No, no, not that finger.
The Finger Test to Check the Doneness of Meat
Can’t personally vouch for the veracity, but it’s neat if it’s true.
The Nougat has Cleared the Tower
There’s a fairly well-known science question which asks
How does the amount of energy per gram of TNT compare with the energy per gram of a chocolate chip cookie?
I’ve discussed before why I think the answer should be, “About the same,” if you’re doing a first-order approximation, and depending on what options you give for an answer.
We’ve also visited the energy content of a candy bar. So along that vein (or clogged artery) we have
which tests sugar as an ingredient in rocket propellant, in the form of pixy sticks, creme from an oreo cookie, and a Snickers bar.
Creme filling from one Double Stuff Oreo weighed out at 5.7 grams. Mixed with 11.4 grams finely powdered KNO3 (FireFox) with mortar and pestle.
Result: Burns very sluggishly, requires some assistance from torch flame
Adjustment: Added 0.2 grams red iron oxide (Fe2O3) to catalyze the burn. Works much better.
Great Power
It also comes with great current times potential difference.
Click the cartoon to go to XKCD and see the hover tag.
As Long as it's not Taylor-Theismann
Rhett analyzes a football collision. Momentum and Football
Sigh, Star. Sigh!
We said that it’s simple, and it is: it’s a brick wrapped in a piece of paper.
If you don’t have a couple of bricks (and we didn’t), they turn out to be cheap at hardware and home improvement stores. These are “cement bricks” — red dyed cement– and cost about $0.25 each. Wrapping them up keeps them from scratching up your shelves and books, but also from depositing cement debris everywhere.
The geek part is on the outside.
I Remember Her Cooking Show
The definition of a Julia set can get a bit complicated, but it can be thought of as an object that carves up four-dimensional space into two categories – belonging to the set, and not belonging to the set. How exactly the shape is carved depends on some very deep mathematics.
Dark Matter Left, Red Shift, Big Bang on Two, on Two. Ready? Break!
The Onion: NFL Scientists Postulate Theoretical Down Before First Down
Citing the extremely low level of entropy present before a normal set of football downs, scientists from the NFL’s quantum mechanics and cosmology laboratories spoke Monday of a theoretical proto-down before the first.
The Peasants are Revolting
“You can say that again” — The King of Id
My molar has apparently abdicated — it rejected its crown. Ugh. Fortunately I was able to have the dentist see me and fix my little problem.
No Butts About it: Truth is Stranger than Fiction
An assassination attempt, with emphasis on ass: the bomb was concealed in the orifice of choice for concealing items. I’d say convenient orifice, but it’s probably not all that convenient.
The bomb couldn’t be that big, and water (being a large fraction of the human body) isn’t very good shrapnel.
While the assassination proved unsuccessful, AQAP had been able to shift the operational paradigm in a manner that allowed them to achieve tactical surprise. The surprise was complete and the Saudis did not see the attack coming — the operation could have succeeded had it been better executed.
We know this wasn’t The Onion because there is no remark about how hindsight is 20-20, mention of a thorough probe of the incident, or talk of a push for new security measures. Or discussion of market penetration of security technology. (Oh, strike that last one. They say it here)
Via Schneier, who cautions us not to tell the TSA.
My Life is a TV Teen Drama
I don’t generally watch the teen-coming-of-age drama shows, unless forced (as I was on vacation; the episode of Degrassi was a cheap ripoff of Pump Up the Volume without the benefit of a topless shot of Samantha Mathis), but I’m sure this plot has been covered somewhere: Awkward Teen asks the Beautiful Cheerleader to the prom; she has recently split with Handsome Quarterback, but doesn’t immediately say yes to AT, so he assumes she will say no and asks Safety Date, who is much more likely to want to go with him, and she says yes. Immediately thereafter, BC also says yes. Depending on the context, either tremendous angst or hilarity ensues. Possibly both, depending on the quality of the writing.
How does this apply to me? A while back I got an invitation from an old navy buddy to give the keynote talk at the Southern Atlantic Coast Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers Conference. Keynote speakers are typically either famous, to some degree, within either the physics or pop-physics communities, or are attempting to become so by promoting a book, so I am not the Beautiful Cheerleader in this scenario. I figured this was an act of desperation, but I agreed, thinking it would be fun. Lo and behold, it turns out that the other speaker can make it. (Cut to commercial)
All is not lost. I’m getting my own slot during the conference, though that will be a tad awkward — the after-dinner talk (and the public talk that some conferences have) has more leeway in not being directly related to the theme of the conference. I don’t have any particular insight into teaching to share; certainly not an hour’s worth. Same goes for a lot of themes that show up here — I don’t want to make the mistake of trying to turn a 5-minute skit into a feature movie, because it rarely works (are you listening, Saturday Night Live?) So I’ll go with my plan and talk about clocks and timekeeping, with a few cartoons thrown in, and leave the connection to teaching as an exercise for the interested viewer. I was going to do a bit about how I’m at least a little bit famous, and promote the blog, and I may leave that in.
I was also toying with the idea of going with a minimalist presentation, with very few slides in the first part of the talk. The show-and-tell part, though, really needs the “show” as much as the “tell.” Still working on that. I lose the comfort of the “1 – 1.5 minutes per slide” guideline, and since talks will follow mine, there’s pressure to finish on time.