The women all do the same for the men. Because the reasons one person finds another attractive is often mysterious, Gale and Shapley selected each person's ranking of potential mates at random. As a result, no two rankings were alike and one person's top choice would likely be farther down on any other person's list. Once everyone has their ranked list, the marriage game begins. Probably because the paper was written way back in , pairings among men and women occur when a man proposes and a woman accepts.
To begin with, the first man proposes marriage to the woman at the top of his list. Because it's early in the game and this is the only marriage proposal the woman has gotten, she accepts remember, it's just a simple model. Once the first pairing is out of the way, the second man proposes to the top woman on his list. Assuming she's not engaged to the first man, she accepts. The game continues with each man in turn proposing to women in the order that he ranked them. As he goes down the list, a woman will accept his proposal if she is either unattached or engaged to a man who she ranks lower than him.
Gale and Shapley found that there are always stable solutions to the problem usually many solutions, in fact , regardless of the number of people involved. Mathematically speaking, that's a pretty interesting result. But it's not terribly useful or informative for real people like you and me. The truly fascinating revelation, in my opinion, is that something very surprising comes out of the study if you consider the relative satisfaction of men and women in the model. Specifically, if you look at the ranking of the women who the men ended up with, most men got engaged to a woman who was high on their list.
Women, on the other hand, were stuck with men who ranked relatively low on their lists. To put hard numbers on it, in an expanded a study of stable solutions to the problem when it included couples, men on average hooked up with women who ranked 8th on their respective lists, while women were engaged to men who ranked an average of 80th. That's a huge discrepancy.
Bear in mind that the only difference between men and women in the mathematical model is that men always proposed and women only accepted or rejected proposals. You'd be right to take all this with a grain of salt. Mating in real life is a much more complicated affair. Even a slight modification of the problem, such as adding the potential for degrees of inherent beauty among the men and women, can radically change the numbers of stable solutions and the average degree of satisfaction.
Some realistic details can actually make the problem so complex that it's essentially unsolvable. Nevertheless, in general when only men made proposals they were much better off than the women. The world has changed a lot since ' Back then, the Stable Marriage Problem didn't have a lot of relevance to the actual complexities of dating and mating. These days, there is one situation that pretty closely approximates the bare-bones problem that Gale and Shapley studied - online dating services. When you join Yahoo Personals or some other matching service, you post your profile and often your picture.
You then have a choice; you can sit and wait for invitations for dates usually, rather than marriage to come rolling in, or you can check out the profiles of other people and decide who you would like to contact. If you passively wait for someone to write to you, you mimic the behavior of the women in the Stable Marriage Problem. That is, you sit on your hands waiting for an email or an instant message from a suitor, then you check out their profile and either accept or reject them. If instead you take the initiative, you act like the men in the Stable Marriage Problem.
You perform some sort of ranking and choose the person you want to contact most from all the people who have posted profiles. If the first person you write to rejects you, you are forced to move farther down in your list of possibilities. According to the solutions of the Stable Marriage Problem, if you take the initiative in asking out the people you're most attracted to you will meet much more desirable people through online dating services than you would if you wait for someone to contact you.
This runs completely counter to rule number six of the top ten rules for women , which reads "When considering whether to use personal ads or other dating services, you should place the ad and let men respond to you. Most of the rules will help a woman play a man like a starving trout hooked on a line. But if you ignore rule six and take the initiative in luring a mate, you dramatically increase your odds of landing a trophy catch rather than some loser you'll want to heave back into the pond. Posted by Buzz Skyline at It turns out that my family has a tenuous connection to tabloid-headlining astronaut Lisa Nowak.
Apparently, she's a few years younger than my uncle and they went to middle school together in the suburbs of Maryland's upscale Montgomery County. According to my family's lore, one day my uncle was using crutches because of a leg injury, and Lisa kicked one crutch out from under him. He wasn't hurt as a result of the alleged assault, and knowing my uncle I'm pretty sure Lisa had a good reason to do it, assuming it's true over years of retelling, we tend to embellish and distort stories like this in my clan.
