An infographic retelling of Little Red Riding Hood
Simple Toys
Another cheap little toy I recently acquired is a keychain containing a multicolor LED that rapidly flashes between red, blue and green. It looks white (almost) to the naked eye when it’s stationary, but when it’s moving quickly enough, persistence of vision allows you to see the different colors. My webcam frame rate is timed such that it picks this up as well.
It’s been a reasonable distraction for when I’m put on hold by tech support or customer “service.”
It's What's for Dinner
Specialized nanoparticles floating in water make a fluid that can be switched between two states with different thermal properties, according to the 13 March Physical Review Letters. If the particles start out evenly distributed throughout the fluid volume, heat transfers more rapidly through the fluid than if they are more concentrated close to the heat source. The flow pattern is not fixed like the steady rolling produced in pure water, which suggests more complicated physics than researchers had previously predicted. But the team hopes some version of their fluid can be used to improve the regulation of heat flow in future devices.
Meat Madness
The meat playoff bracket champion has been crowned. Bacon fans will not be happy.
Lotta controversy. Pot roast, a 15 seed? Pepperoni and Italian sausage in the same sub-bracket? And the upsets — filet mignon losing to hanger steak? Ooh, that’s tough (not really, it was actually quite tender).
Doing Nothing for Fun and Profit
Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts
Paying big users to cut demand when capacity is strained.
10 percent of all US generating capacity exists to meet the last 1 percent of demand. Utilities paid EnerNOC $100 million last year simply to stand at the ready—insurance, in effect, against the inevitable days when every AC unit is humming.
I expect some companies who participate will install their own systems. Energy at the place of use, or distributed energy, doesn’t tax the grid because it isn’t being sent anywhere. I wonder if/when fuel cell technology matures, if this isn’t an ideal application. Generate hydrogen from cheap electricity at night, use it at peak times when electricity is expensive and/or you’re being bribed to reduce your demand.
Where Planes Go to Die
Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center in Arizona
This Trail is not Being Maintained
The weather this past weekend was very nice, so both afternoons were spent geocaching. Some bushwacking required.
The Romans, in Syria, with a Lead Pipe
The Ancient World’s Longest Underground Aqueduct
It turns out the aqueduct is of Roman origin. It begins in an ancient swamp in Syria, which has long since dried out, and extends for 64 kilometers on the surface before it disappears into three tunnels, with lengths of 1, 11 and 94 kilometers. The longest previously known underground water channel of the antique world — in Bologna — is only 19 kilometers long.
Wanna Buy It?
The Makers of Things at Rands in Repose.
Building the Brooklyn Bridge.
With the caisson on the riverbed, it’s time to push it another 45 feet into the riverbed in search of bedrock. Workers did this through the continued application of stone to the top while workers in the caisson dug out the riverbed with shovels, buckets, and, when necessary, dynamite. There was nothing resembling an electrical grid, so there was nothing resembling modern lighting in this watertight pine-tarred box, which was slowly descending through the floor of the East River. There were no jack hammers, so when they hit rock, they used small amounts of dynamite to crack these rocks. In a pine-tarred box, at the bottom of a river, mostly in a very wet dark.
Interesting comment:
When Brooklyn and New York’s population was booming at the end of the 19th century, the best way to get to and from Brooklyn was via ferries. As solutions were considered, I’m sure there were those who simply thought, “More boats!” These ardent defenders of the status quo were not engineers — they were the business. Their goal was not to build something great, but to make a profit.
It should be obvious, but when you ask people with a stake in it, you are going to get a biased answer. The application of this nugget to today’s economic situation is left as an exercise for the diligent student.