In the last year I learned that I shared an odd quirk with Oliver Sacks. Somehow I tend to think about ages in terms of atomic number - the number of protons in an element. Sometimes I'll tell someone their birthday element. Some of the elements are centrally important and others not so much, but it is a nice way to discover and think about some of Nature's building blocks.
Normally I wouldn't call much attention, but a few birthdays are significant and today a good friend celebrates his Indium birthday. The name has nothing to do with nationality, but rather a strong indigo colored line in its spectrum. It has any number of properties that excite metallurgists and is notably used in making certain types of semiconductors, transparent electrodes for touchscreens and energy efficient coatings for glass. Technically Indium is a post-transition element - a label that may have a non-technical flavor.
The birthday person happens to be a fine writer, so rather than ramble on I encourage you to locate the elements that correspond to some of your significant years. My favorites so far have been Magnesium, Scandium, Manganese, Rubidium and Xenon. In early November I hope to attend a celebration marking the beginnings of someone's Mendelevium year!
It might be applied to wedding anniversaries, but the anniversary gift industry might complain...
Rather than wandering on I offer a disclosure and a treat. The celebrant is Om. Among other things he happens to be a fine writer who excels at the art of conversation. Go to pi.co and read a few of his pieces. (he also manages some of the most cleverly short urls around)
And while on the subject of friends and conversation, read Sherry Trukel's opinion piece in the NY Times. You may or may not agree with her, but it is something deserving some thought.
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Recipe Corner
Roasted Cauliflower with Tumeric and Ginger
Ingredients
° 1 large head cauliflower, trimmed
° olive oil (you don't need an expensive one for roasting)
° 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
° 1 teaspoon ground cumin
° 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
° sea salt and freshly ground pepper
° handful of chopped cilantro
Technique
° oven to 400°F
° trim the cauliflower and slice into 2 cm (about 3/4") "steaks" and season both sides with salt and pepper
° heat about 1 tbl of olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat and sear each side of the steaks. Place the steaks on a baking sheet
° whisk about 1 tbl olive oil, ginger, cumin and turmeric and spoon onto the steaks
The structure was small but, despite the amazing view, there was only one small window. A curtain was kept out sunlight. A cluster of electric cables connected the building to the cable car building a thousand feet distant. Twelve is an age when most of us are still at curiosity and society lets us get away with it. I knocked on the door.
My family spent a few weeks each Summer anywhere from the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in Montana up to Jasper in Alberta. That year it was Banff. We had taken the Sulphur Mountain cable car to the viewing platform. On a clear day the view was nearly a hundred miles. The observation deck was crowded to capacity with tourists from all over the world. My parents and sister were talking to a couple from England when I left for the unusual building along the mountain's North ridge.
Physicists have a primal need to explain things as deeply as time and their audience's patience and curiosity permit. Almost immediately I was learning a bit about cosmic rays, muon showers, scintillators, photomultiplier tubes and so on until my father showed up. He had been looking for me for a few hours and happy wouldn't be the right word to describe his mood.
The ride down the mountain and then back to our camp was quiet - I knew better than to say anything. That didn't seem to matter at the time. I was completely engaged in what I had seem. Most of it was over my head, but seeing the existence of the remnants of a cosmic ray shower on a simple detector someone put together solely to explain what they were doing hit me deeply. I saw the beginnings of how people ask questions of nature and it had nothing to do with looking up things in a book. By the time Lyra was overhead I feel asleep knowing I would be either a physicist or an astronomer. It was a calling.
A month later I tagged along with my father on a trip to Los Angeles. He was taking a ten day workshop for a certification and I was seeing California for the first time. Friends and family recommended trips to Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Hollywood, the beach and other things kids are supposed to see in Southern California. I wasn't interested and probably to my father's dismay managed to get my way. I visited JPL, and earthquake observatory, the planetarium at Griffith Park , and the La Brea Tar Pits.
Years later in grad school I came across a survey by the American Physical Society of recent graduates . A large majority of US born recent Ph.D.s, over 80%, had been raised in rural areas or near a natural history museum. This wasn't true of undergrad declared majors who mostly changed majors along the way but those who made it to the end were predisposed to have been in areas where some contact with Nature was likely.
Perhaps some areas are richer in sparks than others.
