Hokie Stone

It turns out that the 78^th annual SESAPS meeting was all that I could have hoped for, and more. The most revealing part of the whole thing was just how many types of physicists there are. There were 35 different categories of talks, all with two to eight speakers each, going all day. That’s a lot of physics to cover.

Of course, some of the talks were more interesting (and more accessible) than others. For instance, did you ever wonder how a cat’s tongue laps up water? Neither did I, until I saw a presentation explaining the physics behind it. 

Though the tongue’s surface is rough, the part that actually touches the water is perfectly smooth. This smoothness, combined with the rapidity of the laps, creates a sort-of funnel of liquid that perfectly pulls water up to the mouth. Here’s a slow-motion video of the action:

You can see the perfect shape the cat pulls the water into, using the power of physics. It turns out that all cats naturally develop the perfect lapping speed to adapt to the size of their tongue. That way, they never have to get their whiskers wet. It really doesn’t have to be said that as far as cuteness was concerned, that talk blew everything out of the water.

Another good talk was about the use of medical imaging (MRIs and the like) to discover more about the process of sleep. That’s a subject I had never really given any thought; my friends and I often wax poetic about the joys of sleep, but… why is it so necessary to life?

The question keeps us up at night.

The answer is: we have no earthly idea. But physics is helping to answer it. By upping the strength of the magnetic field used in MRIs by nearly 500%, scientists can render an incredibly detailed picture of the human brain. Combined with the use of EEG (electroencephalography) and PET (positron emission tomography), we can see what the most active parts of the mind are through different phases of sleep. From what they’ve gathered so far, it seems that the brain goes through some serious reorganization at night: the neural paths are actually reordered while you sleep, reflecting the acts of storing memories, recovering processes, and a myriad of other things that they still don’t really understand. People with little or no sleep don’t receive this self-therapy, and thus suffer. Though some readers might think that sleep is a burden,  just imagine you were diagnosed with fatal familial insomnia, a genetic disorder that deprives a person of their ability to sleep. After a couple of weeks of sleepless nights, they die.

Yup.

 

On the other hand, there was some pretty questionable content featured at SESAPS, too. One of my favorite talks was about a proposed “Theory of Everything”. The room was packed with scientists all anticipating this talk, knowing it was either going to be ridiculous or awesome. And it was awesomely ridiculous. We knew that when he got to the part about porcupines and donuts in Planck cubes, it was time to leave.

Another anticipated farce was a poster about… something. I’ll let you read the abstract yourself:

Any ideas? 'Cause I'm out.

Sadly, the poster didn’t show, but… seriously? There were some pretty advanced studies at the convention. This was not one of those.

Lastly, and I know that it has nothing to do with science, but the hotel was nice. Super nice. Roanoke Hotel and Convention Center has a lot of things going for it, I can tell you that. That being said, there was a strange display of masonry right before the conference ballrooms that made me puzzled every time: a giant wall made of Hokie Stone. Hokie Stone, I learned, is a certain type of stone found near the campus of Virginia Tech that is used as the construction material for nearly all of its buildings. It’s really nothing more than limestone fused with magnesium, but the way that the area treats it, you would think it was gold (which, when you think about it, actually has fewer practical applications).

Don’t get me wrong; it was a nice wall. But I thought it was worth mentioning that, well, physics doesn’t explain everything.