Poultry Processing Plant

Today I had the opportunity to tour a small poultry processing plant.  It was all very fascinating and hard to describe.  This plant was not that big (maybe a million pounds or so per year), and the cut up line was not connected to the kill line, so it was hard to get an idea of the birds per minute they can processes.  The pluckers (remove the feathers from the bird with plastic fingers - in the link the bird goes along the axis of the drums) where really interesting; I haven't seem them on that scale before.  It was also interesting how much emphasis was put on chilling the birds - to the point that in grinding the meat they were willing to sacrifice yield in order to have less friction production cuts.  They also had air vents in their cooling / holding tank, which I enjoyed because of the convection vs conduction aspect. 

I think that if a lot of people made the connection between a processing plant and the meat they eat there would be a lot more vegetarians in the world.

Christmas

David and I examining our boat

I got a boat?
Actually David and I got a boat to share.  No idea what to do with it.  Thinking about cutting the back off of it and making it into a giant sled to pull behind the truck.  Or maybe fastening a sail unto it and sailing down Wisser's the hill in Wisser's heifer pasture.*

Urffer Christmas
My family are a suckers for tradition.  Every year on christmas eve we all write letters to Santa and put them out on the kitchen table.  Then Mother reads us "The Polar Express".  On christmas day my Father always has to go downstairs "first" (now sometimes the bigger kids help with the turkeys before Eli is awake) to make sure Santa came.  Then we all line up on the stairs (youngest to oldest) for a quick portrait, and file into the kitchen to see what we got in our stockings.

Opening presents is also a huge ordeal.  Everybody has their spot to sit in the great room (I sit next to David near the snacks) and Samuel passes out the presents.  We open them one at a time, youngest to oldest in many rounds.  Takes a very long time.  After that is done we usually go outside and do something (I can't stand being inside for that long of a time).  Some time later we have a big Christmas dinner, and that is that.

*It was free alongside the road, and Father wanted the trailer that the boat was on.

Lunar Eclipse

On December 21st (Winter Solastice) there was a  total eclipse of the moon.  I stayed outside to watch it.  It was very cold and pretty.  I tried to take a photo of it every 30 minutes, but I gave up toward the end.  In any case I compiled them in Adobe on the left, where you can see the progression as the eclipse ended.  I just realized now that I should have rotated them so that the patterns on the moon are aligned; I think they are close.

Redish Tint

Wiki

I was intrigued by the copper color of the moon; I attributed it to the absorbition and emission of light scattering through ozone. Why the color changes can be seen by thee figure on the right. 

Source

The wavelength of reid and orange light is between 590 and 650 nm.  I thought that the copper color the moon had during that time was because it matched the spectral bands of ozone / oxygen, as shown to the left.

The real reason seems to be a bit more clouded.  NASA writes "The molecules in Earth's atmosphere scatter short wavelength light (e.g., yellow, green, blue) more than long wavelength light (e.g., orange, red). This process, which is responsible for making sunsets red, also gives total eclipses their characteristic red-orange color. However, the exact color can vary considerably in both hue and brightness." 


Maybe I am close.  There is a dip in the reflectivity in that wavelength.

Sunshine and Temperature

A bit of a ontinuation from what I did before on the amount of sunlight a location receives. I've always thought that the amount of daylight a location got was an indicator of temperature.  The more sunlight, the more energy imparted to the earth, the warmer the place would be.  The question that has been bothering me is why the shortest day of the year (winter solstice) is the not the coldest day of the year.  I found the average temperature from 1971 to 2000 from NOAA, and used the location of Philly for the sunlight.

 I then see that the temperature seems to follow the sunlight with a difference in peak position of about a month.  This fits in with the experience that the end of January is usually the coldest, a month after the shortest day.  The conclusion I got for this is that the earth is a much bigger heat sink than what I previously thought - it takes about a month to cool it down (late fall), and about a month to heat it back up (early spring).

Turtle Cookie

Turtle from turtle cookies

Today I helped my mother at the bakery.  I had to make a cookie tray with the main cookie as "turtle" cookies.  So I made a turtle out of turtle cookies!

Visiting DC

Paradoxical Germans

On the way up from Tennessee I stopped in DC to visit a friend in DC.  I (and hopefully he) had lots of fun.  On Wednesday (December 15) we attempted to drink a beer from each continent.  We tried very hard but couldn't find an African beer, an Australian beer (the restaurant was going out of business and didn't have its New Zeland or even Fosters) on an Antarctic beer.  On Thursday I toured the city.  I decided that in order to be a suave urbanite I need to learn how to tolerate scarves. Currently I think that they are one of the world's silliest and uncomfortable garments (who puts something deliberately around their neck?), but they seemed to be all the rage in DC.

USSR & USA same range
and payload missle

Notable Events:

• Skilfully navigating DC Metro after first putting my card into the out part, putting it in upside down, and finally putting it in the correct way



Model of an Aircraft as mass on a spring

• Walking to the Smithsonian without getting lost
• Destroying little kids at questions during a demo at the Air and Space Museum
• Eating a lot of wasbi peas

Hope Diamond

Cello Face

In the museums I visited I would have liked for there to be more indepth information.  They crystal section of natural history museum was fascinating; but it could have been a lot better it they showed what lattice structure the crystal was.  There was a whole section in the aerospace about CFD; it would have been nice to learn about some CFD techniques.  There is just so much science there.

At Home

I'm at home until sometime in January.

Oversimplification

I wandered to a nuclear proponent site which has awesome skits about different types of energy and spends a lot of time knocking wind energy.  It's horrible.  I understand that scientist have a hard time communicating in general, but I think that this presentation of over simplification insults people's intelligence, and I am never satisfied with being told an over simplistic answer.

The other part that really ground my gears was then they were talking about the wind industry having to prove their worth (mostly attacks on reliability).  I just don't like arguments where they don't have a number to quantify what they are comparing.

Jokes (December 6 - 10)

Appaloosa (known for their spots!)

In honor of the ongoing horse mystery this weeks jokes where all horse related.  I think everybody got Wednesdays (my fault; it was like saying boo to a goose) but nobody got Fridays.  Friday's was even the most groan worthy!


Though Night mare is pretty good.








Friday:
What do you call a clean Appaloosa?  Spotless!


Thursday:
What's the scariest type of horse?  A Night mare.