Some say kids are natural scientists. I disagree. Kids are wonderfully curious, but science isn't a grown-up version of child-like curiosity. Doing science requires learning and practicing abstract skills that are often not intuitive. Older students who have problems in something like a college chemistry class haven't unlearned an earlier ability, but rather
A few kids manage to get struck by a spark and dive in seeing the learning and work as play. This teenage dedication is far from unique to science. Music, sports, mechanics, art ... many kids spend their time picking up and honing basic skills that allow them to progress. These skills can be picked up at any time, but there are some kids who have a great head start - it isn't native intelligence as much as it is learning deeply.
There are two gaps that need to be jumped. First the initial spark, the calling for some, and then a longer gap that makes it possible to enjoy developing a somewhat different type of thinking than they're getting in school. This longer spark is a form of play.
The best day of the year at the old Bell Laboratories was the 24th of December. Employees brought their families and kids would wander around and see some real research often with some enthusiastic guides. Some departments went all out preparing demonstrations for the kids. After a few years kids became bored. They had home computer games were more interesting than anything at the labs. By the mid 90s kids weren't coming unless their parents dragged them along. Bell Labs had become a mostly spark-free environment. Where do you find events with spark potential these days?
Thinking about this earlier today I remembered the Lexus Hover Board ad...
The ad is real without digital special effects. It took me back to my first course in statistical mechanics. The professor was a low temperature theorist. We had been studying some of the oddities of liquid helium and he showed up with a dewar, a large beaker, a strip of metal and a magnet. The metal went into the beaker and was covered by the expensive liquid helium near absolute zero. He dropped in the magnet and we watched it levitate skittering around over the superconductor almost without friction. In the helium the metal had become a superconductor. The superconductor allows current to flow without resistance. When a material becomes a superconductor it excludes magnetic fields.
The field of the magnet induces current loops in the superconductor that exactly cancel the magnet's field. The magnet 'sees' a mirror image of itself and levitates. Its called the Meissner Effect.
Demonstrations like this fill your mind with questions and are entirely worth the cost of a bit of helium (there were only a eight students in the class). After Back to the Future II showed the Mattel Hover Board it was common to ask students to calculate what it would take to build such a device.
It gets even better...
Improvements in superconductors made it possible to levitate with (almost) dirt-cheap liquid nitrogen. In addition to the Meissner Effect there is something closely related called quantum flux trapping or flux pinning. I won't get into the details, but where the Meissner Effect shields the superconductor from the magnetic field, flux from the magnet enters tiny sites and is effectively pinned in place. With a bit of care you can fix the height and orientation of levitation and move objects along almost without friction.
Once you get a handle on flux pinning the Hover Board is just a matter of money.
These days there are any number of interesting YouTube videos. PhysicsGirl is doing terrific work that should inspire teenagers - particularly girls - much more than expensive produced television like Cosmos. That said I believe there is a need to see things for yourself and then begin to explore them on your own using real Nature rather than just watching videos or playing with simulations. This is partly broken, but perhaps we're seeing the start of it return. It is this hands-on component that encourages the hard work and experimentation necessary to move from the curiosity of a child to that of a scientist. Of course sparks for many things can come at any age - most of us are too busy to follow up, but every now and again something dramatic happens.
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Recipe Corner
An end of Summer salad. There are so many ways to go, but here's tonight's with sweet potatoes, apple and corn
Ingredients
° 1 medium sized sweet potato chopped into inchish pieces
° 1 large gala apple (or equivalent - a honey crisp would be good) chopped
° 3/4 cup cherry tomatoes sliced in half
° 1 ear fresh horn - husked
° some olive oil
° a couple of handfuls of arugula
° a quarter cup toasted nut pieces
° sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
° 1 tbl extra-virgin olive oil
° 2 tsp chipotle paste (I had some around - you could use powder)
° 2 tsp cider vinegar
° 1/4 tsp honey or maple syrup (I love maple syrup)
° salt and pepper
Technique
° heat oven to 375° F
° toss sweet potatoes, apple and tomato on a baking sheet with olive oil drizzle and pinch of salt and pepper. Roast for abut 30 minutes turning halfway through
° wrap the ear of corn in foil and put it in the oven for about 20 minutes
° whisk the olive oil, chipotle, vinegar, honey and salt and pepper to make a dressing.
