What are we measuring?

It never ceases to amaze me how many ways there are to describe and measure things in the scientific world.  I am beginning to think scientist just make up new ways to measure things just to confuse the rest of us. By now many of us have heard of the Scolville Scale developed by Wilbur Scolville in 1912 as a way to rank the capsaicin concentration of various spicy peppers.  The downside to this form of measurement is it is based on human tastes and is therefore highly subjective. As I have proven with my infamous Cajin chicken incident; to my mom the chicken was completely inedible, to me it was just really spicy, and to my dad it was not spicy at all.   

So here is just a sampling of crazy ways us scientist measure things which until recently I personally had never heard of.

Water measured in acre foot-  This unit of measurement is used mainly by water resource managers to take stock of the amount of water in reservoirs, aqueducts, and any body of water which is stored for later use. Water resource managers estimate one acre foot of water usage for the average household per year, unless you live in the more desert like environments where the average household is estimated to use 1/4 of an acre foot per year.  So exactly how much is one acre foot of water in terms which the average person can understand?  Well, it is a mind blowing 325,853.38 U.S. gallons. I know what your thinking geeze that's a lot of water each year. Time to implement some water conservation methods?  

Degrees Brix-  Unless you are a food science person, a wine maker, or a person picking strawberries for Wimbledon,  you too have never heard of this. Degrees Brix is a measurement of how much a beam of light bends as it passes through a liquid.  See this website for a more detailed explanation of how this works.  What you ask does this have to do with Wimbledon you ask?  Well apparently there is a preferred sweetness of the strawberries served at this world famous sporting event.  Any strawberry with a degrees Brix rating over ten is considered too sweet.  Personally I have never bitten into a strawberry and then spit it out thinking "man that too sweet."  I think the strawberries at our local grocery store have a degree Brix rating of -10.

A Personal favorite of mine the Smoot- This first came to my attention when I was living in Boston and read a rather small article in one of the local papers about the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity repainting the smoot lines on the Mass Ave bridge. A smoot is a length of measurement of 5 feet 7 inches or the height of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity pledge Oliver Smoot back in 1962. After laying him end to end his fraternity pledge members determined the length of the Mass. Ave. bridge to be 364.4 smoots and one ear. Oliver Smoot is a rather interesting person who went on to become the President of the International Organization for Standardization.

Barn- I've met only one nuclear physicist in my life and he was a pretty funny guy, but it seems like he is not the only one in his field with a sense of humor. A barn is a unit of measurement of the cross section of an atomic nucleus or 10^-28 m².  They also have definitions for an outhouse and a shed. Who would have thought nuclear physicists had such a sense of humor.


This one I stole from Wikipedia Puppy- Lucy van Pelt is credited in the comic strip Peanuts to have discovered the axiom happiness is a warm puppy. The proposed SI unit of happiness, puppy, is derivable as the quantity of happiness that a one kilogram beagle puppy whose body temperature is 310 kelvins produces when held in skin contact for one second.

Want more crazy ways to measure things check out these two websites.

List of humorous units of measurement

 Fun and Unusual Units of Measurements

Where have I been?

I dawned on me the other day that I had not updated this blog in a while, but I didn't realize it had been THIS long since I had last posted something.  I scratched my head trying to remember just what I have been doing since the last post, so here is a little photo montage of the last few weeks.  Hopefully next week the allergy medication haze will clear long enough for me to write something truly interesting.

Looking for the elusive calypso orchid which only blooms for like a week each year. 

Making it to the summit of my first (and last) 14,000 foot peak. Ok, yeah I was in a car but the goats are cool.

Hiking to ozule falls.

Finding the cool rocks which look like they should fall over with perfect holes in them.

Trying and failing to make goofy looking selfies.

Evening primrose

Spotted Coralroot

I also so the very cool and  elusive elephant head flower while out teaching a program, but sadly I didn't have a camera with me at the time to photograph it.

A Message From A Furry Creature....

Hey you! Yeah You! Listen up!  Now is the time of year where you start to invade my turf and start throwing potato chips and cookies at me to try to get me to come closer. You take my picture and then show it off to all of your friends telling them how cute I am. "What is it your friend will ask?" "It's the cute little chipmunk in our campground." you will reply.

LISTEN UP HUMAN!!!!

 

To you all small furry critters look the same I guess.  I am NOT a chipmunk I am a ground squirrel!!