Wednesday:
What side of the horse has more hair?  The outside.


Tuesday:
What goes clip? A one legged horse. (Kinda sick, but we where discussing the stolen horse being turned into glue at that time so the joke had to match.)


Monday:
Why did the boy stand behind the horse? He thought he might get a kick out of it.

BlueBox

Introduction
BlueBox is a homemade cooler at Pappy's Orchard that has 6" thick extruded Polystyrene walls.  Polystyrene is a good neutron moderator and reflector, so the idea is to put a small reactor into BlueBox in order to provide power for Pappy's Orchard and Pappy's Orchard, turkey division.

Simulation

Core Geometry

I did a basic simulation of a 1x1 reactor with nine water inlets.  The core was just U-235, and for both the water and the core I used single group diffusion; i.e. thermal averages of the adsorption and fission coefficients were used.

I had to do an simpler similar problem for a course project, but in that project we had to solve the diffusion equation with a linear system of equations; for this I used MATLAB's PDE toolbox (it made the more complex geometry easier to solve and is a lot faster).

Core Flux

The core flux of neutrons is on the left.  Water is a moderator (slows down and absorbs neutrons), so in and around the water inlets the flux drops.  You can also see the general cosine shape of the flux, the analytical spatial solution for a homogeneous reactor (no water inlets) is

$\Phi(x,y,t)=\sum_{n~odd}^{\infty}e^{-\lambda_n t}\left ( C_n Cos(\frac{\pi x}{n a})Cos(\frac{\pi y}{n a})+ B_n Sin(\frac{\pi x}{n a})Sin(\frac{\pi y}{n a}) \right )$

Here the sin terms drop out because I required the flux to go to zero at the boundary, resulting in:

$\Phi(x,y,t)=\sum_{n~odd}^{\infty}e^{-\lambda_n t}\left ( C_n Cos(\frac{\pi x}{n a})Cos(\frac{\pi y}{n a})\right )$

Radiation Mess Ups

I am reading about the effects of radiation on humans (Turner, Chapter 13), and there have been a lot of messed up treatments.

• Doctors tried to shrink the thryoid in children in the 1930-40s by x-ray radiation.
• X-rays (large doses, several Gy ) where used to treat ringworm of the scalp in 1940-50s.  There was a six-fold increase in thyroid cancer of those treated.
• X-ray doses where delivered to the spine to treat ankylosing spondylitis in Britain in the 1930s.

I wonder what procedures we are doing now that will be silly in 60 years?

Congratulations

Congratulations to Eli for successfully hunting a doe.  I think he also achieved something with his skating - look for him in the 2014 Olympics.

Congratulations to Miss Sutherland upon her engagement.

Mischievous Murph

A while ago I started to write notes instead of signing the receit when you use a store credit card machine.  A cute girl write my number.  Not so pretty one - David or Isaac.  Sometimes draw a dinosaur.  For a particullary grumpy clerk I wrote Macbeth's Soliloquy.  Gotta keep them guessing.  Anyway, I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize, and they told me I left them my number.  Oops.

I had to give a presentation about our research to Dr. Worbel, DHS Research Program Manager. I compared one of our detectors to "saying boo to the goose", and later used the phrase "turmegatroid".

Two apartments down there is a group of guys who have there christmas lights spell out Tennessee.  After a football game in the early fall these guys threw an empty bottle at me because they thought I was wearing an Alabama shirt (hatred between UT and Alabama I guess?) when it was my CMU shirt (colours are the same).  So I went over late one night (coming back from the library) and redid their lights to read 'Alabama Rocks'.  They haven't noticed yet.

I am also being setup for stealing a horse.  I may or may not be responsible for this.  I am responsible for ripping its leg off, but David provoked me. At least it might go to heaven. Enough horsing around!

Unrelated to these escapades, I am now probably on the FBI's watch list.  RSICC thought I lost my simulation code package - it is export controlled.  I really don't know why; you can get the same results from GEANT4.

Jokes

I have been putting incredibly awesome jokes as my status in gchat and a couple of people have guessed at the answers.  Here they are.

Friday:
Why do cowboys always die with their boots on?
So they won't stub their toes when they kick the bucket.

Thursday:
Why don't oysters give to charity?
Because they're shellfish.

Wednesday:
What happened to the shark that swallowed keys? It got lock jaw.

Tuesday:
Why did the raccoon cross the road?  To see its flat mate.

Prize goes to Isaac, he got all but Friday's.

Published

I am pretty sure my paper with Dr. Chang was accepted for publication.  Yay!  Bottle of whiskey for me!

If you want, you can look at the presentation.  My work is pretty much all of the pretty charts.  In a similar vein, someone out there is the IEEE stuff.  I don't know where in the process that is.

Flame Approximation

I found a really cool example of a differential equation while reading the Matlab tutorial on ODE Solving.

"If you light a match, the ball of flame grows rapidly unitl it reaches a critical size.  Then it remains at that size because the amount of oxygen being consumed by the combustion in the interior of the ball balances the amount available through the surface the simple model is

$\dot{y} = y^2 - y^3 $
$y(0)=\sigma$
$0 \leq t \leq {2/\sigma} $

where $y(t)$ represents the radius of the flame ball, and $\sigma$ is the initial radius."

The analytical solution is

$y(t)=\frac{1}{W(\alpha e^{\alpha -t})+1}$

where $\alpha=1/\sigma -1$ and $W(Z)$ is the Lambert W function, $W(z)e^{W(z)}=z$.

I think it is really amazing how a solution to this problem was constructed by simply relating the change in the radius with time to a surface area term ($y^2$) and a volume term, ($y^3$).  Sometimes I get blinded by wanting to find the exact solution and looking at the details; but here a simple model replicates the details quite accurately.

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a really cool search / math feature.  It is a little like Wikipedia, except that it gives the information in a very concise form.  There are browser plugins for it, and it does a lot of the heavy math that Mathematica does.

I highly recommend it; it is really cool.

Thanksgiving

We decided to go traditional this Thanksgiving, and have a meal worthy of the Pilgrims.  Samuel, Eli and I roasted squirells over an open fire.  On giant sticks.  It was some of the best squirrel I have ever had.

Also important to get clean shots; otherwise there just isn't much there.

