Pastafarian Theology Doctoral Theses

[Tigger_the_Wing]

Roland, I have just finished reading your thesis. Awesome!

Everybody has produced such sterling work, I have found it far too intimidating to make any attempt myself.

[pieces o'nine]

Why not submit a thesis on the daunting nature of submitting a thesis?

[DavidH]

I hope you're going to award one to SamanthaSudd? A nice big fat one with lots of curlicues.

[daftbeaker]

Non-mathematical discussions of thermodynamics with a focus on the 2nd Law and its relevance to evolution

1 Hello, my name is Tom and I want to talk to you about thermodynamics. Before I do that there should be a table of contents to stop Dr Cox from killing me if he ever reads this.

1 Introduction (done)
2 Contents (this)
3 What is thermodynamics?
3.1 The main concepts
4 Energy
4.1 Entropy
4.2 Thought experiments
4.3 Pirate thought experiments
5 The Laws
5.1 The Zeroth Law
5.2 The First Law
5.3 The Second Law
5.4 The Third Law
6 The 2nd Law and evolution
6.1 A summary
7 Conclusion

3 Thermodynamics was originally the study of heat and its movement (from the Greek therme and dynamis). It has since become concerned with a variety of issues but there are two main concepts, energy and entropy. Incidentally, thermodynamicists are a weird bunch who do calculus for fun and should be avoided at all costs.

3.1 Energy and entropy are the two main concepts in thermodynamics. They are frequently misunderstood so I shall give a brief metaphorical example of both. This way you will still misunderstand them but in a rather more amusing way and one that suits my forthcoming nonsense.

4 Energy is usually defined by physicists as 'the capacity to do work'. This is clearly bollocks as anyone who has worked with children will tell you; they have lots of energy and are incapable of doing work. In fact the more energy a child has the less work they are capable of. I will therefore leave energy undefined as you all know what I mean by energy anyway. All that is necessary is to be able to think of energy as 'stuff' that can be moved around.

4.1 Entropy is rather more easily defined as the number of ways that something can be arranged. For instance, a fish has one way of being arranged and therefore has low entropy. Putting that fish into a stoo increases the number of ways it can be arranged (you can stir a stoo but can't stir a fish) and so increases the entropy.

4.2 Energy and entropy are too small to observe directly but can be easily understood with thought experiments. This has several advantages over real experiments; it's quicker, cheaper, easier and there are no inconvenient results. To keep things simple and relevant I will use pirates and portions of Fish 'Ead stoo in this thought experiment. The stoo represents the energy. Due to quantum mechanics you will have to assume that the portions of stoo cannot be split into smaller portions.

4.3 If you take one pirate and give them a portion of stoo then there is only one arrangement, the pirate eats the stoo. If you give one pirate five portions of stoo then, along with a very sick pirate, there is still only one arrangement, the pirate eats all the stoo. Now suppose you have ten pirates and ten portions of stoo. There are now many, many arrangements that could be made. For example, one unlucky pirate could eat all ten portions or one pirate could eat nine portions and another could eat one and so on, right the way up to all the pirates eating one portion each. There is some maths to work out the number of arrangements but it's boring (even though it does have lots of exclamation marks in) and all that is necessary to understand is that more ways of arranging energy = more entropy.

5 The Laws of Thermodynamics
These are often stated in abstract gibberish to try and confuse people. Phrasing things in pirate terms makes it much simpler.

5.1 The Zeroth Law - Bad planning in my opinion to go making a First Law and then discovering something that goes before it. It's usually stated as 'If A is in equilibrium with B and B is in equilibrium with C then A is in equilibrium with C'. To understand this imagine three pirates in the galley called Al, Bob and Craig. Al has three portions of stoo on his plate. He will promptly try and get rid of some to Bob. Bob will then try and get rid of some to Craig. After a few minutes of scraping stoo onto other pirates' plates there will be the same amount on all three plates or, as a physicist might put it, A=B=C.

5.2 The First Law - While normally blathering about work done and interconversion with heat, the First Law can be simply stated as 'the internal energy of a closed system is constant'. Imagine locking a pirate in a chest with a portion of stoo. It doesn't matter if the pirate leaves the stoo alone, eats it or throws it back up, the total of the pirate and stoo in the chest does not change.

5.3 The Second Law - This one can be a bit harder. It's usually defined as 'the entropy of a closed system will always increase'. A closed system is merely one that matter or energy cannot enter or leave; for example a locked treasure chest. Until we open the chest it is a closed system since nothing can get in or out but once opened it is an open system.

Since entropy is just the number of ways of arranging things we can use pirates to explain it. Imagine ten pirates and ten portions of stoo in the galley. Once the pirates have eaten the stoo there will be a mad rush outside to chuck up over the sides of the ship. We can see from this that the energy (stoo) is being spread out over a larger area and therefore entropy has increased. Now it is possible to reverse this but the energy needed to force the pirates back into the galley and eat the recycled stoo (some fishing nets may be necessary for this stage) will outweigh any entropy decrease.

5.4 The Third Law - Often stated as 'the entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero will be zero'. There are lots of interpretations of this but it broadly means that the entropy of any real substance (including pirates) will never reach zero.

