Knotty

A long time ago, I thought that I understood how antennas work. I don't mean that I understood them on a molecular level, but that I kind-of understood how they did what they did.

At the time, I worked with aircraft radios. One of our pieces of gear was an 'antenna tuner', which would somehow make it possible for a single antenna to be used with multiple radios that were tuned to multiple frequencies. I don't think it was possible for them all to work at the same time, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, I had a mental image of the antenna as a whole bunch of particles all vibrating in unison, where that vibration matched -- or didn't -- the frequency of the signal that you were trying to get. When it matched, good deal. When it didn't, in my mental model, the tuner 'added' some vibration, so that the final effect was as if the antenna was vibrating at the right frequency. Now, whether this model was even remotely close to how an antenna actually works, I have no idea. I did try to read up on it a couple of times, but what I found was that a) there are no simple books about antenna theory, and b) thats it.

String theory is like that.

I was looking at the videos on the Discover Magazine web site - in particular, the one about string theory. The videos were submitted for a competition to describe a scientific concept in two minutes or less. Well, I know what string theory is, just like I know how antennas work. Which is to say, not really. But two minutes? Heck, I can listen to anything for two minutes. So I clicked on the first one. And I see a picture of a little yellow rubber ducky (oh, this is going to be easy, I can do this!), and I hear this Russian-accented voice say 'In our basic understanding of physics, objects....' (Een hower bayseek oonderstanding uf feesicks, objacktss..) and my brain just shut right the heck down. Run away, run away! it screamed. It's going to eat your brain!!!

The second one isn't as obscure, but still... I think its going to take me...awhile... to get through these videos.