The key to avoid very dry and tough squirrel is constant basting.  Isaac and I made up a basting sauce of oil, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and random spices that worked pretty well.  When roasting you could see that oil drip off into the flames - it was really cool.

Just Kidding.  This was Saturday night.  Thanksgiving dinner was alright; too many people (The entire family & Mike, Laura, Lindsay).  I went over my words quota for the day.  David and I had our ham - we bought a pack of lunch meat ham and had it with our dinner rolls.

Our house must get lonely and empty when everybody goes away.

The most work I did was post holes on Saturday, we finally have all of the new post in for rows 9-5. Isaac hit me with the digging bar, giving me a bump on my head which I still have.

Microsoft Software and Hacks

I have been using MS Word 2007 / 2010 a lot, and I really like the heading feature.  Pops up the Navigation Panel on the left.

I also found that the equations in Word 2007 are easier to do - plus, if you copy as MathML from Mathematica you can insert it directly.  Hard to do equation numbering - by default it wants to put the numbered equation directly below it, not to the right.  However, I found a nice work around that inserts the equations in a table.  Funny thing is that the work around is published on the msdn developers website.

I found a nice little iso tool published by Microsoft.  I don't like how others have a lot of extra junk - I just want to mount my iso.

Finally, if you are a student you can get a lot of the Microsoft developers tools for free through Microsoft DreamSpark.  If you are not (or want a copy of Matlab) I can probably help a brother out.

Lab Dynamics

Having a bit of a difficult time in the lab recently, so this is a bit ranty.

The undergraduate in our lab messed up.  He over amplified the signal, causing roll off, which causes the high energy signals to be chopped off into small energy signals.  Dr. Miller and I spent all of Thursday and Friday trying to figure out why we had so many low neutron count until I checked the measurement.  So I had to miss UOA Nationals redoing his work.  Not very happy about that.

I am also supposed to get 20 samples sometime tomorrow to analyze before Thanksgiving.  At 15 minutes apiece its only 5 hours, but I am still bitter about it.  They better not require more than 300s count times . . .

Finally, Neel and I have been at logger heads.  Conclusion:  make your own damn slides.  Why do I send you the information if you are not going to look at it?

CCC Results and UOA Nationals

CCC's.  Ouch.  I believe we simply beat ourselves - any team could take the win from us if they wanted.  Hell, we were up 3 breaks on Florida before we decided to self destruct.

Saturday (Pool Play)

• Florida - UT went up early, got a solid lead, and then our D line was scored on, O was broken, and we lost confidence and players got frustrated with each other.  Lost it by ~4.
• Carolina - Went up early.  They broke our marks well, and got back their breaks.  I got broken once; my mistake was a mental error - I didn't go back to the force after marking no huck for the first few stall counts.  Lost 10-13.
• UVA - Damn those guys are quick, and they had a lot of energy.  A great call and response cheer as well: "What's that Sound?"  "Night Train" "What's that sound?" "Night Train" "What's that sound?" "Night Train Whoooooo!".  They had another good one of "Night Train, Night Train, Night Train BOOM!".  I had excellent decisions during this game - I knew that I couldn't give these guys a step on me.  UT lost by a lot; after these three losses we where no longer in the championship bracket.
• Georgia Southern - At this point some people where talking about starting drinking and we never had the will to even try to win.  I got skied by letting the other dude get better position; that pissed me off.  I also discovered that I don't respond when people yell at me - I look them in the eyes when they are yelling at me and think "who do you think you are?".  Sure you're advice might be great, but if you cannot control your emotions I am not going to listen to you.  UT lost this game.
• Emory - A win for UT, nothing remarkable.  

Sunday

• Georgia Southern - Weird bracket setup had us playing them again.  We started on O, and they broke.  And broke again, and again.  Finally our O puts one in, and the D gets a turn, doesn't convert, gets another turn, still doesn't convert, gets another turn and finally converts.  I play the next few points, getting two D's.  Georgia Southern lead by 3 at half, when we finally decided to increase the intensity.  Throw a zone to stop there deep game.  I did a really good job in the wall - head was on a swivel and I took away the lanes with my body.  Trey got a few D's on the mark - I think we converted on all of them.  Our O kept on getting broken though, so the game felt a lot closer than what the score ended up being, a win for Georgia Southern by a few.  I really liked the intensity that we displayed in the second half - it was nice to finally get the feeling that the team cared.

UOA Nationals

I ended up not going (lab stuff), but the results show that UT did very badly.  I know that the entire A roster did not go (missing Phil, Richy and UTC guys) and a few rookies went along.

CCC

Classic City Classic is this weekend in Athens, Georgia.  We are coming in as the 9th seed, having Florida and Virginia in our pool.  Let's see if we can make some noise on the national scene.

Goals are:

• No turns
• A chest height bid
• Hold the disc with two hands while pivoting

Good Luck to Yuk at CUFF!

Weird People Magnet

Short Version
Third time in Knoxville that I have been hit on by a gay guy.

Long Version
After running I was practicing my throws at the park.  Towards the middle a guy shows up, introduces himself as Gary, and asks if he can throw with me.  After he throws one of my disc over the fence in the tennis courts we chat a little, at which point he tells me that is an interior designer interested in art.  I decided to shorten the distance between us so he cannot throw another one over, and he starts to chat more, dropping that he also has a license for giving messages (methus?).  At this point I decide that I need to look for an out.  He then proceeds to somehow manage to throw another disc over the fence and starts to apologize profusely. I brush it off, scramble over the fence to retrieve the disc and throw a couple more times before I tell him that I should probably be going.  He then ask me (and I quote) if "[he] could stretch me out".  A bit flustered, I tell him that I'm good.  He then offers to drive me home, and I tell him that I parked in the parking lot.  He then asks if he can take me to the parking lot.  There are three cars in the parking lot; the lexus and two others.  I tell "Gary" that it is really not that far of a walk, thank him for the offer, and leave.

Thoughts
This is perplexing.   Why do these people pick me?  The strangers always seem to pick me to talk to at the bus stops or traffic lights, even when I have headphones in.  I was wearing the Zone shorts today and they are a little short so maybe I was showing  a bit too much leg, but why would you hit on a guy throwing by himself?  Playas gotta practice.  Just because I look content and have a slight smile on my face doesn't mean I want to talk, I am probably just enjoying the world.

Cannot really complain though; it does provide interesting situations.

