Like Mother; Like Son (Episode 2675)

Engines of Our Ingenuity - Like Mother Like Son

Key Points:

§ In 1919 the U. S. Congress passed the nineteenth amendment giving women the right to vote. But the battle wasn’t over. The amendment still had to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. And there remained strong pockets of opposition, primarily in the South.

§ The president at the time was - Woodrow Wilson

§ The state that found itself the “pivotal battleground of the nation” was Tennessee

§ One representative in particular was a wild card — Harry Burn, a twenty-four year old from a rural mountain district.  Tucked in his pocket was a letter from his mother, insisting that he “be a good boy” and vote in favor of the amendment.  

Harry’s mother, Febb King Ensminger Burn,  carved a place for herself in history right alongside her son’s. 

Here is the Mary Poppins clip (Sister Suffragett) followed by the Engine's transcript in its entirety:

No. 2675
LIKE MOTHER, LIKE SON

by Andrew Boyd

 

Click here for audio of Episode 2675

 

Today, a mother’s influence. The University of Houston’s College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Following an arduous, decades long effort by suffragists, in 1919 the U. S. Congress passed the nineteenth amendment giving women the right to vote. But the battle wasn’t over. The amendment still had to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. And there remained strong pockets of opposition, primarily in the South.
A year after Congress sent the amendment to the states, the suffrage movement found itself one state short of ratification. And none of the remaining states had legislative sessions scheduled until after the 1920 presidential election. Suffragists would miss an important election cycle if something didn’t happen. And the suffrage movement could be pushed back years or decades if it lost its momentum.
So President Woodrow Wilson convinced the governors of North Carolina and Tennessee to call special legislative sessions. The North Carolinian legislature voted down the amendment. That left things in the hands of Tennessee’s legislators. Unwillingly, Tennessee found itself the “pivotal battleground of the nation.”
The outcome was uncertain. Twelve years earlier, Tennessee’s governor had proclaimed “Let the women pray and the men vote,” a sentiment that still resonated with many Tennesseans.
Suffragists and anti-suffragists came pouring into Tennessee to influence the outcome. Political chicanery abounded. In spite of prohibition, liquor flowed freely as legislators met in closed door sessions with lobbyists on both sides. Suffragists from out of state asked officials to enforce prohibition laws. It didn’t happen. “In Tennessee,” the suffragists were informed, “whiskey and legislation go hand in hand.”
When the state legislature finally convened, the amendment quickly passed the Senate. But the House was another matter. Both sides had counted votes, but with so much back room dealing no one was sure of the outcome.

One representative in particular was a wild card — Harry Burn, a twenty-four year old from a rural mountain district. Burn himself was noncommittal, but those he represented were overwhelmingly opposed to women voting. Suffragists crossed their fingers as it came time for Burn to cast his vote. But they needn’t have worried. Tucked in his pocket was a letter from his mother, insisting that he “be a good boy” and vote in favor of the amendment. The young man proved to be an admirable son. The amendment was ratified by the House without a single vote to spare. And Febb King Ensminger Burn, Harry’s mother, carved a place for herself in history right alongside her son’s.

I’m Andy Boyd at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)

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Notes and references:
For a related episode, see AMERICAN WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE AND ALICE PAUL.
Special thanks to Professor Landon Storrs of the University of Houston Department of History for research materials used in preparing this episode.
A. Sims. “Armageddon in Tennessee: The Final Battle Over the Nineteenth Amendment.” In: One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement. M. S. Wheeler, ed. Troutdale, Oregon: NewSage Press, 1995.
The “help us to win the vote” picture is from the Library of Congress. The newspaper clipping and text of Ms. Burn’s letter to her son are taken from the Tennessee State Libraries Web site.

Kate in Code

No. 2635
KATE IN CODE

by John H. Lienhard

Click here for audio of Episode 2635

Today, code for Kate. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
The past gives up its secrets only by dribs and drabs. You've heard me talk about old Century Magazines. They give tantalizing hints about our forebears' thinking; but we must fill in the blanks.
Example: One Charles Barnard gives a mysterious title to his 1875 short story. It's just a line of horizontal bars: Long-short-long, short-long, long, short. I finally Googled Morse Code and, sure enough, they spell, Kate. The subtitle (written in words) says, An Electro-Mechanical Romance. Telegraphy was the great new technology of those times.
Telephones would serve the next generation of Americans. But, for now, our lives were intertwined by telegraph lines. Most Americans would instantly have seen Barnard's title for what it was. Many would've understood what it said.
The story that follows is also odd. It's a literary piece that reads a bit like an extended technical manual. Barnard begins with the words, "She's a beauty." But his She is a locomotive, and he rhapsodizes: "A thing of grace and power, she seemed instinct with life as she paused upon her breathless flight."
Then we meet Kate. She's a telegraph operator at the railroad station. She comes out each day to wave at the locomotive's engineer, John. He sees her, then turns back to his engine. And Barnard's words now seem positively R-rated:

The steam-gauge trembles at 120^o, and quickly rises to 125^o. The vast engine trembles and throbs as it leaps forward.

