Mechanical Turk is a system for crowdsourcing small tasks. And it rocks, if you don’t like doing small tasks.

Amazon developed the system in 2005 to crowdsource the job of categorizing its own products, mostly CDs. It’s been open for public use (in Beta form) ever since.

I’m writing about it because mTurk has remained impressively unknown over the years, even among techies. But for entrepreneurs trying to build web systems fast (and gain users, content, discussion, etc.), it can be a powerful secret weapon.

The Idea

Mechanical Turk bridges the gap between completely automated tasks (such as counting the words in a book), and creative tasks that require human thought (such as writing the book). The mundane tasks that live in this gap are not quite doable by machines yet. An example is re-writing a book, paragraph-by-paragraph, to retain the original meaning but with a different wording (as with avoiding duplicate content penalization).

How it Works

1. Break your crazy task into many micro-tasks (called “HITs”: Human Intelligence Tasks”).
2. Design your HIT on mTurk: describe what each “Turker” must do, how they submit the answer, and how much you will reward them.
3. Submit your HIT, and wait…
4. When the work is done, approve it so the Turkers get paid.

Read their FAQ to learn the rest.

Who does these tasks?

Turkers seem to come from every country, with most from the US and India. In fact it’s surprising there aren’t more in India considering the state of Elance, ODesk, and other crowdsource-ish markets. The last I checked, Amazon only direct-deposited earnings into bank accounts or paid Turkers in Amazon credits, which would work best for North Americans. In any case, you can specify which countries are eligible to complete your HITs.

How much do I have to pay?

You can set any prize for your HITs but since it’s a free market, you need to set a reasonable price to get any work done. Many HITs are priced at only $0.01 for simple tasks like image tagging, while others are over $5 USD. I try to keep the effective hourly rate for my hits between $8 and $12 per hour.

Example Uses

My first useful task for Mechanical Turk saved me days of work and hundreds of dollars. I had a video aggregation task; I needed metadata and embed codes for one thousand YouTube videos which met certain criteria. I planned to employ some of my friends for this task and pay them very fairly, which would have run a bill of about $500 and taken about a week. Instead, I broke it into 100 HITs of 10 videos each and posted it on mTurk. To my amazement, the next morning (7 hours later) I had one thousand videos indexed as needed for a quarter of the planned cost.

Other great mTurk uses include:

• Tagging content (photos, videos, articles, etc.)
• Rating and sorting content
• Writing comments, making posts
• Writing reviews, answering simple questions
• Surveys
• A/B page testing
• Aggregation (eg. building a directory)
• Research (eg. finding competitors)
• Clicking ads, Digging articles (just kidding! Totally against TOS, but you were thinking it, weren’t you…)

Surveys

My main use of mTurk has been rapid market research in the form of surveys. In five minutes you can make a basic survey using mTurk’s native forms, or you can link to your own survey system (I prefer PHP-based LimeSurvey).

How fast and how much? About $0.03 per survey question equates to a fair wage, and if you need less than 50 responses (such as with a pilot survey) you won’t wait more than half an hour for all your responses. Of course there is some selection bias with these surveys that you’ll have to consider.

And remember, Turkers are customers too! If you are doing a market research survey for your new widget-thing, why not allow the Turkers to opt-into a mailing list so they can hear when you launch? In the last big survey I did, about 20 percent of respondents gave their email for just that purpose, meaning the survey can pay for itself in leads. It worked for Pixlin.

One problem

When I last checked a month ago Mechanical Turk was still not available to Canadians, but I’m sure you’ll find a way around that.

Summary

In this article you will learn how to:

• Extract infinite energy from a vacuum
• Manipulate gravity and undergo interstellar travel.
• Apply cheesy Star Wars quotes to a serious topic.

