A Stat Mech Story

[RAGORDON2010]

The other day, my wife and I visited a coffee house near the University of Alabama campus.  As we were leaving, I noticed a young coed slowly and very apprehensively turning over the cover page of a textbook.  I saw that the title of the book was “Statistical Mechanics”.

“Oh”, I exclaimed. “they’re still teaching that!”  The young coed immediately looked up at me with an expression bordering on total fear.  I have no idea what she was thinking, but I quickly said “That was my favorite subject!  Good for you!”

Her face exploded in one big smile, ear to ear.

So, physics isn’t so hard.  It just takes a little encouragement to bite into it.

 

[swansont]

My stat mech story: I'm not a solid-state physicist, so I didn't enjoy it much, but it was a required course (The book I had was...not good. And it was stolen from my office part way through the semester, so I had to buy another copy. But a professor wanted to buy it from me a year or so later. It may be the only physics textbook I ever sold). A friend attending a different grad school was in a similar situation.

A friend of the both of ours was writing an episode of Star Trek: TNG and we helped a little with the plot line when we were together at vacation time. As an acknowledgement, he mentioned statistical mechanics in the dialogue and also injured Wesley Crusher

Quote

Since Gil and I were both complaining about our statistical mechanics classes, Naren’s shout-out to us was to mention how the deceased cadet (Josh) had helped Wesley with his stat-mech. Working our names into a story never happened (“Tom” and “Gil” being too mundane for the future).

http://blogs.scienceforums.net/swansont/archives/7210

 

 

[CharonY]

So Tom is too mundane but Michael, Joseph, Janice, Christine, Pavel, Bev, Wes, Amanda and Carol ain't? I think that should be a pointed question at the next convention.

[John Cuthber]

I thought this was everybody's favourite statistical mechanics  story...
An exam question
"Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or Endothermic (absorbs heat)?"
 

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you." and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze."

Obviously, I pinched that from the web.
:-)

[MigL]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Working our names into a story never happened (“Tom” and “Gil” being too mundane for the future).

Wasn't the cadet who led the team on the dangerous maneuver that killed one of the other cadets, and who afterwards wanted to cover it up, 'Tom' Paris ?
Who was later spun-off into Star Trek : Voyager.

Maybe it wasn't the name  .

 

[CharonY]

Gosh, I forgot Voyager. But according to my wife TNG is what counts.

[swansont]

26 minutes ago, MigL said:

Wasn't the cadet who led the team on the dangerous maneuver that killed one of the other cadets, and who afterwards wanted to cover it up, 'Tom' Paris ?
Who was later spun-off into Star Trek : Voyager.

Maybe it wasn't the name  .

 

Yes, I think it was the same actor.

He was supposed to give the speech at the end of The First Duty where he "fell on his sword" for his team at the end of the show, but they ended up giving those lines to Patrick Stewart, because that's how it works.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

So Tom is too mundane but Michael, Joseph, Janice, Christine, Pavel, Bev, Wes, Amanda and Carol ain't? I think that should be a pointed question at the next convention.

Apparently, at least for my friend (who had a planet named after him for another episode - "Narendra-3"). There are several names in TNG I recognize from some people I know. At least one is a name, said backwards.

I also used to get advance word on upcoming plots.

Spoiler

(e.g. "This spring there's an episode where Picard dies" but of course he gets resurrected by Q)

 

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

I thought this was everybody's favourite statistical mechanics  story...
An exam question

Noteworthy because it does not require assuming cows are spherical