Dave Baldwin

UT Men's Ultimate's home tournament, Dave Baldwin, was this weekend.

Friday
I helped to line the fields - constructing correct ultimate fields is hard.  How do you make sure they are square with only a rope is 70 yards long, with tape marks at 40 yards and 25 yards?  A guess and check method is to make what you think is the squarest field, and then use the 25 yard marking to put a mark on each line that intersects the corner.  Take the rope, and use it to make the hypothesis of these two marks.  Compare the length of the hypothesis it to similar hypothesis on other endzone corners.  Correct if they are not the same.

Saturday
 Out of  games on Saturday, only 8 points where scored on us.  I only want to revisit the game against West Georgia B (13-1 win).  They where horrible.  What upset me about this game was the lack of professionalism that we displayed.  There where lots of hammers, inverted points, a couple points with only six guys on the field; all sorts of garbage.  Against a team that couldn't even complete throws without defense (there was a point where the defense didn't cover until they where to get halfway).  I felt really bad for the people on West Georgia B - I think that they should have been given the decency of a quick loss.

Sunday
First game on Sunday was against the Mary Washington Grundlebugs.  I got a few points in this game.  My defense was pretty solid - out of the people I covered, I allowed only 3 catches and throws.

Second game on Sundays (semis) was against Ohio, a 13-9 win for UT.  I didn't get any play time in this game.   We really need to work on our offense, we simply have too many turns.  A few stupid deep throw aways, and just other miscues.  In tight games UT runs a very tight rotation,  which I feel provides the opportunity for the same people to make the same mistakes.  We also really on the get the disc to Phil Offense - while this is effective because Phil is a great player, I don't see how this will help out the team in the long run.

Finals game was against Ohio St.  We lost 13-11.  A lot of dirty play by UT, which bothers me.  Where not talking fouling on the mark here.  Chris (co-captain) gave his thrower what looked to be a bear hug on the mark so he couldn't throw (The thrower called foul and threw afterwards, the disc was not caught and since the foul occurred before the throw it was still a turn).  A couple of bullshit up calls, and foul calls on jump balls.  A lot of fouling on the mark.

Final Thoughts
 I just don't know what to think of it.  At practice we are encouraged to foul on the mark in order not to get broken - I understand and accept this even though I would rather get broken than deliberately foul a guy. How do you support your teammates when you feel that they are being jerks?

Another thing that bugged me is the lack of subbing on Sunday.  I order to still maintain interest in the game, I feel that I need to play a few points.  If we are losing, the loss should be the responsibility of the entire team, rather than the 11 people who played the game.  Same goes for winning.  Its so much harder for the sideline to stay involved when they have no chance in physically altering the outcome.  Not saying that we need equal playing time, but everybody should get their chance to change the outcome.

Also, Wikipedia still has the UPA as UPA (the link directs to USA ultimate though).  In watching nationals, I was amazed and amused by the announcers messing that up.

Thorium Liquid Metal Reactor

Reposting an article that summarized very nicely the thorium and liquid metal reactors. I am very interested in these designs.

The article can be found as the first link in paragraph one.

I find it interesting that in our NE colloquium the presenters talk about improving Light Water Reactor designs - we have yet to have one on fast breeders, liquid metal, or other designs.

IEEE Conference - Presentation

Today was my first conference presentation. I was supposed to talk for 13 minutes; I talked for 12 min 45s. Yay for not rushing through it! I got five questions, I answered three of them. Of the two that I didn't answer I pushed one off on Dr. Miller, and talked to the askee later. Turned out he was just using a different name for pulse height deficit. Hopefully everything goes according to plan and the paper we submitted (as a supplement to my talk) will get published.

Initially I was very nervous. I started out rushing, but realized after three slides I realized that there were only two other people in the room who knew more about this particular problem and results than I did - so there is no need to be worried about the content, if I was wrong nobody was probably going to notice.

I did commit a cardinal sin - I forgot to mention what the axis where on my plots. Oops. Dr. Garoff would not be happy.

Chimney Rocks and Mount Le Conte (Halloween Weekend)

Went hiking Saturday morning, than went to an Ultimate party. Feeling sleepy, so no write up. These are all from Chimney Rocks. Maybe pictures from Mount Le Conte later. Mount Le Conte had some nice cliffs.

Cylindrical Seeds Atop Chimney Rocks

Interesting tree Roots

Chimney Rocks - It was very exciting to climb out 

Check out the Poplars in Valley (Yellow)

IEEE Conference - Day 1

I rock at finding the conference cookies. Went in. Got my registration stuff (including some sweet graph paper!). Primary target (cookies) was spotted.  Cookies consumed.  Boring talks.

I went to the talks on modeling of radiation / detectors, and most of them where pretty boring.  Pretty much developers getting up their and talking about their new additions to the codes.  I was hoping for more of a "look, here's something cool that I did with this code".

Need to work on making my presentation exciting.

Microwaves Heating

Thought Experiment:
If the microwave produces the same amount of radiation for a particular setting, is there a threshold mass such that below a certain mass there is no change from the amount of stuff you put in and the temperature it comes out at?

I imagined microwaves working by producing a set amount of waves that filled the cavity of a microwave - and below a certain volume / mass amount some of the waves would not interact with the material to be heated simply because there was no matter there.  (Thinking of placing a thin disk in the microwave vs. a tall cylinder of equal volume - I would expect the tall cylinder to come out hotter).

Experiment:
I looked at the temperature change of different volumes of water (in the same 2 cup Tupperware measuring cup) for the same amount of heating time (1 min).

As you can see, the temperature change is lograthmic as a function of volume. For the amount of water I was adding, I did not expect to see such a dramatic change. I guess my microwave is wimpy. Look at energy added to the water (from Q=m c deltaT) as a function of water volume.

Linear - does that make sense? Say I have an logarithmic function, T = -27.4ln(V) + 431.2 (the fit for the change in temperature) and a linear function, E = 1057 V + 24285 (the fit for the change in energy). I calculated E as Q = mcT=rho*V*C*T, so then I could write the following: E=rho*V*C*(-27.4ln(V) + 431.2) =? 1057 V + 24285. But the V's in the logarithmic expression for E don't cancel into a linear term, so I have the wrong form for either the change in temperature or the change in energy.

Extra special prize for any suggestions.

