The best mark ever?

One for Dr. Placek

LINK

Non-newtonian fluid

This is a video of me running across and sinking into a tub of non-newtonian fluid made from cornstarch and water.

Waterfalls running upwards

http://gizmodo.com/5823808/these-australian-waterfalls-are-running-upwards

The tables have been turned in the energy and momentum battle between air and water. Air got tired of being pushed out of the way and decided to take it no longer.

Surface tension at work

http://www.break.com/index/painful-landing-in-pool-from-failed-30-ft-backflip.html

More waves

An oldie but a goodie, this video is pretty awesome. I would love to have temperatures like this for one day this month.

http://www.break.com/index/newfoundland_frozen_waves.html

Cool wave machine

I don't know what they're saying, but I can see that they have spent a whole lot of cash in order to better understand waves. Pretty important if you live on an island in a volcanically active area surrounded by unstable faults.
 
http://www.break.com/index/picture-creating-wave-machine.html

New post

So basically algae takes advantage of the no slip condition to propagate and flourish on rocks that are under the surface of a stream and thus creating a slip condition for the rest of us?

Shuttle Launch

I made sure I was around the TV to watch the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis. Fox has freakin cameras on it and you could see the curvature of the Earth from it 3.5 minutes after launch. It reached velocities topping 10000 ft/s at an altitude of around 350,000 ft. It accelerated the entire way. Probably don't have enough computing power in my departmentally approved calculator in order to fathom the power it takes to accelerate that much mass that quickly. At one point it traveled about 10 miles in under 30s. Simply amazing.

Now we just lost the main fuel tank that the camera was attached to and got to see the shuttle separate from it with the curvature of the Earth in the background. You could see some gaseous fluid moving across the wing that was in view. The engines had already been shut off so I imagine I was viewing some rarefied air high on the edge of the atmosphere. Simply amazing.

Thermodynamics expert

This girl got an A in Dr. Maples class for sure.

http://www.break.com/index/blonde-solution-to-global-warming-2072831

Milk

Hanging out and relaxing tonight, I got a little thirsty. Poured myself a glass of milk. I have a tall milk glass, so I poured it quickly, meaning that I gave the fluid a higher velocity than normal. (Yes, I said milk glass. I only drink milk out of it. It is the perfect size for what I regard to be a good-sized glass of milk. Maybe I will measure it one day.) I noticed that the stream of milk appeared to "twist" as it left the jug and fell into the glass. Also I noticed something I probably hadn't bothered to notice before: as the milk filled the glass, it only slightly splashed. Compared to filling a cup of water, the milk was rather silent.  I poured the milk back in order to try it again. Honestly, I don't think in all of my years I have ever poured milk back into the jug. Interestingly enough, it is harder to pour the milk back into the jug than to do the opposite, which also required more precision than was necessary before, which meant that the milk had to have a lower velocity so that I didn't spill it. I still spilled some, of course. Did this slower moving fluid perform similarly to the first time I poured the milk? Nope. It ran in a stream that was pretty uniform, narrowing as it left the glass and ran into the jug, like when you barely turn on the kitchen faucet.Filling my glass again, I started off with a higher velocity stream and ended with a lower velocity stream, noting the change from the twisted stream to the narrow one as I slowed down the flow.

The stream of particular interest had symmetry and order, characteristic of laminar flow. 2% milk's viscosity is reported to be 1.7 times that of water at 30C and 2.6 times that of water at 0C (from Milk by Paul Gustav Heinemann), which explains why milk slides down your throat while water just splashes on down the hatch.

Beer Can Chicken

Tonight we are cooking Beer Can Chicken, Drunk Chicken, Beer Butt Chicken, whatever you want to call it. Took a Miller Lite, had a few sips, added some Jim Beam and shoved it up the chicken's rear end, placing him (or her) on the grill butt side down so the can stands up (relatively) straight. At a temperature of 450F, the beer began boiling after about 10 minutes. I started thinking about how, if I had the right instrumentation at home, I could calculate how much heat it takes to cook the chicken to it's recommended internal temperature of 170F. The calculation would be only an estimate, but isn't most everything we calculate at this point an estimate? Taking it a step further, had I weighed the propane tank before and after cooking, noting the starting and ending temperatures of the beer, chicken and grill and the masses of all, the efficiency of the grill/ chicken cooking process could be estimated as well. I'm getting hungry now. I'll post a picture of the finished product. It's looking pretty good right now. Until next time....

Bushwhacker + Floater

   Today we went up to Moe's BBQ to have a Bushwhacker. If you don't know, a Bushwhacker is sort of like a Mudslide, but with spiced rum and, for $2 extra, a "floater" of Bacardi 151 drizzled on top. However, Moe's takes the floater to the next level by giving you a test tube of Bacardi inverted in your drink. Thanks to my education, my alcoholic beverage has turned into a science experiment.
   Assuming the floater to be completely full at the start, naturally some was spilled during the inversion process, leading to the air-filled region pictured in the test tube. The rest of the Bacardi remains inside the test tube, suspended by the atmospheric pressure pressing down on the surface of the drink.

After drinking half of the drink, (most) of the alcohol remained suspended in the tube. I did notice the presence of very small bubbles moving up in the tube, most likely due to some mixing at the interface of the straight alcohol and the beverage. However, the volume of alcohol in the tube remained unchanged due to the constant pressure on the surface of the drink.

 

Pulling the tube up out of the drink caused no change in the volume inside the tube. Residue on the outside of the tube can be seen, but the outside of the tube remained (visually) pure.