🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

"89 years have passed since Thomas Parnell (...) wanted to demonstrate to the students the liquid nature of pitch. When it is cold, this material is so hard it could be hammered; nonetheless it is still a liquid. Now, to show that a material is liquid, there is nothing better to pour it into a funnel to see it drip. In fact, the pitch really does that: however, a little slower than the liquids we are used to. Today those students (who in the meantime we presume graduated, besides those as dense as the pitch) have seen just 8 drops falling, with the patient yet incessant rate of a drop every six-twelve years.
Mainstone took charge of the experiment on his 2nd day of work, in 1961, and today still waits to see his first drop fall: the poor man was never present when it happened.
Unfortunately, even if a drop takes a few lustra to form, it only takes 1/10 of a second to fall - 3 billions times less than what it takes to become a drop. The probability of catching the moment in which the drop falls are quite low, especially if you think that people have other things to do - sleeping, taking a shower, combing their hair and go out to dinner with their friends, presumably laughing if some of them complains of how boring their job is.
Thinking he was clever, in the '90s Mainstone installed a webcam in front of the funnel, to record all day and night and finally assist to the moment a drop falls, if not live, at least on streaming.
But destiny had been twice as cruel with this man.
First, causing a malfunction to the camera exactly that night in 2000 in which the drop number 8 met its fate and fell from the exit of the funnel. Then, allowing a camera, at last, to record the moment a drop succumbed to the law of gravity, and eventually fell.
But not in Brisbane.
Instead, exactly on the other side of the globe: in Oxford, where in 1944 an analogous experiment to the Australian one was set up.
The 70-years-old Mainstone, however, does not surrender; he has already found among his colleagues of Queensland someone who, after his death, will keep following the experiment."

- Marco Malvaldi, "L'infinito tra parentesi"

Translation by me, because apparently this book has not been translated in English so I apologize for any eventual mistake. It's 1:23AM, I'm tired but I truly wanted to share this piece from a book I'm loving. I can't wait to finish it so I can write a decent review. It's truly a pity that we don't seem to have an English version of this book.

#sciencecommunication #scicom #marcomalvaldi #malvaldi #book #bookclub #chemistry #physics #reading

@dogs

A shout out to the two animals I rescued the last few years angel (the pupper) and mouse (the kittums). Both passed but they were loved at the end!

#cats #cat #dog #puppers #animalWelfare

Which One

#caturday

@freemo at well as downloading and playing with #obspy, which is highly recommended, you can see professionally produced versions of this plot, using more seismometers at #iris here: http://ds.iris.edu/spud/eventplot/20633642 and lots of further information from them here: http://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/tools/event/. My plot uses citizen science data collected from many private #raspishake seismometers across the globe.

There's only one kind of #NFTs we do here on the #Fediverse

@freemo I think Snape was just practicing traversing the ring of integers modulo 2 😂

@freemo - Greetings! I’m very glad to have stumbled on this instance as there were a lot of choices. You have a great community here and it’s technology/science orientation will be an awesome home for me! Thank you for your support! I’m looking forward to interacting with everyone. Yes, let’s chat sometime! I see your interests align with mine, particularly in astrophotography. I’m excited to learn about your setups and experiences! See you around the ‘verse!

And for people who want to use crosspost between Twitter and Mastodon automatically, I recommend Moa!

https://moa.party

Hi, an #introduction, my name is Mark, I am a #computer #science #teacher with a background in #geoscience. I am interested in #computing #education and #seismology. I program in #python & #vba. I run two #raspberryshake seismometers and tinker with #raspberrypi #pico & #arduino microcontroller boards.

Section from today's M7.3 earthquake in the Tonga region at 2022-11-11 10:48:45UTC recorded on the worldwide #raspishake
network. See: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000ip0l/executive. Uses #obspy and #matplotlib.

By way of #introduction, I am professor of #DigitalHumanities at the University of #Lausanne (#UNIL), #Switzerland.

I studied #ComputationalLinguistics and did a PhD in #ComputerScience on #ELearning. But these days my main research interest is #theory, #methodology and #epistemology of digital humanities.

Current research project (funded by @snsf_ch): Towards Computational Historiographical Modeling: Corpora and Concepts (http://dynalabs.de/mxp/research/2021-snsf)

#introduction time I suppose. Name is Carl, but I go by scout basically everywhere. I am from Arkansas. I game a lot, do IT for a living, and work on cars and electronics projects for fun. My family enjoys camping and we are dog people. Here to try something new. Not enjoying social media elsewhere.

Let me introduce myself! My name is Ilenna Jones, I am a computational neuroscientist with keen interest on how dendrites contribute to a singular neuron's ability to compute functions and learn tasks. I build biophysical models of neurons in #pytorch and use #deeplearning principles to investigate how #neuron models can learn and compute given their biologically realistic constraints.

I'm looking for postdocs right now! Feel free to connect if you're looking for someone like me!

I'm very interested in helping other students find resources and guidance as they consider science and #neuroscience in general. Feel free to connect if you're looking for advice/perspectives!

#computationalneuroscience #theoreticalneuroscience #neuroscience #neuralcomputation #learning #modeling #BlackInNeuro #FirstGen #Questbridge

ilenna.com

@PhDMarie Please tell me you've seen this:

https://youtu.be/IS2KQ46Kf84

Ok, it's clear I need a way better #introduction post.

Hi, I'm Isaac. #wisconsin born and raised and still living in this wonderful state (just now on the opposite side of it). As a lover of all seasons, this is definitely home.

I grew up on a dairy farm and migrated away due to the draw of computers and getting a degree. I work as a lead systems and software engineer; which lets me enjoy the hobby of collecting hobbies. I am most definitely found being busy. I spend copious amounts of time #cycling, mostly riding and racing #MTB but also enjoying time on the road bike and commuting by bike to work when possible. I also coach middle/high schoool MTB racing and have spent several years on the board of our local MTB advocacy group.

I enjoy the outdoors and spend a lot of time #camping in our #nationalparks and other spaces; towing a little Aliner classic camper around the country and enjoying it all with my wife and son. I enjoy hunting (no, I'm not a gun nut), fishing and hiking. I spend too much on #photography equipment and not having enough time to use it; and can't wait until retirement so I can shoot more. #birds are one of my favorite subjects. If we're not enjoying our wild spaces, we're donating to orgs to help preserve them.

I'm always tinkering and #making things; my upbringing (poor farm kid) allowed me to learn to be rather handy and have the ability to make all kinds of stuff. Some days I'd much rather be running my welder than a computer.

In the late winter and early spring you can find me making #maplesyrup from ~100 taps on equipment I've built. My dad taught me the art and science of it and now my son gets to learn and we have a lot of fun.

And, I enjoy #rocketry. Low, mid and now high power - but I'm only L1 high power certified so far. It allows me to make stuff. I enjoy scratch building immensely. It's also yet another reason to be #outside and spend some fun time with my son.

That's me in a very condensed version. Glad to be here.