more of these videos but at the same time make whatever it is that you wish, your stuff is cool regardless!! Take your time if youre busy w other stuff
DrC has learned about content creator practices from those who preceded her. It's sometimes a tricky business knowing when to disrespect a person in a group you've learned from.
Are you doing this as your primary income now? I ask because my memory is that you moved to Ohio for a computational physics job, but considering the time you spend on this (and vacationing?) I can't imagine you're doing a full-time job on top of all this anymore unless there's a big reveal of you being a cyborg on the horizon. If this is your primary income now, then I'm not sure how valuable any of our input can be; performance metrics become too important, and only you have the information to make informed decisions on those fronts. My inclination is to say that working on what excites you will show through in the final product (as will an absence of genuine interest), but maybe that's naive and untrue. I'd watch a coffee video, but I watch all your videos. Everyone here is literally paying you to keep making videos, so I don't imagine there would be many vocal naysayers. It also seems like maybe you're actually more concerned about harassing comments rather than performance? To be honest, I'm always surprised when you post screenshot of a 0-like yt comment on bsky. I get the impulse, but reading every comment like that can't be healthy. I might talk to whatever other creators you're in communication with and try to calibrate the degree with which you engage with comments against theirs; I suspect you're torturing yourself more than average (although I know some sickos like Big Joel are addicted to namesearching themselves). Anyway, I'm enjoying Moby-Dick and look forward to whatever you have in store for us. Also, in a fit of boredom and under the persuasion of The Algorithm, I rewatched your LotR video recently, at the end of which you mentioned 4 books you had read but wanted to re-read due to having been in a depressive episode at the time. Did you ever talk about those again? I can't recall, and skimming thumbnails on the second channel, nothing stood out to me. Hope you're doing well. You're killing it. Keep it up.
The red boxes are the notes app trying recognize the equations and failing to do so, you can tap the red box and it will tell you what the issue is. You can turn it off completely by tapping the three dots on top right -> Math -> Off
Angela - don’t worry about the comments. I can only speak for me but I don’t really care about the topic, what I care about is how passionate and authentic someone is when they deliver one. Add some of your more subtle (and not so subtle) dry humour, and you could talk about the world running out of usable sand for cement for days and I’d still love it.
Also, it’s funny with coffee and country. Very few use a drip filter where I am, we tend to use espresso machines now they are affordable. Too many use coffee pods still, but that is changing fast.
This is a deeply satisfying video for me, because I am a coffee "snob," and dip in and out of r/pourover, but the coffee-bros over there do such bad science with their "dialing in" of the perfect cup, with temps, ground size, roasting levels, pouring speed, extraction amounts, coffee to water ratio, mineral content (yes, I've started to re-mineralize distilled water after poo-pooing this for years), and how we're all "blind testing" at home (by ourselves, it can't be done properly, stop it), and I'm realizing I'm using too many quotation marks, but it's all terrible science, but also sort of fun in its silliness. Anyway, this is a great intersections of my rational and semi-rational interests, though I would absolutely love a full coffee video!
Illegitimi non carborundum I love coffee. And I love physics. I'm heartened to hear that you haven't started Moby Dick yet, because I haven't either. I've been trying to finish up my Dune series reread. It's fine. A very good friend of mine took a pottery class a couple of years ago, and she dove headfirst down the rabbit hole. She now has a pottery studio in her basement and has been studying glaze chemistry. It's a hobby with limitless potential for nerdery, if you're inclined that way.
If you make a series going through basic physics textbooks, I will be one of the two people who watches it all. I’m one of the people who never went through physics and I find every day physics fascinating but most of the people who tried to teach me math were unable to get the information into my brain in a way that it stuck. So far the way that you explained things seems to click pretty well. Thanks for explaining why Keurig “coffee” sucks. You are doing a good job with your videos. I always learn something.
If you are interested, there is a LaTeX alternative being actively worked on right now called https://typst.app/. I dont think journals really accept it yet but it's pleasant to write and can produce very nice documents. The main selling point is that it updates the preview instantly and automatically as you type because it is very fast
When it comes to visualizing the electric field, I would like to see you do what you just did in this video, which is to explain different ways of looking at the field, and explaining that they're different aspects of the same thing. I suspect that coming up with the perfect way of visualizing it is probably quite hard. I have a degree in engineering physics, but I specialized in computer science, because I was never very good at physics. I think a lot of things are just not explained very well, or at all, in university. Explaining stuff like that, that the photon _is_ the field, is really useful to someone like me.