Eventually, Kate teaches John to signal his coming by sounding her name in Morse Code on the train whistle. Each day, for a while, she hears that Morse tattoo, runs out to meet the train, climbs aboard -- and rides into the station with him.
But they fear their secret will be found out. So Kate contrives a new means for John to announce his arrival. She invents a trigger device by which the coming train can close a loop in a wire that she's strung out on the ground. It in turn will ring a bell in her office. This involves considerable inventive verve. She has to build her own battery using a pickle jar. But her system works.
Then, one evening the bell rings at the wrong time. John is headed for a collision and he doesn't know it. Kate finds a lantern, intercepts the train, and saves it. She and John are heroes and their story ends with this final flourish: "The winter's stars shone upon them, and the calm cold night seemed a paradise below."
Barnard was a prolific writer, pretty much forgotten today. He liked technology and he wrote engagingly. He reflected a world where new technologies of speed, power, and communication held our hearts. The past opens up to us for a moment when Barnard writes, "How perfect everything! ... From balanced throttle to air brake ... thirty-five tons of chained-up energy ... perfect expression of the highest mechanic art."

SOURCE: http://uh.edu/engines/epi2635.htm

Engines - The Butterfly Effect & The Three Body Problem

http://uh.edu/engines/epi2598.htm
No. 2598
THE THREE BODY PROBLEM

by Andrew Boyd

Click here for audio of Episode 2598

Today, three bodies. The University of Houston’s College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
In 1889, King Oscar II of Norway and Sweden celebrated his sixtieth birthday. As part of the festivities, a much celebrated competition was held — in mathematics.
Rising French mathematician Henri Poincaré was up to the challenge, and wrote a paper addressing the famous three body problem: given three celestial bodies — say, three stars in close proximity — describe how they move around one another. More precisely, given their starting position and velocity, predict their position and velocity at any time in the future.

Conceptually, the problem’s very easy. Newton’s law of gravitation tells us exactly what to expect. In fact, Newton’s theories led to the whole notion of a mechanical universe; a universe where everything’s predetermined precisely because we can infer where things are going to be.
But theory and practice are different animals. Newton had solved the two body problem when he described his law of gravitation. But that was two centuries before King Oscar’s competition. Three bodies were much more difficult than two.

Poincaré was brilliant. He won the competition and received his award at a grand ceremony. But shortly thereafter an error was discovered in his reasoning. Poincaré worked feverishly. He removed the error and added a hundred pages to the paper. But he never actually solved the three body problem. Instead, he won the award for “inventive and revolutionary” ideas. And they were. But the decision also avoided a lot of embarrassment for everyone involved.
That’s an interesting story in itself. But what’s even more interesting is something Poincaré had stumbled upon that no one fully appreciated at the time — even Poincaré to some extent. Years after the competition, he reflected that “… small differences in [where the three bodies start may] produce very great [differences in where they finish] … [so that] prediction becomes impossible …” Poincaré was the first to recognize the so-called “butterfly effect” — that sometimes just the flap of a butterfly’s wings can totally alter the future.
Neither Poincaré nor his immediate successors ever gave the phenomenon a name. It was considered more of a nuisance than a field of study. That would change when meteorologist Edward Lorenz wrote a paper on weather prediction in 1963. He argued that weather can’t be accurately predicted for more than a few days in advance, and in doing so brought the butterfly effect the full attention it deserved by giving rise to a new field — chaos theory.
I’m Andy Boyd at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)

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For a related episode, see 652, THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT. The chaotic nature of the three body problem can best be appreciated via animation. One especially good site is www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/Flash/Chaos/ThreeBody/ThreeBody.html. Accessed April 6, 2010.
I. Peterson. Prophet of Chaos. November 15, 1999. From the Web site of the Mathematical Association of America: www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_11_15_99.html. Accessed April 6, 2010.
The three body picture is by E. A. Boyd. The picture of Henri Poincaré is from Wikimedia Commons.

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is Copyright © 1988-2010 by John H. Lienhard.