And I still haven't answered my original question.

LiF Crystal Detector

The polymer detectors we are intrested in are based off of the Li-6 neutron capture where a neutron comes in, interacts with the Li-6 and decays into a tritum and an alpha particle.

We were tossing around ideas, and Neel asked why nobody made a LiF crystal detector.  Grow a LiF crystal and place it between two parallel plates - like a capacitor.  This seems like a great idea, so I expanded it a bit more.

Most of capacitance is due to geometry considerations, with the material property being the dielectric constant.  Place the capacitor made with LiF as the dielectric in series with a resistor, measure the voltage across the resistor.

A neutron event will produce an alpha, with has a +2e charge. This would be drawn to the negative plate, and would decrease the capacitance (capacitance is linear with the dielectric constant).  Current would flow across the resistor, which would show as a voltage spike across the resistor.   BOOM! Neutron detected!  Somebody get this man a patent.

I really want to test this though, gotta see if I can get Maryia can grow me one.

Mind blowing: Analog to Digital Converters are essentially doing spectral sampling with a dirac function.

Work to Win

The last two practices for Tennessee have been indoor conditioning because of the fields are too wet to play on.  Their conditioning is a lot different than Yuk - more intense, which I like.  (I never got much out of doing ployos in the Arena room.)  An example (Wednesday) we did a two mile warmup at a decent pace, and then did four sprints that consisted of a 10,20 m suicide, followed by a ~300m dash.  Rest was very short ~2 minutes.  Then we did stadium stairs.  The stairs were not particularly hard, but it was nice to be throughly winded and tired from the sprints.

In general, I would say that UT is more efficient at using their time than Yuk was.

What did irk me is a fellow player encouraging us to work hard because "you can be that Florida is doing this" with the insinuation that simply running stairs makes national caliber teams.  It bothered me to attribute Florida (and other national level teams) success to stairs - otherwise, what happened to CMU?  I think that as CMU demonstrated, being in shape is not the capstone, but only the base.   I would rather see encouragement presented as "Eat your veggies" a la Vogel.

IEEE Conference

It is official.  I will be presenting at the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium.

Black Bears - Cades Cove

Back Bears Are Scary

I saw TWO black bears this weekend, from about 100 ft away (I was above them).  They where much bigger than I expected them to be.  I wondered how afraid for my life I should be.  We stared at each other.  I tried to take a picture without looking through the view finder.  I missed.  The flash went off.  The bears jumped and started to move.  I ran away yelling.  My shorts remained dry.

I know that you are not supposed to startle them - auto flash is dumb.  I also know you are not supposed to run away from bears - back away
slowly.    Once they moved though, damned if I was going to back away slowly.

PreBear Encounter

The forest is very pretty in the fall.  I need to learn how to take pictures.  And a new camera.

Whenever I ask people to take a picture of me on the trail I get a lot of weird pictures of myself.  The girl who took the one on the right decided she wanted to take it from off the trail to "get in the beautiful woods".  She was a confusing person.

There was a lot of Fungi (I was one of them - for you, Isaac) that looked cool.

I do get out and socialize.  I went to a party that had UV lights - and then once I had a bit to much to drink I tried hitting on a girl by explaining to her how the fluorescence worked.  I got to harvesting electrons from the pi cloud before I struck out. (She did seem sort of interested at first . . . I think?)  And then there was Murph dancing.

 

Friday, October 22, 2010

A bunch of randomness:

• Milo being scared of mice made my week.  I wonder what his middle name is.  Starts with a f, (I think based on his twitter account), so I guess Franklin.  As in the children's stories.
• I will be attending the IEEE conference, where I will be presenting our results. I couldn't get out of speaking.  If MPL is any indication, this will be the shortest scientific talk ever.  (Ask Brando for details of my MPL talks).
• Compressed Sensing - This is a really cool method which uses the spareribs of signals to compress to O(S log(n/S)).  I am working on implementing an example in Matlab.
• I have to work on the mark once the disc is thrown.  I tend to get flat flooted, making me very slow on the give and go.  Phil (very quick, plays for Tenasi) destroyed me at practice today.
• I get to take over modeling now that Martin had a successful defense.

Finally, I leave you on this disturbing thought: the fine structure constant might not be constant.

Good Night and Good Luck.

MJU

Bananas

This morning I didn't have a banana for breakfast (I ran out). This is the first time in 72 days that I didn't have a banana for breakfast.

US Energy Usage

Breakdown of US Energy Usage and Sources

A while ago I attended a doom and gloom lecture about the US energy usage which gave consevation a very bad rap and decided to check it out myself.

The premises was that the US uses too much energy (petroleum) on transporation which unless there are dramatic changes in alternative transportation technologies we cannot change.  Then focusing on conservation of energy doesn't help all that much because energy conservation is mostly electrical based - which currently is not the largest use.

Electricity Flow Diagram (Quadrillion BTU)

Looking at electricity, the first thing to note is that 63% of the energy is lost converting the fuel into energy.  Residential is the largest consumer of electricity (36%).  If by conservation we cut the residential use in half to 2.35 quadrillion BTUs, because of the huge loss in conversion we would only need to consume 32.55 quadrillion BTUs, a reduction of 16%.  A more doable 10% in residential electricity reduces consumption by 3%.


Below is how I calculated the reduction values. The source for these diagrams is U.S. Energy Information Agency.

$\frac{38.89-\frac{\frac{14.28}{38.89}}{14.28-4.65x}}{38.89}$

Finally, I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but in order to clear off my white board here is a good quote from somewhere: "Carbon / Fossil Fuels plants store their waste in the atmosphere . . . for free".  Just something to muse on.

US DOE EIA Energy Quiz

20 question quiz from EIA about energy usage.  It doesn't tell you what you got at the end, you need to keep track yourself.  I got a 16/20.

Some answers and thoughts below.

• I call shenanigans on the question about petroleum production - how am I supposed to know that Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia a year ago?  I liked how Russia's petroleum production peaked when it was the USSR, than fell when it became Russia.  
• I didn't even know Wyoming produced coal.  
• Didn't know Denmark even had a notable amount of wind power - but  to put the 19% of electricity Denmark gets from wind power into perspective, that is only 3,482 MW compared to 34,863 MW in the US.

