5 ms·
“Someone wrote a PhD thesis on bells” is a clickbait title. It implies the value of the content is merely the surprising or shocking concept that the content ev
by raymondgh 4y ago
“Someone wrote a PhD thesis on bells” is a clickbait title. It implies the value of the content is merely the surprising or shocking concept that the content even exists. But looking at the page, that’s not what the content is about. It’s an earnest study into bells. Are we meant to point and laugh?
- crustycoder 4y agoI wouldn't worry, if that was the intent, I think it backfired ;-)
- skocznymroczny 4y agoI thought it's clickbait because I expected that the text of the thesis was etched on the bells somehow.
- misterprime 4y agoNice joke, Dad.
- belkarx 4y agoI agree, title was a bit clickbait but I was surprised that one would dedicate their life to something that specific. Hyper-specialization at its finest, and the passion is something I can appreciate
- pvg 4y agoYou should still stick to original titles like the site guidelines ask
- belkarx 4y agoAh, apologies. I will keep that in mind in the future
- dang 4y agoThanks! We've changed the title above to the page title now. The submitted title was "Someone wrote a PhD thesis on bells". Sometimes a title like that has the virtue of getting an obscure, interesting submission onto the front page. The sin is venial when the submission is particularly good (and mortal when it's dreck, which alas is more often the case.)
- twangist 4y agoThe doctoral candidate didn't "dedicate their life" to the topic, merely wrote a thesis on it. So, just an intense part of their life. Perhaps they'll remain focused on bells, perhaps not. Probably all PhD theses are 'hyper-specialized', unless they're surveys by an author who won't be continuing as an academic researcher. It's not surprising that people would want to understand these complex inharmonic sounds we've been making for centuries.
- belkarx 4y agoI mean ... they continued their work on bells, and appear to have done (and continue to do) a fair amount of work concerning them
- WhyOhWhyQ 4y ago'Bells' are pretty un-specific as far as specialization goes. The average person actually knows what a bell is. The PhD theses in mathematics are likely far less applicable and far more specific. Check out the titles on arxiv and let me know if you think any of these are less specific than 'bells'. https://arxiv.org/list/math/new https://arxiv.org/list/math/new
- enriquto 4y ago> Hyper-specialization at its finest Don't be so sure. At least for mathematicians, the "bell" may be just an excuse to make the subject cool. Many of the underlying problems are very general. For example, the inverse spectral problem (vibration modes of a complex shape) is the basis of the interaction between proteins, enzymes, and the huge molecules of cell walls. At the cell scale, Brownian motion shakes everything in all possible frequencies, but molecules can only vibrate at a specific set of frequencies (their spectrum). The act of "matching" different molecules happens when they have some common frequencies, often with localized modes of vibration. You may think that you are just modeling church bells, but everything that you do has immediate application to the understanding of some organic chemical interactions, which are a deep mystery yet.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- blipvert 4y agoI wrote a lot of my undergraduate dissertation on Bell’s too. Maybe that’s why I got such a poor degree.