To explain this we need a pirate and a freezer. As we cool the pirate down they become increasingly slow and tired, losing energy and so decreasing in entropy (since entropy is a way of arranging energy, if you have less energy you have less entropy). However, as they are cooled down they shiver more and more and the more you cool them, the more they shiver. Therefore you will never get the pirate to be perfectly still, no matter how much you cool them. There is an alternative explanation for this but it involves quantum mechanics and +1/2 vibrational wavefunctions that I'd have to look up so we'll ignore it.

6 The Second Law and evolution
Several creationists (morons) have claimed that evolution violates the Second Law. This is usually based on an incredibly simple interpretation of the Second Law that would disgrace a ten year old, often 'everything moves to disorder'. While these are generally true they omit a great deal of information. Specifically they ignore the crucial aspect of a closed system.

You should recall from earlier that the Second Law can be stated as 'the entropy of a closed system will always increase'. Since a closed system is one that matter or energy cannot move in or out the Earth is not a closed system. That idea bears repeating, the Second Law only applies to closed systems and the Earth is not a closed system.

Also, the Second Law only demands that entropy increases overall. If you have a closed system with an entropy loss of 4 in one place and an entropy gain of 5 in another, that is fine because the entropy of the system has increased.

6.1 Now we come to the really important point. Life is unlikely and complicated and does violate the simplest interpretations of the Second Law. However, once you realise that the Earth is not a closed system and we get a huge amount of energy from the Sun then the Second Law (providing you use a sensible interpretation) becomes irrelevant to evolution and life. We don't need to worry about it because there is such a massive energy source (metaphorically) on our doorstep. Because the Sun is a massively increasing area of entropy life on Earth is nowhere near pushing the entropy debt back to breaking even.

7 In conclusion, the ideas behind thermodynamics are quite simple, even if the maths isn't. Also, creationists are idiots that don't know what they're talking about. Still, when has that stopped them before?

[pieces o'nine]

That be thee foinest hexplanashun ov thee Laws ov Fizzicks wot oi 'as evver laid me wun goode oi on.


One question from yer audience: arrrgh thee thought hexpeariments on coolin' down pyrates thee etymology ov thee oft-quoted phrase "Shivver me Timbers"?

[Roy Hunter]

Very nice! I particularly like all the assumptions of definitions, and refusals to look up or reference the literature. I just wish I had the bottle to do that with mine. Well done!

[DavidH]

Excellent, db: now I understand it all. The subject needs more fish head stoo.

Bart & family have now left here and are heading up north. Herefordshire is now down by 4 barts and up north will gain four barts. The amount of barts in the universe is unchanged, which proves one of those laws. I think.

[gronank]

Entropy is rather more easily defined as the number of ways that something can be arranged.

This is completly correct, except if you're using Boltzmann's definition of entropy, then it is "Entropy is rather more easily defined as the logarithm of the number of ways that something can be arranged"

[daftbeaker]

Excellent, db: now I understand it all. The subject needs more fish head stoo.

Bart & family have now left here and are heading up north. Herefordshire is now down by 4 barts and up north will gain four barts. The amount of barts in the universe is unchanged, which proves one of those laws. I think.

Yarrgh, that is in accordance with the 1st Law. In accordance with the 2nd Law, they will start off having fuel (petrol/diesel/stoo gas) but arrive with less. In accordance with the 3rd Law, Bart will be rather cold

[daftbeaker]

In light of recent debate I would like to submit an addendum to my thesis, titled 'Why global warming is real'.

First we must take a quick journey into quantum. Quantum is derived from 'quanta', the name Max Planck gave to the smallest unit of energy. Quantum deals with areas of physics and chemistry that are governed by discrete 'jumps' of energy.

This may seem counterintuitive but it's really quite simple. Imagine a ramp where you can step at any point on that ramp. Now imagine a staircase where you can only be on one step at a time. On the ramp you could take a half step but that's not possible on the stairs.

That is quantisation. We are used to a world where we can do anything between two points but, at an atomic level that is not possible.

Now we come to the atmosphere. There are four types of quantised atomic motion, translation, rotation, vibration and excitation. They broadly translate to moving about, turning around, shaking and bouncing up to the next storey. Now these are all quantised so you need exactly the right energy to change between one state to another.

Now we come to individual gases. As I'm sure you're aware most of the atmosphere is made of nitrogen and oxygen. These are effectively transparent at the wavelengths the Sun emits. This is important and worth noting, most of the gases in the atmosphere just ignore warming radiation. They will absorb radiation but the radiation they will absorb is not commonly available in our solar system (the exact wavelengths can be calculated with ab initio software) so they are effectively transparent.

However, CO2 has an absorption band within the Sun's emissions. Note that CO2 is actually quite nice in terms of warming and there are plenty of other gases that, because of their structure, absorb and transmit far more heat than CO2. For instance methane, CH4, is about 4 times as damaging as CO2 because it absorbs more heat. Molecules such as NF3 are several thousand times worse than CO2 at absorbing heat. The problem with CO2 is that as a species we emit far more of it than any other pollutant.