My uncle and Lisa met up again years later when they were both flying in the US Navy. I don't think she attacked or threatened him the second time they crossed paths, but it's possible that they were both wearing diapers my uncle has applied for astronaut slots on occasion, I'm guessing he might have had to wear the diapers as part of the flight testing process. The Lisa Nowak love triangle naturally led me to wonder about the status of sex in space. Lisa never flew on a shuttle mission with the astronaut who was the object of her affections, so it seems unlikely that she had a chance to do a zero-g tango.
There's more to it than simple titillation. President Bush has declared travel to Mars and the establishment of a lunar base to be official goals of our space program. In either case, humans will spend extended periods in low gravity environments. Sex is an important part of human interactions. Whether or not astronauts have attempted to make love during past missions, it's hard to imagine that at least some of them won't try it during excursions lasting months to years.
This raises several concerns. We don't know whether prophylactics will work properly in space. We can't be certain that we can conceive children in low-g. And if we can, we have no idea what effect it would have on the fetus. Is gravity necessary for fetal development, or will space children suffer birth defects? Assuming the lack of Earth-like gravity itself is not a problem, will we find ways to protect sperm, ova and fetuses, not to mention astronaut parents, from the increased levels of radiation in extraterrestrial environments?
Fortunately, Laura Woodmansee has taken time to investigate the latest wisdom on all these issues and more, and compiled them in a very tasteful book entitled Sex in Space.
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Woodmansee is a science journalist who specializes in covering the space program. Two of her other books, Women Astronauts and Women in Space: Cool Careers on the Final Frontier specifically focus on the female astronaut contingent. Although Sex in Space is a brief pages long, Woodmansee covers topics such as whether or not anyone has had sex in space the official answer is 'no, but the extensive hours that people have spent in space in the past 50 years and the numerous opportunities available to them suggests that there's a strong possibilty that the true answer is 'a few times' , how they might make love if given the chance, the effect of low-g on astronaut libidos, and the future potential for honeymoon trips to space.
Woodmanse includes several instructional diagrams of possible positions, and brings up issues I never thought of - like just how sloppy space sex is likely to be. But once I finished that portion and went back to read the rest of the book, I found there was plenty to learn about space sex that never would have crossed my mind without Woodmansee's guidance.
One thing that didn't surprise me in reading Woodmansee's book is that NASA has not conducted any official studies of sex between humans in space. Large, formal institutions don't deal with sex well, as Nowak's troubles seem to confirm. In my opinion, however, turning a blind eye to a natural and important part of human behavior is nothing short of irresponsible, particularly if they seriously mean to put people into space for long periods.
Even a simple mission to Mars and back is going to take years.
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During that time, it's highly likely that some astronauts will experiment with sex. Besides, sexual intimacy is probably a good way to maintain a happy and cohesive crew, provided the whole thing is carefully thought out. After all, they will likely spend most of their time cooped up in a craft about the size of a school bus at best.
The intrepid explorers are going to need all the stress relief they can get. Ideally, I think NASA administrators and scientists should read Woodmansee's book, and then get to work designing a comprehensive study of sex in space. At the very least, it would be a powerful rebuttal to the concerns of critics who feel that the International Space Station is a waste of time and money that could be better spent on unmanned and robotic missions.
Robots can do just about everything humans can do in space except help us to anticipate the various aspects of low-g sex and conception. Whether we like it or not, sex is going to be among the most important issues we will face if we are ever to truly to break free of Earth's gravitational bonds and move out into the vast galaxy that surrounds us. So NASA might as well face the facts and start investigating the science of sex is space. Posted by Buzz Skyline at 8: You probably get half of your genes from your mother and half from your father, but it's possible that you got some of your genes from someone - or something - else.
