I went to college in North Carolina in a city that boomed from the manufacturing, advertising, and selling of cigarettes. As America smoked less, the company and the city busted: a common arc nationally. The company, the family that owned it, and their legacy on the city are complicated. I was reminded of a personal anecdote while recently watching this physics lecture:
27:58-34:38 w/reveal at 33:57
The memory came when Professor Lewin demonstrated Rayleigh and Mie scattering by smoking.
P, the power, when we have Rayleigh scattering… is proportional to 1 over lambda to the fourth where lambda is the wavelength of light
When I was in school I attended a speaker series and arrived early. I sat next to a gentleman I recognized as a former chair of the Chemistry department who had just received a university honor. I introduced myself, congratulated him on his accomplishment and we started discussing the Chemistry department and his experience. I can’t remember the prompt but he started to describe university life in the 1970s and he explained that, through pressure, he allowed a conference on campus organized through the school and the Chemistry department. Lecturers from around the southeast presented research and developments including scientists from the cigarette companies.
He explained that their lecturers included deep analysis of fluid dynamics, displaying a lit cigarette and the motion of the smoke in equations detailing its complex, four dimensional activity. After speaking to the thoroughness of the talks, he paused, and said finally: “highly sophisticated but completely useless.”