As the Sun's energy comes to our planet some of it gets absorbed by the Earth and some by the atmopshere. If it weren't for the global warming effect the Earth would be around -50'C (according to a Biology teacher I knew) but the problem is rapidly increasing concentrations of global warming agents. As we increase the proportions of carbon dioxide, methane and various other nasties we can only expect global temperatures to increase. This is relatively simple science.

I have seen experiments on radical populations and ozone degradation. The reaction proceeded slowly until a 'bath gas' was introduced that absorbed excess heat and allowed reactions to proceed. Funnily enough, IR absorbent gases absorb heat and warm the chamber T

he IR absorbence of CO2 has been shown hundreds of times, all you need is an IR chamber, a sensor and some CO2 (which the Chemistry and Physics department will have loads of).

[Roland Deschain]

I just typed out a really long response, and didn't copy it into my clipboard for those "just in case" moments, and a "just in case" moment happened, and my browser **** itself and lost my whole post. [insert an extremely profuse string of notty words here] I shall retype what I recall of it.

Those were two great theses, DB. Thy personage more than deserves the certificate granting you a Doctorate in Pastafarian Theology. I also noticed a request for SamanthaSudd to receive one too. This shall be granted, as she did sterling work, and it was for a pucker institution too! Not that my diploma mill isn't pucker...

Now onto criticism of your work, DB, and it's not all constructive

Constructive, Yet Pedantic - Your use of pirates to illustrate your points was inspired. This not only helped to highlight the plight of Bart Industries employees at sea, but also enabled me to vividly imagine the scenarios presented to me. I do have one criticism though; your treatment of creationists, and your leniency towards them. Maybe you should have used harsher language when dealing with them, calling them "twats" instead of idiots, or by using one of your favourite words. Probably not a great idea, as this is a so-called scientific paper, with lots of long words in, so probably best to keep it clean(ish). I would go on, but seeing as this would entail research, and that's not really in the spirit of your thesis, I can't be assed.

Constructive. Ok, It's Pedantic - In your mouthpiece on global warming, I mean your mini-thesis on global warming , I noticed that you did not include pirates. While this is not exactly an issue, as they hardly feature prominently in any of the other theses submitted in this thread, I feel that their exclusion caused you to make one fatal error. Your allegorical tale of the person not being able to stand on more than one step at a time is incorrect. As a human bean, I have two legs, both with feet attached, and am able to move one foot to the step above, whilst keeping the other in its place. To all intents and purposes, this then allows me to be in two quantum energy states at once (could be an area for study, such as with interference patterns). If you had used a pirate who's had his wooden leg stolen, this would have been the perfect illustration for the layperson to imagine the energy needed to move from one "step" to another, whilst not allowing said pirate to keep one foot/peg leg on the step below. Plus, the inclusion of pirates always makes things cool (see Pastafarian "Pirates vs. global warming" graph for evidence).

Absolutely Pedantic, and Here Because I Want To Be Annoying - As someone with a legitimate doctorate, I understand what you mean by "half step", but the layperson may not. Unless you clarify what a step is, and what distance it covers, it can mean anything from 1mm to 10m. Maybe the inclusion of mechanical legs on the person, that are programmed to move a set distance per step, would have been in order, or making the theoretical person have a phobia of shuffling, would have helped?

[JD Atheist]

Greetings, Pastafarians:

I have two issues for your consideration:

1. A scholarly research paper submitted for a doctoral degree is a "dissertation." For a master's degree, it is a "thesis."

2. I'm willing to buy one person a copy of my 2011 doctoral dissertation -- yes, it's a real dissertation -- for review or it can be found at the Florida Agricultural & Mechanical (FAMU) College of Law. Otherwise, one must spend the astronomical fee of $.99 to purchase it at Amazon.com. The URL is below.

My dissertation, entitled "A Recipe for Religion," proves that the FSM religion and its adherents have the same Constitutional rights under the First Amendment as do any traditional theists. It is, to my knowledge, the only legal treatise that analyzes the Constitutionality of the FSM religion. I won't bother to explain the entire book, but if anyone is serious about the FSM religion, then this nook should be in your Kindle library.

Please let me know your opinions, and if you would, post reviews on Amazon.com.

http://www.amazon.com/A-Recipe-for-Religion-ebook/dp/B007AG2CF8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1329583675&sr=1-1

[daftbeaker]

1. In the US a scholarly research paper submitted for a doctoral degree is a "dissertation." For a master's degree, it is a "thesis."

Fixed that for you. In the UK it is commmon for a Bachelor's degree to require a dissertation. Of course it depends on the university and the subject as well, while I was at Bristol dissertations seemed to be more common for arts subjects while science subjects seemed split between referring to it as a thesis or project.

In summary, the US does not equal the world Since this thread was started by an English person requiring a thesis for a doctoral award is entirely correct and you uppity colonial types are getting confused again. Next you'll be telling us that humour is spelled wrong

[black bart]

I've already got one...I blow my nose at you.

[pieces o'nine]

He could submit a paper comparing and contrasting the various designations for scholarly papers...