A new model proposed by Jeong-Man Park of Rice University in Houston and his colleague Michael Deem the same guy working on the HIV vaccination scheme I mentioned a few posts back suggests that much a significant portion of our DNA was donated by viruses and bacteria that infected our ancestors over the ages. Although the chances are slim, it's possible that some of your DNA comes from microbes that infected your mother or father. Park and Deem were led to the conclusion as they sought a theoretical answer to the question of why evolution proceeded fairly slowy for 2. The answer may be horizontal gene transfer HGT.
When it was first proposed as a mechanism for bacteria to trade chunks of DNA and effectively adapt without reproducing, the idea of HGT was very controversial. In fact, it seems to be at least as important for evolution as the passing on of mutations through sexual reproduction. Among other things, it appears that our immune systems arose from a gene transfer that must have occurred about million years ago. In addition, Deem and Jun Sun also of Rice University presented a paper at this week's APS March meeting that shows how genes consist of modular chunks that lead to various traits, rather than having the genetic information spread throughout your genes.
This modularity could be handy when it comes to swapping useful blocks of DNA. At the Physics of Sex blog, we're huge supporters of freedom and tolerance. But part of ensuring those prescious commodities includes protecting personal privacy. Recently, some airports have installed backscatter x-ray scanners that see through clothing , revealing weapons in the very rare case that someone tries sneaking something on board, while giving security staff a gander at the most intimate details of the bodies of terrorists and innocents alike.
You can see some examples in this Google image search. In addition, although the risk is low, you have to get at least a small x-ray dose to suffer the indignity. It is inherently unable to reveal personal details because it simply lacks resolution to produce a picture of anything smaller than several inches across. And yet it measures terahertz radiation a type of radiation that's somewhere between infrared light and radio waves that passes through all but the heaviest clothing, to provide enough detail to pick out the shapes of most knives, guns, and other dangerous stuff.
The shot on the right is a microbolometer image of the guy in the photo on the left. Looks like he's packin' some heat. The system will be built of detectors called microbolometers that heat up and change electrical properties when light radiation is focused on them. They were initially developed as parts of antennas for imaging faint radiation from space. A bolometer-based radio antenna measured echoes of the Big Bang that started the universe running, and earned a Nobel Prize for Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in Coincidentally, their antenna lacked resolution to produce pictures of small objects like Uranus, and Helisto's system lacks resolution to reveal details of your a.
I'm not going to say it, but I bet you can figure out what I was going to type. I'm not being modest, it's just too lousy a joke. Feel free to use it though, if you need a bad joke for the pub. Posted by Buzz Skyline at 6: I'm currently in Denver looking for Physics of Sex topics at the year's largest gathering of physicists, the American Physical Society's annual March meeting. He applies the math of physics including things like field theory to look at all kinds of things in biology and medicine.
One of the papers he presented at the conference analyzed the ways that HIV manages to evade the immune response. His research suggests an intriguing vaccination technique that could cope with the ability of HIV to rapidly evolve in the human body. One of the problems with viruses like HIV is that it mutates after infection and produces of several different virus strains.
Your body's immune system develops T-cells to fight each of the strains, but tends to focus on just one variety. That means you are pretty good at fending off only one strain, while the rest of the strains run amock. Deem's analysis of HIV suggests that once vaccines against the disease are developed, similar problems would arise if we tried to vaccinate against more than one strain at a time with a single shot containing a blend of vaccines - that is, only one of the vaccine varieties would take effect.
In order to counteract the problem, Deem proposes that future HIV vaccines should be given with several shots simultaneously injected at different locations around the body. The reason is that T-cells are produced in the lymph nodes located primarily near your joints behind your jaw, under your armpits, etc. Introducing different vaccines near different joints induces lymph nodes at one location to concentrate on fighting one particular viral strain, while leaving other strains to other lymph nodes. When HIV vaccines are finally developed, a person at risk might get a shot in each shoulder, one near each hip, and maybe even at the knees or elbows.