Pythagorean Theorem, Hypotenuse of a Right Triangle, Engines of Our Ingenuity - Music and Mathmatics

MUSIC AND MATHEMATICS

Click here for audio of Episode 2579

Today, let’s talk about music and mathematics. The University of Houston’s Math Department presents this program about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
The history of musical instruments goes back tens of thousands of years. Fragments of bone flutes have been found at Neanderthal sites. Early instruments show that humans have long produced pitched sound — sound containing predominantly a single frequency. Finger holes on ancient flutes indicate that prehistoric musicians had some concept of a musical scale.
Music is also the most mathematical art. Already the Pythagoreans of ancient Greece studied the mathematics of musical instruments. According to legend, Pythagoras was listening to blacksmiths at work. He noticed that some of their hammers produced a pleasing combination of sounds when struck together. When he examined these hammers he found that one weighed 12 pounds and another 6 pounds. The first hammer weighed exactly twice as much as the second.

Pythagoras had discovered a fundamental principle of harmony. Most Western instruments produce sound by causing air to vibrate a certain number of times per second. When two instruments cause air to vibrate at frequencies whose ratios form simple fractions — 2:1 or 3:2, say — we perceive a pleasing combination of sounds. The consonance between the blacksmith’s hammers caught Pythagoras’ attention. For instance, the 6 pound hammer produced vibrations exactly twice as fast as those of the 12 pound hammer. This two-to-one relationship between notes is called an octave, and appears in nearly all music produced by humankind.
But, the problem of translating Pythagoras’ observations to the design a musical instruments has bedeviled some of the brightest minds of millennia past. How do we tune a piano, or any ensemble instrument, so it sounds good when it’s played with other instruments?

Along with the principles of harmony, Pythagoreans also recognized a primary problem of instrument design. The notes used in Western music can be obtained by starting with a frequency and multiplying it by 3/2, and then by 3/2 again and again. This produces a sequence of notes - spanning different octaves - called the circle of fifths. All notes in the Western chromatic scale can be obtained this way — but only approximately. The problem is that if we keep multiplying a frequency by 3/2, we never get frequencies that are exactly separated by octaves.
Hundreds of different tunings have been proposed to work around this problem. Bach wrote his Well-Tempered Clavier to demonstrate the advantage of a slightly imperfect tuning he favored. With past tunings some music sounded very pleasing, while other compositions could sound woefully out of tune. In nearly all music today we use equal temperament — a compromise that effectively makes all our music sound equally pleasing, or equally out of tune – depending on your perspective.
The next time you consider the cold rationality of mathematics, also remember that math is behind the sound of violins, pianos, and song. The beauty of mathematics shines through in the music it helps us create.
I’m Krešimir Josić, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.

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Numerous websites explain the basics of harmony. Here is a very simple explanation that includes an example with sound http://www.aboutscotland.co.uk/harmony/prop.html.
You can find more about the mathematics of musical instruments in the following article that appear in the American Mathematical Monthly: http://www.math.uh.edu/~josic/myweb/research/papers/mathandmusic.pdf.
Although idiosyncratic, I like Bill Sethares’ approach to tuning. He shows how modern technology allows us to easily create scales with any number of notes. There are some pretty interesting examples on his webpage http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/.
The story of the Neanderthal flute has been discussed previously in this series http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1232.htm. However, the finding remains very controversial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe_flute.
All images are in the Creative Commons.

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is Copyright © 1988-2010 by John H. Lienhard.

Engines of Our Ingenuity  http://uh.edu/engines/epi2579.htm  

ππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππππ

The Pythagorean Theorem 
SOURCE: http://www.mathwarehouse.com/geometry/triangles/right-triangle.html
The Pythagorean Theorem computes the hypotenuse of a right triangle using the following relationship between the legs and the hypotenuse of a triangle:

The hypotenuse [c] equals the square root of the sum of the squares of each leg of the triangle [a and b].
Right Triangles and The Good Old Pythagorean Theorem

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A right triangle has one 90° angle and a variety of often-studied properties such as: Pythagorean Theorem Trigonometric Ratios ���

A Right Triangle's Hypotenuse

The hypotenuse is the largest side in a right triangle and is always opposite the right angle. (Only right triangles have a hypotenuse). The other two sides of the triangle, AC and CB are referred to as the 'legs'. In the triangle on the left, the hypotenuse is the side AB which is opposite the right angle, angleACB.

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The pythagorean theorem : the sum of the squares of the lengths of the legs equals the square of the length of the hypotenuse.