Well, from the left, the right, from above or below, from in front or from behind, squinting or wearing sunglasses, are all different ways of looking at the field. Every angle reveals a different aspect of the same thing. And let's not forget Dr. Collier's lesson that electricity & magnetism are the same thing. Also, the electric & magnetic fields have the same content as the vector & scalar potentials. It's not confusing at all. P.S. There's also this effect that the stronger the field, the more photons will flit back & forth between two charged particles, but there's kind of a factor of 1/137 undercount. The other 136 photons are apparently unseen, AKA virtual. See that? Totally unconfusing, no?
I would love a video on coffee. Just do what you are gonna do. I'll watch it. And if I don't like it, well, I'm too lazy to say anything anyway.
oh and btw I would totally watch your lecture series/take an online class. I think more people would love that than you realize. Not to keep mentioning Sean Carroll, but his “Biggest Ideas in the Universe” series on YT felt a lot like that, and it was one of my favorite things I’ve ever watched, and there was clearly an audience for it! I’d love for more people like you two, who are VERY GOOD EDUCATORS, to put that sort of content into the world.
first, always whatever you do whenever you wanna do it, I’m here for. Maxwell can take 5 years, I’m just glad when you get things the way you want them bc no one else’s videos are like yours. btw, the glass one was banger! An all-time fav of mine, I just LOVE that part about the speciality guys who know everything - I’d love more videos on those kinds of people, or just a big video about people like that some day! As for how you describe a thing, I say do whatever feels right in the context of the moment and we’ll pick up on it! Even us layfolk, I’ve been listening to Sean Carroll for like 15 years, and when he talks about particles, I know he is not unaware of where that language is imprecise, and he’s also made clarifying distinctions about language and how he will.. well, essentially we’re talking about code-switching in a way, right? Changing your language based on your audience or the context. But I’m just here to say I do have faith the audience can go with the flow on that, and not to worry about us too much. Lastly, I would be so sad if there were things you really didn’t ever talk about which you would like to bc you were worried about the, to use your terms, Mann-Gell Amnesia or The “Igon” Value Problem, or you were worried we would be bored. Your videos are literally always fun and never boring, I would listen to you talk about anything. So rude people can kick rocks, please keeping chasing your own inspiration and following your instincts on how you make these things. I’m literally so excited hearing all the books and classes and pre-pro you are doing with all these irons in the fire. That’s what makes your videos so totally unique.
turns out that Angela's Kriptonite is Coffee beans.
Alec from Technology Connections! lol, great shout-out. And great delivery, I did lol! Aside: I get your point about recording any entire series of lectures. I immediately think of like the MIT online stuff (which IIRC was originally not a YouTube thing at all)... and the various online Freeman videos. But let's not go there ;-) -- your lectures would be good! But yeah short clips like this right here, I think, are a lot more enjoyable to watch. Hey! Maybe you could do this recurring, like every 3 or 6 months, and welcome patreons to submit potential problems (e.g. referencing a book you did here) -- and we can all vote on like a top ten that struck you as interesting? Idle thoughts ...
PS The Alex TC reference is particularly spot-on right now, after his recent 70min ceiling fan deep dive...
I find water at boiling temp poured into my coffee grounds makes my coffee bitter. A temperature between 185-195F makes a much more satisfying flavor for me. This is water poured into 2 about tablespoons of grounds in a suspended infuser basket on a coffee cup and left for about 5 minutes. Apologies for imperial measurement, imprecise quantities and using volume instead of weight. All of those things are fine at 5am except for boiling water :)
have you tried doing pourovers using boiling water? In my personal experience, i find infuser baskets release too much bitterness and too many of the coffee's oils into my drink. I like the water to hit the fresh coffee grounds, allow the water to bloom the coffee, then continue to pour my desired amount of water (but not having the water sit in the grounds for more than a moment). I prefer a light roast and fruitier notes of coffee (like a Guatemalan or one of those amazing new co-Ferment coffee roasts).
