That darned cat

It was a sunny day at the end of summer. The Professor and Lily were sitting in the shade, talking about all sorts of things, enjoying a refreshing cold drink.

Suddenly a cat came darting around the corner of the house. Followed by a euphoric, wildly barking, Spot. The couple careered across the lawn, under the fence and into the neighbouring farmer’s field.

“Do you think he’ll catch the poor thing?” asked the Professor.

“Never in a week of Sundays,” laughed Lily. “That old cat is far too cunning to get caught.”

The Professor thought for a moment before continuing.

“Have you heard of Schrödinger’s cat?”

“The what-dinger’s what?” responded Lily, as she had not.

“A famous scientist from some time ago,” continued the Professor.

“He was trying to explain how things work when you experiment on something really small, like the tiny particles that everything is made from.”

“The idea is that the measuring affects the outcome.”

“That’s where the cat comes in.”

“Imagine putting a cat in a sealed box together with a poison that may be released at any time, but you don’t know when. How can you tell if the cat is dead or alive?”

“You open… the box?” suggested Lily with some hesitation because she knew the Professor was fond of trickery.

“Exactly!” exclaimed the Professor. “Unless you open the box there is no way of knowing what state the cat is in.”

“Some people say that the cat is half alive and half dead until you open the box.”

“Schrödinger was arguing that this was a bit absurd.”

“It does sound stupid,” said Lily with emphasis. “What if the cat meows?”

“Make the box sound proof,” said the Professor.

“What if he scratches the inside of the box?” Lily was determined not to give up.

“Make sure the inside of the box is soft so he can’t scratch it,” suggested the Professor, also not prepared to lose the argument.

“Ah…” said Lily, deciding to try a different strategy, “… but the cat must be either dead or alive. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.”

The Professor was a great fan of logic, but this time he did not bite.

“Why does it have to make sense?” the asked. “Do you think that’s the way the world works? Surely there’s quite a lot of nonsense around?”

“Hmm,” decided Lily. “That’s funny and not funny at the same time.”

“Anyway,” she finished, “that hum-dinger guy wouldn’t have got away with it.”

“You’re not allowed to be cruel to animals.”

Just another short story to celebrate (commiserate?) the last few days of summer. Hope you enjoyed it!

A left-right turn

Trying to give our oldest daughter an easy way to remember the difference between left and right, I suggested the classic “The right hand is the one you write with”. Fortunately - for both of us, really - this works fine in our case. Of course, it is not generally true. The world of handwriting is divided between righties and lefties.

It’s quite interesting, this handedness of the world.

Strangely, there are not as many left-handers as right handed ones among us. But it has been noted that many of societies high fliers are left handed. A highly unscientific survey (don’t tell them I did this!) of my colleagues suggests that this is correct. There are too many lefties for comfort. And they seem awfully clever, as well. Although... might be on dodgy ground trying to argue that the office is a particular peak performance environment.

Perhaps the competitiveness of the left has something to do with the division of the brain. The left half is supposed to deal with logic, numbers, science and reasoning. The right is in charge of art, poetry and the artistic side in general. Clearly, the left siders will be too shrewd for the dreamy right siders. No surprise if they end up on top.

The left-right division cuts right through society.

Politics is neatly (well, maybe not “neatly”) divided into left and right. It’s not clear to me if this has anything to do with the different sides of the brain. Suspect not. It is difficult to argue to that the idealistic socialists on the left, insisting on fairness and an equal division of many things, are driven by hard logic. Similarly tricky to insist that the free market capitalists on the right, with their eagerness for cut-throat competition and arbitrarily large banker’s bonuses, are guided by aesthetics. Somehow, the left-right labels almost seem to be the wrong way around...

In many countries people drive on the right. In others they stay on the left. Some countries have switched from left to right in living memory. Not sure if they did it the other way round somewhere. In some places, like India, the rules seem to be happily disregarded... and people drive all over the place.

Some languages are written from left to right. I find this confusing, but this must be because I am conditioned to things being the other way around. Reading your own language backwards is certainly weird (if you think not, look back at the red button short story from a couple of weeks ago). Although, playing around with it a bit (selecting phrases carefully and breaking up the words differently) you can end up with something that sounds like a real language. Admittedly a weird one, a bit like Welsh.

Nature is right and left handed at a much deeper level, as well.

The idea is that things can come in two sibling forms that are similar yet different. They are mirrored in the same way as the human hands. Hold your right hand up in front of a mirror and you see your reflection’s left hand. In typical scientific fashion, there is a fancy word for this: chirality (from the Greek word for hand).

Some molecules in chemistry and biology show this kind of symmetry. Others don’t, their reflection looks identical to the original.

So there you go, from a simple way to remember which hand you write with to one of the key “symmetries” in nature.

