All about the demos…

June 30, 2009 – 8:39 am

Summer school is all upon us.  Chemistry demonstrations are boiling on the bench.  Today is all physical chemistry.

Heat capacity of copper is measured by dropping 64 grams of metal at 100°C into 100 grams of water in a styrofoam cup at room temperature, and measuring the temperature rise of the whole.

Speed of sound in gas is demonstrated by blowing helium, air, and sulfur hexafluoride through an old wooden organ pipe.  The pipe length supports a standing wave, and the frequency of the standing wave is proportional to the speed of sound in the pipe.  Fill the pipe with helium and the tone goes way up, with sulfur hexafluoride and the tone goes way down.

No clue what the bucket of ice requested is for.  Sometimes that is the way it goes.

Galaxy viewing, two perspectives.

May 22, 2009 – 8:46 am

The earth swings aside to show the galactic center,

or as much of it as we can see before the sunrise blots it out with blue sky.

galaxy on the rise

I am playing with a Kaossilator by Korg, lent to me by a musician friend whose day job puts him in my department.  It is a super-nutty musical instrument, with a knob and three buttons and a touch pad, and two rca jacks out.  Like rocking out and dorking out, this you must have!

There was a pyramid in Albuquerque.  This is the view from the hotel room I stayed in while guest of UNM Center for BioMedical Research.  We gave the Chocolate from Bean to Bar, Science  talk we did for last year’s holiday lecture in the Science Center.  Google it and you’ll find it.

pyramid_in_albuquerque1.jpg

This is another view, stitched together from several shots.  Not bad from HP software.

stitched pictures of mountain in Albuquerque, NM

Mercury lamp spectrum

April 24, 2009 – 1:43 pm

The  un-done demo of the day is the 4 meter wide spectrum of mercury vapor, visible lines on a screen and the ultraviolet lines detected with a hand held screen.

With three colored plexiglas sheets was demonstrated absorption spectroscopy.  The yellow plastic absorbed the violet line and glowed fluorescently yellow.  The orange sheet absorbed the green lines, and the red sheets absorbed yellow and green.  The yellow lines were clearly doubles.

The lamp is 1000 W and the quartz capsule is bare to the air, making safety a big deal.  The slit is formed by the door to the emergency exit, almost closed, across from the exit door on the other side of the hall, where we have the 7 meter focal length mirror grating reflecting back onto a screen.  The colors are beautiful, and the UV lines go way over, with the zinc sulfide detector showing them handily.

mercury spectrum

A balloon, 1,2,3 volume sequence.  Apropos the 1812 Overture balloon cannons, which are filled first with one part oxygen, followed by two parts hydrogen.

Honeypots for pirates

April 14, 2009 – 7:31 am

No links today.  Just a word or two about pirates, and ambiguity. 

Like many Americans, I was happy to hear that the captain in the lifeboat was saved.  He is a brave  man who was willing to die for his crew.  The pirates were stupid, and in the world of theft and violence, the wages of stupidity are death.

One report is that the pirates are just desperate men, driven to hijacking by hunger.  The failure of Somalia to provide protection from over-fishing by factory boats, or from the dumping of toxic waste,  is condemning the people.  Why wouldn’t they take the opportunity to provide for their families?  

Attacking unarmed shipping instead of getting it together to establish a functioning state is stupid.  Certainly not sustainable.   Capping pirates in the full glare of media coverage invites retribution, which invites further retribution.  Sweet revenge, you idiots.  Drink deep. 

The ocean is too big to patrol.  That is the navy’s plaint.  Wah.  

Don’t go looking for them.  Let them come looking for you.

Imagine, a sixty foot yacht, sailing a dozen miles off the coast.  On deck, a white-haired couple sip champagne.  Shiny hardware and a flashy sail, under an American flag.  A gold watch glints from the man’s wrist, and diamonds sparkle at the woman’s neck.

Up zoom the pirates, one two three.  As the powerful outboards rev down and the grappling hooks come out, the yacht lurches, up, up, what?   Grey steel of a submersible weapon platform, a submarine, perhaps, clears the water.  From the barrels of a gattling gun six feet above the water spins a thousand rounds at the nearby boats, sending pieces of pirates to an anonymous watery grave.

On shore, only the knowledge that this pirate crew never came back.  No warning, no apologies, no threat of retribution.  A wife’s tears, a hungry child.

Revenge fantasy #8,047.

 

Psychology of fun and happiness.

March 20, 2009 – 1:38 pm

I am totally enjoying the fact that next week is spring break here.  No reason to prepare demonstrations, to do physical work.  Just thinking about a week free from the snap and flutter is wonderful.

Today’s only demonstration was a ripple tank, and various wave phenomena therein.  I had a moment of weakness, thinking that maybe the ripple tank simulation was better than actual tiny water waves, lit from below by a point source arc lamp, and projected on a screen by a pair of huge front surface mirrors.

Well, if you don’t have the physical thang, then head on down to Paul Falstad’s House of Physics Applets!  If you can’t waste an hour messing with physics simulations, I’m sorry.  The Fourier series applets are pretty sweet.  Prof. X’s comment?  It’s too perfect.  Hahahahaha.   One hint: change the settings so that your computer has to do the most calculations.  Crank the resolution.  Run more than one applet at a time.  Your CPU will be so pleased that you are using it for physics and not video games.

Another awesome way to spend an hour is watching TED videos.  TED.com, I’m not going to make thatsd a clickable link.   But here are two great talks by local prof’s Dan Ariely on moral code, and Dan Gilbert on miscalculating the future.   Yow!

Thanks to Joost Bonsen, Man of Venture, and super friend, for a thousand blog posts on Maximizing Progress.  Way to go!

Now I will have fun and maximize my happiness by getting out of here.