I would be happy to see a video on LaTeX :)
I was happy, yes. Many people didn't fully agree with her opinion. I don't disagree with them. But I do often use a tool I don't like. I do like LaTeX, don't get me wrong there. But other tools can also be good.
I am envisioning the coffee equivalent of Faraday’s famous lecture, The Chemical History of a Candle. You could also throw in commerce, politics, or whatever the heck that sparkling brain of yours wants to include. It will be unique.
I'd very much like to hear about how electric fields really work, because I only have an undergraduate degree in Physics and all I remember is the field being the potential at various places, like a map. I have no idea how "the photon is the field". It sounds really neat.
Hint: Easiest way to think about the field is that the electron's charge polarizes the empty space around it. So, what the "field" is, essentially, is the polarization of virtual photons.
I legitimately didn't know that about the Keurig, I just thought it was designed to be more convenient at the cost of generating a lot of waste
Hell yeah Royal Farms used to have the same kind of coffee array and some of them were actually not bad at all. I don't know if they still do. Haven't been back to the US in 4 years.
1. We're all part of the problem. 2. I love coffee. I make it 2 ways, currently. The amount, grind & type of the coffee I use are all different in the 2 cases. One, I boil water in an electric kettle & pour it over Colombian drip grind in a permanent filter. I have to do it in tranches: Pour a bit, wait for it to drip thru, pour a bit more, repeat until the mug's full. Two, 1tsp drip grind, 1 tbsp dark roast beans (French roast, Kirkland espresso blend, or Peets Dickason). I've recently doubled my electric spice grinder grinding time from 10s to 20s. I also have a manual grinder that does really well, but takes longer & more effort. I make 2cups of Americano by pouring 1cup cold tap water into a thermos, add my sweetener, another 1cup into a moka pot, put the grounds into the receptacle, screw shut, place on hotplate (I'm making it in the bathroom). water boils, forcing steam up thru the grounds, condensing into the upper catch tank. The pressure inside the pot as the steam goes up thru the grounds, it seems obvious to me, is higher than ambient air pressure. Pour the approx 1cup of brew into thermos & shake. I can chug bc not all of the water was boiled. The latter is comparable effort, takes a bit longer, & the coffee is noticeably tastier. Not that I don't like my drip mug. On occasion, I may drive thru a Starbucks, their Americano differs from mine & is also good. I like Black Bear Diner's cold brew, so I'm also making my own sometimes. Heat & non-ambient pressure are certainly not involved. 3. Learning physics from an experienced theoretical physicist is much more valuable than learning it from an intro class heavily dependent on a textbook. The Feynman's Lectures, no matter who's the real author, are excellent supplemental reading. Even so, Lenny's teaching was priceless by comparison. Doing the problems is important, but hardly substitute for grappling with experiments IRL. Even labs don't capture the not knowing what's gonna happen element of breaking new ground IRL.
Your experience of watching this video, specifically the coffee discussion from 08:00 to 25:00, will be sharply enhanced if you watch it at caffeine-buzzed 1.5x speed.
I'm sure you hear this all the time, but so what: I enjoy every video you make, sometimes because I learn so much (it's been many decades since I took physics), but just as often because you are simply so entertaining and lovable!
I don't love my teachers bc I don't know them well enough to know what I'd still think if I did know them better. They tell us what they're comfortable with. Anything else in their lives or personality are outside the scope of the class; ie, none of our business. Unless our loving them is explicitly a goal of theirs, my assumption has to be that it isn't the goal of a teacher-student mode of interaction. I do know that Dr C has spoken out against parasocial interactions with her channel's audience.
First step is running white vinegar through the coffee maker. It's probably mineral scale.
3am diner coffee...
