Cimrmanovy opravne konstanty

Vratme se vsak k jadru veci: K Cimrmanovym opravnym konstantam.

Temer kazdy, kdo jiz mel co do cineni se studiem jakehokoliv technickeho smeru, Cimrmanovy opravne konstanty alespon jednou, at uz vedome ci nikoliv, pouzil. Pischvojcovy konstanty, jak jsou Cimrmanovy opravne konstanty bohuzel casto nazyvany, dnes jiz bezesporu nerozlucne patri ke kazde technicke discipline. Ukazeme si pouziti Cimrmanovych opravnych konstant na prikladu:

Zadani: Student dostal za ukol spocitat urcity integral z explicitne definovane funkce f. Oznacme vysledek jeho cinnosti jako A. B necht je pak spravny vysledek uvedeny ve skriptech, ucebnici, ci jinde.

Reseni: Student spocita ulohu a pokud se jeji vysledek rovna spravnemu vysledku (tedy A = B ), pak je vse v poradku a pouziti Cimrmanovych opravnych konstant je bezpredmetne. Jina situace nastane, pokud se A < > B. V tom pripade upravime vysledek nasledovne:

C = k * A

k....Cimrmanova opravna konstanta
C...Vysledek Cimrmanovou opravnou konstantou jiz prepocitany
A...Vysledek, ktery spocital student
B...Spravny vysledek

C = B

Jakykoliv (!), na prvni pohled nespravny, vysledek je mozne diky Cimrmanove opravne konstante prepocitat na vysledek spravny!

pri mereni fyzikalnich velicin nam pouziti Cimrmanovych opravnych konstant znacne zpresni namerenou hodnotu.

Pischvojcovy-Cimramanovy opravne tabulky, vydane roku 1897 jsou k dispozici v kazde solidne vybavene kihovne. V podstate se jedna o tabelaci funkce

y = ( 2 * ( x + 1 ) - 2 ) * 0.5

k = C / A

k = B / A

Pouziti Pischvojcovych-Cimrmanovych rozsirenych opravnych tabulek se diky vyse uvedenemu vztahu, a diky prudkemu rozvoji kalkulatoru, stava bezpredmetnym. Vedecka kalkulatory maji jiz funkce pro praci s Cimrmanovymi opravnymi konstantami zabudovany. Ke cti jejich vyrobcu nutno dodat, ze respektuje historickou krivdu odmitaji pouzivat tolik znamy nazev Pischvojc. Vypocet na takovem stroji vypada asi nasledovne:

1. Zapneme kalkulator.
2. Stiskem tlacitka CE (Cimrman Enable) prepneme kalkulator do rezimu prace s Cimrmanovymi opravnymi konstantami.
3. Stiskem tlacitka CM (Cimrman's Mathemathical buffer) uvolnime pamet.
4. Vypocitame konstantu podle vyse uvedenych vztahu.
5. Tlacitkem M+ ji ulozime do pameti, odkud ji muzeme kdykoliv vyvolat tlacitkem RM a pouzit.

Dalsi vyvoj na tomto poli jiz Cimrman nedokoncil. Krome zde uvedene (multiplikativni) opravne konstanty zavadi konstantu aditivni jako: C = A + k ke kteremuz vztahu se dosud nenasel vzorec pro vypocet konstanty k. I presto je teorie opravnych konstant jednim z nejvetsich piliru Cimrmanova matematickeho zivota, a jeji pouziti patri dnes jiz nedilne k jakekoliv technicke, ci vedecke discipline.

iVosH LUkAcoViC - XLUKACOV@HWLAB.FELK.CVUT.CZ

[na obsah][na domovskou stranku Jary Cimrmana]

Opravny operator Pabla

Pravdepodobny duvod tohoto prehlednuti lze odhalit na zaklade poznamek jeho zaku obecne skoly. Notoricky repetent Albert Jednosutr si do pozdniho veku pamatoval, jak Cimrman tvrdil, ze cislo se vynasobenim nulou nezmeni. (Z jistych - bohuzel zubem casu znacne poznamenanych - Mistrovych poznamek lze vyvodit, ze k tomuto presvedceni dosel pravdepodobne na zaklade zname rovnosti 0! = 1!). Vzhledem k tomu, ze malou nasobilku se zmineny zak ucil ve 3. tride celkem sestkrat, byl si jist ucitelovym omylem a troufl si ho na to upozornit. Mistr na to zdanlive nereagoval, ale za pul roku mel vypracovano zasadni zobecneni: opravnou konstantu nahradil opravnym OPERATOREM. Bohuzel Cimrmanuv vydavatel mel v matematice jeste vetsi mezery a neuvedomil si, ze v pripade nenulove chybne hodnoty se opravny operator redukuje na nasobeni opravnou konstantou, takze komercni uspech tabulek opravnych koeficientu nebyl zdokonalenou teorii nijak ohrozen. Pro jistotu proto Mistrovu praci nikdy nevydal (vymluvil se na to, ze ji pro necitelnost sazec odmitl vysazet. V pripade Mistrova rukopisu znelo toto vysvetleni velmi pravdepodobne).

Znalost teorie opravnych operatoru vsak kupodivu nezapadla a sirila se ustnim podanim. Sam si pamatuji, ze behem meho studia na FE VUT na pocatku 60. let byl znineny operator mezi kolegy velmi popularni, aniz bychom tehdy tusili, kdo je jeho puvodcem (ostatne v te dobe o Cimrmanovi nevedel jeste nikdo). My jsme ho nazyvali Vitoul-Stejskaluv operator "Pabla". Kolega jej dokonce s klidem Anglicana uspesne pouzil pri ustni zkousce. Zkousejici se nepriznal, ze sam nema o existenci takoveho operatoru poneti a reseni uznal.

