Looking at things Cockeyed

I just was over at cockeyed.com, and wound up writing the following letter:
Rob,
I was just reading your page about the crosswalk button sign that you made up, and I remembered something that I'd seen here (Yes, Walter Lewin is the man.) The effect is the same thing as a "halo" or "glory" generated by water droplets, so if you can simulate that, you can get reflective paint. Simple solution: wait until your latex paint is just tacky then throw sandblasting sand (little glass spheres) at it. Dry, and coat with a clear urethane coating. Viola! A wonderful reflective sign... and all for the cost of some sandblasting sand and urethane (which I'm certain you can find somewhere for less-than-cheap).
Best of luck in pulling off some awesome warning signs with this!

Regards,
Pete

Hope someone can use this advice... eventually.

And eventually I'll put up pics. In the meantime, look at Lewin's end-of-term video about rainbows. It's amazing!

Sucralose

The "Truth" about Splenda
The Truth about Splenda
What's the difference? Well, the top site is run by and industry group that could use some... help getting consumer letters straightened out before becoming liable for their content. The second one is a pretty trusty wikipedia article. My contribution to the former? This:
"First of all, good work with creating this website. As a scientist myself, I usually require proof to regard something as true. This website gives a goodly bit of proof. Further information on splenda and sucralose at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose, which is where I found a link to this site.
Another thing that I must do as a scientist is to educate. First of all, yes, sucralose contains three atoms of chlorine, but remember that regular table salt is half chlorine, and you can't live without it. The thing is that the chlorine in sucralose is bonded covalently rather than ionically (therefore more strongly). This means that it's not able to get into your body as the dissolved chlorine ions that we all need to survive. Furthermore, since sucralose is a different molecular "shape" than sucrose, or any other sugar, not only does your tongue sense certain resonances which make it percieve it as sweeter than sucrose, but sucralose cannot be absorbed or processed as sugar can. This means that the various bacteria in your digestive system, not to mention the filtering tissues of your liver and kidneys, will be overworked to try to deal with this unfamiliar contaminant.
Remember also that anything that your body is unfamiliar with which has some effect on it is classed as a toxin, and that a certain sub-class of toxins which don't kill you in small doses are referred to as drugs.
So, what have we learned? From many sources, we find that sucralose can build up in the body due to inefficient removal from the bloodstream. We already know that many other artificial sweeteners have detrimental effects, yet are still on the market: aspartame contributes to brain tumors and lesions and lymphoma, and can break down into such toxins as formaldehyde (now considered to dangerous to even be used as it once was, in embalming); acelsulfame potassium is a known carcinogen; cyclamates cause bladder cancer, as does sodium saccharine, and the other saccharides.
However, consider also that bleached sugars contain trace amounts of sucralose due to the processing methods used in their manufacture.
Overall, sucralose may be the best of the horrible options which are artificial sweeteners, but personally, due if nothing else to the disgusting aftertaste, I'll stick with honey, maple syrup, and brown or unbleached sugars, thank you."

Oh, and what is "Chorine"?

ROV

Well, it turns out that northern NJ and southern NY have a heck of a bunch of flooded abandoned iron mines. I want to know what's down there, but I don't feel like taking a confined space SCUBA course to do it. So, I've recruited a team, and we're going to build an ROV to see what's down there. More on the design as it comes together.

Clock

I made a clock! Apparently A. C. Moore carries clock hands and slate rounds. So, with drill and masonry bits in hand, I took the old clock movement and made something new. Now I can chalk up my own times!

Dinner

Dinner:

Caesar Salad



Roasted Stuffed Tomatoes

- 1 pint baby bella mushrooms

- 1 pint white mushrooms

- 3 cloves garlic

- 3 small onions

- 4 sun-dried tomatoes

- 4 large beefsteak tomatoes

- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

- 3/4 cups water

- 2 tsp. olive oil

- 1 cup grated mozzarella

- 1/2 cup bread crumbs

Dry mushrooms in broiler. Chop mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes into a bowl with the vinegar and water. Mush together by hand. Put some of the liquid from this into a small frying pan and add the garlic, onions, and olive oil. Sauté. Pour contents of pan into bowl, along with bread crumbs. Load contents of bowl into a food processor, usually in two batches: one will be chopped, the other puree. In the meantime, cut the tops off of the beefsteak tomatoes and empty them. Salt them, and them place on a grate over the kitchen sink to drain for 15 mins. After this, stuff the tomatoes, and place them in the oven at 450°F for 4-7 mins. When removed, they should not be wilting. Remove and top with mozzarella.



Tuna Steaks

- 3.5 lbs. Tuna loin

- 1 cup sesame seeds

- 1/2 bottle natural soy sauce

- 1 cup maple syrup

- 2 sun-dried tomatoes

Roast about 2 tablespoons of the sesame seeds in a frying pan. Chop the sun-dried In a large tupperware or other plastic sealable container, combine these with the maple syrup and soy sauce. Marinate tuna for 2-3 hours, and then broil for about 5 mins per side. Reduce marinade to a sauce for dipping.

New Blog

Check out my new daily over at The Informed Physics Student.
I've always said that there should be a manual for handling academia, so I'm putting one together, one day at a time.

MIT researchers explore method of transferring electricity wirelessly - Wikinews

This is truly news. I've read a lot of Tesla's works, and as soon as I had the time and money, I wanted to try this myself. His ideas were and are revolutionary, and if the MIT folks get this right... well, let's just say, "Hold on to your butts. This is gonna be a ride."

Read more at en.wikinews.org/wiki/MI...