Look at me does this face scream chipmunk to you.......NO!

The face is one of the easiest ways to tell me apart from those stupid chipmunks. Look at my eyes ya see any stripes going across them?  NO! you don't and why is that you might wonder. Because only chipmunks have stripes which go across their eyes. 

STUPID CHIPMUNK! SEE THE STRIPES ACROSS IT'S EYES!

Also a chipmunk is small only about 3-5 inches in size and weigh 1-5 ounces. I am a ground squirrel and way bigger! Me: 9-11 inches in size and 4-13 ounces in weight. I crush you, stinking chipmunk!
Also when chipmunks run they tend to put their tail straight up in the air. Ground squirrels we put ours straight out horizontal with the ground.

Also while you think it is cute to give us human food, DON'T it just makes us fat and lazy.  I get use to eating your little handouts in the summer, but where are you in the fall when it is cold and snowy or raining...at home in front of the TV that's where.  Meanwhile because I haven't been collecting food all summer like a good ground squirrel should. Now I'm cold and hungry with nothing to eat. SO DO NOT FEED ME PLEASE!  I don't care if you think my eyes are saying one cookie that's all I want. DO NOT FALL FOR IT!!! I will survive much longer and healthier if you just keep your snacks to yourself. 

Oh and one more thing...this is a Canada Goose not Canadian Goose!

 

"Wait, What?"

It is not often I get to leave people completely stunned and confused at the same time, but that is just what happened last week while I was teaching a snow science class.  I posed the following question to a group of 9th grade science students: "Imagine you have a huge amount of information you need to send from here to a computer 1,200 miles away how are you going to do it?"  We all stood next to this odd looking structure high up in the mountains as they all pondered their answers. I got some pretty logical answers; underground cable connects the two computers together, bounce the information off a satellite, or send the information using a wireless network. Ok, all good ideas I told them, but not the answer I was looking for. Then I blew their minds, "the way this data gets from one place to another is by meteor tail." A hush filled the forest and the students looked a little confused. The teacher pushed her way through the students and looked at me and said' Wait, what? Did you say meteor tails?" Yep you heard me right.

Scientists estimate 25 million pieces of space junk try to pass through the earth's atmosphere every day. When this space junk be it a part of an asteroid or piece of metal which fell of  a satellite or space craft when this junk starts moving through our atmosphere it begins to bun up creating a meteors or what we non-scientist call shooting stars.

From NASA's Website. 

 That bright tail you see behind the space junk which is burning up lasts for about 2-3 seconds and that is what two computers are using to send data to each other.  COOL!!! This is why I love science!
The big odd looking thing we were sanding next to was a SNOTEL (snow telemetry site) and it looks like this.







Every thirty minutes SNOTEL sites all across North America are sending information to computer centers with real-time data on how much snow is up in the mountains, how much new snow fell since it sent its last data set, how much rain the site gets all so scientists and city managers know how much water may be available for people to use for all sorts of things.

I did a bunch of reading of scientific papers mostly written by engineers and communication specialists, too bad I understood none of it. There was a cool graphic though on the SNOTEL website. But I and my coworker wanted to know HOW it worked. 

The very smart people who manage the SNOTEL sites were happy to help us and sent this reply to our email:
 
"You are correct in thinking the radio signals bounce off the ionized trails left behind as the meteors burn up in the atmosphere.  This happens at an altitude of approximately sixty miles.  There are literally millions of these micro-meteors every day and the trails last from a few milliseconds to a few seconds.  We operate five master receive sites to collect the data from the field sites and forward it on to us here in Portland.  The master stations are located in Idaho, Utah, Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio.  The field sites transmit near forty megahertz and have an optimal range of a thousand miles and can speak to any and all of the masters.  The data is transmitted in the packet format and parts of the message can be received by multiple master stations and reassembled.  The master stations are sending out a continuous strobe.  Hourly the data is transferred from the logger to the transmit que of the meteorburst radio.  Once the radio has data it starts listening for a strobe from the master station and when it hears one it then sends its’ data and the master station acknowledges.  If the field site doesn’t receive the acknowledgment it will continue to try sending its’ data till it does get an acknowledgement or it times out after a set number of tries, waits fifteen minutes then tries again.  The data will remain in the radio’s transmit que till it is transmitted then it is deleted from the radio, but still remains in memory in the logger.  The logger can retain well over a year’s worth of data.   It all sounds very complicated, but works very nicely.  It is not true real time data, but rather near real time.  Some sites get their data through almost immediately while others take a little while.  Overall our average latency is roughly fifteen minutes."