Jan Kucera - KUC@FCE.VUTBR.CZ

[na obsah][na domovskou stranku Jary Cimrmana]

Psychologie

Timto vedeckym oborem se velikan zacal zabyvat po smrti sveho pritele, doc Kratinohy, ktery ve jmenu vyzkumu prave na tomto poli obetoval zivot. Mozna, ze kratce trvajici manzelstvi primelo doc Kratinohu, aby opustil pohodlne misto univerzitniho kantora a zacal se zabyvat problemem zenske logiky. V te dobe se aktivne stykal s Cimrmanem, ktery ho v cele zalezitosti podporoval. Doc Kratinoha, zacal svou teorii budovat doslova na zelene louce. Zcela prirozene si nejdrive musel vytvorit sadu nastroju, o ktere by mohl svuj vyzkum oprit. "Zakladni entitou," pise Kratinoha ve svych poznamkach, "je pro mne zenin vyrok, ktery vsak neni vyrokem v pravem smyslu slova." Doc Kratinoha pro sve potreby rozsiruje tehdy jiz znamou vyrokovou logiku. Zatimco v klasicke vystacime s vyrokem pravdivym ci nepravdivym, v Kratinohove tzv zenske vyrokove logice rozlisujeme vyrok pravdivy, nepravdivy a vyrok zensky. Pri svem vyzkumu Kratinoha casto propadal skepsi. "Bojim se jedine veci," uvadi ve svem deniku. "Zdali to co je predmetem meho zkoumani vubec existuje." Po nekolitalete cilevedome praci se preci jen zacal blizit cili. Cimrman, ktery se s nim v te dobe casto stykal, celou vec komentuje: "Zacal byt znicehoz nic veselejsim a veselejsim. Pred tim se nikdy nesmal a ted se dokazal hlasite smat cele hodiny. Tvrdil, ze zanedlouho bude jeho vyzkum u konce." Cimrman v te dobe nemohl tusit, jak krutou pravdu tato poznamka skryva. Jiz za par dni Kratinoha telefonuje Cimrmanovi. "Sdelil mi, ze konecne objevil princip zenske logiky," pise dale ve svych poznamkach Cimrman. "Bylo mu vsak dosti spatne rozumet, nebot se celou dobu silne smal. Jeste nikdy predtim se nesmal tak silne jako ted." Nez vsak Cimrman stacil dorazit do badatelova bytu, postihla Kratinohu jiz zminena tragedie. Zahada smrti, pri niz zdemoloval veskere zarizeni bytu, otloukl steny a jenz mu zanechala usmev i v posmrtne kreci se pitvou brzy vysvetlila. Doc Kratinoha se doslova a do pismene umlatil smichy. Princip zenske logiky si s sebou odnesl do hrobu a stal se tak dosud jedinym clovekem, ktery v tomto smeru dosahl poznani. Zaplatil vsak za to cenu nejvyssi.

Cimrman, ktery se po jeho smrti snazil rekonstruovat jeho badatelsky postup, daleko nedosel. "Vse mi v tomto oboru pripada jakesi mlahave, nejiste a vubec," pise, a prave tato veta dala nazev dnes progresivnimu vednimu oboru.

Popularitu dnesni discipliny FUZZY LOGIC, zpusobuje predvsim ten fakt, ze se tato opira o Cimrmanovy-Kratinohovy vyzkumy na poli logiky zenske.

Co se vsak dnesnim generacim bohuzel nedochovalo je Cimrmanuv ZENSKO-CLOVECI SLOVNIK FRAZI.

Prestoze se Cimrman prestal zenskou logikou zabyvat, u psychologie jeste nejaky ten cas zustal. Pri svych castych potyckach s bytnou zacal vypracovavat tzv strategii tvrdeho chovani. Pri jedne hadce se bytna neovladla a vybuchla hrozbou: "A ser ty me!" Tento vykrik Mistra inspiroval k pojmenovani noveho oboru. Cimrman ve svych poznamkach rika: "Chovala se proste ASERTYMNE." Nazev ASERTYMNE byl pozdeji zkomolen a dnes bychom rekli, ze se chovala ASERTIVNE. Asertivita se bohuzel nezachovala v puvodni historicke podobe a tak jak ji zname nyni je vlastne znacne zjednodusena. Napriklad jeho metody hladovy pes, zakousle kliste a obtizny hmyz postupne zdegenerovaly na metodu poskozeny valecek fonografu a dnes ji zname pod nazvem preskakujici gramofonova deska.

Snad jen na okraj by bylo dobre dodat, ze Cimrman definoval ctvrty stupen vzteku. Bylo to jeste za zivota jeho pritele doc Kratinohy. Jedne srpnove nedele docent Mistrovi ve sve pracvne predvadel, spise v zertu, svou definici tri stupnu vzteku. Zavolal na nahodne telefonni cislo.
"Boubelik," ozvalo se z aparatu.
"Dobry den," del Kratinoha. "Je tam prosim vas pan Novotny."
"To je asi omyl," dostalo se mu odpovedi. "Tady zadny pan Novotny nebydli."
Kratinoha zavesil a teatralne zvedl prst. "To je prosim prvni stupen vzteku. Ted vam ukazu druhy." Zavolal na to same cislo a opet se dozadoval pana Novotneho.
"Uz jsem vam jednou rikal, ze tady zadny vas Novotny nebydli," pronesl na druhem konci jiz mirne podrazdeny hlas.
Doc Kratinoha opet zavesil, chvili pockal a opet zavolal na to same cislo, kde se dozadoval pana Novotneho.
"Zatracene chlape," kricel hlas ze sluchatka. "Kolikrat jsem vam uz rikal, ze mate zatracene spatny cislo. Zatracene uz mi volate sna..."
Docent zavesil a pousmal se. "Tak to je treti stupen vzteku pane kolego."
"Zajimave," na to Cimrman. "Ja vsak znam jeste ctvrty stupen vzteku."
"Skutecne?" opacil docent. "To mi musite nekdy predvest."
"Klidne ted hned," odpovedel suverene Mistr. Pristoupil k aparatu a vytocil ono zname cislo.
"Boubelik, prosim," zaznelo nastvane.
"Dobry den," rekl Cimrman velmi milym hlasem. "Tady je Novotny. Nenechal mi tam nekdo nejaky vzkaz?"

iVosH LUkAcoViC - XLUKACOV@HWLAB.FELK.CVUT.CZ

[na obsah][na domovskou stranku Jary Cimrmana]

Badani

Troufam si vstoupit do diskuse a ponekud poopravit nazory na vyzkum kolegy Urbana, co se supravodivosti pri Cimrmanove putovani na severni pol tyce. Musim bohuzel konstatovat, ze omyl pane kolegy vznikl z lakonicke poznamky "VEDE!!!", ktera byla nalezena v Cimrmanovych poznamkach z polarni cesty a interpretovana bez prihlednuti k dalsim souvislostem. Velikost pismen by mohla sugerovat epochalni vynalez, vysvetleni je vsak v kontextu dalsich vyzkumu daleko prozaictejsi. Poznamka se tykala vysledku hry v lizanem mariasi. Hru naucil sveho spolecnika pri preckavani snehovych bouri. Zahaneli ji nudu cekani, a protoze karty byly ojinene, i zizen. Bystrost sveho korejskeho kolegy pak ocenil Cimrman prave touto poznamkou. Korejec totiz genialitu Cimrmanovu v teto hre prebil svym sikmookym nahlizenim do jeho listu.

Obr 1. Dnes jiz 178 lety korejec Heu-Chu-Mi se tesi stalemu zdravi.

Rad bych se ale venoval tematu - Cimrman a pocitace. Obecne je velice malo znamo to, ze

Cimrman vynalezl elektricky pocitac jiz za sve pouti po sire Rusi.

Puvodni humanni nazev se vsak bohuzel postupem casu vytratil. Lze take pripustit, ze pri Cimrmanove ledabylosti trouseni vynalezu mu tento byl, tak jako stovky jinych, ukraden.

Dalsim jeho genialnim vynalezem byl automaticky scot, ktery uz vzdalene pripomina pocitac. Nakresy byly puvodne dr. Hedvabnym vyhodnoceny jako natrasadlo, ktere oddelovalo zrno od plev. Nikdo vsak dosud jednoznacne nevysvetlil, proc reseto bylo pomerne ridke a obsahovalo volne pohyblive koule. Po prostudovani nacrtku a v souvislosti s jeho genialnim vyrokem "Vsechny vysledky jsou stejne spatne, pouze nektery muze byt horsi", ktery si zapsal pri presunu bryckou z Ukrajiny do Tibetu, kdyz se marne snazil cosi spocist na scotu, jsme dosli k nezvratnemu presvedceni, ze vynalez, puvodne oznaceny jako "rucni natrasadlo s klikou", lze bezpecne zaradit pod heslo "Rucni automaticke kulickove pocitadlo". Toto pocitadlo pracovalo metodou Monte Karlo!!!! Slozita soustava pak a vacek, o ktere se dr. Hedvabny mylne domnival, ze slouzi k nastavovani sklonu natrasadla pri bocnim vetru, nebylo nic jineho, nez nastavovani hodnot scitancu, aby vysledek byl vypocitavan s vyssi pravdepodobnosti, nez by plynulo z nahodneho rozdeleni.

Tak daleko a vysoko sahala genialita Cimrmanova!

Radek Splichal - INSPL@FCE.VUTBR.CZ

[na obsah][na domovskou stranku Jary Cimrmana]

Uvedeni na pravou miru

Ve svem minulem prispevku jsem se zminil o Cimrmannove vynalezu supravodivosti u nekovovych materialu, v souvislosti s Mistrovou cestou na Jizni pol. Tento objev je podlozen mnoha dukazy v denicich Mistrovych spolupoutniku. Pro ukazku uvedme napriklad citat z deniku 15 leteho Ivana Alexandrovice Assimovova: "... a neustale otacel tim svym protivnym kravalnikem, ze ktereho vedly draty do ledovce a z nej (Mistruv starsi vynalez znamy pozdeji jako primocare trifazove dynamo, ktere bohuzel zapadlo a nikomu uz se nepodarilo zjistit kam, nejpise do skladu firmy Buwol metal,vykup surovin). Pri tom ramusu se nedalo sahnout na led, protoze clovek hned dostal ranu a ON (mineno Mistr) se tomu smal a zrychlil. Ten clovek snad vymysli jednou i neco k jidlu." Tolik snad jako pripomenuti dulezitosti a preciznosti tohoto objevu.

Vratme se ovsem k praci pana Splichala. Evidentni neznalosti gramatiky zde doslo k fatalni chybe. Titul zminovane knihy nezni Marias kosym pohledem, ale Marias kosim pohledem. Uz z nazvu je jasne, ze se nejedna o pohled kosy ci sikmy, ale o pohled, ktery do mariase prinasi ptaci perspektiva, konkretne Mistrem vycviceny a uspesne pouzivany i na mezinarodni urovni kos. Tento Mistruv genialni tah prinesl nemale zisky finacni, ale nutno podotknout, ze i telesnych trestu od nervoznich spoluhracu.

Obsah teto knihy se zachoval pouze ve fragmentu obsahujicim uvodni slovo profesora Nejedleho a potom shodou okolnosti i doslov a obsah. Z obsahu snad pouze:

Zaklady vycviku mladych ptaku
Rychly prenos informaci eterem
Spravne drzeni karet pod vodou

Uz z uvedene casti obsahu vyplyva, ze Mistr opravdu vytvoril komplexni prirucku pouzitelnou kdekoli a kdykoli. Skoda pouze, ze nevysla mutace teto knihy pojednavajici o strategii hry Clovece nezlob se.

Myslim, ze pro spravnost vseobecne informovanosti bylo ucineno dost a proto dalsi vysledky budu publikovat pozdeji.

