Cheerful Curmudgeon

Science is just plain cool. Check out the Ruben’s Tube (a surefire favorite if you are into flame and music) and the Non-Newtonian Fluid (if you are worried about burning down the garage).

We all know the story of Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in an electrical storm. I always thought that it was kind of fanciful, along the same lines as the myth about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. Guess what: I was wrong. Franklin not only flew the kite in a storm, he held onto the string, and he stuck his hand near the key so that he could fully experience the “electric fire.”

I just finished reading the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, downloaded from Project Gutenberg. At the end, I found a letter Franklin wrote to Peter Collinson in 1752 describing the electrical kite experiment in exquisite detail.

Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large, thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wet the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the phial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained, spirits may be kindled, and all the electric experiments be performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated.

I also love the illustration:

"You will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle"

I think it is certainly fair to say, Don’t Try This At Home.

But if you do… be sure to let me know how it works out!

Welcome to today’s world. Physics isn’t just about the things thar normal human beings can understand but you can watch YouTube to catch up on the latest. My hat’s off to Geeks Are Sexy for finding and collecting these two videos, one educational and the other fun and educational. Enjoy.

Is your head hurting? Well just kick back and relax with a bit of rap music by the same science team which build CERN:

You have probably heard me grumble about history repeating itself. The LHC is just another trivial case in point.

We now return you to your regular programming…

You’ve got to see this to believe it. And even then, you might not believe it.

I was dubious until another member of a forum where this video appeared wrote,

My neighbor works for Santee Electric in the transmission line area and he does this. He is 60 year old and still rides up in the heli and walks the lines. He says he would much rather walk the line than ride on the copter. He gets motion sick while riding.

I am also a certified tower climber and I had to put an antenna on a billboard off I95 once and Steve helped me, well I needed to run back to the shop and get a different mount, he was already up the 300 + feet on the billboard. When I got back I could not find him, I ended up climbing up to the top and found him sound asleep on a 4in I-beam. I guess it is all what you get used to.

Sheesh!

What happens when lightening strikes an airplane?

According to Edward J Rupke, senior engineer at Lighting Technologies, Inc., not much. (Image courtesy of Edward J. Rupke and borrowed from Scientific American.com.)

Although passengers and crew may see a flash and hear a loud noise if lightning strikes their plane, nothing serious should happen because of the careful lightning protection engineered into the aircraft and its sensitive components.

I have been asked that question many times and, though I have never heard anything to make me worry much about it, I did not know the details of the answer. You can read the full article at Scientific American. Ask the Experts: Physics: What happens when lightning strikes an airplane?

Nature.com reports, in Geometric whirlpools revealed – Recipe for making symmetrical holes in water is easy, that it is surprisingly easy to make “holes” in a bucket of water that have all kinds of interesting shapes.

The researchers found that once the plate was spinning so fast that the water span out to the sides, creating a hole of air in the middle, the dry patch wasn’t circular as might be expected. Instead it evolved, as the bucket’s spin sped up, from an ellipse to a three-sided star, to a square, a pentagon, and, at the highest speeds investigated, a hexagon.

Photo credit: T.R.N. Jansson

From talking with my high school aged sons, it sounds like high school science classes have become downright boring. I suspect budgets and fear of liability law suits have chased the hands-on lessons out of the classrooms. That is truly a shame since I fondly remember many experiments from my school physics, chemistry and biology classes. Perhaps this new phenomenon will entertain and educate future generations.

Exciting, Breaking News, from the Weizmann Institute. Scientists have finally figured out how a material cracks:

Physicists attempting to find a formula for the dynamics of cracking, to allow them to predict how a crack will advance in a given material, have faced a serious obstacle. The difficulty lies in pinning down, objectively, the fundamental directionality of the cracking process: From any given angle of observation or starting point of measurement, the crack will look different and yield different results from any other. Scientists all over the world have experimented with cracking but, until now, no one has successfully managed to come up with a method for analyzing the progression of a forming crack.

Perhaps now someone will be able to bake matzo which actually breaks along the lines.