The force is strong within you

Imagine a renewable energy source so dense, a cup full could vapourize all the oceans on Earth!  While this idea sounds even too bold for Star Trek, it is one possible consequence of the zero-point radiation field (ZPF) [1].  The ZPF is a uniform photon flux which permeates the entire Universe, existing even in total vacuum.  It is not casually detected because the ZPF exists everywhere uniformly; perceiving it would be like a fish perceiving the water it swims in.  Although the existence of ZPF is widely known and accepted by most physicists, the implications of the field and its role in the universe remain a matter of speculation.  Physicists have identified four technologies the ZPF may yield: tapping ZPF energy, manipulating inertia, altering gravitation, and generating forces (propulsion).  All four technologies have theoretical merit, and with expanded research and scientific attention, all four will likely be achieved.

The purpose of this essay is to convey the present state of zero-point radiation research and highlight areas of high potential for ZPF-based technological advancement.  An effort was made to simplify the often complex physics inherent to the subject, and present it in terms agreeable to engineers and general scientists.  Several interesting ZPF-related phenomena have been excluded from this essay in order to limit the mathematical content.  Please see the references for more detailed discussions.

You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned

What do you get when you remove all matter from a volume?  “A vacuum” may be the obvious answer, but this is not entirely accurate.  Prior to the 19th century, it was thought a vacuum was attainable by removing all visible matter and gas.  With the development of the electromagnetic theory, it was realized that attempts to create a perfect vacuum are foiled by the presence of radiation [2].  This was not particularly disturbing to scientists since most forms of radiation could be shielded from the vacuum, and even thermal radiation could theoretically be eliminated by cooling the immediate surroundings to absolute zero.  The vacuum was nothing special at that time; it was rather boring even.  The development of quantum theory in the early 20th century alerted physicists to how interesting vacuums still are [2].  Far from empty, the vacuum is witness to such curious things as the spontaneous creation and destruction of matter and antimatter.  Additionally, a photonic radiation field which cannot be suppressed exists in the vacuum [2].  This is called the zero-point radiation field.

The theoretical basis for the ZPF is simple and widely accepted.  The Heisenberg uncertainty principle asserts there is a fundamental limit to our knowledge of any particle’s state.  The more precisely one measures a particle’s position, the less accurately its momentum (mass times velocity) can possibly be measured.  This does not describe a flaw in measurement technology, but rather a fundamental condition of the Universe [3].   Consider now an ideal one-dimensional harmonic oscillator, such as a mass on an ideal spring moving back and forth.  For a small enough mass (such as an electron), the Heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates the oscillator can never come to complete rest, since this condition of zero momentum is forbidden (the uncertainty in its position becomes infinite).  Furthermore, the oscillator is limited to possessing only particular states with energy levels of E_n = (n + 1/2)hf, where h is Planck’s constant and f is the oscillation frequency.  The system’s energy can be raised and lowered in units of n, but when the kinetic energy (temperature) becomes zero, n becomes zero, leaving a residual energy of  hf / 2 [1].

Electromagnetic radiation such as radio waves, X-rays, and light can be thought of as waves traveling through space at the speed of light.  In many ways they behave as harmonic oscillators, each carrying an amount of energy proportional to its frequency.  According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the average minimum radiation energy of any given frequency is  hf / 2.  While this is a minuscule amount of energy, the number of possible frequencies is tremendous, yielding a very high theoretical energy density [3].  This universal sea of radiation is called the zero-point field.  The magnitude of the energy flux depends on the radiation cutoff frequency, which is believed to be 1043 Hz, since space itself is thought to “break-up” at the corresponding wavelength distance of 10-33 cm.  Assuming this cutoff, the zero-point energy density is 1070 Joules per cubic meter – 110 orders of magnitude greater than the radiant power at the centre of the Sun [3, 4]!

