The Homely Scientist

Quick, name Newton’s laws … eh, don’t bother I have them summarized below.  Regardless sometimes the concepts of inertia, equal and opposite reactions, and force can be hard to wrap your head around.  Over on ScienceBase I found this little YouTube video on these very principles. Oh and here’s the list:

Newton’s laws underpin so-called classical mechanics, as opposed to quantum mechanics or relativity theory. I’ve summarised them below, but you’ll get a much clearer understanding of bodies in motion if you watch the video.

1. Objects stay still or move with constant velocity unless a force pulls on them or gives them a shove
2. Pulling or shoving an object changes its velocity (accelerates it) at a rate proportional to the force of the pull or shove
3. If you shove or pull an object it will pull or shove back with an equal and opposite force

Source: The secret of Newton’s laws explained with Lego

Personally I’ve been wanting to do something similar but using a pool table for the example.  It all works.  The cool thing is that as you make your first break in pool you show all three Newtonian laws!  The kid doing the video (and an awesome job too!) used the pool table example to illustrate Newton’s 3rd law.  But, if you consider hitting the cue ball with a cue you can illustrate the harder you hit, the faster it goes idea (2nd Law, sorta) and the 1st Law, good old inertia, well once the balls are in motion, they would keep moving around the table if they didn’t have friction (the felt) the bumpers (absorbing energy) and gravity to content with.

Whew, good thing we have Newton’s Laws, a game of pool would be prett dangerous with out them!

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I got a fun link from my good friend Laura over at CFS Stories, throwing hot dogs to calculate Pie.  No, really I’m serious.  I read through the article and it all makes sense.  Now, I’m not too crazy about throwing good food on the floor, so I think using something like a piece of PVC pipe or wooden dowel might be better.

Have I tried this yet?  Are you kidding?  We’re still having the occasional power issues and the water system is still coming online.  Maybe another snowy day.

Tags: Pi, calculating Pi

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Costas Efthimiou is bursting our bubble here.  He’s gone through and poked holes in some of our favourite Halloween monsters, ghosts, zombies, and vampires.  He looks at the physics of ghosts being able to walk on flours and pass through walls (no can do he says … but wait what if they aren’t really touching anything just in a different dimensional plane, huh?).  Zombies in Hati just being the victims of a neurotoxin (okay I knew that one … Anthro does come in handy).  Vampires, if they existed, we’d all be one (I guess he hasn’t seen Blade movies where there are familiars and that according to legends vampires don’t turn all their victims in the undead).

From the Wired story:

Efthimiou takes out the calculator to prove that if a vampire sucked one person’s blood each month — turning each victim into an equally hungry vampire — after a couple of years there would be no people left, just vampires. He started his calculations with just one vampire and 537 million humans on Jan. 1, 1600 and shows that the human population would be down to zero by July 1602.

Don’t call him a spoil-sport though with the kids coming to the door:

And Halloween? Both physicists will suspend disbelief when vampires, ghosts and zombies come to their doors.
"I give them candy and I feign fright," Park said. "They enjoy it, what the hell. The problem is the ones that never get over it."

Ah well.  Now what about werewolves?

Tags: Halloween, vampires, ghosts, zombies

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Remember my homemade barometer?  Come on I just wrote about it on Monday ;-)!  Seriously here’s a little update for you.  First, as you can see, I’ve coloured the water to make it easier to see.  The water level in the tube isn’t accurate.  I quickly opened and closed the top to fill the tube a bit for the picture.

Next … I’ve made two more!  These two are for my daughter’s Grade 4 class (studying meteorology remember) and my son’s daycare.  I have enough tube and bottles to make another one or two if need me (I think Lorraine’s niece might like one for her class … I’m going for the wacky uncle who is always doing strange experiments thing).

Now why am did I make one for my daughter’s class (besides that I’m a geek and I just love this stuff)?  Because one of her teachers mentioned that she was going to make a balloon barometer.  Which will also work.  The air expanding and contracting in relation to atmospheric pressure would make the balloon get bigger and smaller and this could be measured.  But … as we all know balloons lose air over time.  So at some point the device will lose effectiveness because there isn’t enough air to left to make it work.  These, however, will keep working as long as there is water in them.  No, I’m not bragging, it’s just one of those science things.  The balloon will be great for a while, but won’t last more than a week I’d think.  These can be there for the whole year and beyond!

Tags: homemade barometer, experiments at home, waeather fun, weather instruments

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Yep I finally did it.  My daughter had been begging me to do one.  She’s seen the pictures, the movies, all of it.  So for her b-day party at my place …

Her very own Mentos-coke geyser.  Yeah it didn’t go as high as I had hoped (I didn’t get all the Mentos in at once), but I did it and I’m sure I’ll be doing it again.  Lorraine took the pics using the rapid-fire setting on my camera so you can see the whole set here on Flickr.