I would love a coffee video! I'm sure this in your research list but I've heard good things about the book The Physics of Filter Coffee: https://a.co/d/05UDt9RH
The coffee video would be great. I think there's a bit of a bell curve meme where a lot of "snobs" exist in the middle, obsessing over gear/roast/fermentation/terroir and, being the loud majority, they silence a lot of the conversation around crop/human/economic factors. From how you're talking in this video, you're already there it seems. There is a population of people who value the producers (and not as a marketing tool) and understand good produce is the first and most important step, worth putting money into before gadgets and exotic processing. I think that population is largely disillusioned with the industry but still wants to geek out where sensible. You'd fit right in there it seems. I will be the snob and say better/consistent measurements are helpful ;) I use a Flair lever at home and +/- 1 gram of beans on 17-19 grams can be notable, as are individual ticks on my hand grinder. Though the variability of any random shot is comparable to those changes too... Also check out Lucia Solis podcast and maybe youtube (I've not watched any) for more talk about the producer/human/crop/economic side of things. The podcast is fantastic.
"— Why would I take a pottery class for a YouT–" because the videos you make are exceptional!!
I don't drink coffee. It doesn't matter whether I get a fancy cup of coffee or a shitty one, it all tastes the same to me. It's just bitter. I do enjoy tea and I absolutely can tell different varieties apart, so it's not like my tongue is broken. But no coffee for me. But I do enjoy listening to people talk about it. :-)
haha - you could do the coffee video as part of the Maxwell video: E&M plus thermodynamics! And there's a "good to the last drop" joke in there somewhere too. I'm mostly made of coffee - I'll even drink the bunn-o-matic gas station coffee that's been overcooking for hours if that's all there is, but I also fix espresso machines for fun and because I'm too cheap to pay full price for one. For better espresso you really just need a better grinder (the only thing that most of r/espresso gets right. I think half of them don't even like coffee). You can also make a really good pot of drip with a $5 #6 cone filter, paper filters that will biodegrade in the garden, a thermal carafe, and a kettle. Or just one cup with the $3 #2 plastic filter cone. It kills me that the hipsters made pourover into an expensive delicacy.
smart toaster jump-scare
"WiFi is out so my toaster doesn't recognize my bread and keeps erroring out"
Naive question from a cabinetmaker. If "you can't have a photon description and a vector potential description at the same time", what if you divide up the project? Main video, the vector potential version, credits roll, there's still forty minutes of the video, and then you do the photon version of episode 1, etc. If it can't be described at the same time, maybe don't describe it at the same time. As for writing structure for how to break up the episodes, given the challenges you've expressed about vector potentials vs photons, I'd strongly suggest that it's structured on the physics that you end up wanting to describe, and hang the story that's pertinent on that skeleton as much as possible. Or some such. It sounds like you need to make a structure decision first in any case. The structure needs to make it easier for you. I hope that stating the obvious like this helps... "But what do I know? I'm a bear! I suck the heads off fish!"
watching your autistic brain run free is such a fascinating joy to behold. I would also so watch you teach a physics course online. But then Im retired so have time to spare. thanks for such entertaining and educational stuff.
this a weird (rude?) comment. I am not autistic and I am not sure people with autism would appreciate being labeled this way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j4Q_YBRJEI ah, but for the longest time, cheap and effective coffee makers have used the same resistor to boil the water and keep the pot warm. As for the larger question, stay the course, do it your way, the way you want to. I don't think you should read so many youtube comments. All humans have a tendency to notice the haters more. You're making good videos, it's fine, it's FINE.
Hey Angela! Thanks for the video, it was a bit all over the place, but in a good way. You mentioned your worries about your video output. But IMO you're doing a great job in both quantity and quality, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Just create stuff you like and I'm sure people will watch it. Also, I recognized the Moccamaster! Dutch engineering :D I used to make my coffee on an old one in my student days. That is also when I last used LaTeX, to write my thesis ~20 years ago. It was the best way to get math equations and citations/references on paper and make it look nice. Funny how they have that in common. Nothing fancy, just a way to consistently get excellent results and in the end that's what is most important. Anyways, looking forward to the Moby-Dick book club!
Not that it's a competition, but I worked for Don Knuth in the early days of the TeX project. It's no big deal, but it is a sign that I lived. I was a student. He did a starter app for a printer (today I'd call this "firmware"). He had concocted a traffic-based scheduler to make preparations ahead of time when there was enough time to finish off a chunk of print data & get it out of the task queue before the next time one of the motors needed the CPU's attention. I caught on fast, and Knuth said he was impressed. Heh. It was really nothing, but it sticks out in my memory.