° put arugula in a bowl along with the roasted pan contents. Slice the kernels from the corn and add. Toss the salad. Season to taste.
The Wife Carrying World Championship began in 1992 at Sonkajärvi, Finland, and has been held annually since then. Contestants are winning couples from wife-carrying competitions in Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland and the United States. The competition involves the man running along a 253.5 m track with three obstacles, carrying his “wife”. This “wife” must weigh at least 49kg, or be weighted to 49 kg. The “wife” need not be your own, but can be “the neighbour’s”.4 As a health bonus, the winner receives the “wife’s” weight in beer, known to improve cardiovascular health when consumed in moderation.5
...
I guess that removes the polygamist advantage.
Why these people did not win an Ig Nobel prize is beyond comprehension.
Wife carrying for health  
I-Min Lee MB BS, ScD, Associate Professor1 ,Sylvia Titze MPH, Associate Professor2 ,Pekka Oja PhD, Scientific Director (retired)3
1 Division of Preventive Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass, USA.
2 Institute of Sport Science, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
3 UKK Institute for Health Promotion Research, Tampere, Finland.
Abstract
Objectives: To highlight a fun activity — the sport of wife carrying — and to investigate factors associated with better performance.
Design, setting and participants: Cross-sectional study based in Sonkajärvi, Finland (venue of the annual Wife Carrying World Championship race), of 172 couples participating in wife-carrying races, 1992–2010. Main outcome measure: Race finishing time.
Results: The mean age for male participants was 32.6 (SD, 8.7) years and for female participants, 30.5 (SD, 9.2) years. The mean finishing time was 98 s. Finish times tended to be somewhat slower as the age of the male partner increased (P = 0.06), but not as the female partner’s age increased (P = 0.89). Race experience was not associated with faster times (P = 0.88). Estonians were almost 12 s faster than other nationalities, although this was not statistically significant (P = 0.25), probably due to the small number of Estonians. Men who engaged in endurance-type physical activities as hobbies (P = 0.003), or in both endurance- and strength-building activities (P = 0.001), were significantly faster than those who did neither. Among women, strength- building (P = 0.03) but not endurance-type (P = 0.36) physical activities were significantly associated with faster race times.
Conclusions: Wife carrying can be a novel option for increasing physical activity levels, which improve health. Although some key data were unavailable, such as wife’s body weight, and injury rates, this study identified several factors associated with better performance in this sport.
It was published as a Christmas article in the Med J Aust 2011; 195 (11): 723-725. Australians are known beer drinkers. You could easily have male and female carrier divisions to make it less sexist.
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The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony started out as science types having fun. The Journal of Irreproducible Results has been around for decades and reflects science humor much more closely than television shows like The Big Bang Theory. Over the years the Ig Nobels have evolved into papers that sound wacky at first glance, but in the end make you think and raise more questions.
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Recipes
Here are two spiced chai recipes... Let me know if you have better!
I have tried several but here are two I make with variations… for sweetening I usually use honey or maple syrup
note the overnight trick on the second type - you can adapt the first to it) it makes a very rich brew. I usually make 2 or 3 cups at a time and have throughout the day.
I’ve had some very good and very not-so-good spicey chai mixes that you just add to the water, milk and tea … there are probably some to try, but homemade is good.
______________ (All measurements are per cup – multiply for the number of cups or medium-sized mugs you are making. There are two approaches: focus on one key spice, like cardamom, or use a smaller quantity of several ingredients)
3/4 cup water plus 1/4 cup milk (I make this with coconut, almond or soy milk for a vegan version - all have different tastes. coconut is very rich) Sugar to taste Roughly ~2 teaspoons per cup loose black tea leaves (Ideally Assam or Ceylon tea – English Breakfast will do)
Some or all of the following (measurements are per cup or per medium-sized mug):
2 green cardamom pods 2-3 whole black peppercorns 1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds 1-2 pieces cinnamon (“real cinnamon”. May be labeled “Vietnamese cinnamon”) Fresh ginger (2-3 thin slices for extra zing)
Or
Loose tea masala (a mixture of spices that I’ve found - it makes it very siple) and ginger (see above) if desired (I like ginger a lot, so I almost always use it)
Heat water and milk. Before it comes to a boil, add fresh ginger (with skin, sliced into thin rounds), if using and any or several of the following: a few pods of green cardamom, Cinnamon stick, fennel seeds, peppercorns and/or cinnamon. Devesh used 1/8 teaspoon of tea masala per cup and fresh ginger, skipping the other spices. When the milk / water mixture boils, add loose black tea. Turn off the heat and let steep for 2 minutes. Pour into a cup through a sieve to strain out tea leaves and spices. Add sugar / sweetener to taste.