S cimrmannologickym pozdravem "Nic neni nemozne si zduvodnit v Mistrove dile"

Urban Jakub - URBAN@FSID.CVUT.CZ

[na obsah][na domovskou stranku Jary Cimrmana]

Jara da Cimrman - a pioneer of Theoretical Physics

It is a common misconception among physicists that both theories originated from different sources, evolved separately and only recently have scientists tried to unite both in what is known as Quantum Gravity. As a matter of fact, both theories originated from a single experiment performed by Cimrman in the fall 1898 in a small town in Northern Bohemia, where Cimrman held a teaching position in a local elementary school. The fact that both theories lived separately for so long can be explained by Cimrman's decision to communicate only certain aspects of his experiment to other physicists, while the remaining aspects were lying dormant for some time until they were stolen from Cimrman by one of his pupils.

Cimrman's fascination with wave propagation has been well documented in the literature. But as usual he wasn't satisfied with the passive recording of the discoveries with subsequent communication of them to his pupils. He wanted to be at the forefront of science and felt that his pupils should be there with him, since he realized that mere memorization of obsolete facts from textbooks could not satisfy their childish curiosity. Since kids loved the way in which he demonstrated that light propagates much faster than sound, (see Appendix 1) he decided to start original research on measuring the speed of light, whose exact value wasn't quite known at that time.

For this purpose Cimrman devised an ingenious experiment, whose basic layout was as follows: before the dawn he placed a pupil on each of two neighboring hills. Pupil A with a lantern and a curtain and a pupil B with the same simple equipment. Cimrman would then stand beside the pupil A, who at his signal would drop the curtain and expose the lantern, whose light would rectilinearly propagate across the valley and reach the pupil B. He (or she) would then expose his (or her) lantern and Cimrman would record the time elapsed between the two events. From the knowledge of the time of propagation and the distance between the two hills, he could compute the speed of light from elementary formulas of classical mechanics.

At this point we have to remark that during this experiment Cimrman-physicist was greatly helped by Cimrman-inventor. For the purpose of an extremely precise measurement of time Cimrman invented what is today known as Cimrman's Digital Hourglass. In a common hourglass, as the reader may recall, the stream of sand is more or less continuous and the only way to know the elapsed time is to visually estimate the size of the sand heap in the lower compartment. That, of course, was too rough for Cimrman's purposes, so he placed two specially designed fans in the upper compartment whose purpose was to blow the sand so it would go down the neck one grain at a time. Behind the hourglass he would then put one of his pupils, who counted the grains fallen into the second compartment and simultaneously wrote the results on an adjacent chalkboard, thus recording the time digitally. Later, when Cimrman's experiments became popular among the pupils he would even have several sand-counters behind the hourglass and the exact time was then determined by taking the arithmetic average of all the current counts. We may mention here that for this purpose Cimrman invented a slide-rule, but that's just an aside.

Since he had such a highly sophisticated devise at his disposal, Cimrman felt that the use of ordinary sand would jeopardise the results of his light-speed measurements and persuaded the principal of the school to have a few fistfuls of sand delivered from the Sahara desert where sand is unusually homogeneous. After taking all these precautions, Cimrman finally conducted an actual experiment, which he repeated several times with different pupils to exclude human error from his data. Thus it is not surprising that he came up with a value that shocked the whole physics community. Indeed, some of the leading physicists wouldn't even believe it. Based on many evenings of tedious computations, Cimrman found that the speed of light must be bigger than 238 km/h (cca 150 mph). Needless to say, for the computation he used his freshly invented slide-rule, which he greased with olive oil for better accuracy.

Finally, let us remark that the modern measurements of the speed of light, making use of all the laser technology available pinned the value down to 299,792.456 km/sec which (however incredible it sounds) is in accordance with Cimrman's measurement from 1898 (!!). From then on, in Cimrman's honor, the speed of light has been denoted by c.

In the next few months Cimrman, of course, repeated the experiment, assuming himself the role of the pupil A (he was a renowned Austro- Hungarian runner at that time), but no dependence of the speed of light on the velocity of the source was ever detected. Cimrman was certain that something must be wrong here, since classical physics teaches us that if you throw a ball with the speed c from a train moving at the speed v, then indeed, the speed of the ball relative to the ground is always v+c. Yet light absolutely disregarded this rule. And to make things even worse, it also disregarded Cimrman's slide-rule. After a few days spent on thinking about how his new principle would fit into the current laws of physics, Cimrman decided to go ahead and patent his new discovery, so nobody would steal it as was almost always the case. Knowing how obscure and lengthy the patent procedures were in Vienna, Cimrman sent his discovery to Bern, where his letter was intercepted by a young clerk named Einstein. Einstein wrote Cimrman a polite letter which said that he thinks the light speed paradox is merely illusory and that he would explain it away by the so called ether-theory, which became very fashionable at the turn of the century. The irritated Cimrman replied that the paradox is really there and that if Einstein wanted to spend some time doing physics, he should take the "constant speed of light" as a basic principle and derive some theory from it, no matter how contradictory it seemed to his common sense.

Einstein followed Cimrman's advice and wasn't sorry. When few years later in 1906 he shocked the scientific world with his Special Relativity, only he and Cimrman knew who sparked this brilliant work.

As we said earlier, the success of Cimrman's measurement relied on the exact knowledge of the time and distance the light had traveled. The time wasn't a problem. Neither was the distance when the pupil A was standing still. Once the pupil A was set into motion, however, Cimrman ran into troubles because he had difficulties finding WHERE exactly the curtain had been dropped. As a matter of fact the faster the pupil ran, the more uncertain Cimrman was about the position of the curtain-drop. Cimrman was quite vexed by this problem and tried to estimate the size of the error which distorted the quantitative part of his work. But it seemed that some error was always there. The puzzled Cimrman finally gave up and in his final report wrote the following words:"it seems that one cannot measure the exact position and the velocity of pupils simultaneously. If the error associated with one quantity is relatively small, the other one seems to be almost unmeasurably huge."