If you, like me, thought that was way too long to boil water it’s because the Amps are probably lower in the problem than in real life. I did the math and my electric kettle draws 12.5 Amps not 2.
I was thinking it was a PEBCAC issue. The Reddit poster probably constantly falls asleep or is absent minded (hence the not getting back to the post). Also, the need for coffee backs this up. Plus, once the first cold cup of coffee is found out it probably gets dumped down the drain. At that point the sleepyness/lack of focus ramps up. The coffee maker puts on another batch and yet again forgets what time the brew started and wanders around only to arrive back an hour later to discover the coffee is cold again.
Not July. :) Also, the problem as-is does not have a defined answer. Hear me out: 1a. Is the 120V AC or DC? 1b. If AC, is it 120Vpp or 120Vrms? 2. The tf is undefined in the text of the problem. What is the altitude above sea level where the experiment is done? The boiling point of water changes with that. Yes you can assume it's done at sea level, but that's not explicitly defined. If you do the experiment in Denver or in Lhasa, the result will be different. Nitpicking? I don't think so. It's a real world problem, and requires real world parameters to solve. :)
Correct. The intro level homework is an implied spherical cow version of the problem. Eg, Rob Spekkens works at Perimeter. They don't do experiments there. Rob is a physicist. To do his job the way he correctly believes he should, he has to go down the road to a place where they do experiments. In other news, David Albert "debates" Jacob Barandes in a recent video wherein Albert demands his spherical cow be necessary & sufficient & in essence complete. He has become a committed philosopher. Barandes is a physicist & too young & fresh to have made the transition. IOW he's operating as a philosopher bc physics has foolishly bought into a fallacy that foundations of QM isn't physics, thereby relegating theories of what's going on under the hood to philosophizing. That's bad bc while correct that physics is about getting right answers, it's also empirical science, & that's a mixture of doing something, getting raw data, the quiet part there being that raw data is inherently anecdotal, & a combination of data science (insufficient) & theory are both necessary to do data analysis converting a collection of anecdotes (clues) into data. It has implications for theory, & thereby theories encapsulate past empirical evidence. In short, a theory is a prediction machine. But... a theory that's so shallow that it can only retrodict past experiments falls short, bc good theories predict future experiments. So the "shut up & calculate" metaphysics neglects a most important facet of empiricism. IMO theory physicists aren't rigorous in their math bc they have the "crutch" of operating in the real world to protect them, & they're forced to go beyond toy models bc their goal is to align with the real world. So foundations done properly needs to be the work of the theoretical physicist, not by philosophizers & not by pure math-ers. While I both love & respect both of the latter, the physics person enjoys both an easier job & a more useful product. I mean, insisting Jacob's theory be held up in the light of the gargantuan scope of the domain of "all of existence" is absolutely not in the spirit of physics. My example is in converting a Lagrangian to a Hamiltonion by the most convenient technique, a certain amount of rigor is needed, which is to say some rigor (attention to detail) should be in mind. The domains of applicability of Lagrangians & Hamiltonians are not identical. That is, in the math, a Lagrangian function needs to be convex to turn it directly into its equivalent Hamiltonian. I'm saying in essence that both math & philosophy impinge on the physics. But the role of the physicist is central in the same way that firmware in an embedded system is. You want a firmware type to do the initial troubleshooting of any problem that might be hardware or maybe some servo algorithm, to zero in on probable causes. In short, IMO the very sharp & pedagogically astute David embarrassed himself, making Jacob look like a genius. Which they both are in a way, & at the same time, they are both just folks. Jacob's stance of one foot in each camp is the clear winner. tl;dr "Empirical" = forensic. Good physics theories are never shaped entirely by their underlying reality. They are constrained by evidence, so they always reflect the available evidence. We never really have a clear picture of whatever reality may underlie, because the latter is simply never in evidence. Politics ain't beanball, likewise physics has to get past spherical cows, eventually.
As a tea person, this is completely alien to me. I mean, fascinating discussion. ETA: let me elaborate that one of the places I worked at had Keurig-like machine that also did Keurig-style tea and it was just so vile. I only used the boiling water function. Also, looking forward to the ceramics video (unfortunately my ceramist friend can't ship to the US anymore due to the tariff stuff).
I'd be one of the two :-D
Yes it's July