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Masala Chai Tea
makes one 8 ounce serving 3/4 cup water 2-4 whole green cardamom pods, smashed 1-2 thin slices fresh ginger 1 1-inch cinnamon stick 1 piece star anise 3/4 cup milk (vegan use coconut, almond or soy milk) 1 1/2 teaspoons loose black tea leaves (Assam or English Breakfast teas work well) Sweetener, to taste (I prefer honey or maple syrup)
In a small saucepan, combine the water, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon stick and star anise. Bring the mixture to a boil then lower the heat and simmer for a few minutes until the mixture is fragrant. Add the milk and tea leaves, and simmer for another minute then turn off the heat and let steep for 2 minutes. Pour into a cup through a fine mesh sieve. Discard the leaves and spices. Add sweetener, to taste.
If you want deeply flavorful tea in the morning, follow these alternate directions starting the night before.
In a small saucepan, combine the water, cardamom, cinnamon stick and star anise. Do not add the ginger yet. Bring to a boil then turn it off and cover the pan. In the morning, add the sliced ginger and bring to a boil then lower the heat and simmer for a few minutes until the mixture is fragrant. Add the milk and tea leaves, and simmer for another minute then turn off the heat and let steep for 2 minutes. Pour into a cup through a fine mesh sieve. Discard the tea and spices. Add sweetener, to taste.
Yesterday Todd Reichert went 139.45 km/h - 86.65 mph - using nothing but his muscles.
Some people claim Usain Bolt holds the title with his 9.58 second 100 meter world record sprint.1 An amazing run with a peak speed of 43.92 km/hr, but humans are terrible sprinters compared to more than a few land animals like cheetahs. We're really good at the longer distances, so perhaps it makes more sense to consider milers or longer races more representative of human achievement.
I'd argue the fastest person is the one who goes the fastest on muscle power. It may not be pure to consider a cyclist, but cycling is much more efficient than running.
Most of the power required to travel at high speeds goes into moving air out of the way. A few years ago I posted a simple back of the envelope derivation showing the power required to cut through the air increases as the cube of velocity. On a normal bicycle you start to feel strong wind resistance around 15 mph and you're working very hard at 20mph. You can make your life easier by improving your vehicle's aerodynamics. Road racing cyclists spend thousands of dollars making slight improvements to their bicycles.
A person on a bike isn't the most aerodynamic object. The equation I derived is sensitive to the area of the air column you travel through. This turns out to the the cross section frontal area of the moving object times a coefficient of drag - a term that depends strongly on the shape of the object. A Tour de France racer in a racing tuck has a coefficient of drag, a Cd, of about 0.7 and presents a cross section of about 0.5 square meters to the wind. Someone riding a casual commuter bike has a larger Cd and cross sectional area. They effectively travel through a larger tube of air, but at a much lower speed.
Velomobiles are streamlined bicycles. They're rarely seen in the US - perhaps a few thousand have been made and mostly in Germany and the Netherlands. Commercial models have frontal areas similar to that of a cyclist, but the Cd is usually in the 0.1 to 0.15 range - tiny by the standard of even the most aerodynamic cars.2 Even though they're larger and heavier than a regular bicycle, it is relatively easy for a normal rider to cruise along at 25 mph.
The Aerovelo Eta Todd Reichert piloted is the part of a serious engineering project involving some University of Toronto people. The Eta's frontal area is 0.35 m2 and its Cd is an astounding 0.038. A bit of calculating shows the Eta should be nearly three times as fast as a Tour de France road bike at speed with the same power input.3
One hundred miles per hour on a bike is a magic number. Although Todd is an excellent athlete, he isn't in the elite class. Just to move the air you need (161/140)3 times as much power. 100 mph on 1.5 horsepower - perhaps within the reach of an elite cyclist.4
From an old post Colleen delivers an easy 100 watts of power to the pedals of her bike at about 14 mph. That works out to about 1,025 mpg if you use the energy equivalent of vegetable oil and it goes up dramatically with a velomobile.5 Her speed improvement in the Eta would be something close to a factor of two. She should easily be able to cruise at nearly 30 mph and easily sprint to 40. Her power output is well within the capability of many commuters.
It seems very wasteful to have 3,500 pounds or more of car dedicated to move less than ten percent of that weight most of the time. Velomobiles operating in a 30 to 40 mph range would be great for 15 mile commutes and would be readily be adaptable to electrification. In mass production a practical version would probably sell for under $2,000. Unfortunately a problem that comes up whenever you start thinking about elements of a system rather than the full system. The velomobile, car, bus, or whatever is part of a very complex and expensive system that took decades to build and partly defines how we live. Massive systems have a lot of inertia.
I should note a few negatives for velomobiles. They tend to be heavy and long requiring parking infrastructure - less than cars, but it's an issue for cities that are moving towards bicycles. They're too fast to merge with bicycle traffic and too slow to safely merge with cars - dedicated and separate lanes are a tough sell. Making one agnostic to sidewinds is an issue. Heavier velomobiles help as does reduced side area so recumbents are an aerodynamic win, but that's not good for visibility in traffic. Finally, speaking from experience, you don't want to be in one on a warm Spring or Summer day. None of these problems is insurmountable, but infrastructure and "different" are issues. I see them as very interesting niche vehicles.
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1 A fascinating paper looking at the physics of the run. His peak speed was 12.2 meters per second - about 27mph. Peak acceleration came out of the starting blocks at 9.5m/s2 - 0.97g and peak power came a second into the run at 2.6 kW - nearly 3.5 horsepower. His body had to somehow deal with over 10,000 watts of excess heat at the time.
On the performance of Usain Bolt in the 100 m sprint
J J Hernández Gómez, V Marquina and R W Gómez Published 25 July 2013 European Journal of Physics, Volume 34, Number 5
Abstract Many university texts on mechanics consider the effect of air drag force, using the slowing down of a parachute as an example. Very few discuss what happens when the drag force is proportional to both u and u2. In this paper we deal with a real problem to illustrate the effect of both terms on the speed of a runner: a theoretical model of the world-record 100 m sprint of Usain Bolt during the 2009 World Championships in Berlin is developed, assuming a drag force proportional to u and to u2. The resulting equation of motion is solved and fitted to the experimental data obtained from the International Association of Athletics Federations, which recorded Bolt's position with a laser velocity guard device. It is worth noting that our model works only for short sprints.
2 a few Cd numbers for reference:
0.7 - 1.1 F1 car - very unaerodynamic and variable depending on downforce
0.7 Lotus Seven
0.6 - 0.8 normal semi truck (this is very low hanging fruit)
0.51 Citroën 2CV
0.48 VW Beetle
0.38 VW New Beetle
0.37 Ferrari F50
0.32 Honda Accord Coupe 2002
0.32 VW GTI Mk V 2006
- most current production sedans are in the 0.31 to 0.33 range
0.31 Audi A3 2014
0.28 Chevy Volt
0.275 Ford Fusion 2013
0.27 VW Golf Mk7 2012
0.25 Toyota Prius 2010
0.24 Mercedes S & C Class 2014
0.24 Tesla Model S
- dropping below 0.24 and still looking like a car is very difficult
0.195 GM EV 1
0.189 VW XL1 2015 ('production')
3 The back of the envelope:
Tour de France road bike Cd with rider is 0.7 - 1.0, area ~ 0.5 m2
Aerovelo Eta Cd = 0.038, area = 0.325 m
F~ 0.5DCdAv2, P = Fv → P ~0.5DCdAv3 (D is air density)
for the same power CdAvn3 = CdAve3
assume n is normal road racing bike with CdA = 0.7 * 0.5 and e is the eta with CdA = 0.038*0.325
0.35vn3 = 0.0124ve3
ve/vn ~ 3 ... everything else being equal (power, transmission efficiency, wheel friction, ...), the Eta should be about three times as fast as a normal optimized road bike. It should be noted that over 90% of the power going into a road bike at speed pushes air out of the way.
4 Some rough numbers on how much power can be supplied over time. Elite male athletes are not shown. A TdF rider can usually supply about 6 watts/kg of body mass for thirty minutes or so. These guys are usually light and all leg muscle, so we're talking about 400 watts. Sprinters can easily go over 1,000 watts for short periods. 1,100 watts might move the Eta past 100 mph including sources of drag other than wind resistance.
5 In theory this would work - vegetable oil has the same energy density as diesel fuel, but people prefer regular foods. One of those comparison -only-don't-try-this-at-home numbers. Colleen on her bike has a Cd of 0.91 and a frontal area of 0.72 m2. An upright riding position and a very tall rider. The speed increase can be found by equating the power required by her bike and the Eta: 0.66vn3 = 0.0124ve3 → ve/vn ~ 3.7 assuming it is dominated by wind resistance. That is only the wind resistance component. Since we're not at extreme speeds the overall speed improvement is less. Another back of the envelope that I don't show suggested it is reasonable to expect an improvement by factor of 3 resulting in a cruising speed of a bit over 40 mph. Effective mpg would be in the 3,000 mpg range.
A commuter velomobile would have to be larger than the Eta to accommodate larger drivers and baggage. The frontal area would be larger and the Cd is unlikely to be as optimized as it would need better interior ventilation among other things. Even so a Cd of under 0.1 should be easy along with a frontal area of 0.5 m2. That would give a speed improvement of 2.3 on wind resistance and at least 2 overall. So she would be traveling close to 30 mph on the same effort she currently uses. Longer trips, higher speeds and better hill capability could be had with small auxiliary electric motors making it a human-electric hybrid.
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Recipe corner
No recipe this time, just a link to a new tomato - the Rutgers 2.0 to celebrate Rutger's 250 anniversary. Sign me up, I look forward to getting some seeds to grow next year.
A large portion of the human brain is devoted to processing vision. We turn light collected on two small surfaces into electrical signals that are converted into a rich three dimensional model of the world around us. Simple tasks like catching a ball turn out to be beautiful examples of Newtonian physics. Observing the world gave us a huge supply of problems at many levels of difficulty. Over the centuries we worked through Nature's hints and problem sets developing amazingly predictive theories about how the Universe works along the way.
I sometimes wonder what discovery of physical law and art would be like for other animals if they had brains as powerful as ours. Dogs with their sense of smell probably wouldn't notice as much of the beautiful geometry in the sky. They'd probably concentrate on odors and would develop a science centered on chemistry. Their art would be very foreign to us - stories with rich plots on top of plots where observation is of the past rather than the present and time is calculated by the decay of an odor.... Whales are acoustic specialists, but the sounds they're sensitive to doesn't allow precise imaging. Their intuitive geometry might not be very crisp and what we think of as simple constructions might be abstract. Their vision isn't very good so they wouldn't be finding the patterns in the sky.
Our physics and math progressed to a point but finally intuition beyond visual observation became important. We struggle with what the equations suggest and rely on private visualizations to make sense of abstract fields like quantum mechanics and fields. One has to wonder if intelligent spiders might might have several legs up on us grasping field theory.
Nature allows many lines of questioning - but I'll admit to being biased towards vision.
Visualization is a necessary skill in much of science. More than a few physics departments offer courses through art departments to improve drawing and visualization skills. I suspect most people who end up in science have been sketching and visualizing for years.
I've been drawing as long as I can remember. I remember the kinetic joy of finger painting, but the real freedom came with pencil and paper. My Dad would bring home rolls of inexpensive butcher paper and let my sister and I go at it. We'd draw for hours. Time slowed down or just disappeared as drawings just emerged. Then we'd be pulled out of our trances for dinner or bed. It is the first time I can remember falling into a state of flow.
I still draw and sketch quite a bit for recreation and thinking. Paper is an amazing technology when you think about it, but I would love to be able to easily capture my drawings digitally. I've spent a fair amount of money and effort trying to do this, but nothing has been satisfying. When something is important I hunt for paper and pencil and then scan or photograph it if it needs to be digital.
With this as background, Apple's iPad Pro announcement caught my attention this week. I haven't tried one, but it may get me past the flow boundary. If you don't know about it, take a look at Apple's promotion video from the announcement a few days ago:
This isn't a normal iPad. iPads use a pointing device that, although convenient, isn't terribly accurate. I use my iPad 3 for reading, browsing, email and other forms of communication, reading and even editing music and photos. I leave my laptop at home when I travel. It is very good at what it does., but...
the regular iPad fundamentally fails as a drawing device
Sure you can do some simple drawing and any number of styli are on the market that are a bit more accurate than a finger. When I was a toddler I progressed from my finger to a pencil. I want a digital device that feels like a pencil on paper.
