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What a nice day it is out there. A little hazy, but the temperature's quite nice and the sun is out. I think today's the only day I've been able to go out blading this week! Actually, I neary rammed myself into a SUV when I was passing through the gas station. The lady behind the wheel didn't look in my direction (i.e. didn't look down the sidewalk) so she put her car across the sidewalk and stopped to turn. I had enough time to stop, but my brakes are dangerously low, and I had time to turn, but I was wary of the sand. I did have a chance, since there was a pole next to the car. I was able to hook my arm around the pole and spun me into the gap between the pole and the car and fortunately for me, I didn't lose my balance! (Nor get hit by another car coming up behind her.)
Last night I made and ate dinner. I made five sausages, and could only force myself to eat four of them. That's it. Four sausages for dinner. Not exactly the most healthy (nor satisfying) meals, but it's the only uncooked food I had left in the (now quite warm) freezer. The only thing I'm left with to cook are my eggs. Everything else I have in the freezer is precooked.
I didn't feel so good after dinner though. That much pork can't be good for me. This morning, I went through another four Eggo waffles. This time I was worried about the maple syrup I poured onto my breakfast. Being left at (basically) room temperature for about a week now, I'm not sure how long syrup stays good for before it gets infested with bacteria. The last time I got sick was probably because I ate some apple pie that was left out way too long. (It didn't smell or taste bad so I didn't know.) The syrup didn't taste bad, but I guess I won't find out of I poisoned myself until sometime tonight. Boy am I not looking forward to that. I think it's time for me to start dumping food (either that or offer it to other people to see if it's still good or not - okay, okay, maybe not).
So the fridge is still FUBARed. I'm not sure what I'm going to do foodwise now. I can live off of cans for a little while, but you can only eat canned food for so long.. I've been thinking of renting a fridge, but I have to see what everyone else thinks. I don't want to go through the summer without one, that's for sure.
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Theochem bit the big one again. Since I had serendipitously moved everything over to Scienide last night, things should still be okay on this end. (Although I still have to get the counter working again.) That shouldn't take too long, but it's annoying that Theochem's been so flaky recently. I had hoped that it would be reliable for years to come (so it could host this page!). Oh yeah, theochem.uwaterloo.ca points over to scienide.uwaterloo.ca so you don't have to worry about changing your links just yet. Besides, this may just be a temporary measure.
While I'm here, there's another little physics problem in Science Teasers you may be interested in:
Weightless Water:
A corked bottle, half full of water and half full of air, is about to be sent into space in a satellite. When the water becomes weightless, will it be above, below, or in the middle of the air inside the bottle? Or will it cling to the glass?
I didn't get the answer to this one, nor did weirDo. Can you?
Just came back from throwing the disc around. I actually went skating before that, so I'm a bit exausted. I don't seem to be improving much despite going to the rink once a week. I don't think I'm getting enough practice. Doesn't really matter though, I'm just there for the exercise.
The answers coming in for the Weightless Water question are quite interesting! I'm going to hold off on putting out the answer until I get some sort of response from MJO (who solved the The Old Rubber Tire problem). If he takes too long, I'll post the solution.
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Just noticed that Laz (on the 7th) guessed that my comment script took down Theochem. It did not! Heck no! It had to be my journal script! Never trusted it really. Always had to keep an eye on it, and I dunno, it's like it had a mind of it's own.. but anyway, my comment script is a good boy! *pats comment script* It'll never even think about taking down a computer!
While I was checking out those comments, I noticed a complaint from Growly which makes me wonder if comments should be commentable? Of course, then I'd be heading into the direction of a forum as opposed to a simple comment list.. Hmm..
Seeing that Laz also has an update up (already!) I could talk about the IE cookies..
*taps table*
Nah. I don't like cookies anyway, never did. Turn them off when I can. Yeah yeah, I might be paranoid, but you'd be too if everyone was out to get you!
