The Way of the Geophysicist.

A wonderful TED note on science communication¹:



You don't need to be a fabulous presenter.
You don't need to publish all your research in Nature.
You don't need to make it perfect.

Go out there, tell people about your fascination. Maybe start with a friend or your family. Their probably not great for for constructive criticism, but they are practice and they will give you confidence. Go out and partake in a competition like a Science Slam or Famelab. Maybe start a blog or send out tweets about your fascination.

This is not just for your audience. As Einstein put it:

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

I absolutely agree with this quote, as it is what I experienced very often, with myself and also with others.

Go out there, share what you know and love!
You know something and that something is beautiful, don't be selfish, share it with your audience.

Within the last days a couple of amazing physics videos have been passed along on Twitter. My personal favorites are the two I want to talk about now. They basically involve some sort of experiment with oscillation or wave-like motion, with a twist. But see the first video for yourself:

Coupled pendulums

Personally I find it amazing. 32 metronomes start out completely independent on a moving table and they gradually align!
First of all the choice of colors is very beautiful but has no effect on the experiment, however, the weight of the metronomes are approximately set to match the same speed. The weight on a metronome determines the vibration period by the inertia set on the lever. This or a multiple of the base inertia is necessary to make this experiment work.

Why do they line up?

The metronomes are on a moving table and therefore can be viewed as a coupled system. Every metronome exerts a force on the moving table and opposing forces cancel out. With 2^5 metronomes you can be certain that at some point of time some metronomes will exert a force into one direction that is stronger than the opposing force, slightly moving the table to that side. Now this is where the coupling really comes into effect. When the table moves the period of the pendulum in direction of the movement of the table will be reduced, forcing the pendulum to swing to the opposite direction faster. On the other side (literally) the pendulum motion will be elongated, extending the movement in that direction. So in this exact moment the metronomes started to align just a little bit. Of course in the very next moment a couple of the other metronomes might exert just a different force which makes the entire process quite complicated. However, if we wait long enough the resonance of these pendulums will cause the metronomes to line up. Amazing right?
Now take another look, they line up pretty quickly for such a bulk of different complicated forces influencing each other, however at 2:11 You see something interesting happening. Far on the right in the pink row, the second metronome from the front, is aligned, but exactly opposite to the other metronomes. You can hear, it's lined up by listening to the sound of the metronomes. This is quite interesting because it takes quite some time for the last one to line up and this is because the counterweight is in sync with the movement of the table. Eventually it will line up because  the metronomes are attenuated and once the metronome is just slightly getting out of sync the table movement will force the last metronome to line up.

Why do you care, you're a geophysicist?!

First of all, they're colorful and cool and those metronomes are pretty mesmerizing.
Those metronomes are reminding me a lot of geophones. The good ol' mechanic geophones work with a spring and a weight and hopefully some kind of attenuation. Those geophones are put on a moving "table" aka the ground and you measure the force exerted on them and every time a new movement comes in, the spring and weight in the geophone are affected again. Now I was talking about attenuation and there is a reason for it. Without attenuation the forces on the metronomes and the forces on the spring and weight would sometimes build up without any counterweight stopping the motion, which would result in a lot of broken geophones or quite some pendulums ripped off of metronomes.

Uncoupled pendulums

I told you there was a second awesome video. Well this is just beautiful. Fifteen weights on a string with linearly increasing length: Continue reading "Curse of a geophysicist: Those waves!"

Those of you who have been following this blog over the past months, know that I am working in a big company. In fact Schlumberger is so big, they have policies and trainings for everything. Yes, even one for lifting boxes in a safe way. Therefore, it probably doesn't surprise anyone that this company handling big, important, expensive data has certain policies for data protection. Just recently the worlds biggest oil company was subject to an attack²:

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Now why am I writing about this?

This might just as well be something you should be worried about.
Protecting your data doesn't just mean, protecting it from others, but also keeping it in a place that it doesn't get lost. Yeah, probably almost anyone of us had some accident were data loss happened. Some external hard drive crashed or got stolen, your phone got lost, or something happened to your Desktop PC. From this point on we can probably say, that our Desktop PC is the safest from all of these devices. They're not the most valuable item in your house and if a thief has the choice to either carry your customized high-end computer out of your apartment or some off-the-shelf flat screen, what's it gonna be?
Far more vulnerable for getting lost, stolen or destroyed are modern laptops, phones, external drives and tablet PCs. They're hyped and I myself am writing this article on a laptop in a train from Birmingham to London. There are even thieves specialized on theft of electronic equipment. I'm not trying to get you paranoid, but some actions might just help your valuable family photos be saved from vanishing.

This will be the starting point on a series of data protection in an age where security can barely hold pace with the demand of accessibility of data. Look at Dropbox for an instance. Dropbox is great for having your data everywhere, even your phone. But when it comes to security they have had a lot of issues where your data was accessible for anyone³, spammers got email-adresses of the users⁴ and passwords were leaked⁵. However Dropbox seems to learn and hire some specialists to get the security side up to standards.^{6 7} This will be the opportunity for you to take data security in your own hands, in small steps, so anyone can do it!
We will have some introductions to physically securing your data. But my main focus will be on the software and data part of this.
Yet again, I am no expert on this field. I do geophysics and I just happen to be a nerd that likes to play around with stuff. When I decrypt my fully encrypted dual boot laptop I always feel a bit like a nerdy James Bond. Maybe I can share some of this fascination with you.