For those who don't know, I am a HUGE fan of Big Bang Theory, the US sitcom. Here is an article I found on the website 'Stumble Upon' about real-life science lesson you can take from the show. I found it impressive.
By Alvina Lopez
10 Real-Life Science Lessons from “The Big Bang Theory”
By Alvina Lopez
"The Big Bang Theory" has, over the past three years, become one of the biggest sitcoms on the air. (The series’ latest appearance at Comic-Con was another rousing success.) But while most people watch the show for the antics of Sheldon and Leonard, the writers make sure plenty of care goes into the scientific talk that tends to pass most people by. Granted, the show isn’t a college-level science class, but you’re still going to come away smarter than when you went in, which is something most other sitcoms can’t promise. As proof, here are ten scientific tidbits offered up on the show. If anyone asks, just pretend you knew them already.
- Giant Ants, Sadly, Can Never Exist: Raj and Howard chat in "The Wheaton Recurrence" about how giant ants would be a cool new method of transportation, but as is often case, Sheldon punctures their balloon by telling them that the mutant beasts would be physically unable to survive. This is because of something called the square-cube law, which (very simply) states that making a tiny object that much bigger would put impossible strains on its physical structure. The new animal’s dimensions wouldn’t be able to cope with its density. Giant ants would be cool, if slightly terrifying, but they’re the stuff of pure fantasy.
- Teleportation Is Problematic: One day, apropos of nothing, Sheldon begins expounding on the physical and existential problems of teleportation. His main complaint is that the idea isn’t about disassembly and reassembly of an object, but the destruction of something followed by the creation of an identical copy. One of the issues he touches on is theHeisenberg uncertainty principle, which deals with the problems in accurately mapping every possible scientific aspect of a human body for successful reproduction in another location. Plus, again, you pretty much have to kill the old guy and build a new one, which raises a number of thorny metaphysical problems.
- Always Watch Your Formulas: Another example of the square-cube law came into play in "The Staircase Implementation," in which we learn how the elevator in the guys’ apartment was destroyed. The short version is that Leonard used hydrazine, a rocket propellant, as fuel for a model, but when he scaled the amount down, he forgot to reduce the catalyst, turning his potential fuel into something much more explosive and deadly. Sheldon tossed the mix down the elevator shaft, causing an explosion that wrecked the works. Let that be a lesson: When making rocket fuel, always double-check your math. Or, better yet, don’t make rocket fuel.
- Monopoles Are Hard to Find: In the second-season finale "The Monopolar Expedition," Sheldon wins a grant to go to the Arctic and search for magnetic monopoles to try and win a Nobel Prize. What’s the big deal? Well, they’re theoretical, so finding one would be cause for a whole lot more recognition than just a Nobel. A magnetic monopole is a hypothetical particle with only one magnetic pole. Every other magnet has two, north and south, but if you cut that magnet in half, you don’t wind up with a pair of monopoles; you just get two smaller magnets, each still with a north end and a south end. For more than you ever wanted to know about monopoles (and more than I can comfortably explain), go here. Some researchers claim to have found monopoles, but it’s still uncertain.
- Dark Matter Is Also Hard to Find: In an episode titled "The Pirate Solution," Sheldon and Raj work on the problem of dark matter. For the unscientific out there, dark matter is posited to fill the galaxy and pull on stars and other objects. The problem started to make itself known when it was observed that galactic rotation curves for stars didn’t slow down as you move away from the center of the galaxy. The problem that Sheldon and Raj were working on dealt with finding ways to see, measure, and prove the existence and methods of dark matter.
- Earth Finds Meteors, Not the Other Way Around: "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency" found the gang camping out to watch the Leonid meteor shower. Raj makes an illuminating point when he says that even though it appears that the meteors "arrive" at Earth, it’s actually Earth moving on its orbit into the meteor’s path. It can be tempting, even in a highly scientific era, to think of Earth as the center of all happenings, but the fun truth is that the Leonid shower (and others) happen when Earth’s orbit and the path of a meteor brush together. When the Temple-Tuttle Comet makes its way near Earth’s orbit in November, we can see the dazzling results.
- Interstellar Travel Is Going to Take Some Work: Stan Lee showed up in "The Excelsior Acquisition." Lee’s pretty much a lock for a guest appearance on anything involving geeks, thanks to his lengthy career as a creator, writer, and chief at Marvel Comics. Sheldon’s goal was to ask Lee how the Silver Surfer can travel between the stars, a geeky question with very real scientific ramifications. Even assuming the Silver Surfer can travel at the speed of light, the nearest stars to Earth are about 4 light-years away. In other words, a round trip at the fastest possible physical speed would still take close to a decade, never mind the amount of time that would pass on Earth while you’re in transit. For more on this and other physically perplexing issues that superheroes tend to just shrug off, read up.
- There Are Odds for Aliens: "The Hofstadter Isotope" finds the gang talking about the Drake Equation. They’re using it in a comedic context to appraise their chances of meeting and talking with women at a bar (probably less given their hermitic pedigrees), but the real equation is about calculating the potential number of alien civilizations in the galaxy. The formula accounts for everything from the rate of star formation in the Milky Way to the number of potentially life-supporting planets and the likely fraction of civilizations capable of broadcasting signs of their existence into space. Who knew there was math for this?
- It’s Not Flying, It’s Falling With Style: The third-season finale, "The Lunar Excitation," involved a plot in which the guys wanted to bounce a laser beam off the moon. This brings up an interesting point about orbits. The Moon is constantly being pulled toward the Earth, and both are falling into the Sun. Yet it happens at such a rate and direction that the fall becomes an orbit. The same thing’s evident among astronauts on the space shuttle: They appear to be floating, but they’re actually moving incredibly fast around the Earth, constantly falling "over the edge" as it were and therefore able to cheat the gravity that’s yanking on them almost as strongly as it pulls on those of us down on the ground.
- Lesson: Last season’s "The Plimpton Situation" was all about pulsars, to which most viewers likely said: what? A pulsar is, very basically, a neutron star that emits (via "pulses") radio emissions that result from particle acceleration. Neutron stars are themselves the remnants of stars left over after gravitational collapse. They’re extremely dense — an average neutron star is about the size of a city but packs more than three times of the mass of the Sun into its density — and can be used kind of like signposts throughout the galaxy. Of course, it’s not necessary to know all that (or remember it now) to enjoy the episode. But it’s nice to know that, on some level, someone’s doing the math.