In the meantime, Deem thinks the scheme could help in the prevention of dengue fever. Apparently there are vaccines for several strains of dengue fever, but getting the shot for one strain prevents the others from taking effect, and can increase the risk of developing life-threatening dengue hemorrhagic fever. Deem is hoping to get some medical studies started to see of his multi-shot vaccination scheme works against dengue fever, and eventually against HIV. Listen to an excerpt from the interview with Tiffany. In case you missed it, Tiffany Granath of PlayBoy Radio was a hoot when she interviewed me this afternoon.
I'll post a few snippets of the show on my iTunes podcast in a day or two. We talked about everything from the reasons humans have sex to the the fluid mechanics of blood flow during arousal to the physics of the nervous system. Even better, we took a few moments to discuss a sexual technique that I call the Growler. If you listened in, you heard it first on Tiffany's Afternoon Advice. A Growler is a low frequency hummer.
If you've never heard of a hummer, it's just oral sex, except that the person performing it hums as they work. The extra vibration adds spice to the experience, whether you're doing to it a man or a woman. So, why is it a Growler? Your nerves transmit signals in a way that limits the vibrations you can feel in your hands, feet, genitals, and basically any other body part besides your ears, to a maximum of hertz or so.
That's about the pitch of the A note above middle C on the piano. To give a good hummer, you should stick to pitches somewhere lower on the scale. But as you lower your pitch, the sound turns into more of a purr or growl than a hum, hence the name "Growler. I can tell you that it feels great, and women seem to love getting growlers too perhaps even more than we guys do. Thanks to Tiffany for letting me explain it on her show! Posted by Buzz Skyline at 5: If someone had asked me a few months ago whether there could possibly be an objection to a vaccine that could prevent cancer in thousands of people each year, I would have confidently answered "Absolutely not.
Human papillomaviruses cause more than ten thousand cases of cervical cancers and four thousand deaths annually in the US alone. The numbers are much worse in developing countries where sex education is inadequate, screening is rare, and cancer treatments are prohibitively expensive. The new vaccine, which is being actively and clumsily marketed by Merck pharmaceuticals , appears to effectively prevent certain virus strains that are responsible for two thirds of HPV-related cancer cases. I'm sure that no one will be surprised to learn that I support HPV vaccinations.
Anything that extends life and reduces suffering gets my support. The fact that it also makes sex safer only strengthens my conviction. If you've been following the public debate, you've probably noticed that the connection to sex is one of the chief objections that some vocal opponents to the vaccine point to. I can't imagine that many viruses can distinguish between sex inside and outside of marriage. If your partner or husband or wife carries the virus, you may be exposed during sex.
The Physics Of Sex
I suppose a woman could search for a mate who claims to be a virgin, and then take him at his word. Or she could simply get the vaccine and protect herself. But the biggest issue I see is that vaccines like the Merck HPV vaccine don't just protect the individual, they protect the community as a whole. The benefits extend beyond vaccinated girls.
Of course, the greatest protection will go to the vaccinated girls. Abstinence-based objections to HPV vaccinations strike me as both unrealistic and antisocial. It's not just about you, Jill Stanek, it's about protecting society as a whole. Such reasoning is so absurd that I can't imagine where to start. Were Small Pox vaccinations a bad idea because they didn't also prevent polio?
Another, more frivolous and short sighted objection is the fact that Merck will make a bundle off of the vaccine. I don't trust the altruism of major corporations they're set up to make money, not save the world , and I certainly think we should look closely at any drug they provide.
That's why we have the FDA. But the lack of profit in vaccinations is one reason we are facing a potential crisis the next time a highly-contagious and virulent flu hits our shores. In this case, it looks as though an HPV vaccine will lead both to profits and improved societal health.
How can a compassionate person possibly object? Think of all the additional people who will be alive to hear the abstinence messages that folks like Stanek promote. You can call in toll free to ask questions at I'm looking forward to hearing from you on the air. A few months ago, I never would have imagined that physics could be a topic on channel like Playboy Radio. Now, I wonder if I could convince Physics World to include a centerfold model just to bring the whole thing full circle.
