Birthday

Yesterday we had a decidedly distracted evening, as Digital Electronics turned into Projectile Motion 101. At the same time I introduced the class to a magnetic velocity multiplier (see movie above), and Dave Russell, our professor, showed us all a vacuum cannon that he'd built to use at the high school he teaches at.
And then there was today, my birthday. A lot of talking on the phone to the Katie was involved, both yesterday and today, and for that I say, "Yay!"
My best present by far was the blackboard, pictured above. As you can tell, I went right to it, working out part of the math for the magnetic velocity multiplier I mentioned before. I find it very interesting that you have to prep the board by rubbing it with chalk and then erasing it so that the first marks on it will not be indellible. I must research that further.

Another Day, Another Demonstration

Another demonstration of physics, my craziness, and stupidity, that is.
The stupidity isn't mine.
The Duke Lacrosse Case is quickly becoming a stormy story of outrage. The stupidity lies herein, but also in the fact that GoDuke.com, the university's athletic department's site, decided to pull the roster of the men's lacrosse team. Why did it still show up on Google's cache, then? [PDF]
Anyhow, I met with Dr. Halpern who showed me his immense boxes of physics demonstration tricks and talked with me about the future of physics teaching.
Then, the big project: this evening I cataloged and catagorized everything that's made it into my SAR pack. The list is here.

Well, Let's See...

What have I been up to?
-Plotting the gravitational field of Saturn and its rings to see if there's some possibility of generating a perspective on gravity quantization from this data.
-Composing yet more music, and being asked to play at a concert at my church, among other things (details to follow).
-School work.
-Designing an amorphous metal-based pressure sensor.
-Reviving part of the trombum as a dijeridoo for Rob.
-Reading far too much Spider Robinson.
-More school work.
-Setting up a vibration-reducing coil housing for my independent study.
-Working at Campmor.
-Teaching myself discrete structures mathematics (since my professor's not doing it).
-Working on the energy audit of my school.
-Still more school work.
-Writing a review paper for my independent study.
-Etc., etc., etc.

Yes, it's been rather busy. I'll post as often as I can.