I might as well mention that Sparky and Tiffi both have updates up as well. Both of them are looking for a new job (although Sparky has just started he first one!), and both seem to think nothing is going on in their lives. I doubt it. Something is always going on. A boring anecdote to someone may seem like an epic to someone else. Hmm.. epic was a bad word to use. Oh well. brain not functioning well.. need food. *looks at leftover sausage* Ick..
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Dang. The day started off great, but now it's raining. How the heck am I going to get my blades back home?!?
Seems like MJO has finally responded, so I can post the answer now. It's a long one, and aimed for a more general audiance, but it's somewhat interesting. If it doesn't interest you, then go to the end where the relevant information is.
This teaser is nearly a hundred of years old. It appeared soon after Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon, his famous story of the three men who were shot from a cannon. In it he tells how the men became weightless and floated around inside their cabin for a while. The scene was so interesting that other science fiction writers copied it. They added to it by having characters eat weightless food and use supplies of weightless bottled water. In trying to describe a meal in space, they ran into the problem of the half-full bottle.
The writers considered several facts. On Earth water is heavier than air, so water rests on the bottom of a bottle and air goes up to the top. But when water and air become weightless, neither can sink below the other. Both weight the same - zero - although no change in form takes place. Water continues to be a liquid and air continues to be a gas. Their molecules - the invisible particles of which they are made - stay the same.
Therefore, the writers reasoned, the way the air and water act in the bottle depends on the way their molecules move.
Air molecules have no attraction for each other. Nor have they any attraction for water or glass. They spread out, taking up as much space as they can find.
Water molecules tend to stick together, forming a liquid that can be poured. Their stickiness makes water molecules gather into drops. Water molecules are also drawn toward glass.
Which of these attractions is strongest? Some science fiction writers guessed that water molecules have more attraction for each other than for glass, and in their stories water formed a big blob in the center of the bottle. Other writers had the water stick to the glass, leaving the space in the middle of the bottle for the air.
When physicists were asked which was right, they said they did not know. They too began discussing the problem, for they realized it would come up in equipping real spaceships.
Finally Russian and American astronauts solved the problem. Colonel Popovitch, a Russian astronaut who spent three days in a satellite in 1962, reported, "I took a bottle half full of water with me. In the wightless state the water gathered around the edge of the bottle and the air collected in the middle in a little sphere. It stayed there even when I shook the bottle."
So there's your answer. The attraction between the water and the glass (adhesion) is stronger than the attraction between the water with itself (cohesion). You can check it out for yourself by putting some water into a glass. Check out the surface of the water, near the glass, you should see that the water curves up (a concave meniscus), which indicates that the glass is "pulling" the water up (and also leads to capillary action).
So it seems as if Growly is right this time around. I'll give girl some marks for creative writing which comes in handy when you don't know the answer and want to distract the marker from that fact.
These two examples were the better problems in the book, there are a couple of other ones in there I'll probably mention (a lot of the questions posed in there are kinda dumb), but I'm going to go around to see if there are any other interesting scientific (or mathematic) problems.
The counter is sort of working ATM. There's something about this version of Apache that doesn't seem to like spitting out some numbers, but I guess I'll have to live with it for now. I can see the sunshine in the distance, so I might be able to blade home, but it seems as Dusty might be lending me his bar fridge so I'll see if I can get a ride..
To go back to the problem I posed, because of the fact that a glass bottle was used, the water stuck to the glass. Now if some waxed paper cup was used, the water might end up becoming a single large droplet in the center of the bottle (or many droplets if you shook the thing). Glass is the key!
In regards to the sphere of air, I think it's quite possible. Since the water is not attracted to the air, I think it would try to reduce it's surface area with the volume of air. Thus, the air would ball up into a sphere (or more precisely, the water would force the air into a spherical shape).
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Won't get a ride, but might get a fridge. Played a bit of Counter-Strike. Too bad I might miss out on excessive gaming tonight.. ah well.
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