Is the zero-point field real, or just a curious mathematical by-product of the uncertainty principle?  In the year 50 B.C., the Roman poet and naturalist Titus Lucretius Carus recorded his observation of metallic plates sticking together in a peculiar way.  Exactly 2000 years later, Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir showed the phenomena was a theoretical consequence of zero-point radiation.  As conducting plates are moved together, zero-point radiation between them is reflected between their inner surfaces.  Boundary conditions at the plate surfaces allow only certain radiation frequencies to be reflected, and those with wavelengths greater than the plate separation are quickly damped-out.  The result is an imbalance of the radiation pressure between the inside and outside of the plates, causing a net attractive force between the plates.  The Casimir Effect was proved experimentally in 1996 with high correspondence between results and theory.

How can such a powerful energy field be nearly undetectable?  A common dismissal is that we cannot sense it because it surrounds us and penetrates us – it is the “dead state”, upon which all other energy is measured.  The light we do see is over and above the background zero-point field.  The homogeneity and uniformity of the field mask it from casual observation.  As suggested by the Casimir Effect, matter is continuously interacting with the zero-point field, but the effects of radiation pressure always cancel due to the uniformity of the field.  Even objects moving at constant speed are unaffected by the field, since the field is proven to possess the special property of being “Lorentz-invariant”, meaning it appears uniform in all directions to objects moving within it [5].

Use the Force

While the existence of the zero-point field is a proven fact, the ability of the field to do useful work is controversial. How can energy be extracted from such an elusive and uniform medium?  The situation has been likened to the impossibility of extracting work from a uniform thermal reservoir, but this is not quite the case.  The zero-point field is not itself a thermal reservoir, and possesses very different properties [5].  The Casimir force forms a basis for the application of thermodynamic theories towards developing an energy extraction machine.  Despite several creative attempts, no Casimir engine can operate beyond its first cycle – as the plates perform work and collide, they require an equal amount of work to be separated to repeat the cycle [6].  Although impractical as energy generators, Casimir devices are conceptually significant.  They demonstrate it is possible to extract some energy from the zero-point field.

Many promising variations on the Casimir engine have been proposed.  One such derivative involves allowing a charged plasma stream to “condense” under the Casimir force.  After an initial energy input to overcome the plasma’s coulomb barrier, particle condensation should release enough energy to drive the cycle with a net energy gain.  Although a highly speculative design, several countries are reportedly exploring this technique on an experimental basis [6].

Patented zero-point energy collector

In 1996 a historic patent (#5,590,031) was granted to Dr. Mead of the United States Airforce.  The subject of patent is a system for “converting high frequency zero point electromagnetic radiation energy to electrical energy” [7].  Unlike a Casimir engine, Dr. Mead’s device has no moving parts.  Two conductive spheres resonate at their natural frequencies as they are excited by incident zero-point radiation (Figure 1).  The spheres are of slightly different size, and resonate at different frequencies.  Secondary radiation emitted by the spheres interfere with each other, producing a beat frequency oscillation in an antenna positioned between the spheres.  The collected signal is then electronically rectified and used for work [7].  There is no word on whether this device works, possibly because of the difficulty distinguishing between zero-point radiation, and other sources of radiation.  Dr. Mead realizes that smaller spheres would yield more energy, since they resonate at higher frequencies, and the energy density of zero-point radiation is proportional to the frequency cubed.  Consequently, the smaller this machine is, the better it becomes, implying the use of microscopic, or even single particle resonators like protons and neutrons [8].  Clearly there is great potential for this invention, and many more clever devices are expected to follow.

Although the most obvious thing to do with an infinite energy field is to extract energy from it, the ZPF may present some significant fringe benefits also.  Already mentioned is how the zero-point field is Lorentz-invariant, and thus undetectable by any means (such as by Doppler shift) by observers at rest, or moving at constant velocity.  Upon acceleration however, an asymmetry develops in the zero-point field, the magnitude of which is proportional to the acceleration of the object [5].  Physicists Haisch and Rueda have succeeded in deriving Newton’s second law of motion, F=ma , as a consequence of the zero-point field – a significant accomplishment given the second law was previously considered an underivable postulate [5]).  Their conclusion is that “matter resists acceleration not because it possesses some innate thing called mass, but because the zero-point field exerts a force whenever acceleration takes place” [5].  Four years after their initial publication, Haisch and Rueda arrived at the same conclusion using a completely different analysis, but this time deriving the complete relativistic version of Newton’s second law.

