{"id":8061,"date":"2013-06-27T11:25:56","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T15:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/?p=8061"},"modified":"2013-06-27T11:25:56","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T15:25:56","slug":"260-million-scientists-a-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2013\/06\/27\/260-million-scientists-a-month\/","title":{"rendered":"260 Million Scientists a Month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The day I bought my iPad, as I was taking it out of the box, SteelyKid (then 3) came bopping into my office, spotted it, and declared &#8220;I want to play Angry Birds!&#8221; It&#8217;s a remarkable demonstration of the genius of their product: not only have they created a game that a three-year-old can play, they&#8217;ve managed to make every three-year-old in the industrialized world aware of their product.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also a testament to my current obsession, the universality of science, and not just because <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2013\/06\/03\/angry-birds-furious-forces-by-rhett-allain\/\">you can use the game to illustrate physics<\/a>. After all, the process of playing the game serves as a good metaphor for the process of scientific thinking:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On first encountering a new level, you need to carefully observe it to determine what you need to do to clear it<\/li>\n<li>Once you know the goal, you construct a mental model of how you might reach it: &#8220;If I hit <em>this<\/em> block with the yellow bird, it will topple <em>there<\/em> crushing those pigs&#8230;&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Once you have your model, you put it to the test, firing the birds in accordance with the plan, and see if events play out the way you expect<\/li>\n<li>If your theory passes the test of experimental (videogame) reality, you move on to the next challenge. If you came up short, you refine your model (&#8220;Maybe I should hit <em>that<\/em> block instead, which will bring <em>this<\/em> down&#8230;&#8221;), and try again.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The only essential element of science that isn&#8217;t mandatory is the sharing of results with others, though God knows, there are plenty of people who do that on message boards and whatever else.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s pretty amazing. What&#8217;s more amazing is that, as of several months ago, they claim <a href=\"http:\/\/expandedramblings.com\/index.php\/how-many-people-play-angry-birds-infographic\/\">260 million users a month<\/a>. That&#8217;s one out of every twenty-ish humans alive today choosing to unwind by thinking like a scientist for a while. Including a good number of three-year-olds.<\/p>\n<p>Keep that in mind the next time somebody suggests that science isn&#8217;t something for everybody, or that some group of people isn&#8217;t capable of scientific thinking. We&#8217;ve got 260 million scientists a month, thanks to just one of the umpteen silly video games you can install on your smartphone. Scientific thinking is a fundamental, universal human activity, employed even for frivolous purposes.<\/p>\n<p>(The screen shot at the top of this post is from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2011\/11\/physics-of-the-yellow-angry-bird\/\">Rhett&#8217;s study of the physics of the yellow bird<\/a>. A version of this is part of the introduction to the book-in-progress at the moment, though there are some structural problems with the draft Introduction that might force it to move elsewhere; those revisions are what prompted this post.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The day I bought my iPad, as I was taking it out of the box, SteelyKid (then 3) came bopping into my office, spotted it, and declared &#8220;I want to play Angry Birds!&#8221; It&#8217;s a remarkable demonstration of the genius of their product: not only have they created a game that a three-year-old can play,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2013\/06\/27\/260-million-scientists-a-month\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">260 Million Scientists a Month<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,339,37,11,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_writing","category-outreach","category-pop_culture","category-science","category-video_games","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}