These words would almost certainly be forgotten if it wasn't for the fact that among his pupils was the nephew of a German mason (who were quite common in Northern Bohemia then), Werner Heisenberg. Young Werner was one of Cimrman's most talented students and, as a token of his appreciation, Cimrman gave him a copy of his report. Many years later (in the late 20's) when Werner was a professor of physics in Leipzig, he found Cimrman's report under the sofa and realised that what it said about the pupils can be generalized to all elements of matter, and in a few weeks came up with the famous "Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle". How Cimrman felt about this plagiarism is not known, since he disappeared from the public life in 1914 and hasn't been heard of since (see Appendix 2).

A reader acquainted with the history of physics knows, however, that the Uncertainty Principle doesn't represent the very beginning of Quantum Theory. Its foundation was actually laid 20 years before by Max Planck, and again we have to say that it was Cimrman who prodded Planck into considering brand new ideas on how to explain the radiation of a black body. How did Cimrman come about these ideas which subsequently made Planck famous? To find out about this we must skip one year and have a look at Cimrman's activities in the fall 1899, when he was very interested in psychology. Cimrman's excursions into psychology and his correspondence with Sigmund Freud are currently a subject of research, so we will limit ourselves only to the part relevant to Cimrman's physics career.

Jara da Cimrman was very interested in human stupidity. He felt that history was written by idiots and that only by careful study of stupidity can we understand the history of human race. In 1899 he made a very important discovery related to this topic. He noticed that stupidity always comes in discrete quantities called morons. Sometimes you can find only 1 moron, sometimes you see 3 of them and sometimes hundreds of them, but you never see 3.7 morons. Cimrman wrote in his diary:"...stupidity always comes in discrete packets. I will call them quanta of stupidity and these cannot be further divided." The word "quanta" which was later popularized by Planck wasn't actually invented by Cimrman. He heard that expression when he was doing stupidity related research in the town of Pardubice (east Bohemia). One day he strolled into a local bar and asked if there were any idiots present that he might investigate. A bartender told him: "Yep, we've got quanta of morons here" (in Czech: "jo blbcu tady mame cely kvanta"). Cimrman liked this expression a lot and since it was relatively unused in the scientific world, he didn't have to be afraid of offending anybody by using it in his idiocy research.

After a few months of research, Cimrman found out that stupidity can have very tangible and material results. He saw bridges fall down, people killed, books burned, the malfunction of devices and many other results of human idiocy. This lead him to the conclusion that stupidity is a form of energy. As a matter of fact, Cimrman was sure that it is a form of internal energy and he found many interesting things about it. For instance he discovered that the total stupidity of the Universe is increasing (just like the entropy) as a simple consequence of the fact that new quanta (that is people) are being produced (born). Cimrman even coined a phrase "fundamental law of sociology", but the scientific community didn't accept his theory and the name fell into oblivion. Cimrman also found that during the elastic collision of two or more idiots the total stupidity of the system remains constant and he insisted that this rule should be considered as basic as the conservation of matter, energy and momentum.

He was slightly bothered, though, by an accident he witnessed in Pardubice. One of the morons he questioned hit a brick wall with his head during a walk with Cimrman. Jara noticed that after this occurence, the conversation was much brighter than before. Cimrman thought about this surprise for a long time because it didn't fit in his theory. At first he thought that part of the person's stupidity was transformed into the thermal energy of the brick wall, but then he realised that an idiot and a brick wall do not constitute a closed system (from the point of view of thermodynamics) and decided finally that the whole problem was just an experimental anomaly and gladly disregarded it.

The final step in Cimrman's discovery of Quantum Theory came with his observation that if one form of energy (namely the stupidity) comes in discrete quantities, then the same should be also true for all other forms of energy.

Now that we have clarified Cimrman's double impact on Quantum Theory, we can return to his relation with Albert Einstein. After the success of his Special Relativity, Einstein became one of the leading physicists and, in 1910-1911, gave a series of lectures in Prague. Cimrman, of course, could not pass up such an opportunity to talk to a fellow genius and asked Einstein if he could have a dinner with him some time. Einstein, who owed Cimrman for essentially all his fame, couldn't say no and the two great men met November 28, 1910. Cimrman noticed that Einstein was not yet quite familiar with Prague and since it was getting cold he dragged Einstein into a famous Prague brewery "U fleku". Einstein evidently liked their black beer, since every now and then fell off his chair, hollering "Damn gravity!!" across the whole brewery. The observant Cimrman readily deduced that Einstein must have been struggling with the theory of the gravitational field and immediately became interested in the subject. After he chugged down another dozen half-litres of the strong Czech beer, he leant over to Einstein and mumbled: "..listen, Albert, I just can't get over the impression that this f*cking space- time continuum is curved. Wha'd'ya say?...hick!" Einstein didn't say anything at the moment, but only squinted blankly up and down the room. After a while, he agreed that this was a very interesting idea and on their way home both men made a series of experiments which fully corroborated Cimrman's impression. Cimrman felt the effects of the curvature of the space-time so strongly, that he expressed an opinion that there might be a space-time singularity (so called "black hole") near the abovementioned brewery. Einstein later corrected his opinion by placing the nearest black hole at a distance of a few thousand light years rather than within the city limits of Prague.

Fig 2. Albert Einstein. It is for sure that Jara da Cimrman showed him the way to both Special and General Relativity.

When Cimrman looked at Albert's desk (and here we have to admit, that the curtain of 19 beers in his head wasn't quite raised yet) he saw Einstein's violin on it plus some papers beneath it which he didn't pay much attention to. He stared at the violin and wondered what that thing could have to do with the structure of the space-time. But then he slapped his forehead with big "AHA". Strings! It must be the strings! And quickly he pulled the strings off the violin and promptly returned to Liptakov.