Usually, this theorem is expressed as a²+b²=c²

In the right triangle on the left, A2+ B2= C2

The Pythagorean Theorem Practice Problems

What is the value of x in the picture on the left? Answer Set up the Pythagorean Theorem: 142 + 482 = x2 2,500 =X2

What is the value of x in the picture on the left? Answer x2=212 + 722 x2 = 5,625

What is x in the triangle on the left? Answer X2 +42=52 X2 +16=25 X2 = 25 - 16 9 X= 3

Herons and Egrets

No. 2574
HERONS AND EGRETS

by John H. Lienhard

Click here for audio of Episode 2574

Today, herons and egrets. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
I should be careful, talking about birds. I'm far from being one of those highly-informed bird people who knows the form and habits of every subspecies. I'm just reaching the point where I can do more than tell little brown birds from big white ones.
But my camera keeps informing me. Each time I study my day's catch on the computer screen, I find another creature I'd never heard of. Yet, despite the dazzling diversity out there, a year-round constant here on the Texas Coast is the heron. The heron, in its many forms, shapes our regional identity.
Heron is an umbrella term for bitterns, egrets, and many birds that are called herons. Herons generally have long necks, and generally fly with those necks folded in. In the air they look like stubby birds with deep chins. They usually wade the edges of waterways, picking up small fish or crustaceans. Still: I've watched them fly with necks outstretched. And I've watched them fish as gulls do -- flying low over water, scooping up prey in their bills.
By the way, it's an education to watch different water birds fishing. Hawks fly high until they see a fish near the surface, then they swoop down to snatch it in their talons. Cormorants swim on the surface, then dive like submarines to hunt their prey. Some ducks, like the lesser scaup, also do that. But most ducks just upend and fish with their tail-feathers pointed heavenward.
But back to herons: The great blue heron is the largest and most striking -- usually found alone with its seven-foot wingspan and gaunt grayish look. It stands in strong contrast to the white egrets, although the great white egret is almost as large. And my favorite is the less dramatic snowy egret.

Lots of snowies live on our gulf waterways, and I never tire of them -- so beautiful in their ever-changing appearance. Long black beaks and yellow feet frame the purest shining white plumage. On a cloudy day, you might find a group with their necks tucked in, standing in the reeds like monks in a Chinese lithograph. Or you'll find one stalking the inches-deep water on the concrete bayou apron, looking for small prey. During breeding season, snowy egrets spread their delicate plumage out in seductive sprays.

A century ago, that beauty almost led to their extermination. Snowy egret feathers were so prized for ladies hats, and egrets were so easy to hunt along the water's edge, that they almost vanished. Laws were finally passed to protect them, and now they thrive. Well, at least they do here in Houston. In other areas, their habitat dwindles. Here, our bayou system of water runoff sustains a fine home for them in the midst of a huge city.
And they really are magical birds. Mid-20th-century American poet Mary Oliver called a group of egrets,

A shower
of white fire!

She watched them in the shifting light and wrote,

... unruffled ...
they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.

I'm John Lienhard at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)

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See the Wikipedia articles on herons, snowy egrets, and Mary Oliver. The full text of Mary Oliver's poem may be read in the plagiarist poetry archive. For more on this theme, see Episode 2568. For more on the fight to save birds from milliners, see Episode 599. All photos by J. Lienhard.

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is Copyright © 1988-2010 by John H. Lienhard.

 

Magnetism Lesson

SCIENCE and GEOGRAPHY 1-21-10


Physics - Lesson 29 Magnetism 
 
Chinese Compass and HowStuffWorks - How Compasses Work
Earth's Magnetic Field
Engines of Our Ingenuity #613 William Gilbert
Engines of Our Ingenuity #1613 Faraday and Magnetism
Compass Quiz

Riding the Waves

No. 1838:
RIDING THE WAVE

by John H. Lienhard

Click here for audio of Episode 1838.

Today, let us ride the waves. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
I was caught off guard the other day when a friend expressed surprise that radio waves and sound waves moved at different speeds. Well, why wouldn't someone think that -- doesn't the radio deliver sound?

At first, I remarked that radio waves are inaudible, they surround us all the time, and the purpose of a radio is to convert those fast-moving waves into slow-moving sound waves.

Then, the very next day, a NASA article announced that sound waves had been observed emanating from a black hole in the Perseus cluster of galaxies, hundreds of millions of light years away.
That "sound" was a pulse with the astonishingly low frequency of one cycle every nine million years. We can see those pulses traveling through highly rarified gases in the space between galaxies. It's disquieting to hear them called sound, even if they are propagated in much the same way as audible sound.

Here on Earth, we are intimate with two kinds of waves.

• In one, inertia carries a disturbance through some material. That's the way a sound wave, an ocean wave, or a violin string works. As inertial waves move back and forth in a violin string, the string drives an inertial wave that we can hear in the air around the violin.

