Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Experiment

If I were a God but a not quite omniscient God I would conduct grand experiments to determine the kind of Universe I was operating in.
One very interesting experiment I would do involves a school playground and a good supply of schoolchildren.
I hasten to add for the politically correct among us that being God I would ensure that no children were physically harmed in this experiment.
Afterwards I might write up the experiment as follow.
Object
To determine the minimum number of children required to produce a constant background noise.
Apparatus
1) Empty school playground
2) 60 small children
3) Tape recorder

Method
Switch on tape recorder
Begin to drop the children 1 by one into the empty playground counting into the tape recorder as each one falls… 1,2 ….3 etc
As the number of children builds up so should the noise level so that eventually there comes a point , theory suggests around 20, when there are no discernable gaps in the wall of noise.
One could continue dropping children into the playground and estimate whether the noise level, pitch etc is related to numbers of children dropped.

It is indeed a great mystery to me why this should occur at all. As a child I never shouted in the play ground and yet it is an incontrovertible fact that a noisy hysteria occurs when the number of children in a play ground reaches a certain figure.

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