There Cimrman immediately started to work on what he called a "String Theory" while at school he simultaneously ran a workshop in Applied Strings, so that his pupils could enjoy being at the vanguard of science with him. The most favorite activity in the workshop was making models of black holes out of various kinds of strings. Kids just loved it. One of his students, Rudolf Kolben, the son of a rich Czech capitalist, once brought to school an extra durable set of superstrings which his father had brought him from Switzerland. Cimrman noticed that these produced models of black holes which were more accurate than all the models they made before. Cimrman was fascinated with strings and even took some home with him. Soon after this he wrote the revolutionary paper "Superstrings - a key to the understanding of black holes" and had its colored copies sent to all the prominent physicists and mathematicians of his time. Unfortunately, HIS time turned out to be too far ahead of the time of the rest of humankind. None of his contemporaries gave his paper a serious thought and it took modern physics more than 70 years to fully catch up with Cimrman's work on Superstrings.

Cimrman's workshop on String Theory was the last time he had living contact with his students. After his succesful demonstration of the Big Bang on the school yard, the envious director of the School Board did not renew his contract. That shouldn't come as a surprise if we take into account the fact that parts of the roof of the school building were found as far away as Amsterdam.

Before we close this contribution, we have to go back to Albert Einstein again. In his response to Cimrman's first letter Einstein informed Cimrman that the similar experiment (about the speed of light being constant) was actually performed 10 years before Cimrman in 1887 by Michelson and Morley. Cimrman was, of course, embittered and blamed the obsolete technology in the rotting Habsburg empire for being beaten by the earlier and more precise results of Michelson and Morley. For a long time, he sought the opportunity to regain the reputation as the foremost experimenter in the world and after he was banned from the school premises in Liptakov, he felt that this opportunity had come.

He spent his last days in Bohemia in seclusion and only his house- keeper knew what he was doing in the dark cellar of his country house. Cimrman made an extensive search in the library and found that while there was a lot of experimentation going on pertaining to the speed of light, there were no experiments regarding the speed of propagation of darkness. This was also his allegorical way of criticizing Austria's reactionary government and some even think this was his vision of the future dark times on Czech soil. For this experiment he used his famous black bulb, which after being connected to a circuit, spread darkness all around it. Cimrman's dark bulb itself would be enough to give him a decent place in the history, but once again he wanted to astonish.

Using his Digital Hourglass, Cimrman found that the darkness does not propagate at a constant speed (as light does). In his cellar he installed a circuit with both a normal light bulb and his dark bulb. He was shocked to find that in the morning the light from the light bulb was a little bit faster than the darkness, while in the evening the darkness from his dark bulb was always a bit ahead of the light. For the sake of exactness, we will mention that the values Cimrman arrived at were the following: in the morning the darkness propagated at the speed of .867c (where c is the speed of light) while in the evening the darkness beat the light easily, making up to 1.283c (or 1.278c in the shadow).

With these results at hand, Cimrman was the first man who provided a scientific explanation of the change of day and night.

Up to this day, there has been no single reference to this discovery in the whole literature of physics. It is quite possible that for the full appreciation of this work we will have to wait til the 21st century, or maybe even til the 22nd. Or maybe we will have to wait forever. Such was the nature of Cimrman's genius. Sometimes he jumped 10 years ahead, sometimes he jumped 100 years ahead. And sometimes, perhaps, he jumped right off to infinity.

Appendix 1: For the reader's convenience we will recall a specific example of Cimrman's pedagogical mastery. He claimed that only the things which his students see are the ones which they remember. One day he picked two of his students and gave the faster one a lantern and the slower one a cow-bell. Then he asked both pupils to walk away 200 metres and, upon Cimrman's whistle, to run back. Of course, the faster guy, carrying the lantern always came in first and Cimrman would comment to his students:"...see, remember that light propagates faster than sound". For more details about his teaching techniques, the reader may want to consult the standard sources.

Appendix 2: It is a sad fact that the beginning and the end of Jara's life are not known. He was born some time in the 1870s and was last seen in 1914 leaving the village Liptakov in Northern Bohemia at the age of approximately 40-50 years. It is not known what happened to him afterwards and it is possible that he lived elsewhere. Some people think that he was sent to Russia to cover the oncoming Bolshevik Revolution for a local newspaper and during the process got stuck in Siberia, where he may be frozen to this day in the state of suspended animation. Some other researchers (such as Ross Hedvicek, who is NOT related to Dr. Hedvabny) claim that he escaped to the USA, where he became a successful businessman and, under the name Jerry Zimmerman, begot a son named Robert Zimmerman who later became the famous Bob Dylan. Which of these two versions is true is still a subject of research. Taking into account that Jara played a lot with Quantum Physics in his last days, it is quite possible that from then on he might have existed at several locations at the same time and we will be only able to determine the probabilities of his being Here, There and Everywhere.

August 1995

Jan Rehacek - JREHACEK@MATH.GATECH.EDU

[na obsah][na domovskou stranku Jary Cimrmana]
[contens of English version][WWW page of Jara Cimrman. English version]

CERNAN: Houston, we've got a problem here.
HOUSTON: Go ahead.
CERNAN: There seems to be lots of scratches here...they sure don't look to me like they were made by natural phenomena...
HOUSTON: What exactly are you talking about?
CERNAN: Well, there is this groove here...
SCHMITT: ...and there is one more over here too...and this looks like something really heavy was being dragged along here...
HOUSTON: Couldn't YOU have made those marks?
SCHMITT: Absolutely no way. We were working on the other side of the module all the time.
HOUSTON: Any footprints or anything like it?
CERNAN: Uhmmm, not really. There are only these...sort of sharp marks here.

After few more minutes of puzzled conversation Cernan was given prompt orders to leave and a few weeks later the Apollo program was terminated. Apparently, NASA officials had no interest in unearthing (or should we say unmooning) any further evidence of somebody else's presence on the Moon long before the Apollo mission was even conceived. The question, however, remains. Who made those scratches on the lunar surface? Was it a man or somebody from outer space? How did he/she get there? The answers to all of these questions lie in the following simple fact.

The first man on the Moon was neither an American nor a Russian astronaut, but the famous Czech inventor, poet, scientist, skier and gynecologist- amateur Jara da Cimrman who reached the Moon's surface on September 9, 1914 in his home-made squirrel-propelled submarine "Nemovitost".

