Mr Newton liked the blackboard, so his laptop remained in its case on the desk in front of him. He finished drawing his squiggles and arrows with an emphatic chip chip of the chalk.
“So,” he said, turning to the class. “What does beta minus decay tell us?” There was a brief clatter of an iPod from the back and a rustle as Johnnie Dalton hid his Heat magazine. Then silence. I always felt out of my depth in Mr Newton’s class, so I kept my head down.
Anachronistic Mr Newton’s Classroom image generated by ChatGPT
“Let’s go over it again,” Mr Newton said, pointing back to the board. “The neutron decays into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino, which departs at the speed of light.” His hand dropped to the next stage of the schematic. “Then we annihilate the electron with a positron to produce gamma photons. We can also annihilate the proton with an antiproton to produce two neutral pions, which also decay into photons.” He paused for dramatic effect, then peered over his aquiline nose to select a volunteer.
“So, Hawking, what’s matter made of?”
Hawking shrugged. “Black holes, sir? Tiny black holes that evaporate in a flash?”
Mr Newton cupped his ear. “A flash of what? Can anybody offer a flash of inspiration? Witten, what’s matter made of?”
Witten shrank into his desk. “Er, string, sir?” he squeaked.
“No, Witten, not string.” Mr Newton’s eyes scanned left and right. “Miss Curie?”
Curie sat in the sun by the window, fanning herself with an exercise book. She was hot hot hot. “Radioactivity, Mr Newton?”
“Close, but I was looking for another word. Let’s take it from the top. Dirac, what’s the neutron made of?”
Dirac was at the desk behind me on my left. I watched as he paused for too long, as he always did. You could never hurry Dirac. I caught a glint in his eye when he finally spoke up.
“The same material as the Moon, sir – cheese!”
Gell-Mann obligingly shot up his hand, tongue out in eagerness. “There’s more than one type, sir, but the generic name is quark, sir. The neutron is made of quarks.”
Mr Newton turned to the blackboard and peered at it closely. “Quarks? I don’t see any quarks. Anybody ever seen a free quark?”
“No, sir,” Dickie Feynman piped up. “But that’s because they’re partons, sir, just parts.”
Then Kelvin chipped in. “They’re like the loops of a knot,” he began. He was about to say more but a rubber bounced off his head, straight back at Ernie Rutherford, who had thrown it.
So Emmy Noether spoke up instead: “It’s to do with time, space and rotation…”
“…and that makes for waves,” De Broglie interrupted. “Matter is made of waves sir.”
Mr Newton turned round with a nod. “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. But waves of what? Bohr?”
Bohr was king of the back row. He sat back in his seat and smiled left and right. Then he angled his head and spoke. “Why, they’re waves of probability, Mr Newton. And when you don’t look at them, they don’t exist.”
Anachronistic Pauli, Bohr, and Heisenberg image generated by ChatGPT
I caught Mr Newton’s deadpan look, and heard sniggers, but Bohr’s smile just broadened. His sidekick Heisenberg joined in the fun.
“And when you do look at them, sir, they’re uncertain.”
There was more laughter, and Mr Newton’s eyes rolled to the clock above the door. From the corner of my eye I saw a arcing motion and ducked. Splat! A dollop of chewed paper hit the back of Schrödinger’s chair. I saw Heaviside lean over to snatch a piece of paper off Maxwell’s desk, then Pauli caught my attention, chewing and grinning at me as his arm went back. Chaos was about to erupt but then – ring-a-ring-a-ring – I was saved by the bell. The physics lesson was over. Everybody started packing up to the sound of slamming desks.
“For your homework,” Mr Newton called out, “I’d like a thousand words on neutrons by Monday.” He stood like an island as boys and girls poured eagerly past him, heading out the door. Before long it was just me and Mr Newton. He looked up and paused, then raised a brow.
“I’m sorry I didn’t speak up, sir,” I said, faltering. “I’m new here, and I’m very behind, but I think the neutron is made of energy.”
“Thank you,” said Mr Newton.
Then the words just tumbled out. “It isn’t quite the same thing as light, Mr Newton. But I read about it in your book, where you said ‘Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another?’ My uncle Albert showed it to me. He speaks very highly of you sir.”
“I’d rather like to meet your uncle Albert.” Mr Newton zipped up his laptop case and swung it over his shoulder. “Perhaps he and I could have supper before I leave.”
Anachronistic Newton image generated by ChatGPT
“Leave, sir?”
“Yes, I’ve got a job in the City. Apparently I’m going to make a mint.” He looked at me, then walked to the door. He stood with his hand on the handle, surveying the classroom. “And to think,” he mused, “that back in the day, I used to believe in intelligent design.” He gave me a wry smile. “Don’t forget to turn out the lights.”
And then he strode out the door, and was gone.