Even better, maybe we could raise enough of a public outcry to get science journalist Karen Hopkin to resurrect her Studmuffins of Science wall calendar. Science is probably the farthest thing from your mind as you make plans for Valentine's Day next week. But for this popular holiday dedicated to romance, it occurred to me that you should keep a few of the suggestions from earlier Physics of Sex posts in mind. Listen to the podcast with Text-to-Speech roboreaders Kate and Paul. If you're a regular reader, suggestion number 5 is a new one that you haven't seen here yet.
The rest are taken from earlier posts. Opt for a low fat dinner. Fat from your meal rapidly moves into your blood, making it sticky, thick and more difficult for your heart to pump around. Reduced blood flow dampens erectile vigor in the genitals of both men and women , and can reduce lubrication in women. So skip the foie gras on the 14th. See the entry Pumped Up and Ready for Love, part 2 for more information. Tune your bed and body for better sex. Different beds have different rhythms: For the most versatility, start with a firm bed and add pillows or thick comforters to slow things down.
If you want to take even more control of the pace, experiment with sexual positions. You will find that various positions often encourage distinct natural rhythms. See Sexual Rhythms for more details. Mix it up for sensory bliss. So mix things up in bed — change how and where you touch your lover to keep the sensory cells firing and the excitement levels up. See Sex and Sensibility, part 1 4. Keep going longer with sensory repetition.
If you or your lover suffer from premature ejaculation, you may be able to stave off the inevitable with the start-stop method. The method is essentially the opposite of the suggestion above. Just as the sensory cells and nerves in your scalp soon forget about the sunglasses stowed there, repeatedly taking a man to the brink of orgasm and stopping briefly makes the sensory system less responsive, and can help him last longer in bed.
See Sex and Sensibility, part 1 5. Hum a low pitched tune. The details of this suggestion will be in the upcoming post Sex and Sensibility, part2. If you still need to find a Valentine's Day date, try looking the physics way. I can't guarantee results, but researchers have found that some approaches are better than others when it comes to cruising for mates. Valentine's Day is a week away, so you still have one more weekend to try it out. Here's a bit of disquieting research news - the bacteria E. The revelation, which appears in a paper to be published Monday, February 5 in the journal Physical Review Letters , could explain how the bacteria manage to make their way far up the urinary tract to cause pyelonephritis , a particularly nasty kidney infection.
Yale University researchers Jane Hill, Jonathan McMurry and Hur Koser collaborated with Ozge Kalkanci of Bogazici University in Istanbul on the work, which they believe is the first observation of the natural tendency of bacteria to swim upstream. The researchers discovered the phenomenon by filming E.
The bacteria tended to swim to their left when viewed from above as they were washed downstream. Eventually, their leftward swimming caused them to move toward the side of the channel, where they promptly turned around to swim back upstream. You can watch the behavior yourself in a video supplement to the paper that the researchers recorded.
The crosshairs in the video highlight the path of one of the bacteria. It seems that the leftward swimming and upstream migration result from the mechanical design of the bacteria. Their cell bodies rotate clockwise in response to the torque of their twisting flagalla. The combination of motions cause E.
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The surprising result in the recent experiment, however, is that the motions also cause the bacteria to face upstream when they are submersed in a liquid flowing rapidly along a surface, in a manner that the researchers say is "much like a weather vane orienting into the wind. They even speculate that leaving a running hose in contact with the ground could lead to bacterial migrations out of the dirt and into the toilet tanks and water heater inside your house.
You might wonder what's the Physics of Sex connection to E. Well, if you consider where the largest population of E. You wouldn't want to give those nasty fellas a chance to swim up anyone's urethra, would you? Another Saturday night is just around the corner, and you're looking forward to cruising for action at the local hot spots.
How'd it work out for you last time? Did you hook up with your dream guy or gal, or did you strike out? Either way, it's possible that you could improve your odds by applying the physics published in the journal Physical Review Letters a few years ago. Or, if you're in a rush, Skip to the Tip in this week's post. In , a group of Spanish and Brazilian physicists looked at two types of search strategy that might be employed by such things as predators in search of prey, bees in search of flowers, or other creatures like you in search of mates.
