A session at Bira. The riders were relative beginners, so they were not providing extreme knee-scraping action. But after the restricted shooting opportunities of a Formula One circuit, it was good to stand in any suicidal position that took my fancy; such as the apex of a corner leaning out over the track.
The resident maestro, Graham, was in teaching mode so I had to shoot him through the grass to obscure the fact that his knee is not scraping the ground.
Comments 🔗
2009-10-01| Billy saysDon’t forget what Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle tells us … photo #1 was particularly relevent in this respect ….
2009-10-01| genuinej saysBilly, for the benefit of the thick, i.e. me, please explain just why H’s UP is relevant to photo #1, or anywhere else for that matter.
2009-10-02| Spike saysKnowing Billy as I do, he has selected an arbitrary scientific term, one that has reputation for complexity, and applied it in a mocking way to emphasise that all that is being offered is an average photo of a bike; as opposed to, say, a stark capture of a refugee with a baby, begging for food while being abused by a soldier (of course I have shots like that, but they are so last year).
Alternatively, he is taking laws that only apply at the quantum level and suggesting that I cannot know both the position and velocity of the bike at the same time, and am therefore putting myself in danger. Of course, even if Heisenberg did apply above the quantum level, Billy is not allowing for Lagrangian mechanics.
If we are lucky, Camberley, being a doctor in nuclear physics (I kid you not), will wade in and clear the whole thing up.
2009-10-02| Billy saysI used those Lagrangian mechanics once, totally fuc*ed up the clutch on my Volvo Estate.
GenuineJ … thank you for your most excellent question.
I was of course referring to the “Observer Effect” with which Heisenberg’s is invariably confused by the layman (including me as my maths runs out rather early on in the game). My point was that the bike rider (the observed)was undoubtedly having his attention affected by the observer (Spike in this case) … possibly with injurious consequences.
No doubt the good doctor will be able to explain in terms that we can all not understand.
2009-10-02| Camberley saysAccording to quantum theory an object can be in all possible states simultaneously and it only resolves itself into one particular state by being observed. In other words the bike and rider were simultaneously at all points of the universe until Spike poked his camera at them causing the collapse of their wave form. As an aside Spike is quite lucky they resolved themselves a few feet from him and not directly on top of him - perhaps somewhere in the mulitverse that is exactly what happened and we are now writing an obituary. Anyway enough of such frivolity, this indeed is the observer effect. Spike is quite correct that the Heisenberg principle refers to the uncertainty of location and momentum.
There is however another interesting feature with that first photograph and it is the fact that the bike is much shorter than the bikes in the other pictures. This is clearly a result of the spacial compression due to the effects of relativity. I am very rusty on all this now but I would estimate the speed the bike is travelling to cause this level of compression at about 1/2 to 3/4 the speed of light, in other words somewhere around 200,000 km/s. It is just possible that the shortening of the bike is due to something called perspective caused by the angle of the bike relative to the camera, but I feel this explanation is quite unlikely.
2009-10-02| Spike saysI am touched and proud at the quality of debate on this site. It’s all bollocks of course, but it’s intellectual bollocks.
2009-10-02| genuinej saysSpike; you’ve just pricked my bubble!
2009-10-02| Billy saysThank you Doctor, my faith in you was very clearly not misplaced ….
2009-10-04| Spike saysgenuinej, I didn’t know you had a bubble.