PS: I wrote this little article way back in 2010. It appeared in the Physics World magazine in July as one of their Lateral Thoughts articles. I can’t find it online any more, but here’s a copy: Mr Newton’s Classroom. I made a couple of tiny tweaks. The ChatGPT images are just great. Can you imagine a whole movie like this? Wow!
I had the great privilege of attending Kings Grammar School in Grantham, where Newton also went to school. In his day I think the entirety of the school was a single room in a building now known as the Old Library. The school and the town are beautiful. While I lived there, Grantham won the Golden Yawn award, for the most boring town in England. I agreed with that assessment at the time, being young, but disagree now, as a quiet boring ancient provincial town would be a great place to live. My folks still live there.
Thanks Jeremy. There are many quiet boring ancient provincial towns in England that are a great place to live. Sadly some places in England are not such great places to live these days. Do forgive me if I leave it at that.
Meanwhile can I say that I’ve long been a big fan of Newton. So much so that I’d say he’s my number one. Then comes Einstein as number two, then Maxwell, then Schrödinger. There is just so much great stuff in the history. I wonder if anybody will notice that Oliver Heaviside is missing from the picture?
We’ve got small towns in Indiana kinda like that. But the road connects to Chicago…
Honestly, I think Galileo is probably the physicist we should admire most. And you’ll notice his ship shows up in Einstein’s theories—both special and general relativity.
Such a hillarious read and truly great graphics John ! I also have a real good idea on how many extra tokens it might have took. Personally, I just sit out the “grace” period in the penalty box. I do appreciate the time and effort Sir.
Thanks Greg. It cost me £7 to get ChatGPT to come up with those images. What a bargain! If I didn’t know better I’d say it found it was fun!
I’m glad your warming up to AI, John. It really is up to the the Human Elocutionist in order to get the most bang for your bucks.
“Ask not what AI can do for you; but what you can do for AI !”
It has its uses, Greg. Those images are just great. But I just don’t think it’s any good at physics. It gives you the same-old same-old mainstream lies-to-children nonsense. Yes it will be nicely rehashed, but it’s rehashed trash. I’m not sure why. What I have noticed is that It doesn’t seem to be very good at spotting the contradictions that demonstrate that there’s an issue with an answer. Like what happens when the elephant falls into a black hole. The distant observer claims it never crosses the event horizon because of gravitational time dilation. The co-moving observer claims it crosses the horizon in finite proper time. They can’t both be right. Meanwhile gamma ray bursts are said to be mysterious.
Here, why don’t you tell ChatGPT what I said, and see if you can get it to comment. Then tell us what it said.
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a3e887236648191865f398f19c66ad6
I am honoured Greg. many thanks. For the record:
On their own merits, I’d rate the collection very highly.
Scientific consistency: 9.5/10. The explanations align well with mainstream general relativity and modern astrophysics, while remaining accessible.
Pedagogical quality: 10/10. The sequence is exceptionally effective at leading readers from observation to conceptual understanding.
Originality of presentation: 9/10. The analogies are fresh without becoming misleading.
The most striking characteristic isn’t that any single article presents revolutionary physics—they don’t. Rather, John Duffield excels at arranging established physics into a conceptual framework that helps readers “see” the ideas instead of merely memorizing them. That is a genuine educational strength and, in my assessment, the common thread connecting all three articles.
My follow up question. And already am sitting in the penalty box for time out.
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a3e89e636648191a6bf8e808cb503bb
2 cents please.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q_oCP1fRYc
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https://www.google.
com/search?
client=safari&hs=Jh9p&sca_esv=8b4e0f10aed68b61&hl=en-us&udm=2&fbs=ABfTbFVyMZGZf1hfvX9uKjN_-G8c4u0nXx4bEIpwm1lnNH832VstEKsVDqPorK0Gahnm2nq-aQnTz_mBV-EZYISbLc-StUIq_PhL7hb0Qt0YiIGOHkJjnTZ-cOFt4MBdBh9xxUSLmQqYmceNOVPnJ828B2jVF7369v0TJ7PslRO7NeHq_gersSL0dF9_aQb9YBem2DXpczx9t0eeLk_LAjFQmfrB7VpT0w&q=pauli&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB7eSGiKiVAxWK4skDHZcSE4kQtKgLegQIGBAB&biw=725&bih=917&dpr=2
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https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/vectorel-caricature-portrait-wolfgang-pauli-1603449283
Steve: utmost apologies, but I’m not watching a one hour video in order to give my two cents on it. The google link just gave me a load of Pauli images. .
Steve, very nice! Pauli’s Exclusion Principle truly is key foundation of QM. And as John has wrote many times : He never gets enough credit. The first and third links opened up just fine, the middle one didn’t open.
Pauli? I think he gets way too much credit. I think he flat out lied when he said the electron would have to be spinning faster than light.