Mice

I learned today that a friend of mind is scared of mice.  That might make my week.  By the way, rodents don't bother me.  As kids we used to spend a lot of time trying to catch and kill the mice that would come into the turkey pens once a flock was done.

Though I guess I can't say much since I am afraid of heights, something that doesn't even move.  On the way back form Itchfest I was discussing this with Casey, and now I question if I am scared of heights or of falling, since being in an airplane doesn't bother me while standing on a 11ft ledge does.  Supporting the fear of falling is that I became scared of heights after falling out of a tree and breaking my arm.

Itchfest 2010

This weekend I played at Itchfest 2010, and a delightful time was had by all.  I didn't have any spectacular plays (I did have a very nice layout of O and a D that I got my finger on but knocked it closer to my guy), but I felt that I did a good job of team D.  On O I played alright - I completed a flick huck, handled against a zone for a point (until someone else turned it), and generally had good cuts.

Points of Improvement:

• I need to work on staying in my position in a H-stack
• Continue to work on looking upfield.  I noticed that as the games get tighter I look upfield less.
• Pop-out throws.  They were generally a little behind the guy, and slighly wobbly.
• Catching slightly below the waist.  I had a drop in the endzone and a drop in practice today where I tried to crab catch and both times I had a drop with the disc hitting my hands.   I either need to take a knee, or practice pancaking / crab catching below the waist.  Carb catching below the waist sounds really, really dirty.

Open Gate 2010

Open Gate is a program sponsored by PSU Ag. Extension where a bunch of farms conduct tours of of their premises.    This year Pappy's Orchard will be participating, along with other farms.  I made up a poster explaining the fruit aspect of Pappy's Orchard, and another of the turkeys.

So if you are in the Coopersburg area you should check out a few places.  If nothing else there are free samples at Pappy's Orchard, and Marwell Dairy (the Gehman's, down the street) usually have a nice presentation with large equipment.

Ultimate Action

I played really well today.  I think I will attribute to the return of the backwards hat.

It made me really happy. Looking forward to the tournament this weekend in Nashville.

PR

Today I ran 10.25 miles in 67 minutes 23 seconds (slightly over 6 min 45 sec splits), and continued on the greenway for a total of 15 miles in about 110 minutes.  The 10 miles felt great, but I really ran out of steam for the 5 getting back to Neland.  In any case I feel that it is a PR, so I am happily exhausted.

Fall Break

 Fall Break was this weekend, and I left UT for home Wednesday afternoon.  Overall I had lots of fun, but am not looking to the work ahead of me this week.  I wish I could be back at home right now, riding the scooter through the orchard and on the back roads.

On Thursday I helped my mother in the bakery until 3 pm.  Then I did some weed trimming until it got dark; I rediscovered the new blackberries we planted! (I think Art mowed over one though).

Arkansas Black - My Favorite Apple

Friday Eli was off from school, so he was my helper.  We put up the free range turkey fences for Father, even making a hexagon.  I then taught Eli had to find the area of a hexagon so he could prove to Father that using a hexagon maximized the amount of area for the fence we had.  Then Eli and I went ice skating - he is getting to be quite good now, good enough to have his own coach.  Can even do fancy little jumps.  I fell four and a half times, the half times are from when I stopped my fall with my hands on the ice.  Turns out I cannot do jumps or twirls.  Friday evening I picked a lot of apples - Criterion, Winesap, and some Red Delicious.  We had a problem with fruit dropping off the trees before it was ripe this year, so for some variates the color is not there.

Saturday we brushed the fruit from Friday, and then I worked in the brooder house preparing for the next flock arriving October 16th.  I also did more weed trimming and mowing, preparing for Open Gate October 17th.

Absolute Light Yield of Benzene with Methyls

I had a scientific discovery!  In our weekly meeting today Neel asked me about what the samples are.  In looking them up, I noticed that there seemed to be a trend - as more methly groups where added to the benzene ring the slope of the absolute light yield as a function of boron increased.  This is really exciting (in case you were wondering), because our current paper provides only characterization and having a physical backing would be awesome.

Ideally I hope to associate the change in the pi cloud of the benzene with the changes in the slopes - but other than being a neat little fact I don't know what it would imply.  I have to learn a lot of chemistry.  Most of it seems to be easy enough to pick up and qualitative.  I think at some point I should revisit my chemistry career and get over my lingering hate of freshman chem. 

It is all rather confusing, actually.  We want to detect a neutron interaction with boron, so two fluors are used to transfer the ultraviolet photons emitted from the when boron reacts with a neutron to visible light, and from there the benzene+methyl groups transfer the photon.  So really the above trend could be because of the methyl groups interacting with the fluors . . . at which point its time for whiskey.

In other news, I learned a really cool command for dos, 'tree'.  It prints out the file structure as a tree structure.   This was very useful as I tried to find the settings that were used for the previous rounds.

Monday, September 27, 2010

I just discovered the what is the bomb!  It is "We Built This City" (the song)!  No, but that is what came on what I started this post and I thought it was funny.  The actually bomb is tab fixing in vim:

1) :set filetype=sh (or whatever)
2) :filetype indent on
3) :e
4) gg=G

To think I spent the last 10 minutes fixing the spacing by hand . . .

"Don't you remember, We built this city, We built this city on rock and roll"

Football Weekends

Football weekends at UT are a very big inconvenience to me.  My lab is right next to the stadium, so after 5 p.m. on Friday nobody can enter the building, and they kick you out around 9 p.m.  The building is usually reopened sometime Sunday afternoon.  We are analyzing sample scintillators from SCSU, and the deadline for the paper is in a month so it would have been helpful if I could have been in the lab - but alas football takes precedence.  I do get to be the 4th author (out of 5) on the paper though - so I guess I will be published in about a month?

They also close down all the recreation buildings, so I cannot get in my weekend climbing wall.  Termagatroid, I know.

Football weekends do provide plenty of parties though.  The ones I have been to are very different from CMU parties.  A lot less angry drunks.   There is one invariant; I am still horrible at drinking games.

I wish that the university could remain functioning even if a football game is going on - I cannot be the only one who doesn't care about football.

Cuts

I made UT's A-team!  Whoo!  I treated myself to some nice yogurt (I forget their logo, but is about spooning and it always reminds me of Mandy Spaghettoes), and a nice glass of bourbon.

