The electron band structure found in semiconductors such as germanium or silicon is one of the bedrock physics factors on which our entire technological civilization is based. If electron band structure theory doesn’t work, then transistors don’t work. If transistors don’t work, the clocks on the VCRs stop blinking 12:00, and many other bad things as well.
Thus you can understand why I was rolling on the floor laughing, literally, to read this latest research that proves all of solid state physics is basically just a hoax. I haven’t enjoyed a solid state physics paper this much since I came across the classic one that Britney Spears authored. (If you liked THAT one, you’d probably also enjoy the Seven of Nine lecture on OSPF I came across a year or so ago, along with all of the other hilariously great RouterGod interviews.)
On a more serious note, never forget that physics doesn’t spring fully-formed from a textbook full of equations. Somebody has to DO this stuff experimentally first every single time to prove what really exists, and that means physics is HARD. So when you pass your favorite physicists in the hall this week, stop and give ’em a hug. Buy them a beer. Or maybe even give them all your money. If electron band gaps don’t really exist, your bank isn’t going to be able to keep track of your money much longer anyway.
It’s great to see a researcher who actually has the guts to present their scattershot data. And an excellent write-up, as well.
It’s really important for scientists to present the data behind their hypotheses. I was thinking that when I read about the new finding that women may continue producing eggs all their lives (“For more than half a century, the medical textbooks have said that women are born with a fixed number of eggs, and the supply eventually runs out in middle age. But new research on mice suggests that may not be the case after all.”) From what I can see (and forgive me if I have this all wrong, I’m just an interested layperson), researchers looked at declining levels of sperm in men as they age and concluded that men produce fewer sperm as they age. They looked at declining numbers of eggs in women’s ovaries as they age, and concluded that women are born with a fixed number of eggs which they gradually deplete. Huh? Wouldn’t it have made just as much sense to say women, like men, are continuously producing their sex cells, and they produce them more slowly as they age? It’s an undeniable fact that men (um, how do I say this delicately?) can continually release large numbers of sperm, while women only release an egg or two a month, but what led researchers to conclude that the release of eggs is the only way they’re destroyed? After all, sperm don’t build up to high pressure levels in a man who’s been vascectomized, so there is obviously some other sex cell destruction pathway. I don’t know all the details that were available to researchers way back when, but they chose a hypothesis that doesn’t seem to have been backed up with data, and which, it now appears, may be completely wrong. And this conclusion has always been presented as fact, not as hypothesis. *Sigh*
Nowhere close to approaching even your “lay person” status, Sweetwind, I still agree with your hypothesis-lacking-data analogy.
I don’t mean to sound sexist, but seems to me the scientific community of the past has made far too many assumptions about female reproduction and sexuality.
Thus we have fertility drugs with dangerous multiple births for women — and the famous little blue pill for men. Further impacting the social side of sexuality is that insurance companies, incredibly, tried to get by with footing the bill for a man’s erection but not for a woman’s birth control medication– until women sued for equal treatment.
I do have more than a passing acquaintance with middle-aged childbearing. I gave birth to my son 3 months shy of my 41st birthday. In some ways he has kept me young (I promise!). The flip side of the coin is that he has neurological impairments for which we have no answers, but I’ve been told by more than one specialist that perhaps an “old egg” might have caused his problems. (This is one of several suggestions I delete from my memory on a daily basis.)
If I had bearing a child at age 41 to do over again, I would do it in a heartbeat– but I would do so with the new technology of my own much younger egg, kept frozen until the right time.
This is an easy one to put to bed. The reason why the data is scattered over the graph in a random fashion is because the contact with the semiconductor is non-Ohmic. It is one of the “black arts” in microfabrication to create a recipe for a good Ohmic contact.
Usually, the semiconductor will be heavily doped near the contact either n or p-type and then a metal such as Gold mixed with p or n-type impurities such as Titanium, Nickle or Zinc, is vapourised on the surface. The proportion of the material must also be changed as different layers of metal are vapourised onto the surface. After the metalisation, the semiconductor is heated at 475 deg C for about 1-3 minutes to allow the dopants to diffuse into the semiconductor.
