Soot particles grow inside a flame when tiny, carbon-rich spheres stick together to form larger, tenuous aggregates. As they grow, the particles take on a characteristic branched shape because two colliding clusters are most likely to attach at their protruding “fingers.”
These bushy shapes are conveniently described as fractals–geometric objects whose mass grows as a fractional power of their linear size, rather than the third power that characterizes ordinary solids like spheres and cubes. Theory predicts that virtually all clusters should have a fractal dimension very close to 1.8, and past experiments agree. But a collaboration led by Hans Moosmüller of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, found many clusters with a much lower dimension, characteristic of a more rod-like shape.
Seeing it in Perspective
America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making
Breaking down the $2 trillion in deficit since 2000. For all the hysteria about recent events, I find this tidbit interesting (summarized in this graphic):
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.
Obama doesn’t get a free pass, though.
“Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it.”
“And,” he added, “not fixing it is, in a sense, making it worse.”
The Effect of Inflation
Intellectual Ventures Lab: Quarter Shrinker
We found out that a local laboratory known as Hackerbot Labs had built a device which uses electromagnetic forming in order to shrink quarters down to the size of a dime. This device would be ideal for us to test our new highspeed video camera and other equipment, while collecting interesting data on how this device is functioning.
Mffle Wffle Hmm?
I was recently eating lunch ‘al desco’. While I was eating-working, a student walked in my office to ask me a question, saw I was eating lunch at my desk, and said “Oh, I’m so sorry for interrupting your lunch. I’ll come back later.”
I was stunned. This has never happened to me before.
I’ve taken to eating at my desk much more in recent times. (Defections of the old lunch crowd left us with less than critical mass, and I can web surf/blog on my lunch break if I’m at my desk) And I get similar treatment as FSP — the assumption that I’m in “may I help you” mode because I’m at my desk.
T or F? F
Remember the important rule of true-or-false questions: if any part of the statement is untrue, then the statement is false.
14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite
A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph.
No, false. There’s no way the meteorite was traveling 30,000 mph when it hit him, nor did it hit him and then form the crater. This doesn’t mean the chunk isn’t a meteorite, nor that he wasn’t struck by it — elements of the story are certainly plausible, and there’s no reason to suspect that anybody is fabricating the event. I suspect it’s a case of a reporter doing a minimum of background fact-checking and seeing that meteors travel that fast in space and just ran with it — no feel for the number being reasonable (supersonic, and many times faster than a bullet) or reconciling the relatively minor injury with this and the creation of a crater.
There’s a fairly thorough discussion of the details over at Bad Astronomy
Let's Teach Adults, Too
And let’s face it: Our culture has lost the ability to usefully disagree. Most Americans seem to avoid argument. But this has produced passive aggression and groupthink in the office, red and blue states, and families unable to discuss things as simple as what to watch on television. Rhetoric doesn’t turn kids into back-sassers; it makes them think about other points of view.
I had long equated arguing with fighting, but in rhetoric they are very different things. An argument is good; a fight is not. Whereas the goal of a fight is to dominate your opponent, in an argument you succeed when you bring your audience over to your side. A dispute over territory in the backseat of a car qualifies as an argument, for example, in the unlikely event that one child attempts to persuade his audience rather than slug it.
Teaching kids how to argue properly presumes that the parents know how to argue, which I don’t think is generally the case. But that’s a rant for another post.
Do Birds Do It, Too?
Coaxing bees into making honeycomb sculpture
“I knew they were ordered and regimented,” the Pennsylvania artist says about his honeybees, which built the three otherworldly sculptures on view at Eleven Rivington. “I had an intuition that I’d be able to organize that, architecturally.”
In the Zone
Fast Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck
I have no horse in this race, or a smartphone for that matter, but any explanation of “the zone of suck” using fast-food apple pies is worthwhile reading, IMO.
Monarch Burger went to the trouble of making their apple pie look like a slice of homemade apple pie. While it seems appealing in its photo on the menu, it sets up a false expectation. It may look like a slice of homemade apple pie, but it certainly doesn’t taste like one. Naturally, it flopped. Fast-food restaurants are set up to be run not by trained chefs, but by a low-wage, low-skill, disinterested staff. As a result, their food preparation procedures are designed to run on little thinking and no passion. They’re not set up to create delicious homemade apple pies.
We Ames to Please
Ames’ Window
I Know You're Lying to Me
Please listen carefully to these options, as our menu has recently changed
No it hasn’t.
I suspect this behavior shows up somewhere on the list of ways you can manipulate people, in this case, trying to get me to listen to all the options instead of choosing the first convenient (and wrong) one or hitting “0.” Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
(I haven’t read the whole list, but am confident that by mentioning and linking to it, someone will read it and confirm that the behavior is indeed there. And that there are ways to persuade people to do your research for you, too, like checking to see if an item is on a list)