Crazy right? All this data being sent and received off of meteor tails! 

Want to know more Google Meteor burst technology and you'll find some pretty cool stuff.




 

Spring is here, spring is here, life is.....wait....what....oh not again!!!!

All week little signs of spring have been popping up all over the place:

Sign of spring #1 The Pasque Flower
 On my walk to work I passed two blooming pasque flowers. These perennial flowers are the first to bloom in the spring even before all the snow is off the ground.

And when they go to seed they look like something from a Dr. Seuss book.















Sign  of spring #2 Mountain Blue Birds

While teaching on Tuesday we all saw two males chasing one female around the meadow.

Sign of spring #3 Frogs.
While teaching at the side of an ephemeral pool there was the mighty racket of a bunch of amorous frogs. We never saw them, but if you moved too close to one edge of the pool all went quiet.

Sign of Spring #4 Flip Flops
Yes, I liberated my feet from the hiking boots slipped on a pair of flip flops and walk to the post office to mail some letters.

Sign of spring #5 The song in my heart.
Every spring regardless of if I want to admit it, but Tom Lehrer runs through my brain. Yes, you noted wacky Harvard professor I just can't help but hum your tune.
                
                       Tom Lehrer- Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.

Then Thursday the unthinkable happened it GOT UP TO 60 DEGREES!!!  WOOO HOOO! About this time the evil weather people started predicting a snowstorm for the weekend.  Won't happen everyone at work said with a nervous chuckle......will it.  We all thought back to 2007 where in a 24 hour period we got 5 and a half feet of snow.  Nah, it's too late in the season for that.  Saturday weather forecast for Sunday 6-15 inches of snow in the mountains 4-8 inches in the valley, their kidding right.

After 15 hours of straight snow we have 7-8 inches on the ground and as of a few minutes ago it started to snow again.  Looking at the long range forecast for the week I am not amused; they are predicting 2 separate days of snow mid week.  Maybe I should have gone to Death Valley last week with a friend of mine, maybe I would be appreciating the snow right now after 2 days of over 100 F.

Maybe the week after next will be nicer..........I hope......PLEASE!



Other Tom Lehrer songs
new math
Masochism Tango
Elements Song
 

"Want me hit you with a bolt of lightening?"

 

"Want me to hit you with a bolt of lightening?"

Think about that question for a second what would your reaction be?  I was asked just this question a number of years ago as I sat inside a Van der Graff generator with a few of my coworkers.  We all looked back and forth at each other in nervous silence for a minute before someone offered up a feeble sounding "sure."

The Museum of Science's Van der Graff Generator (Photo from the Museum of Science Boston)

I should probably explain how we all got to be sitting in the top of the generator in the first place.  One afternoon at lunch the man in charge of the lightening shows at the Museum of Science, I'll call him Len,  mentioned to us he was going to be cleaning out the insides of the generators and if any of us were curious what they looked like on the inside to meet him there tomorrow morning.  The next morning my boss and I along with some other curious coworkers gathered at the agreed on time in the lightening theater.  Len popped open the door at the bottom and instructed us to climb up the ladder to the ball at the top so we could see it innards.  One by one we climbed up the ladder next to a very long conveyer belt which had little brushes over it at the very top.  Once Len had joined us in the big ball at the top he proceeded to explain the generator worked like a big static electricity producer. The faster the conveyer belt ran the more static was produced by the brushes and the extra charge would build up on the outside of  the metal before discharging to create the lightening bolts we saw in his demonstrations.  After a few more minutes of questions from us Len then looks at us with a glint in his eye and asks "want me to hit you with a bolt of lightning?" After agreeing he slips back down the ladder and closes the door at the bottom.  We all let out a nervous giggle as the conveyer belt began to build up its static charge.  "Should this be open?" I shouted down to Len who now sat inside the Faraday cage at the controls.  "You're fine just keep your heads inside" he reassured us.

