This is most certainly an off-topic post…
After reading this post, you may gather another data point on the risks posed by single scientists in the wild. You may sympathize, or worse, empathize with me. Alternately, you may want the few seconds of your life back, but then again, if you are reading this blog, you might be posed the question, “what life?”. You may now consider yourself well and fully warned.
So, in keeping with my recent resolution to engage in some basic ‘refresh and research’ for a certain period of time every day, I found myself watching a video on thermal analysis presented by one of the experts at DS SolidWorks. Watching the video, I was encountered by a rather old friend, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. Enigmatic, just like dozens of its other storied friends, such as Avagadro, Planck et al., here is another constant that you don’t usually bother to understand, or analyze and assume that the famous people who have rendered their name to such wild numbers must have done so after they themselves spent Saturday Nights agonizing over how to make Engineering Problem Solving quite a tedious, yet terrifying experience.
Yet, I was staring at the screen, and I realized something very neat.
Back when we were studying Physics in India, remembering these constants, with their numbers and exponential values, could make the difference between going to a University of repute, or one of not so much repute, or failing both, finding something else (which would at least make you richer and happier than any engineer out there). Thus, you had to really excel at rote memory or be mnemonic geek (mind you, in addition to other forms of geek savant behavior).
If I were to do that today, I would have had fun with the (approximation of) Stefan-Boltzmann. It is neat if you think about it, like the Steps Song, also titled 5, 6, 7, 8. If you have never heard it, here is the video (of a tolerable song with some incredibly bad choreography – the kind that will chase aliens away from this planet, should they watch it):
And now, it will be nearly impossible for you, or me, to forget the simplified Stefan-Boltzmann Constant. You’re welcome. Or, not. Oh, and if you really want to know what I do on Saturday Nights:
http://blogs.solidworks.com/tech/2017/03/solidworks-simulation-step-series-thermal-analysis.html