• The other class of waves is electromagnetic. Such waves move far faster than inertial waves, and they take a dizzying variety of forms: X-rays, light, thermal radiation, radio waves -- but they all move at the speed of light. It takes about a seventh of a second for such waves to circle the earth. Sound waves would take more than a day to make that trip.

Electronic information, traveling on the Internet, rides in fiber-optic cables, on radio waves, or through copper wire. One reason that copper conducts electricity so well is that it's rich in free electrons. Those electrons bounce about within the copper, much as air molecules move around you.

Electrons move a lot faster than air molecules, but nowhere near the speed of light. When you impose a voltage on a wire you send a wave through the electrons. That wave carries energy at near the speed of light. Just as you might bob about, in an almost stationary ocean, while a powerful wave moves past you, the elec-trons hardly move as electric waves pass through them.

And so it's not true that electricity is a flow of electrons through a wire. Rather it's energy flowing through the electrons. Electricity is slowed slightly, as it passes through a wire, and it moves only about two-thirds the speed of light. Even then, at sixty cycles per second, the wavelength of alternating current is a full two thousand miles.

All those numbers are so extreme they might well leave us disoriented. So try this concluding thought. As you listen to this program, the sound of my voice is taking ten times longer to get from your radio speaker to your ear, than it took to get from the transmission tower to your radio.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)

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For the NASA description of the Perseus waves, see:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/09sep_blackholesounds.htm For more on the concept of an electronic gas, see, e.g., Tien, C-l. and Lienhard, J.H., Statistical Thermodynamics. New York: Hemisphere Pub. Corp., 1979 (Chapter 6)
My thanks to several people: Carol Lienhard originally suggested the episode. Jack Wolfe, Stuart Long, and N. Shamsundar (all in the UH College of Engineering) provided technical counsel
Both images are from The Boy Scientist, 1925.

A representation of the Michelson-Morley measurement of the speed of light.

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is Copyright © 1988-2003 by John H. Lienhard.

Momentum - Engines of Our Ingenuity #1246

No. 1246:
MOMENTUM

by John H. Lienhard

Click here for audio of Episode 1246.

Today, let's talk about momentum. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
In another episode I talk about a museum docent who didn't understand the role of momentum in a demonstration she ran for school children. When my wife saw that, she said, "Look, a whole lot of people like me never learned about momentum. If it's important, why don't you explain it in a program?"
That's a tough challenge because we all have at least a gut sense of the concept. But what would you do if you had to define momentum? The dictionary calls it the impetus of a moving body -- not much help there! Your gut sense is probably more accurate. When you say something gains momentum, you mean it's increasingly hard to stop. And that's absolutely correct.
In a physics class, we're told that you calculate the momentum of, say, an automobile by multiplying its velocity by its mass. So, to understand momentum we have to understand mass. Suppose you have a six-pound rock. That rock would only weigh one pound on the moon but its mass would be the same as it is on Earth.
Years ago, when I first studied physics, I came home terribly frustrated trying to understand mass and momentum. I complained to my father that I couldn't see how mass differed from weight.
So he picked up a paper weight and tossed it to me. "What happens when you catch it," he asked. "It pushes my hand back," I said. "Okay," he went on, "How much would that weigh on the moon?" "Only a sixth as much," I answered, wondering where he was headed. "All right then, what would you feel if I tossed it to you on the moon?" And, just like that, the scales fell from my eyes.
Of course! Matter has a property independent of its weight. Catching a paper weight would feel just the same on the moon as it would in my living room. A six-pound weight is just the reaction of a certain mass to Earth's gravity. That object would have different weights on Jupiter or Mars. But it'd still have the same mass -- even in outer space where it weighs nothing at all.
Now, back to momentum. Put an object in motion, and you give that mass a momentum which is hard to stop or deflect. The momentum of a spinning skater can change form. With her arms outstretched, she spins slowly, but the outstretched tips of her fingers are really moving quite fast. With arms drawn inward, she spins faster, but the tips of her indrawn elbows move fairly slowly. What stays about the same is her net momentum.
Years ago, a construction worker told of a friend working on the side of a building. A wrecking ball swung toward him -- gently and slowly. Instead of getting out of its way, he reached out to stop it. He didn't realize that, with its enormous mass, it also had enormous momentum even if it was moving slowly. The result? It slowly crushed him -- left him lame. If he'd only had a proper gut sense of basic physics -- he might still be walking today.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.

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See also Episode 1244.

From Wells' Science of Common Things, 19th century

Illustrating Angular Momentum