Daily Archives: September 4, 2010

Mailing It In

Posted on by

I ordered something online, and expected it to be delivered at the end of this past week. I thought that it was going to ship via the postal service, but then got a tracking number from FedEx. Here’s why.

That’s right. (Pardon my use of the vernacular, but) FedEx got the package and then fucking mailed it. Apparently this is a new “service” called SmartPost, and if you Google on that term, you will find complaints all over the place. The skinny is that the SmartPost service waits until they have a critical mass of deliveries, and then they turn them over to the Post office, so “at the Postal Facility” might not be the truth. If it is, then they’ve been hanging on to my package for 4 days, not the 1 or 2 advertised. And based on the complaints I’ve read, if it actually gets delivered on Tuesday, I will be getting off easy. There are horror stories of deliveries taking weeks and packages just disappearing.

Magnus-ificient

Posted on by

Carlos ’97 free kick no fluke, say French physicists

While their research quickly confirmed the long-known Magnus effect, which gives a spinning ball a curved trajectory, their research revealed fresh insight for spinning balls that are shot over a distance equivalent to Roberto Carlos’ free kick.

The friction exerted on a ball by its surrounding atmosphere slows it down enough for the spin to take on a greater role in directing the ball’s trajectory, thereby allowing the last moment change in direction, which in the case of Carlos’ kick left Barthez defenceless.
The researchers refer to their discovery as the ‘spinning ball spiral,’ comparing the spiralling effects of Roberto Carlos’s kick with the shorter-distance (20-25 m) ‘circular’ free kicks shot by the likes of Beckham and Platini.

…

‘People often noticed that Carlos’ free kick had been shot from a remarkably long distance; we show in our paper that this is not a coincidence, but a necessary condition for generating a spiral trajectory.’

Here’s the kick in question:

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Turns Out There's a Third Option

Posted on by

Taking The Temperature Of A Dinosaur

A team of researchers led by Robert Eagle, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, found that rare, heavy isotopes of carbon-13 and oxygen-18 clump together differently depending on temperature.

“It’s basic thermodynamics: At warmer temperatures, you get a more random distribution of these isotopes with less clumping,” Eagle said. “As temperature decreases things slow down and you begin to see more bonding.”

When this bonding takes place within an organism, such as in the formation of the mineral apatite to form tooth enamel, the pattern of bonds preserves a record of the animal’s body temperature, within a few degrees.