Science – Page 25 – Fooyah

November 7 2012

Sandy

My Shatism on Storm Sandy.

November 5 2012

The Theory Of Relativity and the space-time continuum must be having a joke. It is Guy Fawkes night here in the UK and it is traditionally the time of year when people spend their hard earned cash and buy fireworks to explode in celebration of the destruction of a Catholic plot to take over the country. Every year we ritually burn a Catholic effigy on a fire, just to make a point.

Fireworks are not just limited to the 5th of November as they can be let off anytime from about a week before to a week after the actual date, or so seems the tradition in areas I have lived.

This sudden need for fireworks to burn has a strange effect on the existence of shops that sell fireworks. All of a sudden, shops exist where none have existed before. It is almost as if the universe knows that we need fireworks and obliges by creating these quantum spaces where money can be exchanged for coloured explosives. For the rest of the year these shops do not exist. I have no idea where you can buy fireworks at any other time of the year.

It seems strange that the will of the people is satisfied by the universe in allowing these shops exist. Yet, prayers for health and wealth go un-listened!

I imagine that fireworks shops are floating around in hyperspace just waiting for a critical mass of “need”. This “need” gives the shops the energy binding to fix their position for a short while so they can serve their reason for existence. As soon as that “need” passes the shop can no longer maintain its bind to reality and it is forced back into hyperspace. Perhaps they follow the need of Earth’s population around the globe and end up following the seasons! Early November in the UK, Diwali in India and New Year everywhere. The number of fireworks stores for the Olympics must have been immense!

Just imagine, a world where the needs of the people are served by a wonder of shops and services just floating outside existence until the “need” reaches critical mass. That’s my sort of universe!

November 4 2012November 5 2012

Summary

I’m not sure how the Met Office app gets its summaries for each day but the following doesn’t seem to make sense to me unless it just “averages” the day’s weather.

Today’s summary:

Today’s actual forecast. See the difference?

October 19 2012October 19 2012

315 Feet

The car had to go to the tyre and brake people this week. I had noticed the feel of the brake pedal was changing slightly from smooth to a bit jerky when releasing pressure. This didn’t really concern me but the fact that the rear discs were looking rusty and there was only a thin band of clean metal had me worried.

The car went in to ATS Euromaster at 08:30 and I’d had the call by about 09:30. New pads and discs at the rear (I’d expected that), two new tyres as the fronts were worn to just about legal. I hadn’t really expected that but then I don’t hang around and a little sliding when it’s damp is good fun (no kids in the car and only where it’s safe and there’s space). I had mentioned that there was a slow puncture on the nearside rear tyre and it’s just aswell.

When I went to pick up the car it was still on the jacks so the guys could show me the problem that was causing the slow puncture. The inside of the tyre where the join normally occurs and is “welded” nicely was just a split. It had gone down to steel and would eventually have caused some serious issues. They believe it was a manufacturing fault and the tyre has been sent back to Pirelli and I hope I get a refund and I ended up paying for 3 tyres.

An interesting little fact that I hadn’t considered was that the new tyres went on the rear of the car and the worn tyres were swapped to the front. This is to try and ensure that when the car is on the limit it will understeer rather than oversteer. Understeer is much safer that oversteer and so by keeping the grip at the rear of the car (especially an estate where the rear is quite light) the car is safer to drive. Nice.

315 feet is the stopping distance of a car travelling at 70mph. This is the number given in the Highway Code. Most cars will stop much shorter than that. Should you ever be lost for a stopping distance then the formula s=v+(v^2)/20 works to give you the Highway Code numbers. The thinking and reaction time is the same number of feet as miles per hour and then the actual breaking distance is proportional to the speed squared. It’s all down to kinetic energy! See the Wolfram|Alpha stopping distance calculation here.

October 15 2012June 22 2018

Stunning Mach

Amazing.

That’s all that’s needed really.

Felix Baumgartner and a huge team of engineers and back up crew including Joe Kittenger have done it. It was stunning.

I wasn’t alive for the Moon landings so I couldn’t see them live and I don’t recall watching Andy Green break the sound barrier live on television although I definitely watched the documentary on it. Felix Baumgartner’s skydive from a billion miles up was something I could watch live and, such is technology nowadays that I streamed it to my phone while I was walking the dog in the park. I was trying to watch it on my phone while the kids had thier dinner. Then it got to bath and bed time and Felix hadn’t jumped. But, then it was time to walk the dog. Fortunately I can get a 3G signal in the park and watched the live stream via cellular technology. It was quite an amazing thing to see. The check list was simple and yet necessary. The standing on the edge and then the fall. I imagine that watching the moon landing was like this but much more so. I felt chilled and elated at the same time. It was as though time slowed and I watched every second of his freefall in utter peace. I am astounded at how it went when all the possibilities are considered.

Well done to all involved.

October 2 2012

Changing Appearance

I’ve just been editing my theme files of this website to remove the “leave a comment” link at the bottom of pages. I have no idea about php but I can see how it works from looking at the files stored on my server. A little bit of searching of the internet (world wide web really) and I found the sections to remove from my index.php file. I think this has meant that the website looks a little neater.

However, I do need to have another look and edit out the | symbol that appears at the end of each communication after the tags for that communication. One of the issues is that it is hard to see where these parts of the php file are when you already have deleted the “leave a comment” bit.

Anyway, it’s been about 14 months since I started this website and I am finally doing some tidying up. If they update the theme that I am using then I’ll have to do the whole editing thing again, BOO.

September 7 2012October 13 2018

Cool Glacier

Here’s a very cool glacier photo. I stole the link from Phil Plait. His text from his RSS feed follows:

“This is so cool – photographer André vd Hoeven visited the Pasterze glacier in Austria and took quite a few pictures of it. Quite a few. He then stitched them together to make this astonishing 10,000 x 8600 pixel version that you can pan and scan and zoom:

[You may need to refresh the page if you don’t see the pannable and scannable image directly above this sentence.]

The scale’s a bit hard to grasp. So do this: go to the bottom left corner, where you can see a little splash of blue. That’s where the glaciers is breaking up, exposing cleaner ice. Zoom way in on that spot using the control buttons on the bottom right of the picture. See the people standing there near the open water? That’ll give you a sense of scale. Keep your eye on them, and then zoom back out.”

Glacier: