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..