I found an article about a cool bike this morning and it has been stuck in my head.  The drive mechanism is clever, but I don't know what the point is.  Kinda like silly bandz.  I wonder if it is more efficent than a regular bike, or if the ratchet mechanism that resets the string wears out, like the craftsman ratchets (though that could be from using them as hammers . . .). Also intresting how the drive mechanism is seprated from the wheel, looks like a drive shaft connects them.

Gaylen, David and I should get cracking at something like this.  Winter break?

instantaneous Reaction To Forces

I have been wondering if the finite speed of light limits how fast an acceleration can be.  An example would be if objects would instantaneously fall if the speed of light was infinite.  The gravitational constant, however, is empirically measured so that makes it a bit difficult.  The coulumb constant (characterizing the force between charges) , however, depends on the speed of light squared, leading to an infinite constant as the speed of light goes to infinity.  This would then lead to an infinite force between the objects, so there could then be an infinite acceleration.

What bothers me about the above thought experiment is that electrostatics was (is?) a classical theory, where the speed of the light was assumed to be infinite.   But maybe they did not know what factors went into the constant at that time . . .

Handler Murph?

Agent Orange currently has me handling in their zone O, and sometimes in their man.  Very, very scary.  I just want to dump and cut, but I cannot!

I also had my first zone D practice with Agent Orange, and I did a very good job as mark in the cup.  They run a two man cup with one mark, with the mark dropping back to cover the dump on a trap.  If felt real nice to get some hard running in, and the cup got a nice couple of pressure D's, while I got 4 handblocks.

September 19, 2010

Yesterday I played my first tournament with Agent Orange.  First game was against Chain Lighting, a nationals caliber team.  We got bageled.  I played 5 points, and in all of the points I touched the disc and didn't throw a turn, which I consider a success. 

Next we played Duel, another Atlanta based team.  We lost by 5 or so; and I played more (lots of D and a couple O points).  I had one throw away where I looked away from my dump, but in all fairness I gave him from stall 4 to 8, and the on 8 I decided to take the 50/50 upfield. 

UT needs to work on handler spacing.  A guy gets on stall 6 or so, and then all of the handlers collapsed on him with the cutters coming in to help.  The thrower then has no space to throw with all of the defenders now there; it is much easier to throw to space when you have 10 yards or space than 2 yards.  Takes a little restraint for the O players to trust the dump to do his job.

UT becomes a very angry team when they are losing. I don't like it, and I think it doesn't help them.  Some people can channel their anger; they can't.  They also tighten their rotation.  I can see why you want your stars on the field, but after being down 3 breaks I think that it is time to do something different.

It is weird how UT makes much of the same mistakes as Yuk did (or does, but hopefully not). 

Ultimate at UT

Playing ultimate at UT is a lot different than Yuk.  Quite simply, UT likes to huck while CMU doesn't really do that.  Not saying that they won't work it under, but they will look off an open in cut for a 75% completion on a huck.  UT also has a lot more deep ball type guys than Yuk, so it makes sense.

They also do their tryouts weirdly.  Every Friday is a mixed scrimmage, but Monday and Wednesday practices are separate.  Everybody that is new is automatically on B.  In theory if you play well on Friday's scrimmages you can get placed on A, but nobody on B has had that happen yet.  I have been beating guys in all the time, and do a pretty good job forcing the guy I am covering to cut in.  I believe I have been playing better than some of there current A members, but who knows?

With Yuk (from my perspective) tryouts were done assuming you where on A until you were cut.  UT is the opposite.  I don't know which system is better.

In somewhat related news, I am happy that Brandon made regionals with Iron Man, I think it is well deserved.  Congratulations to both Iron Man and Dire Wolf.

Ramsey Falls and Vim

Along the trail to Ramsey Falls

Over the weekend I revisited the Smoky Mountains to do some hiking.  I hiked the Ramsey Fall trail, which is a nice 8 mi round trip.  About 1/3 of the trail even has gravel, but once the gravel stops it gets kinda rocky.  Seems like whoever designed the trial took you straight up runoff stream beds.

Think about this for a second - why is there water falling over falls at all?  In order to be at the lowest potential wouldn't we expect the water to cascade down as quickly as possible - an 9.8m/ss rush of water from the source to the bottom.  So why does it take longer than that - and why is there a head on the top of a waterfall? 

 The reason is the viscosity of the fluid.  I can't figure out how to post formulas, otherwise I would post it.  It is really cool though.  It is awesome when you get to apply something from the classroom; it makes me so excited!

Excited!

YOU know what else makes me excited?  Vim now has autocomplete!

Carbon Fibers

Carbon fibers are really, really cool.  I think that it is one of the topics you learn about, but until you handle them they seem like a scientific oddity - the ohh, that's cool.  I went to the science lecture before UT's football game (UT has a lecture before every home football game where they bring in people to talk about current topics in science), and the person there from Oak Ridge brought in samples that he let us play with.   He tossed around a 2' by 2' by 4' cube that looked like it was made with 1" square steel that was really made out of the fiber composite.  Having worked with steel it was just amazing to be able to lift this thing up with one hand, something that I would not have been able to do if it was made out of steel.  Really impressive that it weighed 2 lbs but had the same strength as steel.

Anyway, his talked focused on the commercial production of carbon fibers.  His group at Oak Ridge got $30 million to build a small scale facility in order to demonstrate that it is commercially viable to produce carbon fibers from ligands.  (Ligand is a byproduct of the paper industry - currently most of it is burnt as fuel in the paper mill)  The ligand fibers have lower strength properties than the oil based (PAN) carbon fibers, but they are still remarkable.

So basically I am going to use carbon fiber composites in my nuclear plant.  I did some reading on carbon fibers and found out that mesophase carbon fibers (the ligand one falls into this category) can have conductivity similar to those of metal alloys, so perhaps it can be used instead of graphite in the fuel assembly.  Carbon fibers will not produce as much bremsstralung (type of radiation) as metals, so maybe there is something in that too. 

September 10, 2010 - Sorrows of a Young Werther

I have been reading Sorrows of a Young Werther and it is an excellent book.  I like how the book is organized as a series of letters; it is interesting to look at the time that passes between them.  In addition, I like Goethe's bits on nature.  Reminds me a little bit of Walden, but without taking nearly as long.  I just can't figure out what the title means - babel fish has werther meaning worth, but "Sorrows of a Young Worth" doesn't seem to fit.