When Cimrman left Liptakov in the spring of 1914 he was fully focused on breaking up the decrepit Austrio-Hungarian empire whose conservative atmosphere was stifling his genius. At the prospect of the oncoming war conflict, Cimrman decided to subvert the Austrian military might and go to Hamburg where he would construct a submarine with which to destroy, or at least cut, the strength of Austrian naval force.

Cimrman's route to Hamburg was relatively straightforward. From Liptakov he walked a few kilometers when he was overtaken by a horse cart. He asked for a ride and on the same day reached the nearby river Labe. There he used his last money to persuade a small freighter captain to hide him on the lower deck of his boat which carried Czech coal to the sea-port of Hamburg. On his way, which took 5 days, Cimrman studied the sailing charts and also debugged his latest invention, a device whose purpose was to synthetize yogurt out of the minerals and organic matter contained in sea water. He thought that the long and presumably boring submarine trip would be a good time to test it.

Fig 3. During his stay in Hamburg, Cimrman invented hamburger, whose recipe he sold to a local fast-food chain for 20 DM. Well, Cimrman wasn't a good businessman (at least not at that time). Cimrman was sorry that he sold his hamburger recipe so cheaply and briskly invented freiburgers, ludwigsburgers, wartburgers and an ABQ (the predecessor of BBQ).

Cimrman's life in Hamburg was far from a luxurious one. He lived in an abandoned storage house where he was throwing the submarine together out of materials which he found in the surrounding area or stole from the harbor. Not having any money, Jara felt very hungry and after three days of fasting, decided to take a break and invent the "hamburger", whose recipe he sold to a local fast-food chain for 20 DM. Well, Cimrman wasn't a good businessman (at least not at that time) and he soon realised that, besides food, he would also need a fuel for his submarine and that for 20 DM he couldn't get more than a few pounds of coal which would be hardly enough to get him out of the harbor. Cimrman was sorry that he sold his hamburger recipe so cheaply and briskly invented freiburgers, ludwigsburgers, wartburgers and an ABQ (the predecessor of BBQ), but nobody gave a damn any more. The market was already saturated with hamburgers. Despondent, he roamed through a city park when suddenly the frolicking squirrels reminded him of something.

A few years before when he visited the house of Liptakov gamekeeper Josef Borovicka, he saw a small toy cart propelled by a squirrel running in a drum which was attached to it. The rotation of the drum, caused by the running squirrel was transferred via a system of gears and axles to run the whole cart. Heureka! What cheap power! Over the next two days, Jara spent a lot of time catching squirrels in the city parks. At the end of the second day, the panting Cimrman counted and then, not believing his eyes, re-counted his prey but in both cases the result was 2. That wasn't much if we take into account that during the chase one of the squirrels tripped over a root, sprained its ankle and became unusable for Cimrman's purposes. Jara did not capitulate, however, and came up with one of his best inventions ever: a semi-convertible hydraulic squirrel trap with A/C and power windows. It's no wonder that squirrels went nuts over it. As a matter of fact, wherever Jara placed his trap, the excited animals literally dashed in and usually incurred minor or major head injuries, which later compelled Cimrman to install air bags in it. But on the whole, the contraption worked and the next day Cimrman selected 96 healthiest and fittest squirrels and got ready for the departure.

As we said earlier, his submarine wasn't very spacious and so he left most of his belongings in Hamburg and took with him only the real basics plus one small revolver in the unlikely case of squirrel mutiny. To get an idea of how minimal Cimrman's cargo was, here is a complete list of food he carried with himself: 9 kg of bread, 17 litres of water and 5 kg of hazelnuts. Strictly speaking, we should add his yogurt maker, even though the prudent Cimrman didn't want to count on it too much.

Feeling a little bit homesick before the departure, Cimrman wrote a political pamphlet "From Hamburg against Habsburg" in which he promised his fellow Czechs that he would see to it that the days of foreign oppression in Bohemia were numbered. Then he went to the docks, fed the squirrels and, under the veil of night, christened his submarine with a bottle of mineral water from Karlovy Vary. At first, Cimrman wanted to name the submarine "Cimrmanovitost", but then his inborn modesty prevailed and he changed the name to "Nemovitost", paying homage to Jules Verne's legendary captain Nemo. The pamphlet was sent the morning of the next day and in the evening Cimrman set off, bound for America from where he intended to launch his guerilla war against Austria-Hungary.

Fig 4. Moon. NASA officials had no interest in unearthing (or should we say unmooning) any further evidence of Jara Cimrman's presence on the Moon long before the Apollo mission was even conceived.

His yogurt maker didn't turn out to be a big success either. After 4 days of running it in the sea water it did produce some distantly whitish cream, but Cimrman wasn't quite sure about the result and he fed it first to his favorite squirrel Zrzecka. After she failed to exhibit any life signs for 3 consecutive days, Zrzecka was declared dead and Cimrman put his yogurt-maker on ice. It was no wonder that his mood these days was predominantly dismal. Steadily approaching the shores of America, he only frowned from behind the rudder and the hazelnut rations were cut in half. But his unexpected triumph was just behind the door. Even though physically he was 20 feet below the water surface somewhere near Bermuda Island, the moon was just within his reach. How so?

To understand what happened, we have to make a small excursion into physics. It is known that the space-time continuum in which we all live is not as smooth as scientists always assumed. As a matter of fact, there have been a number of results justifying the existence of so called "wormholes". These can be thought of as some kind of short cuts through the space-time and became a popular means of transportation in sci-fi literature. While most of the wormholes span inter-galactic distances, the existence of shorter wormholes within the Solar system cannot be excluded and, as luck would have it, it was one of the shorter ones that Cimrman dove into during his journey. This wormhole connected the Earth with the Moon and its earthly entrance was in the Bermuda area, where Cimrman, not suspecting anything fishy, happened to be traveling in his submarine.