After a few tense minutes there was an audible crack and we all looked out the hole as the lightening hit the cage Len sat inside.  Cool we all thought as the belt began to spin faster now. After a few minutes of watching rather small lightening bolts hit the cage Len called up "Close the window." We did as instructed an sat completely enclosed in our metal sphere and waited.  Then there was another loud crack and a sound like someone throwing a tennis ball against the side of the metal.  On and on this went for a few minutes the belt spinning faster and faster, the cracks and bangs against the metal getting louder and louder.  When the banging reached deafening proportions we pounded on the sides of the metal sphere, our agreed on signal for Len to stop.  We waited for the belt to stop moving and the door at the bottom to be opened before descending back down the ladder.

"So?" Len asked after we had all safely made it out of the generator.  "Cool!" was our response. "How many volts was that last strike?" someone asked. "Enough to blow up a large redwood." Len casually responded.   

If your trying to figure out how we were all not blasted in to millions of little pieces the answer is simple and complex at the same time; we put our faith in the skin effect. Since I never took physics I can't really explain how this works, but because of the frequency of a bolt of lightening the charge was spread over the surface of the copper metal in which we sat and never penetrated the metal sphere. 

The same idea works if your sitting inside your car in a lightening storm as long as you DON'T touch anything inside the car, just sit there with your feet flat on the floor and hands in your lap. See this in action on BBC's Top Gear.

To see the Museum of Science's Van der Graff Generator in action check out this YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-mFl_YXqiA  But it is MUCH cooler in person!

For More information:

For a great explanation on how the generator works and why Van der Graff created them in the first place see the HowStuffWorks website.
For a really in-depth explination of how the skin effect works. http://fermi.la.asu.edu/w9cf/skin/skin.html
More information on cars and lightening http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/vehicle_strike.html
How to be safe outside in a lightening storm. http://www.ready.gov/thunderstorms-lightning

For a brief glimpse inside the generator I sat in watch Since Bob's video. http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/videos/video-van_de_graaff.php

What is it about chocolate?

Quick run to your kitchen throw open the cupboards and the refrigerator and look to see how many pieces of chocolate you find. Go on I'll wait.

So what did you find?  If your like me there is a lot of chocolate in your house or in my case there was until this last weekend when things when from good to poop in a rather short period of time. 

I was listening to the TED Radio hour on NPR over the weekend like I normally do and something caught my attention.....the mention of chocolate. This was kinda weird since the topic of the day was about success.  I perked up to hear Ron Gutman talk about smiling your way to success. "A smile, he reported, has the same brain stimulation as eating 2,000 bars of chocolate."  This was not the first time I had heard some scientific research related in terms of chocolate, but since I don't know who is reading this I will refrain from posting it because it is not appropriate for all age groups.

I started looking for fun sort of motivational facts about chocolate and here is what I came up with:

1)  "One chocolate chip can give a person enough energy to walk 150 feet.^"
                        (Bring on the chocolate chip cookies I say. )
2) "A Hershey's bar was dug up after 60 years from Admiral Richard Byrd’s cache at the South Pole.  Having been frozen all those years, it was still edible."
3) "Chocolate melting in a person’s mouth can cause a more intense and longer-lasting “buzz” than kissing."
                        (On the same note I read once that there are 22 calories in a Hersey Kiss and you burn 25 calories in a passionate one minute kiss. Not a bad way to burn calories if you ask me.)

4)   "Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power. It is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits. – Baron Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), German chemist"
                         (I'm not sure exactly how these go together.)
5)  "Chocolate is a Vegetable: chocolate is derived from cocoa beans. Bean = vegetable. Sugar is derived from either sugar cane or sugar beets. Both are plants, which places them in the vegetable category. Thus, chocolate is a vegetable. To go one step further, chocolate candy bars also contain milk, which is dairy. So candy bars are a health food."
                          (It isn't but I like the logic here)

Why are we so enamored with chocolate is it the way it melts on the tongue, the fact that it gives us the same chemical happy feeling in our brains that other pleasurable things do, or is something coded in our DNA from way way back. Imaging being the Aztecs your trying to make something like beer and come up with chocolate were you bummed out by this or after some taste testing by your friends did you decide it was the best thing on earth?

Ruth Wakefield, who invented the  chocolate chip cookie, sold her recipe to Nestle for a lifetime supply of chocolate. You go girl! 

Whatever it is that has us so addicted may it never be factored out of chocolate.  I tip my hat to you Aztecs for your mistake is one of my favorite things.

Want more chocolate?
http://www.facts-about-chocolate.com/chocolate-quotes/
Even local bears love chocolate.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3GiXckb9z0
http://facts.randomhistory.com/chocolate-facts.html
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/rm-quiz-chocolate