Monthly Archives: May 2011
Leaving CorVegas
Jen-Luc Piquant and I are heading out to Oregon State University today, as I am a featured speaker at OSU’s first Sonia Kovaleskaya Mathematics Day, honoring the prominent Russian female mathematician of the same name.
I am contractually obligated to link to activities involving Oregon State. So, here you go.
This is Not Tilt-Shift Photography
World’s largest model airport the Knuffingen goes on show
The incredible model is based on Hamburg Airport and features 40 planes and 90 vehicles that autonomously move around the airport.
It took seven years to build and cost a staggering $4.8 million.
One-Sided Food Argument
Thought that this should exist after describing pasta as having different gauges (like wire), whether it’s solid-core (like spaghetti) or hollow core (ziti) at lunch at my recent conference. And it already exists.
So be it… Jedi!
Here’s what happens to CDs that will not turn to the dark side.
Oh, My!
Shocked clamp is shocked.
Wait, What?
Some double-take signs seen recently while out geocaching
Do you ever videotape but not for recording purposes?
It's Ungodly
The Dangerously Clean Water Used To Make Your iPhone
The ordinary person thinks of reverse-osmosis as taking “everything” out of water. RO is the process you use to turn ocean water into crystalline drinking water. And in human terms, RO does take most everything out of the water.
But for semiconductors, RO water isn’t even close. Ultra-pure water requires 12 filtration steps beyond RO. (For those of a technical bent, the final filter in making UPW has pores that are 20 nanometers wide.
…
Water is a good cleaner because it is a good solvent–the so-called “universal solvent,” excellent at dissolving all kinds of things. UPW is particularly “hungry,” in solvent terms, because it starts so clean. That’s why it is so valuable for washing semiconductors.
It’s also why it’s not safe to drink. A single glass of UPW wouldn’t hurt you. But even that one glass of water would instantly start leeching valuable minerals back out of your body.
My Boys Can Swim Bike
The bike is more than just a rolling billboard for the company aimed at increasing awareness of the need for donors to help childless children around the world. Inside the head of the giant sperm cell is a cooler compartment designed so that the metal containers with sperm donations can fit snugly inside and be kept cold.
The rider should be wearing a bike helmet … with a protruding reservoir at the top … and he should have clear plastic raincoat for inclement weather. Just sayin’
Old McDonald Had a Scintillator
Here a scope, there a cope, everywhere a spinthariscope
The spinthariscope — see atoms decay before your eyes!
A small radioactive source (the details of which we will discuss later) emits alpha particles that collide with a zinc sulfide (ZnS) screen. This screen gives off flashes of light (called scintillations) at the places the alpha particles hit. These minute flashes are magnified by a simple lens and can be viewed through the eyepiece. Every flash the viewer sees is the trace of a single atomic nuclear decay. By adjusting the bottom screw, one can effectively increase or decrease the rate at which alpha particles hit the screen, transforming a flood of particles into a trickle, or vice versa.
This is a pretty neat effect, and is worth blogging about in itself, but the spinthariscope also has historical significance: it was the first device invented that is able to detect individual radioactive particles, a precursor to the Geiger counter!
I got one, too, though mine lacks the adjustment screw. Neat flashes of light, though, as long as I am not wearing my glasses — I need to get my eye right up to the eyepiece. Unfortunately the flashes have proven too dim to capture on a camera. The low-light viewer we have in the lab didn’t help; it’s geared more to being sensitive in the IR (and shifting it to green, which helps the eye more than the camera) than to amplifying raw signals.