From Lifehacker …
How To Pull A Van Uphill (with Only A Rope) - video powered by Metacafe
This video shows one of the simplest machines, the pulley–not a lever as Lifehacker says–and how it increases your ability to lift/pull heavy things.
If you want to try this at home … try something other than a car … log or something.
This is so simple you’ll be amazed it works. And the chemistry/physics behind this also keep you from falling on your tush in the winter:
- He took 6 hot beers from my garage and he placed them into a steel pot from the kitchen
- He tossed in enough ice cubes to completely cover the beer
- He then filled the pot with water
- Next, and this is the trick, he tossed in (what must have been) 2 cups of table salt.
- He took a large wooden spoon and stirred this thing up to be sure the salt dissolved.
- He placed the concoction into the freezer and in 3 minutes we had ice cold beer.
Frankly, I wish I knew about this little trick years ago. Apparently this works for wine, soda, or anything. The addition of the salt does something that I am admittedly not qualified to explain. If we have any experts that want to weigh in, feel free. I do however know that this works. From: How to Chill a Hot Beer or Soda in 3 Minutes – Dumb Little Man
This works simply because the salt lowers the freezing point of water from about 0C (32F) to like -4C (I think). Which means the water can be colder and still be liquid and because water is a right awesome conductor of heat (hence why it is used as a coolant for engine, nuclear power plants, etc) it can suck (technically transfer, but suck sounds better) more heat out of the can. The water isn’t cooling the can as much as the heat is moving into the cold zone.
I think you can skip the whole freezer bit, because three minutes in the freezer isn’t going to do much. Stirring does help because it circulates our super-chilled water do the colder parts can get nice and cozy with the warm cans. Try it for your self.
Oh how does this keep you from falling in winter…when the salt hits the ice it again reduces the freezing point, therefore melting it. Spiffy eh?
Need a daily dose of ideas to help save energy (and the planet…but that is such a huge concept, too distant for many…stick to stuff closer to home and you)? Check out LiveEarth’s Twitter feed:
Shading windows. It can lower your home’s temperature and reduce your cooling costs by 30%. Source: Twitter / LiveEarth070707
This tip is especially good right now as the hottest part of the summer is coming our way in the Northern Hemisphere (the Dog Day … which are named such because Sirius the Dog Star become visible this time of year). Another great one is to put a fan at the top of the stairs to your cellar (if you have one) to bring cold air up from there.
The LiveEarth concert is this weekend. I’m going to try to listen to it as much as possible, but since it should be a nice weekend I think I’m going to get everyone out of the house for some fun.
Insulating buildings is one of the most important aspects of the building process. Insulation not only has to, well, insulate, but it also has to not grow nasty things and last for a long time (who wanted to rip open all their outside walls every few years–if ever). Insulation, which is typically fiberglass now, does take resources to make and isn’t recyclable (although it is made from recycled glass). Now, what if you could grow insulation? Yeah, grow. Couple smart guys figured out how to make a growing medium for oyster mushroom spores that could become suitable insulation material:
Placed in a dark environment, the cells start to grow, digesting the starch as food and sprouting thousands of root-like cellular strands. A week to two weeks later, a 1-inch-thick panel of insulation is fully grown. It’s then dried to prevent fungal growth, making it unlikely to trigger mold and fungus allergies, according to Bayer. The finished product resembles a giant cracker in texture.
“It really allows for a myriad of uses,” said McIntyre. He said they’ve envisioned modifying the product to make structural panels that could be grown and assembled onsite to produce sustainable homes.
“Green building materials should be evaluated on the idea of cradle to cradle,” said Evelyne Michaut of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In the cradle-to-cradle industrial model, goods should either be fully biodegradable or reusable, limiting waste and pollution, according to Michaut, a sustainable city advocate from Santa Monica, Calif.
“That’s the ultimate environmental reference,” she said, adding that it seems like Greensulate is on its way to fulfilling that criteria.
For Bayer and McIntyre, their next step will be creating larger pieces of Greensulate to use in building a wall. From there, they’ll perform further testing to see how the product stands up to various elements, including saturation and humidity. McIntyre said they have one two-year-old sample that’s been exposed to the elements and shown no sign of degradation. Source: Mushrooms become source for eco-building - Yahoo! News
Cool stuff. Of course, it’s a little ways from being a part of your next building project, but it shows the amazing untapped potential of natural materials.