A consequence of the zpf-inertia theory is the idea of inertial modification through manipulation of zero-point radiation.  Between closely spaced conductive plates (a “Casimir cavity”), the zero-point field is slightly anisotropic, being weaker in one direction than in others.  Under these conditions, inertial mass should also become directional.  Unfortunately, the change of mass as a function of direction would only be on the order of 10-22 percent under experimental conditions – a little too small for practical use [5].

If inertia is a zero-point field phenomena, then what about gravity?  Einstein’s principle of equivalence requires gravitation to have an analogous zpf-related cause, which would neatly unify inertial and gravitational mass [3].  Manipulation of zero-point radiation might then lead to anti-gravity technology, a concept not as far-fetched as it may seem.  Antigravity has long been a proposed as a necessary mechanism to explain the current structure of our Universe.  Recent astronomical observations indicate the Universe is actually accelerating apart, likely resulting from zero-point influence [8, 9].  Promising work is being done to explain gravity as a long-range effect of zero-point radiation, although a complete theory has not yet emerged [5].

The fourth major technological hope for the zero-point field is propulsion.   If inertia and gravity are zero-point phenomena, then an asymmetric interaction with the field could provide a propulsive force.  Although purely speculation at this time, the concept is exciting as a future mode of space travel.  It is currently the only remotely viable idea for providing reliable thrust in the vacuum of space – an essential requirement for efficient space travel.  A review of our best current and theoretical propulsion technologies reveal no other practical technology for interstellar travel [10].

Other phenomena now attributed to zero-point radiation are Van der Waal forces, diamagnetism, the Lamb-Retherford Shift, explanations of the Planck blackbody radiation spectrum, quantum noise, the stability of the ground state of the hydrogen atom from radioactive collapse, spontaneous emission from excited atoms, and recently observed cosmological antigravity [4, 8].

Do or Do Not … There Is No Try

The zero-point field presents vast opportunities for technological advancement.  The realization that zero-point radiation not only interacts with ordinary matter, but is also the very cause of inertia and gravity will soon catalyze a paradigm shift in physics.  Suggesting that zero-point radiation will result in such “sci-fi” technologies as efficient space drives, and inertial and gravitational manipulation may sound naïve.  However, for the first time we have the theoretical basis to consider these and other possibilities.

Our current situation can be likened to that of electromagnetic radiation research in the late 18th century – the basic laws were understood, but no one had yet applied them to build a radio.  As professor Wesson states, “research into the ZPF is justified because it is of fundamental academic importance and of potential importance to technology” [11].   Continued exposure for zero-point theories and additional funding for theoretical research is recommended, as the number of physicists active in this field appears small.  Including zero-point energy as a potential renewable energy source is also recommended.  Especially given today’s global energy concerns, it would be irresponsible for the scientific community to disregard any possible energy solution.

References

1.         Yam, Philip. “Exploiting Zero-Point Energy,”  Scientific American, December 1997.

2.         Boyer, Timothy H. “The Classical Vacuum,” Scientific American, pp. 70-78, August 1985.

3.         “An Introduction to Zero Point Energy,” California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, May 2002.  Internet Site: http://www.calphysics.org/zpe.html

4.         Millis, Marc G.  “Some Emerging Possibilities,” May 2002.  Internet Site: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/html/warp/possible.htm

5.         Haisch, Bernard and Rueda, Alfonso.  “How to Abhor the Void While Loving the Quantum Vacuum,” Mercury Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 5, September 2000

6.         Puthoff, H.E., PhD.  “The Energetic Vacuum: Implications For Energy Research,” Speculations in Science and Technology, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 247-257, 1990

7.         United States Patent #5590031. “System for converting electromagnetic radiation energy to electrical energy,” Mead, Jr, December 31, 1996.