They found that the searchers could dramatically improve their odds by tailoring their strategies depending on the distribution and motion of their targets. Theoretically, you should be able to improve your odds of finding that special someone as well. When you go out on the town looking for love, you have at least two options.
For one thing, you could pick a bar and settle in for the night, while doing your best to mingle as you work to attract or seduce someone. This type of search strategy is called a Brownian random walk. You just bounce around to search randomly for a love connection in some small area, such as the dancefloor of your favorite bar.
Eventually, you might drift to another nearby establishment. But in any case, you don't cover a lot of ground over the course of the night. Alternatively, you could bar hop - drop in on a bar, work the room, and then if there's nothing promising, dash to another bar to do it again. Bees often hunt for pollen rich flowers this way, and there's a good chance that you look for your lost keys with a similar search pattern.
You might check the dresser, skip down to look through the desk, pop over to the closet to check your coat, etc. Picture, for example, groups of eligible singles nestled at bars around town, with the bars far enough apart that you have to drive or walk a long way to get from one place to the next.
Don't worry. Be healthy.
The first scenario sounds a lot like the club scene in most major cities, and the second scenario is more like the flowing crowds at Carnival in Rio or Mardi Gras in New Orleans. But if you're at a big event with lots of available singles around, you should stay in one place. Unfortunately, things aren't always so easy. In fact, the faster your targets are moving the less you should stray from your barstool. In some cases it makes sense to evaluate the traffic flow and adjust your strategy throughout the course of the night.
That would've worked best for me when I was in college and I used to head with my buddies into town to meet girls. Early in the evenings, clusters of women would seem to be roaming everywhere. And we were roaming too, occasionally flirting as we were going along. In retrospect we could probably have met more women if we'd settled somewhere and waited for them to come to us.
But as the night progressed and the alcohol kicked in the girls tended to travel less, and many of them eventually took up residence at various bars. That would've been the time to zip from bar to bar looking to hook up. Of course, by then we were usually pretty tipsy too and probably in no shape to walk or drive very far. If I had it to do over again, I would spend the early part of the evening sipping mild drinks and sodas while attempting to charm the girls who were cruising through one of my favorite hangouts.
The physicists who ran the search simulation weren't specifically thinking of the singles scene, they also considered things like the relative sizes of searchers and targets. For small searchers on the prowl for large targets - like parasites hoping to latch onto passing horses - it's best to sit tight and wait. For humans, who are all roughly the same size from a physics point of view relative size isn't an issue. We only have to worry about the relative motion and the distribution of the people we'd like to meet.
So the next time you head out to the club scene to hook up, stop to take stock of the situation. If the kind of people you're after are bar hopping, you should stop in one establishment and mingle. And if you're going to Mardi Gras, pick a location, sit tight, and wait for the prospective mates to come to you.
Posted by Buzz Skyline at 3: The Science of Orgasm by Barry R.
SEX AND PHYSICS
Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores, and Beverly Whipple has got to be one of the best science books on sex that you can buy, if you can deal with wading hip deep through medical and biological research jargon. I learned something new on just about every page, and each fascinating factoid and phenomenon - from the horrific sexual behavior that can result from certain types of brain damage to the question of whether or not orgasms are good for your health - is backed up with citations from top research journals and institutes.
The authors themselves are responsible for a significant amount of the original research in the book. It seems pretty clear that that they know what they're taking about. Still, you have to be awfully determined to plow through passages like this, "The participation of the adrenal cortex as a source of steroids capable of maintaining sexual response in women after bilateral oophorectomy has often been suggested" page It can't hurt to have browsers open to Gray's Anatomy the medical text, not the TV show and Wikipedia as you make your way through the book, just to keep up with the lingo.