It really didn’t work, though.

My daughter still can’t tell the difference. She only says “Which hand do I write with, Daddy?”. She might just be cheeky or... maybe I lost her with that chirality business.

The dancing shoes

Professor Kompressor was not a dancer. He was, in fact, quite severely rhythmically challenged. He could not even clap in time. This did not usually matter because he was an inventor not a ballroom performer.

It came as a shock to the Professor when Maud asked him to join her for a dinner in the village hall... followed by an evening of dancing.

It seemed inconceivable that this was happening.

But... Maud seemed so excited that he could not say no.

He would have to deal with it.

It was a tough nut to crack, and the Professor did not have much time so he had to crack on. The situation required invention, but what kind?

Movement was key. He needed to make sure the feet moved in a coordinated fashion without getting tangled up.

“The shoes!”

If he could get the shoes to guide the feet, then the rest of him could simply follow.

“A pair of carefully designed dancing shoes, that’s what I need,” the Professor decided. “Surely, that can’t be too difficult?”

The Professor had a lot of experience with robots and thinking machines, so the construction of the dancing shoes was indeed not very difficult. The main challenge involved the programming of the various dances. This required information about complicated steps and moves. The Professor did not have the first clue about such things. He had to look them up in a book, but this was not the kind of book he had in his library. He had to order one from the library in the village.

The night of the event he was dressed in his finest suit. Maud looked beautiful in a dark green dress. The village hall was packed with people as the band struck up the first tune.

“Shall we, Professor?” asked Maud.

The Professor was nervous but it was too late to back out. He took Maud by the hand. The band was playing a waltz. As the Professor tweaked the remote control he had hidden in his pocket, the shoes recognised the music and gently guided him across the floor.

It went swimmingly.

After a couple of tunes they stopped for a drink. Maud was surprised that the Professor was such an accomplished dancer.

When the music started again the Professor stuck his hand in his pocket to adjust he remote control. As he was fiddling with the dials a dancing couple bumped into him. He only lost balance for a moment but managed to drop the remote on the floor... and step on it.

All of a sudden, the shoes had a mind of their own.

The band was playing a tango...

... but the Professor was dancing a rumba. He dragged a frightened Maud across the floor, throwing her this way and that. She held on for dear life.

Moments later the shoes changed to something wild, possibly an African war dance. The Professor’s feet were drumming the floor, his arms were waving like windmills, people were clambering to get out of his way.

There was no stopping him.

At least not until the batteries ran out.

Television spectacles

Professor Kompressor enjoyed his television. After a long day of hard thinking and inventing he found it relaxing to sit in his comfortable chair and watch whatever happened to be on. The noise from the television brought life to the living room, which made the Professor feel less lonely. The repetitiveness of the frequent commercials had a hypnotic quality, which made the Professor sleepy. As a result, he often dozed off, lost the plot and ended up having to go to bed.

In reality the Professor liked the idea of the television more than the actual thing. He had often thought that someone ought to improve on the concept. Being an inventive person, he had even had a go at this himself, but the result had been less than perfect.

“Ideally,” thought the Professor, “you’d want to be able to watch your favourite programme wherever you are. Whenever it suits you.”

“A portable television would be the perfect solution,” he decided.

“The problem is that it would be too bulky,” he considered after giving his own television set a hard stare.

“One would need to make the design a lot more economical. Perhaps by making the screen smaller?”

“You could always get the same effect by watching it from close up.”

“I guess there’s a limit, though... If you get it too close to your face you might scratch your glasses.”

“The glasses!” he exclaimed. “That’s absolutely brilliant! Why not make the glasses themselves into the television?”

He decided that this was, indeed, a fine idea so started working on it immediately. It turned out to be very tricky to fit all the required electronics into a lightweight frame similar to that of his glasses. It was a real mini-challenge and the Professor had to work away under a microscope for quite some time before he was successful.

“These must be the most spectacular spectacles ever,” smiled the Professor as he was getting ready to test his invention.

He switched on the tiny television by tapping his right nostril once. A scene came to life in front of his eyes, blocking out the view of the inventing studio. The sound came clearly through tiny speakers he had installed in the frames. The effect was sensational. It felt incredibly real.

He changed the channel by tapping his left nostril. Deafening music blasted through the speakers. After a moment of panic, the Professor turned the volume down by pulling on his left earlobe.

After a bit of tapping and pulling he settled on an interesting documentary about African wildlife.

The Professor decided that a nice cup of tea, three lumps of sugar and a splash of milk, would make him enjoy the experience even more.

Caught up in the action on the screen, he walked off towards the kitchen... and crashed into the doorframe.

“Ouch,” he groaned as he checked if his nose was still there, “maybe the normal television is better after all?”