September 7th, 2010 - State of Me

UT offered free fitness assessments (similar to CMU's health and wellness fair).  According to their standards, I am in excellent shape.  Question is, will it stay that way to the end of the semester?

Results
Weight: 161 lbs
Height: 5'10.5"
Body Fat: 7.4%, 22.8 BMI (I think that is lower than last year at CMU)
Sit and Reach: 21 cm (Rocked this one, having had yoga earlier)
3 min YMCA Step Test (96 bpm) heart rate: 84 bpm
Pushups (1 min, no rest - once you rest test is over): 45
Situps (1 min, no rest - once you rest test is over): 47

I have also started to do an on/off cycle - run .25 miles, jog 0.25 miles,  run 0.25 miles etc.  It is a nice change up, and gets tiring.  I am doing my run about 1.5 times than my jog (at least I am taking ~1.5 more steps in my run than my jog).  The 0.25 mile intervals are because the trails I run have those increments.

September 7, 2010

A while back I had a thought about discrete energy levels.  I emailed Dr. Garoff about it, and he explained the error in my argument.

The problem was that the energy levels are not infinitely narrow.  They have a spread of at least the uncertainty principle.  In addition, Dr. Garoff stated that the idea that the photon has to match the energy exactly is only correct to first order.  Higher order perturbation theory allows for a widening of the acceptable photon energies.

There are similar sort of transitions in the nucleus (I think Schrodinger's equation can be applied to any sort of motion - just plug in the appropriate potential and Hamiltonian) that is slightly different.  While I know that all particles obey the uncertainty principle, it is awkward to think about the uncertainty principle being applied to neutrons and protons since they are 1800 times heavier than an electron.  However though, neutrons are the electrons of the nucleus; they move about in discrete transitions in the nucleus.

September 6, 2010 - Labor Day

Nothing playing frisbee in the afternoon sun, relaxing by loafing in the grass reading while enjoying a beer, and then seeing fireworks in the evening.  That was my day today, and it was the best.

Fireworks are what I imagine the start of the universe looked like.  A giant fireworks display simply for the combined beauty of light and sound.

Teflon tape is cheap, don't waste it

As kids Father would always say to us when we were screwing on the fittings for the small waters "teflon tape is cheap, don't waste it".  The idea was that he didn't want leaks, but not to waste the tape.  Incidentally I always waste teflon tape when I use it to seal fittings because I inadvertently always wrapped the tape on the wrong way, so that when you screw the fitting on the tape comes off.

Figure 1 - EJ 254

Figure 2 - GS20

In relation to this, I just had a meeting where we discussed using teflon tape.  FOR TWO HOURS.  Our lab ran out about when I joined it (coincidence I assure you), so I have been doing all of our measurements without it.  (We use teflon tape to reflect the light from the sample back into the PMT).  As shown in figure 1 and 2, there is quite a difference between the measurements used - but I think that we might have sacrificed a well defined peak for higher counts.

The worst part may be that it has no bearing . . . I am currently doing experiments to see what type of method is most reproducible and most forgiving to different detector geometries.

September 1st, 2010

I saw myself in a mirror, and realized that I have an alternating color outfit.  Brown sandals, white shorts, brown polo, white hat.  It's awesome.

On an unrelated note, I like to listen to Ke$ha's Tik Tok as I walk to campus in the morning.  I like to think of different lyrics, mostly about getting excited to learn and do science.  It is really quite a bit of fun..

Passive Safety Systems

Passive safety systems are based on natural forces (convection, gravity) and do not need any external input (operator / energy) to work.  I think the idea is really great - why design complex "active" systems when you could let nature do what it does?  However, in reading reviews about passive safety systems I find that most are constructed as backups to the active systems.  For example, the EPP-1000, ESBWR, CANDU 6 & 9, AC-600 and AP-600 (among others) all have a large water tank over the reactor. The design is that after the active system fails, gravity just dumps water all over the reactor, cooling it.  Another common design is to build a large "containment pool" that collects the reactor after it melts.

I don't understand why the passive systems are being used as a last attempt backup instead of the first.  It would just seem more natural to use a system that works off of nature instead of pumps and machines to prevent accidents.

There are problems with passive systems.  They tend to be slower to respond / alleviate the problem (gravity driven and heat transfer can be much faster with pumps), and it they might not work outside a given problem / setup, while active ones have more flexibility.  (You can always pump fluid, but with a passive system you need something to drive the flow).

Discrete Values of Wave Equation

Transitions between states in the atom are in discrete energy levels, as shown by Schrodinger's Equation.  In order to go to a higher state, the atom must adsorb a photon of the exact energy as the gap between states.  I wonder if such a photon exists.

I think a good analogy (which is probably the source of my error) is our representation of a number.   There are infinitely many numbers between 1.01 and 1.001 which means that we would need infinitely many photons to have a continuous range of photon energies so that one would be the discrete, exact, energy.

A simple counter argument would be that we witness these transitions all the time - but the transitions we see the source atom is in external fields, and these fields result in splitting of the bands.

I think somewhere I am making a grave mistake, so if you find it please let me know.

Nuclear Silliness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgZsamFWyBI&feature=related.  This is what I do.

Sunrise and Sunset

In talking to Miss Sutherland she mentioned that I (being farther south) must get more sun.  I agreaded, but by quickly looking up the sunrise and sunset times for Knoxville and Philly, we discovered that I had about 30 more minutes of daylight.  I was expecting about 10 minutes.   Anyway, cogs got turning, and I wondered how much more suntime Knoxville gets (compared to Philly) over the entire year.


NOAA has a solar calculator, which you can download as an excel file.  Philly is at (39.953333 N, -75.17 W) and Knoxville at (35.972778N, -83.942222 W).

Figure 1

 As shown in Figure 1, the days are actually longer in Philly during the summer than in Knoxville.  (What Miss Sutherland's and mine error was in just comparing sunsets, not sunrise times).  In fact, Philly get 228.2 more minutes of sun than Knoxville.  Syracuse gets 588 more minutes of sun than Knoxville.


It is really hard to wrap your head around, but it is true.  I played with my desklamp and a ball for about 10 minutes before it started to make sense. I think that it is important not to associate warmth with long days, and to note that long summer days quickly add up.