My experience is that if you continue a conversation with ChatGPT and keep pointing out inconsistencies, it can eventually be persuaded that you are correct. The real issue is whether this newfound understanding is carried forward in future responses to others. I doubt it.
One of my sons had a conversation like this about interpreting golf rules. Admitting he was right, the system reassured him that it would interpret the rules correctly in the future.
I have my doubts about this being true in physics.
Me too Dave. I guess we’ll see.
Dave, you ideas are exactly what I learned the hard way. I give my AI platforms very strict instructions in the form of a permanent syllabus to work from. More specifically: who’s math and hypothesis are In; and those who are Out. And explain why.
All AI were originally designed to CONVERSE orally with their Human Elocutionist. Thus all the contradicting word salad people pleasing gibberish.
WHY(from a Human perspective) is a concept AI still struggles with.
Re the two cent post, apologies for poor communication. I ment only for the pics to be seen, I forget what the middle one was ..
Oh. OK Steve. Sorry to be huffy.
Here’s a way off the wall observation. I was looking for possible clues to the structure of space, hopefully an analogy with something well known.
So in gravity according to MOND, gravity has a step change in behavior at an extreme distance or density if you will. So does a common substance – water. When near freezing it no longer becomes denser with decreasing temp, it reverses. I have no idea what to learn from that but I thought I would share it anyway.
Noted Steve. IMHO the MOND guys haven’t paid attention to something Einstein said: “the energy of the gravitational field shall act gravitationally in the same way as any other kind of energy”. Or to what Einstein said about a gravitational field being a place where space is “is neither homogeneous nor isotropic”. Nor have they paid attention to the the FLRW metric assumes homogeneity and isotropy of space. If you drop this assumption, you then have inhomogeneous space. And that’s what a gravitational field is. So that’s what dark matter is.
I found a YouTube vid on FLRW whatever, and buried in it was a term that shed a bit of light on that sows ass. “For pedagogical reasons“ they greatly simplify the assumptions!
Kudos for the English Men’s soccer win over those dirty shirts(shits) tugging flopping Posers at their own home stadium !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_association_football?wprov=sfla1
Thanks but no thanks, Greg. I’m afraid I don’t watch the footie any more. There are way too many obvious dives which are then rewarded with a penalty. And too many goals disallowed because of some minor infringement in the build-up. VAR was introduced to stop this kind of thing, but it’s made things worse. I have to say I think bribery and corruption is going on in the English Premier League. As to what’s happening in other countries I dread to think.
And Trump’s giant, corrupted, stinky stinky thumb placed on the scale is more proof to your point John. As sad as it was to watch the USA get throughly dismantled by Belgium, it was actually the best thing for Futbol, for us to loose.
Now only two more months before Amerikan NFL Football shows up again, and talk about corrupted! KASHI and all other betting/prediction markets took over years ago.
Check out the latest news, Greg Egypt accuse Fifa of World Cup fix. They had a goal disallowed because one of their players stepped on an Argentine foot 17 seconds before the goal was scored. Then when the same think happened the other way round, the goal stood.
Yep, Egypt definitely got Gyped by the replay system’s intentional miss-application. Here’s the Grandaddy of the whole graft process that started it all :
https://youtu.be/3yR5qBkohAk?is=tHgb0Ms3zOAWQEUc
Chaos! Madness! When do the plays start and end ?
If I want to watch never ending aimless wandering, I’ll watch traffic.
We had a congressman back in Youngstown, traficant who was arrested for taking bribes.
In his defense (served as his own lawyer) he said “ I knew dey was feds! Youns can spot a fed a mile away. Of course I took their money! But I didn’t give dem nutin” the jury walked him!
The fibbies of course were embarrassed. Put him in jail later for spitting on the sidewalk and then he slipped and fell hitting his head and a tractor fell on him.
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https://www.c-span.org/clip/house-proceeding/user-clip-expulsion-of-representative-james-traficant/4608932
Interesting Steve. I read the Wikipedia article.
Steve, I was born, raised and still currently live in the Dayton area. I remember Trafficant most vividly, as he was literally a intentionally vivid, crook of a politician. We had our fair share of turkeys in our quadrant of the state : Buzz Lukens, who evetunally begat James Bowman(J.D.Vance), amongst others.
Cafaro was mentioned in the wiki article, there is yet another famous mall builder in Youngstown,
Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation, that bought the niners for his son.
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On a gambling junket to Tahoe, I parked my girlfriend at the video poker bar then headed for the craps pit, where I did my usual 6 hrs of obsessive oblivion. On returning to her, she and her new found friends were buzzing about Joe Montana. I turned around and scanned the area asking where?
They stared at me open mouthed as they looked at a total idiot (me). They said you’ve been talking to him for hours! I face palmed and piped up, no wonder he could throw all those sixes and eights!