All of a sudden, on the morning of September 9th, Cimrman was awoken by a series of rather harsh jolts followed by squirrels' whining. At first Cimrman thought that his singing lessons finally bore some fruit, but then he noticed unusual lights outside the submarine. The whole vessel began to shake and roll from side to side until everything plunged into a big silence and darkness.

Cimrman was on the moon, just a few hundred yards from the future landing place of Apollo 17.

At first, Cimrman thought that the squirrels became unsynchronized and he had crash landed on the ocean floor. Indeed, the only thing he could see was a bizarre landscape, a lack of any kind of life and dark horizons - something easily mistaken for the ocean depths. Jara was awed by the majestic serenity of the surroundings and he named his landing site "Mare Serenitatis", "mare" being the latin word for "a sea" (sea for Cimrman, of course).

But then he looked up through a small window in the hatch to what he thought would be the ocean surface and there saw the earth, solemnly hovering in space. He pinched himself first, but the Earth was still there. He pinched all of his squirrels, but the Earth didn't move a single bit. Slowly, Cimrman realised the unbelievable reality. It took him 80 days to get from Liptakov to the Moon. Being naturally excited, he forgot to correct his previous mistake and in his log book he still referred to the place as "Mare Serenitatis". Later this mistake became canonized by other lunatics (i.e. scientists interested in the Moon) and all the major plains on the lunar surface were named "mare", even though they had nothing to do with real seas.

Being an avid explorer, Cimrman was looking forward to his first walk on the Moon's surface. He was indeed glad that he had packed his old diving suit made out of his doubly impregnated raincoat. He didn't have any oxygen tanks though, and so as a makeshift, he filled 4 empty beer bottles with the air from the submarine and, after closing them tightly, put them in his bag (for Cimrman's later work on transportation of air see the Appendix). There was one more thing, however, which had to be taken care of before his walk. Cimrman was afraid that his shoes would leave clear shoemarks on the pristine Moon's surface and, since he knew that the Austrian Secret Police had his shoeprints in their archives, he was worried that they might find his whereabouts, which he wanted to keep secret from them at any cost. So for his moon-walking he decided to use improvised stilts, whose sharp marks in the lunar dust later so baffled the Apollo 17 astronaut H. H. Schmitt.

If there were any Martians on the Moon at that time waiting for some earthlings to come in a shiny spaceship and fancy spacesuits, they would certainly be amused by watching Cimrman awkwardly staggering on his stilts around the rusty submarine and every few seconds taking a sip of the air from the 4 beer bottles which he carried in his worn-out bag. Fortunately, there was nobody on the Moon and so Cimrman could perform his scientific experiments with all the due dignity. An interested reader should consult Cimrman's recently discovered paper "Snapping Fingers in the Vacuum" for more details. Last but not least we have to mention that Cimrman used this forced landing to bury the victim of his yogurt experiment, the poor squirrel Zrzecka. Zrzecka thus became the first squirrel on the Moon (in memoriam) and to the best of our knowledge, so far the only one.

During his moon walk Cimrman also noticed a little cave in the moon rock and decided to spend the night there. He dragged the submarine under the overhanging cliff and jumped in just in time before the submarine disappeared in the convolutions of the space-time loops. It turned out that the cave was the lunar entrance of the wormhole, connecting the Moon with the Earth. What happened after that is merely a matter of speculation because there are no conclusive records about Cimrman's further activity. So far the most plausible version claims that Cimrman reached the USA, where he sold specimens of the Moon's rock to the Barnum&Bailey circus and became an entrepreneur. It is ironic that nobody ever believed that those rocks actually came from the Moon and yet they were some of the few genuine things in the Barnum&Bailey's arsenal.

Cimrman also allegedly sold his yogurt maker to a street vendor, who subsequently became a big tycoon in the rat poison industry.

As an example of what kind of phenomena we are talking about, let us remind the reader of the last exchange between the flight 19 and the control tower.

FLIGHT 19: Control tower, this is an emergency. We can't make out where we are.
TOWER: Head due west.
FLIGHT 19: Everything looks wrong. Even the ocean looks strange.
(then there is a puzzled silence and finally)
FLIGHT 19: We are not certain where we are...it looks we are...
(and here the record ends)

There is no doubt that flight 19 reached the Moon. And in all probability so did all of the other ships and planes sent into the area. Unfortunately, none of them ever returned, because Cimrman forgot to disclose how to get back to the Earth. And mankind had to wait til 1969, when the Apollo program found a new and safer (even though a bit longer) route to the Moon. But Cimrman's pioneering work will not be forgotten. After all, he was not only the first man on the Moon, but also the first cimrMAN on the Moon and that brought us such goodies as luna parks, moon pies and a vacuum cleaner.

Appendix: After his successful moon walk, Cimrman spent some time on perfecting the techniques of air transport, which he deemed would be of essence in the future. He made a series of experiments in which he showed that the most efficient way to carry air is not in empty bottles (as was the popular belief at that time), but in bottles full of SOMETHING ELSE. The reasoning behind this seeming paradox is the following. Suppose we have two identical bottles A and B. The bottle A is filled only with air (and let's say that its volume is V), while the bottle B is half-filled with water and so the air fills only the volume V/2. Now after we carry both bottles to their destination, we pour the water out and make a new measurement. We will find that the bottle A again contains the volume V of the air, hence we carried 100% of the original amount. In the case of the bottle B we find that it also contains V volumetric units of the air, but since we started off with V/2 we easily see that we have transported 200% of the original amount of the air. Thus Cimrman arrived at his shocking conclusion.

As far as what exactly the filling medium should be, Cimrman was of an opinion that it really didn't matter, but based on his extensive experience in the field he would recommend either crude oil or herbal tea for the best results.

August 1995

Jan Rehacek - JREHACEK@MATH.GATECH.EDU

[na obsah][na domovskou stranku Jary Cimrmana]
[contens of English version][WWW page of Jara Cimrman. English version]