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About Bad Astronomy
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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January 13th, 2009 at 9:23 am
About two feet?
January 13th, 2009 at 9:23 am
It took me a few minutes to figure out what the captionless photo was about, but then I saw the gaps in the snow on top of the fence. Then I got the title’s meaning.
So, what is the wavelength of the North American gray squirrel?
January 13th, 2009 at 9:25 am
So what’s the nutquist frequency?
January 13th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Haha! That was funny, got me staring for a few seconds looking for some weird squirrel :’)
January 13th, 2009 at 9:28 am
I embiggened the pic, but still could not see… then I read Ken B’s post! It all makes sense now! I used to have a dog, and there was one particular squirrel that would walk across the top of the fence, stop, then start chattering at the dog. The dog would go crazy..
January 13th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Looks more like an absorption spectrum to me. Which end of the fence is red?
January 13th, 2009 at 9:33 am
I don’t know what the wavelength of the North American gray squirrel is, but it must be low – their frequency is very high.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:36 am
At first I was going to say it was a red squirrel, but the wavelength is way too long. With a 2-foot wavelength, let’s see, that’s about 2/3 of a meter, so that gives you, what, about a 50MHz frequency? But that’s not even in the visible spectrum, that’s up in the ham radio range…
It wasn’t a squirrel, it was a pig!
January 13th, 2009 at 9:37 am
“Which end of the fence is red?”
Depends on which way the tree rat ran.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Everyone knows squirrels are the advanced guard in the Great Animal Conspiracy.
And like others, I don’t know the wavelength of a squirrel, but I do know the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow!!
January 13th, 2009 at 9:38 am
HA! Now we KNOW what gives various rodentia their high-pitched voices! It’s the Doppler effect!
January 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Let’s see,,,if E=hv and E=mc^2 then mc^2=hv therefore the frequency v=(mc^2)/h.(h is Planks constant).
Thus, if we assume the squirelly mass=500 grams then the frequency of a squirrel =,,,oh darn, I broke my calculator,,,never mind,,,
,,,anyway, it would be REALLY HIGH!!!
GAry 7
January 13th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Some sad Doctor Who news:
http://www.kasterborus.com/tardis/blog/2009/01/dalek-operator-john-scott-martin-has-died/
January 13th, 2009 at 9:49 am
OK, that was pretty good.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I just remember this XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/26/
January 13th, 2009 at 9:59 am
HA! Now we KNOW what gives various rodentia their high-pitched voices! It’s the Doppler effect!
It depends on whether they’re running towards you or away from you — or you are running towards or away from them — innit?
January 13th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I think someone is getting a little squirely.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Man, that’s clever. The first thing I thought of was “area under a curve” with the squirrel being the curve segment…
geekeeee!!!
January 13th, 2009 at 10:08 am
bwahahaha…. that made me chuckle. Thanks!
January 13th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Uh, Kevin, is that an African swallow, or European?
January 13th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Ahahahah:). That’s hilarious:).
January 13th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Was this made by one squirrel interacting with itself ? What would happen if you put it into a box with Schrödinger’s cat?
January 13th, 2009 at 10:34 am
@Magnus
It would be both dead and alive at the same time.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Those are some wide absorption lines – are the squirrels thermally or non-thermally broadened?
January 13th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Now if the squirrel goes through a grating, does it make a diffraction pattern? Or just a splatter?
January 13th, 2009 at 10:54 am
@Gary Ansorge
According to that, I come out with 6.7819646488447 * 10^49. A big number indeed.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:13 am
@Todd W.
I actually think both possibilities inside the box will kill the squirrel. The living cat will eat the squirrel, and the poison will kill both the cat and the squirrel.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:31 am
@Magnus
You’re forgetting the rare possibility that the squirrel may be able to breathe the poison without being affected.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Question? im 15 i dont see why knowing the wavelength of a squirrel should matter
January 13th, 2009 at 11:38 am
I think of you’re going to thermally broaden a squirrel, it’s probably best to skin it first then pass it through the grating, and then cook over a slow fire (to tenderize the meat).
“Squirrels are singed, gutted, trussed like rabbits, roasted or put in pastry: eat with cameline sauce or in pastry with wild duck sauce [Le Ménagier de Paris, J. Hinson (trans.)].”