8.         Valone, Thomas, M.A., P.E. “Understanding Zero Point Energy,” Integrity Research Institute, 1999.  Internet Site: http://users.erols.com/iri/ZPENERGY.html

9.         Glanz, James. “ASTRONOMY: Cosmic Motion Revealed,” Science Maganize, Vol. 282, No.5397, pp. 2156-2157, Dec 1998.

10.       Haisch, Bernard and Rueda, Alfonso. “Prospects for an Interstellar Mission: Hard Technology Limits but Surprising Physics Possibilities,” Mercury Maganize, Vol. 29, No. 4, July/August 2000.

11.       Wesson, Paul S. “Zero-Point Fields, Gravitation, and New Physics,” University of Waterloo.  Internet Site: http://www.calphysics.org/articles/wesson.pdf

Additional Resources:

12.       Stenger, Vic.  “The Phantom of Free Energy,” Skeptical Briefs, 1999.

13.       Haisch, Bernard.  “Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Field,” Science and Spirit.  Internet Site: http://www.science-spirit.org/articles/articledetail.cfm?article_id=126

14.       Corey, Powell S.  “Unbearable Lightness: A New Theory May Explain Why Objects Tend to Stay Put,” Scientific American, Vol. 270, No. 5, pp. 30-31, 1994

There was once an architect who built a cluster of large office buildings that was set in a central green. When construction was completed, the landscape crew asked him where he wanted the sidewalks between the buildings. “Not yet,” was the architect’s reply. “Just plant the grass solidly between the buildings.”

This was done, and by late summer the new lawn was laced with pathways of trodden grass, connecting building-to-building and building to outside. “The paths followed the most efficient line between the points of connection, turned easy curves rather than right angles, and were sized according to traffic flow. In the fall, the architect simply paved in the pathways. Not only did the pathways have a design beauty, but they responded directly to user needs.” (from mindpower)

Isn’t this a elegant organic design philosophy? Can we program applications that respond so naturally to the users’ needs?

For my first post on this shiny new site, why not tackle one of today’s most pressing problems: sticky laptop fingers. Hopefully this helps someone, somewhere.

Background

Touchpads used to always have that matte, Teflon-like surface to allow for easy finger-sliding action. On my HP Pavillion 6000 (great laptop in every other way), they simply painted it. With paint. When my fingers are completely dry, things are good. But often they’re moist (in the summer humidity), and when I’m in a rush they even get sweaty. The friction builds and the touchpad becomes useless.

Solution 1: finger sock

This didn’t work, so you should skip to the next solution. But if you’re curious: I found some very fine cotton cloth, and sewed it together in the same way as the finger of a glove. It even had a tiny tension strap. This covered my mouse finger  and if I could bear wearing it in public, let me navigate smoothly. But as proud as I was, my invention kept coming loose, and sometimes flew off during wild flurries of keyboard action. Regrettably the sock went AWOL before I could get a photo.

Solution 2: Chalk

The chalk is mostly covered with tape to keep my laptop bag from getting dusty

Gymnasts use chalk to help their hands slide and twist over the apparatus, and weight lifters and rock climbers use it to keep their hands dry. My situation was no less serious, so I borrowed a stick of chalk from my local university (they would just waste it anyway) and chalked-up my fingertip. This did a good job of keeping my finger dry, so I carried on this way for several months.  Two problems: during intense laptopping, I would need to re-apply every 5 or 10 minutes; second, the chalky residue had to be wiped from my touchpad every so often.

Solution 3: Oil

Here the oil is absorbed into two small sponges, and contained in a small pill case.

After sitting through five years of mechanical engineering lectures, it’s a little embarrassing that I actually built a finger sock before considering applying lubrication. Mineral oil is very inert and shouldn’t damage the laptop, and I understand it’s also safe on the skin (I’ll only know for sure in a few months). Once spread over the touchpad, the smallest dab of oil provides hours of blissful sliding.  Problem solved.