Bill Nye vs Ken Ham Debate Response

I’ve recently seen and heard a lot about the creationist vs evolutionist debate that Bill Nye the science guy had yesterday and wanted to address some points.

Disclaimer: I’m not arguing for either side I just want to make sure everyone is talking the same language.

The main issue here is the difference in both sides understanding of probability and large numbers. I will now try to explain situations purely using mathematics, and people can draw their own conclusions.

Issue 1: Why the law of thermodynamics is a law.
This law is obeyed because of how many particles are associated with a given system. Let us talk about a 1 meter cubed box of air, or a 3 foot by 3 foot box of air. Within it we have about 2.1*10^22 particles. If we want to impose order on this system spontaneously, lets say stuffing all the particles into one corner of the box for just 1 second it would be like getting everyone in the world which is only about 6 billion or 6*10^12 people to decide to do nothing but walk in single file for the next 300 years. That’s why this law is obeyed. When a scientist is talking about chances this is the scale of what he’s talking about. Things will most likely happen as predicted unless random occurrences such as what is described above spontaneously happen, which of course is possible, just unlikely.

Issue 2: Why the law of thermodynamics is violated.
This law is violated all the time because of how similar one situation is to another. Although this box of air behaves the same way most of the time, that odd thing could occur right? It really does happen because of how many boxes of air there are in the world. There are about 5*10^22 boxes of air on the earth from the surface to the atmosphere. This means that every second that passes the concept or situation of the box lives for 1.58*10^14 years. The scientific lifespan of the universe is only 10^10 years which means that every second that passes the idea of the box lives for about 1,000 lifetimes of the universe. In that time you do get lucky enough to see the box of air suddenly compress itself. Therefore the law does get violated all the time. Order can spontaneously happen, and it does happen. That’s the scientist’s explanation for evolution. When they are talking about the “chance” for life to form, the “concept” the situation for that little pond of organic goop existed for 10’s of thousands of lifetimes of the universe for each second that passed until it happened. Not saying that its true, its still a theory, but the waiting period before the first life form on earth was created is a lot longer than most people think, and in that time who knows what could happen?

Issue 3: Why the law is still a law even though it is constantly being violated.
The second law of thermodynamics is a law of the universe. Out of those 5*10^22 boxes of air, most likely only a few boxes are doing that violation. Not only that those few boxes are not necessarily occurring at the same moment, so in general most of the time the boxes are obeying the second law. Because of that, the entire universe obeys the second law despite localized violations.

How to Fix No Signal to Monitor

Sometimes when using an old computer the monitor won't connect to the tower. To resolve this follow these simple steps.

1. Check the Power Cable and make sure its firmly connected
2. Check the Monitor Cable and make sure its firmly connected

If the above is true then it is quite possible that the ram might need to be reset in order to do this:

1. Remove the side cover of the tower
2. Find the ram which will look something like what is shown below
3. Gently push down the two clips holding the ram
4. Remove the ram and clean it with a dry cloth
5. Replace the ram in its initial position by pushing down firmly, the clips will snap the ram in place if successful

KP Fundamentals

Overview of Kelvin Probe Method

• Background
• Kelvin method invented by Lord Kelvin over a century ago
• Work Function - energy required to remove an electron from material 
• indicates surface conditions such as
• absorbed, evaporated layers, surface reconstruction, surface charging, oxide layer imperfections, surface and bulk recombinations
• Use a reference surface to study a sample electrode
• the two are conductors that form a parallel plate capacitor at the tip
• Capacitance - C = ε A/D
• ε is the permittivity of the material in between plates, A is area connected as capacitor, D is distance between two conductors

• C = Q/V
• C is capacitance, Q is charge, v is voltage
• Q = V ε A / D
• As long as it is possible to determine voltage difference charge can be calculated, ε = permittivity of free-space if instrument is in vacuum
• Null method - apply external voltage V1 to probe. If V1 is equal to Voltage on probe then V is 0, so no current is flowing to or from the probe

• Current Nullification method
• Probe is vibrated in sinusoid and is perpendicular to the surface
• Distance between plates D = D0 + D1sin(ωt)
• D1 is the amplitude of oscillation
• Find new capacitance
• C = ε A/[D0 + D1sin(ωt)]
• Find Current generated
• I = V dC/dt
• I = V d (ε A/[D0 + D1sin(ωt)]) /dt
• I = V ε A [D1ωsin(ωt)]/[D0 + D1sin(ωt)]2
• Then we nullify this current by bringing Voltage to 0

• This is the solution to noise difficulties that come from null field method
• Distance D is maintained due to parallel movement of probe
• Capacitance remains constant as permittivity and area doesn’t change
• Therefore we are looking for the variations in surface potential/charge
• Current I is generated I = (dV/dt) C
• Drawbacks
• This results in an averaged potential measurement
• Given some potential function, the instrument will measure the enclosed charge averaged over the size of the measuring tip
• Resultant Error
• If diameter of measured potential > diameter of tip error results = 2 times the size of the tip
• If diameter of measured potential = diameter of tip error results = 2 times the size of the measured potential
• If diameter of measured potential < diameter of tip error results = 2 times the size of the measured potential
• To get accurate measurements the probe must be both close to the surface and small in comparison to measured charge to minimize edge effects

Back to ToC

Kelvin Probe Research ToC

Table of Contents

1. KP Fundamentals