Swans on Tea

What happens when a balloon explodes?

At 2700 fps.

Ten-Word Wiki, is a wiki in which all the entries are ten words long, and is only three words long. (I checked)

laser:

Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

Pew Pew Pew

Eureka’s Top 30 Science Blogs

It’s not April 1 or anything, but somehow a climate denial site is listed at #30 (the list is alphabetical — can you guess watt it is?). And there’s an aggregator site listed as well, so it’s really the top 28.

The Jobs Of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations

No, these were not outsourced overseas. I remember milk delivery — we had an insulated box on the front porch, and got the delivery at about 4 AM a few times a week. The clinking of the bottles as the delivery man walked up to the house would wake me up now and then.

On the Periodic Table, that is. Fun with the alkali metals.

I’ve witnessed a pretty nice Rubidium reaction, when I was cleaning out the oven we used to make an atomic beam. The oven was little more than a pipe with a hole in it, along with a removable plug for refilling/cleaning access, and heater wire wrapped around the outside. A little squirt of water into the tube, and BOOM! Turns out there was a macroscopic bit of unoxidized Rb left inside. Good times.

It’s that point on the orbit again: Talk like a physicist day. In case you need to brush up on your vocabulary, you can refer to my original post and its follow-up.

It’s getting much harder to come up with new examples, which means in physics-talk I’m approaching a local maximum in entropy.

Today was chosen as Talk Like a Physicist Day because it’s Einstein’s birthday, as well as Pi day in the US date format: 3/14 (Just wait 5 years and it will be precision Pi day: 3/14/15). So here’s some Einstein.

The New Yorker: Time Bandits
What were Einstein and Gödel talking about?

Bonus Einstein: at National Geographic

Brooklyn Dem Felix Ortiz wants to ban use of salt in New York restaurants

“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food,” the bill reads.

Now, I know I’ve tried to make the case that food preparation, as practiced by most people, is not science, this does not change the fact that what happens in the preparation of food is actual chemistry. And that if you change the ingredients, you change the food. Note that “no salt” is not the same as “no sodium.” Potassium chloride is still a salt, it’s just not table salt. And the bill says “salt in any form.”

I understand the intent is probably to eliminate the excess salt in some foods, but the choice of adding salt, or not, to a food after it has been prepared is not the same as eliminating it during the preparation. In bread, for example, it plays a chemical role”

By mixing with salt, wheat flour produced gluten from gliadin and glutenin whose elastic property is characteristic in bread and noodles.

and it has more roles, too, other than taste. (Hmmm, there’s a salt manufacturer’s association. Of course there is.)

Add to this the fact there is salt already present in many foods. Can you add eggs to a recipe without running afoul of the law? Cheese has salt in it, too. Remember, it’s “salt in any form.” What a stupid proposal.

Abstract City: My Way

Maps as metaphors.

The Unpersuadables

He was on the other night, but you can travel through time (or not) and see the video: The Colbert Report and Sean’s post on the experience

Abstruse Goose: Reasonable Expectation

I’ve heard there are groups that get together to swap shopper cards on occasion, just to stick it to the corporate man.