It's interesting that the publisher would choose cover art that resembles a plain brown wrapper, as if you're going to buy a copy to read under the covers while your mom thinks you're sleeping in. No matter how sexy the topic, doctor-speak is hardly a turn on. Although, I'm sure it works for someone. If you read nothing else in this book, I highly recommend the brief section addressing the biological function of the female orgasm pages I have never seen a more coherent and compelling argument that orgasms in women serve some vital, if only partially understood, purpose.
It's an excellent counterpoint to arguments claiming that orgasms are critical rewards to induce men to mate, but in women are only evolutionary accidents. I'm not going to go into details here, but basically the authors point out that women seem to have at least some specialized anatomy that lets them experience types of orgasms that have no male equivalent. The authors even invented a device to give women orgasms by stimulating only the cervix, which is an exclusively female body part.
The female-only orgasms can't be something left over from male anatomy, they conclude, if they can't exist in male bodies. I plan to explain things more fully in a future post, but if you can't wait and you think reading the Journal of the American Medical Association is a good way to pass the day, pick up a copy of The Science of Orgasm. If nothing else, it's a good addition to your sexual science reference shelf.
Theoretical physics – like sex, but with no need to experiment
If you're eagerly anticipating part 2 of Sex and Sensibility , we'll have that for you next week. In the meantime, we decided to send two of our writers, Buzz Skyline and Martica, into the field to do an experiment inspired by a portion of the Physics of Sex post Sexual Rhythms. Specifically, we wanted them to see what physics could tell us about the Select Comfort brand adjustable bed. We hoped they would learn enough to help you determine if it's the best bed for your love life.
You can listen to roboreader Heather interviewing Martica and Buzz in our latest podcast , or read the transcript below, to find out what if anything the Sleep Number bed has to offer for sex. Skip to the tip in this week's post, if you're in a rush. We want you to test out your bed and send us the data so that we can figure out, once and for all, what type of bed is best for sex. But don't do it for us. Do it for yourself. Do for the world. Do it for science. Welcome to the Physics of Sex podcast.
My name is Heather. If you've been listening to our past episodes, you know we usually give a little lecture about a fascinating aspect of physics, as it applies to your love life. But this week, we decided to try something different. We sent two of our writers into the field to do a few experiments on an unusual kind of bed, in order to find out how it might affect your sex life. Here to report on what they found out about the Select Comfort sleep number bed, are Martica. So guys, you ventured out to test a bed. Did you do what I think you must have done?
How'd you keep from being arrested? We actually just went and jumped on the bed. Well, we sat and bounced on the bed. OK, well tell us about the bed. You can change the amount of air inside the mattress. And they call it the firmness. So this is the bed Lindsay Wagner promotes on TV. How did you do the experiment? We sat on the bed and bounced up and down. We set it for different numbers and we took turns bouncing on it. Martica bounced on it a few times at different settings and I bounced on it at a few different settings, a few different sleep number settings, and the last time.
We sat next to each other and bounced up and down at the same time, which is actually really hard — but fun. What sort of results did you expect? So, what we thought would happen was we assumed the sleep number really was what you call firmness, which on a spring would basically be the spring constant. It would tell how strong the springs are. And that means that as you turned it up it should increase your resonance frequency- the frequency that you bounce on the bed. And as you turn it down, it should decrease your resonance frequency.
And so we started out with Martica on the bed, and what we found was no matter what sleep number we chose, she bounced at about the same rate. It was obviously the physics. And so we thought there must be something wrong. So I sat on the bed and tried it for several numbers and I also bounced at almost exactly the same rate every time. Yeah, I bounced slower than Martica did because I weigh about 50 pounds more. No matter whether the bed was really, really, really firm and full of air or really, really, really soft and the balloon was almost flat. Asked by a Swedish encyclopedia for a picture of him playing a drum, to paint a more "human" portrait of the physicist, his reply is legendary:.
Theoretical physics is a human endeavour, one of the higher developments of human beings—and this perpetual desire to prove that people who do it are human by showing that they do other things that a few other humans do like playing bongo drums is insulting to me. I am human enough to tell you to go to hell.
My favourite audience is young children. They are born theoretical physicists, insisting on repeatedly asking "why? I have been asked all varieties of questions from children, but not a single one has asked me what the purpose of learning about nature was. There are many educational agencies currently investigating how to instill children with a sense of curiosity, but I think the more accurate question is to ask why children lose their curiosity during their transition into adulthood. The next time I am asked by anyone what the purpose of theoretical physics is I will reply with the following: But theoretical physicists comprise the few atoms in the universe that know where they came from.
Nobel physics laureate Higgs 'overwhelmed' Update. Albert Einstein's celebrated genius may be underappreciated, according to a new book by Yale physicist A. The father of relativity theory deserves far more credit than he gets for his insights into quantum Belgian scientist Francois Englert said his happiness Tuesday at winning the Nobel Prize for Physics was tempered with regret that life-long colleague Robert Brout could not enjoy the plaudits too.
Time is real, the laws of physics can change and our universe could be involved in a cosmic natural selection process in which new universes are born from black holes, renowned physicist and author Lee Smolin said in a talk A timeline of particle physics up to Tuesday's Nobel nod for the theorists behind the Higgs boson.
A group of scientists at the University of Tokyo has recorded the largest magnetic field ever generated indoors—a whopping 1, tesla, as measured in the standard units of magnetic field strength. The electrical and mechanical responses of crystal materials, and the control of their coupled effect, form one of the central themes in material science.
They are vital to applications such as ultrasonic generators and non-volatile As a result of climate change, population growth, and rising expectations regarding quality of life, energy requirements for cooling processes are growing much faster worldwide than for heating.
Another problem that besets In a recent experiment at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, plasma electrons in the paths of intense laser light pulses were almost instantly accelerated close to the speed of light. Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Particles surf their own waves, reveal how microbes and cells move through human body September 17, Surf's up for microbes swimming beside red blood cells. Covert sensing of objects around a corner may soon become a reality.
Adjust slider to filter visible comments by rank. At least you managed to pile all your quackery into just 2 posts huh? But yeah, I'm often annoyed by theoretical physicists also. Then again, as an experimental physicist, I suppose that's just part of the territory. Well physicists are always trying to ketch a peek at nature naked.
No one has succeeded yet, so what would happen next is still a virgin field for experimentation. The old Greek story of Orion's fate at seeing Diana in the altogether may be instructive in this regard. The thing as a theoretical physicist is: You can be spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong more often that latter than the former. In the first case you'll go down in history - in the second case you'll just get passed by.
As an experimental physicist you're at least assured of getting SOME results that mix with reality and are worth entering in the annals of physics journals unless you're completely incompetent. Both types are needed. Without the guys and girls working on pure theory you sometimes don't even know what experiment to devise that could open up wholly new paradigms. Teech2, I'd guess that Feynman simply meant that for him, Physics deals with physical relationships in nature whereas Mathematics is a bit abstract in it's purist form.
In much the same way, sex has to do with relationships and masturbation is kind of abstraction Back in Feynman's day, nobody but Feynman talked about masturbation Well, going to the last line of the article: It's sort of like a physicist telling an ordinary person, "without the Higgs Field, you wouldn't exist.
Please explain how nonlife first turned into life. I must know this! The Higgs doesn't exist. The mass is an electric dipole moment. It seems to me that Mr. Jackson constructs a straw man which he then rails against — against his own evidence. He accuses all, except himself and a small set of others, of not paying proper homage to theoretical physics. Yet he cites that we are all born physicists who always have to know "why". He also cites research which has been paid for by universal public and private support — some of it massive like CERN, atomic research, and space exploration.
Science real and fiction is a big percentage popular publishing. He further claims that his is the only profession that must routinely justify its work. We all have to do that every day. But Stephen Hawking, for example, can speculate on multi-universes to explain the anthropic principle on the basis of — well? Nice little article Mike.