I can unstand the frustration with doing experiments though, everything must be perfect before it works but I think the world of science can relax.
Maternal age is a well known factor in birth defects such as Down Syndrome, but wasn’t there research that showed that part of it was that the partners of older women tend to be older men? And that there was therefore old-sperm problems as well? Lemme go google it a bit…yep. Did any of your son’s specialists impugn the father’s “old sperm”? (Assuming you’re not a cradle robber, gypsysoul!! :-)
but not one specialist mentioned an aged SPERM when the topic of older parents surfaced. (We’ve been dealing with this for about the past 14 years– I was glad to see the link you offered.)
What I notice in the news is celebrities like Larry King and Tony Randall, spreading their seed all over fresh new ground, so to speak, and gee– their offspring appear to be just fine. I suppose it helps if ONE of the parents has been cradle-robbed.
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I don’t mean to sound sexist, but seems to me the scientific community of the past has made far too many assumptions about female reproduction and sexuality.
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My wife works in the medical field, and I can back up that much (not all) of medicine uses the male human as the norm. There were and are assumptions about female physiology because females weren’t studied, scientifically, at least, until relatively recently. There’s a lot of medical wisdom and praxis which is based solely upon studies of males. This still goes on, btw.
There’s an entire chromosome of difference between males and females, which should give the medical field pause since individual genes can cause so much medically significant variation!
=Mark Ensley
I try to do an article on the electron band structure of germanium, for chrissakes, and the discussion ends up on sperm. What do you think this site and its back pages are, a dumping ground for tittering sex stories with a science slant? Dontcha think I’d have renamed the site “SpermScoop” if I’d had that kinda stuff in mind? (Hmmmm….)
Electron. Band. Structure. Of. Germanium. Get with the program, ladies!
You do know I’m grinning, right?
…has a nice ring to it. Hey, I just know slightly more about sperm than I do germanium (but not much more).
Besides. Sweetwind started it :-).
Once the search engines pick up on this page, ‘spermscoop’ will become an official googlewhack!
Sorry.
But what a funny site!
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Let’s be blunt and honest, okay?
Most great discoveries are the result of accident, error, or miscommunication. More often than not, facts are chosen to fit the theories — there is a lot of truth to the old saying about lies, damn lies, and statistics.
I’m of the opinion that the best new discoveries are born of necessity, so I agree that physics can be hard. But saying the experiments came before the equations and theory is begging someone to ask, “Oh. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”.
Back in the days of Edison and Firestone you grabbed a beaker, some chemicals, and a battery. Today, you grab your notebook computer and a copy of Mathematica. Most things happen in physics when a grad student HAS to find a good subject for his doctorate or a professor is under the “publish or perish” rule.
I must admit I am puzzled by the fact (with the internet, tech journals, government grants, and experiments going on) that someone hasn’t accidentally concocted a ray gun that transforms a target into ten thousand Prince Rupert’s Drops.
It took me a while… I was real puzzled for a minute (“but SPERMSCOOP is only one word!”) when I realized… :-0 (groaning face)
Hmmm, somehow I’ve GOT to find a way to work an old post of rickyjames’s into this conversation…
…that wasn’t a story about electron band theory in germanium.
This guy’s experience reminds me of exactly why I stopped being a biochemistry major and went into computer science. This is exactly the sort of lab report I should’ve written back when I was spending every week in organic chemistry wasting 6 hours to get an empty test tube of product at the end of every freaking experiment. You should’ve seen my graphs for analytical chemistry — lab experiments are pointless for butter-fingered klutzes except to show them this isn’t what they should be doing.
That’s the funniest lab report I’ve ever seen. Exactly what I WISH I had dared to write up during my undergraduate days.
is http://www.besse.at/sms/smsintro.html. Just got pointed to it today, love it!