Hat tip: Boing Boing
Chemistry sets are getting a tad passe, if not whimpy. Well, try this book on for size:
Controversy over potentially hazardous chemistry experiments is nothing new. This amazing book only lasted two editions because it was considered too dangerous for children. Now, only 126 copies exist in libraries. Fortunately, a beautiful PDF version is available online. Modern texts
still shy away from child-damaging pyrotechnic experiments but contain hundreds of very important projects. Geekkids can learn about gases and solids, acids and bases, atomic structure, osmosis, chemical bonding, solvents, crystallization… everything. Source: Geekdad - Wired Blogs
I downloaded the book and started to skim it. Holy crap there was stuff I wouldn’t consider trying outside of a very well equipped lab (fume hood and all safety stuff on hand), scarier there is stuff I wouldn’t try even in a lab. I’ve handled some really, really nasty stuff (carcinogens, mutagens, explosive mixtures, and highly exothermic reactions), so I’m not a lab wuss, but wow making hydrogen sulfide gas? Chlorine gas? Heck no.
Now, in the interest of science, it’s a great read. A supervised read for the older kids. Oh and remind them that you can’t pull batteries apart anymore (you’ll understand if you read it).
LEGO ice cubes now those look cool. Now for a geek dad just buying the mold is just out of the question:
First things first: Making your own Lego ice cube trays is emphatically not cheaper than buying them straight out from from Lego. It is probably more fun, and since I wanted to learn mold-making, it gave me an excuse to buy a few materials and take a stab at it. Details after the jump. Source: Geekdad - Wired Blogs
Man I wonder what will happen when his kid wants a car!
Yeah I know lots of people think earthworms are yucky, but they are essential to plants and good soil. The cool thing is that you can have worms in your kitchen chomping away at your veggie waste and all the while making kick-butt fertilizer for your garden! It’s called vermiculture. I had a worm bin for a while and it was pretty successful for a while (I got it and the worms from these folks), I had trouble keeping the stuff moist and such. I think I bit off more than I could chew.
Well, worm poop is big business you know. I’ve seen it on Dirty Jobs (Discovery Channel) and this bit from Business Opportunities:
Tom Szaky is passionate about worm poop. So passionate that he dropped out of Princeton to start Terracycle, a company that sells worm poop. Vermicomposting is the process by which earthworms eat, digest and excrete castings (aka worm poop). Water is mixed with the worm castings to produce a nitrogen rich ‘tea’ prized by gardeners who believe the mixture makes plants grow faster and healthier than chemical fertilizers. Source: Business Opportunities Weblog | Niche Biz: Worm Poop
Terracycle is doing something awesome. Recycling pop bottles and making organic fertilizer! What could be better? Unfortunately the Scotts company (MiracleGrow) is suing them.
If you’re interested in vermiculture a quick Google search will find folks in your area to get supplies. I’m thinking maybe finding an apartment-sized set up for myself. Why not. I can just give the fertilizer away.
Remember my coffee can racer from a while back? Well from GeekDad I got to a site where you can put all those dern, unrecyclable CDs to good use…turn them into racers!
Man I wish I had found that earlier, cause how many kids get to race a car with wheels made from beta builds of Ubuntu!
Tags: science for kids, cd racers
Ah sex. Such an awesome science topic. You get to discuss something that is often spoken in hushed tones in the name of science. So you think you know when you’re turned on? Guess what … your body is already getting primed for sex before you are even conscious of it. How’s that for unconscious desire!
According to the sequence put forward in the mid-20th century by the pioneering sex researchers William Masters, Virginia Johnson and Helen Singer Kaplan, a sexual encounter begins with desire, a craving for sex that arises of its own accord and prods a person to seek a partner. That encounter then leads to sexual arousal, followed by sexual excitement, sex, climax and resolution.
In a series of studies at the University of Amsterdam, Ellen Laan, Stephanie Both and Mark Spiering demonstrated that the body’s entire motor system is activated almost instantly by exposure to sexual images, and that the more intensely sexual the visuals, the stronger the electric signals emitted by the participants’ so-called spinal tendious reflexes. By the looks of it, Laan said, the body is primed for sex before the mind has had a moment to leer.
Moreover, she said, arousal is not necessarily a conscious process.
Source: ThirdAge
I’m sure the study participants enjoyed participating in the study, but really it goes to show how complex we really are. Even take out the part about sex, this is almost a “Spidey sense” isn’t it? You are “aware” of something and your body is priming up for it before you know it.
It makes you wonder if the idea of pre-cognition is really just science fiction doesn’t it?
Tags: sexual desire, sex, sex science
Well the can car was a huge success. In the end it went like stink and my daughter could probably start a business making them for people. The device wasn’t without some problems, though. When it left my house it was working great, but sometime later the rubber band broke. Oops. It took a lot of work and panicked phone calls to me to get it running again.
There are two key parts to a successful can car. First is using a bead or nut on the winding end. That pencil or chop stick can’t be touching the whole lid, in fact I think the less touching the better.
Next is the liquid soap. I think this is the real magic ingredient. That little bit of greasing the wheel seems to be directly proportional to the speed and distance of the car.
So there you have it.
Gonna be a little hectic around here over the next little bit … I’m moving so I’m trying to juggle all that stuff and blog.