Becoming a Citizen of the Web

It looks as though, due to classes, my geek factor has been suffering of late. I didn't even know what digg or del.icio.us were for until today. Took a look, and man, no wonder they're being used so much. Between these two pages, flickr, skype, slashdot, and facebook, you've got all you ever need for news and to stay connected. Truly, one seems unable to be a "citizen" of the web without having at least a blog and an account on all of these (or similar alternate) services.

Finals

My mom brought me home a sandwich. When she asked me how it was, I responded, "You don't want to ask me anything right now. I'll respond by giving an answer in cartesian coordinates of where it's triggering taste buds on my tongue."
Yesterday I turned a Zip drive into a speaker. Details later.
This week:
Monday: GRE (680V/680M Yay!)
Tuesday: Mathematical Methods in Physics in-class final and Johnny Moseley at Campmor
Wednesday: Work, climbing, and take-home finals in Advanced Mechanics and Electrodynamics (Electricity and Magnetism or E&M to the uninitiated)
Thursday: Differential Equations paper due and in-class final, and Katie comes home!

Who said being a Physics major couldn't be fun?

A December Repreive

Okay, so this blogging has not been going well.
But in the meantime:
- I've managed to become a member of NJSAR
- I've written a few short story bits
- I've run two hiking trips, one an overnighter with stargazing
- I've made the lab at school a little bit less of a mess
- I've applied to grad school (WE ARE... PENN STATE!)
- \lim_{t\rightarrow\infty}{(knowledge(LaTeX))}>>0
(If you can read that last line, you're almost as much of a geek as I am.)
- I've rapelled/abseiled
- I've made a good sized stack of lumber
- I've written yet another publishable paper and done a talk: presentation [PDF]
In short, I've kept myself busy, and even if I didn't build something physical and new every single day, the spirit of that commitment has been kept up.
By the by, I also discovered Piled Higher and Deeper. Read it.

And finally, I got my first issue of Make magazine.

Mission Failure

Well, it seems as though I've failed rather miserably in keeping this blog up to date. However, I'll just put in that I've got a number of projects going on now:
-Optical Logic Gates
-SAR Balloon
-SAR Relay
-SAR APRS
-SAR probability mapping
-Biofuels
-Morse Code-to-Speech for the Disabled
Plus which I've just completed my semester at school, and my Wilderness First Aid course for NJSAR.
Oh, yeah, and I'm finishing my music minor with "The History of Rock and Roll" at school this June.
I'll update as I can, hopefully including some pics from the lab.

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.

It's Been a While

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is the most recent circuit I couldn't get to work for electronics class.
In the past week and something since I last made an entry, I've made so many things, such as circuits for my electronics class or a new waltz, or the experimental setup for my independent study, that I don't really know where to begin.
Katie was home last week for spring break, which was absolutely terriffic. We got to spend much more time together than I'd originally expected, which was beauteous. Not only that, but she spoiled me rotten with home-made lunches.
Tomorrow I'm off to Lehigh for the day to see Sir Roger Penrose speak about the universe before (yes, you read that right) the big bang. Link is here.

More Digital Design

I made progress on some file manipulations that I'm doing for Katie today. Also, after working with my digital design professor David "Digital Dave" Russell, (I just had to say that.) I finally figured out how to properly modulate and demodulate the clock signal and data that I'm sending. More to come when I build. As for now, I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to get to bed early so I can get to school early and work on Discrete Structures review for my test on Friday. Yeesh!

In the Last Week...

In the last week, I've definitely been busier than I've been since the beginning of the semester, or maybe even since the beginning of this school year. At the same time, I've been making a lot of stuff. I've been working on the experimental setup for my independent study, composing some new music, and creating a lot of interesting circuits for my digital design class.
I also have to make myself ready, this week, for two tests: Discrete Structures and Multivariable Calculus.
In other news, the quote that started a new game was put up by my friend Pete Oliver as an away message:
You're driving down the road, and you stop at a red light. The archbishop pulls up beside you, and rolls down his window. He asks: "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?" You hand him a jar from your glove compartment, and he spreads some on a communion wafer. As he bites into it, you wake up screaming, and your pillow is missing.
My friend Pete HDP (the OTHER Pete) and I started making this into a very weird Mad-Libs. He said he'd post some of the ones he came up with, so a link will be up shortly to that.

Teodorian Natural Philosophy

I'm in the process of trying to revive the physics club at school which, unfortunately, has been ailing of late. I got defaulted into the position of VP late last semester. So far, we've got an ambitious list of people we'd like to bring to speak, and a slowly growing new set of by-laws. So, that's what I've made today, other than a proposal to create a unique area at school for the science majors to hang out in. More to come as my insane schedule allows.

Oooh! Shiny!

Wow. Check this out. Multi-Touch Interaction is quite a neat field. Now I'm working on something similar: on the proto board I have for my digital design class, I'm working out a simple LED/photodiode switch to use instead of the on-board buttons we have. Pictures to follow.

Finally I Get Back...

Well, I'm back in the saddle again. This past week has been quite a whirlwind. I had quite a bit to do for school, and also some extraneous projects such as certain musical ones. I had Valentine's Day gifts to get for Katie... In short, quite a lot to do.
As for music, I'll put up a post on that soon. Needless to say, most of the things I've been making are assignments for school.
Also, I've made a change at Campmor: I'm now working in tents most of the time, as of this past wednesday.
In other news, this past tuesday I had an interesting hydrogen-roadmap fuel cell-related symposium to sit in and take notes on. More news and a link on that later, though.
And now back to schoolwork.