January 13th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Well, apparently all matter _can_ be represented in wave form, be it gas, plasma, or even squirrel.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
It was, of course, a spherical squirrel…
January 13th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
If you’ve ever read Farley Mowat’s “The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be”, there’s a hilarious section where the local cats used to taunt Mutt, the dog, from the top of fences, smug in their sense of security.
That is, until he learned to climb and traverse said fences.
Cat lovers will wince, I’m afraid…
January 13th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
@ Gary Ansorge and @ Dylan
No, no, we’re after the De Broglie wavelength, not the frequency. Assuming the squirrel is traveling at a non-relativistic 1 mph (~500 cm/s) and that its mass is 400 g, we get:
lambda = h/mv = 6.6*10^-27/(500*400) = 3.3*10^-22 cm
So either the BA’s fence is very small or we have disproved de Broglie’s hypothesis!
January 13th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
“that’s up in the ham radio range… It wasn’t a squirrel, it was a pig!”
…unless its name was Hammy. “I can burp my ABCs!…”
January 13th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Geeks of the world unite. Where else but here can with have conversations about the wave length of squirrels, or disprove DeBroglie’s hypothesis.
January 13th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
There was a short article in the February, 2006 issue of The Physics Teacher very much along these lines.
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PHTEAH000044000002000085000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
January 13th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I doubt that’s a standing wave…
January 13th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
What’s the frequency Kenneth?
January 13th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
not standing but cute bouncy squirrel wave.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
European squirrel or Asian squirrel?
I don’t know… AAAHHHHH!
January 13th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
@Metre
*ahem* 3.3*10^-32 cm. *cough*
And you might have gotten away with it too, if you’d just used SI units.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Just have to ask from down in Gainesville, Fl, what is that white powdery substance you have used to calculate the squirrel’s wavelength? I hope it was environmentally friendly. I’ve heard some unscrupulous louts are in the habit of using the dangerous dihydrogen-monoxide as the powdered medium.
Luckily we never see such horrors down here.
January 14th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Tony, tony, tony, what can I say but “Nuts to you!”.
January 14th, 2009 at 4:28 am
@Autumn, (at 10:03 pm above)
I think you are on very flakey ground, just _mentioning_ dihydrogen-monoxide!
And we in the Southern Hemisphere are being sadly deprived of it at the moment, due to some Squirrel having cornered the market. But we will have revenge in a few months.
Ivan.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:30 am
@Paul H
I guess that explains a lot about the grades I got in physics.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:39 am
Can you determine the exact location of the squirrel from that wavelength and the momentum that created it? Could you run a few squirrels through the twin-slit experiment to help me get to the bottom of this?
My brow is furrowed. . .FURROWED I tell you!
January 14th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Metre and Paul h:
Thanks for the expansion on my original hypothesis,,,I knew there was a reason we invented computers,,,much less register overflow,,,
Wow! 10^-32cm? That’s only a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the Plank Length,,,I wonder what would happen if we slammed two squirrels into each other? Would they form an Earth gobbling black hole? Or perhaps some gooey Stranglets?
Quick, we must sue the natural order to prevent such heinous experiments.
GAry 7
January 14th, 2009 at 7:25 am
@Gary
The observing scientist would exclaim, “Aw, nuts!”?
January 14th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Gary:
A pair of nutcrackers.
January 14th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Ban dihydrogen monoxide now! It’s killing people!
January 14th, 2009 at 8:19 am
James Cronen, that’s hysterical! I wish that guy had written more about it, but I guess they only gave him one page. His fence looks like mine, too.
January 14th, 2009 at 8:32 am
IVAN3MAN: NUTCRACKERS?
GAK!!! COUGH!!! CHOKE!!!! Coffee spewing from nasal orifices,,,
Ok. I’m done,,,
GAry 7
January 14th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Was that a spherical squirrel in a vacuum?
January 14th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Aside from the squirrel which IS NOT on the picture, I’d like to point out, there actually IS an UFO on the picture. But once again dr Plait, being part of government cover-up agenda, is distracting us from really important topics.
January 14th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Clearly this was a drunk squirrel.
January 27th, 2009 at 8:00 am
[...] that? See it? Today was colder than the time I took the Squirrel Wavelength photograph. That means lower energy, and the squirrels, with lower energy, can’t jump as far. The [...]
January 27th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Clearly it’s a case of the ‘Red shifting squirrel’. I propose a name akin to that german sounding cat; Hubble’s squirrel. Now you see it now you don’t. I pity the dog!