Tags: mentos coke geyser

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The folks over at ScienceBlogs are having a nerd-off.  Well, I see a challenge when read one.  Nerdy? Oh let me count the ways…

• I have a rock hammer with my name engraved on it.
• I write with fountain pens
• All the tee shirts I wear have something written on them
• 99% of the above, are computer related
• The remaining 1% are: my Colby Geology shirt, my Colby Woodsman’s Team shirt, my Mickey Mouse shirt
• I’m wearing a blogging shirt right now
• I injured my knee playing football, during practice.  Stop laughing I did play football
• I know Latin
• Have studied two additional languages (German and Spanish)
• I can do my own Wordpress installs
• I used to code games in BASIC on my Apple IIe, from a book
• I skated over my own hand learning to roller skate (first and last time)
• I was on a competition lumberjack team in college (stop laughing) … and I still have the jacket too!
• I know how to code raw HTML
• When working on my computer saying "I’ll be done in a minute …" means something between 10 mins and an hour
• I have bow ties and know how to tie them
• I have suspenders that need buttons to attach them to pants
• I have pants with said buttons
• I have sown on buttons to my pants to use suspenders
• Just ask Lorraine … sock and sandals … no big deal.
• I was the guy who all the girls came to for homework help or to fix their computers, but laughed if I asked them out.
• My handle on LavaLife was PixelGuyBC … Lorraine almost didn’t reply to my first message to her because of that (whew, good thing she did!)

Is that enough?  How about my nerd score:

71 not bad, but I think I can improve on that.  Okay while Tara over at SB might very well be the Queen of all Nerds, I think I can qualify for Archduke at least.

Tags: nerds, nerd-off, geek power, geeks rule

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It’s the 7th of the month so it must but channel theme day here on Sci-Health..  Our uber-blogger Christina has the list up already.  Now being the only Sci-Health blogging who lives on the West Coast and didn’t write their post ahead of time, I’m a little behind.  I did start this last night.  I got three down before my brain called it quits. … in no particular order (read: this is the order they came out of my head), The Top 10 Things I love about science:

1. The world is an amazing place
2. Ockham’s Razor is usually true
3. Rocks are cool (thanks Dr. Bob!)
4. One word: Experiments
5. Two words: messy experiments
6. Getting to hang out in warm, interesting, fun places and getting to call it "field work"
7. My rock hammer (soft rock aka mason’s hammer).  Yes, my rock hammer is engraved with my name (it was a graduation gift from Dr. Bob).
8. Being able to criticize CSI, Bones, and other Sci heavy shows … because you know when they are totally wrong (side note: about two years ago there was an article in the Victoria, BC paper talking with the real forensics team around here.  They said it would take several lifetimes for people to gather enough random knowledge that the CSI folks just casually mention).
9. Books.  I have some really cool books.  Okay I’m the only one who thinks Process Geomorphology is cool.
10. While this is #10 … this is the best for me.  Going to the beach, checking out the tide pools and stuff with the kids and having almost as much fun as they are discovering things.  Then being able to tell the kids all the cool things about the critter they just found.

So there is my list.  I don’t think I meant for this to be a funny post at first.  I guess it’s the early morning mood.  That and I read Rob’s diabetes top ten list and I was inspired.

Tags: Sci-Health, top ten list, science fun, geekery

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From Chris Pirillo … Not work safe, or for sensitive ears, but listen to this … Holy sh*t! It’s a dinosaur! 

That’s about what I’d say too.

Thanks Chris!

Tags: Dinosaurs, humour, Chris Pirillo

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This is too cool. I found on Download Squad a Yahoo Widget called Wiglet that is a little Jell-O mold that wiggles whenever the USGS records an earthquake anywhere in the world.  I have a nice red Jell-O right now and have been watching some seismic activity in Mexico.

What does this show?  Well that there are earthquakes going on pretty much all the time.  Didn’t know that, huh?  I think this is a cool way to show, maybe even during a classroom presentation, about how active the earth really is.  Imagine it projected behind you as you talk and it periodically wiggles away and flashes the magnitude and location.

Give it a shot.

Tags: Yahoo Widgets, Wiglet, earthquakes, USGS

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I found this YouTube video on b5’s new Searching Bones blog (about the show Bones).  I love the show, despite the fact that the Kathy Reichs’ books are rather different.

But hey, how often can I watch a show and know if the science is wonky or not?  Heck I bet I could go head to head with Hodges on pollen identification.  Back in the day I had an easy 200-300 types in my head that I could positively ID without checking a reference.  Push to 500+ the ones that I was pretty sure of.  Of course the price I paid for spending nearly three years staring into a microscope with the light turned up to full blast is rather bad eye sight, bad night vision, and bright lights really get me now.  Oh well.  It was fun though.

How often do you get to stand on a raft on a lake in the Florida panhandle and watch alligators swim by?  Good times, good times.

Tags: Searching Bones, Bones, Kathy Reichs, Temerpance Brennan

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