Currently most digital artists use Wacom tablets - digitizing tablets that use a pen. The tablet is usually held at a right angle to the screen. Precision work is possible, but my hand feels disconnected to the drawing surface. Additionally there is a bit of latency - sometimes you pen is moving faster than the image on the screen. Flow is elusive.
Some artists use Cintiq screens. They're an LCD screen that is sensitive to a pen. Think of them as iPads with much better pointing accuracy. In theory they're what you need, but there are some issues.1 They have low resolution color screens separated by a thick piece of glass. The image surface is far removed from the drawing surface causing parallax problems. The screens tend to be heavy. They're heavy, very expensive and need to be connected to a PC. There are often driver problems when new OS and drawing software appears. But there're the best thing going.
I need something that is accurate to the pixel level, and has a very low latency - the lag between moving the pen and having the image respond. The Cintiq I used had a best case 25 millisecond latency. Flow is very difficult to achieve if your image can't keep up with your pen. The other issues, particularly the parallax, were annoying, but latency killed it.
The iPad Pro, if it is as good as the video suggests, is an enhanced iPad.2 It is just an iPad until you need the precision drawing demands. Microsoft completely blew their demos when they showed crude drawing that is cleaned up in software and crude lettering - you can do that with your finger. Some, not all, need to go beyond that.
For it to be useful I think I need a latency below 10 milliseconds. I know I can detect and feel 15. I keep asking if artists have tried it and there is some indication this may be in the right ballpark. Apple is using faster sampling and screen drawing when the pencil is in use, so maybe ... If it isn't quite there, they'll probably improve in the next year or two. There are other issues like screen and pencil feel, but I think I can forgive them if everything else works.
So is this the iPad for everyone? Certainly not.3 A normal iPad is more than enough and is something of a PC replacement for many. But if you're a kid or draw, you would want a responsive and accurate pencil when you need to use it. If you draw a lot the pencil is just an extension of your hand - you don't think about it as a drawing instrument.4
Rarely to I see technology that makes me sit up. This is one of those times. It is spendy, so I may wait a year for a more responsive model and would probably go for the standard sized iPad if the feature is extended throughout the line. But we're getting close to computationally enhanced paper...
I'll leave with a video featuring an artist I met several years ago at Disney. Glen Keane draws for the joy of it. The video captures a bit of why you draw early on. He moves on to a VR drawing tool that asks some interesting questions, but I'm more interested in drawing itself - when you can just draw and flow away.
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1 I used one quite a bit four years ago and tried a much better one last year. The newer model was better, but is far from what I need. Would I take one if someone gave it to me? - no...
2 I've tried a Surface and would have bought one if it worked to my needs. I fails the latency test. Would I take one if someone gave it to me? - no...
3 Apple appears to be positioning this as a business tool in addition to the creative niche. Would I take one if someone gave it to me? - certainly (donations welcome:) Would I pay $1k for one? - maybe, but it would have to past my accuracy and latency hurdles.
Perhaps a more interesting question is would this be more appealing if it ran OS X rather than iOS? File management is important for art. Great art programs already exist.
4 You may have seen the pen called a pencil. A pencil is frequently a better device than a pen for sketching. I think used a better term.
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Recipe Corner
Sesame noodles adapted from an old newspaper recipe from ages ago
Cold Sesame Noodles
Ingredients
° 1 pound Chinese egg noodles from an Asian grocery.
° 2 tbl sesame oil
° 3 tbl soy sauce
° 2 tbl Chinese sesame paste
° 2 tbl Chinese rice vinegar
° 1 tbl peanut butter
° 1 tbl white sugar
° 1 tbl grated ginger (fresh is important)
° 2 tsp minced garlic
° 1 to 3 tsp chili-garlic paste (I like 2, but depending on how hot you like it)
° half a medium cucumber peeled and seeded but into 1/8" matchsticks
° 1/3 cup chopped roasted peanuts (no skins)
Technique
° Add noodles to a big pot of oiling water and cook 'til tender, but slightly chewy. Drain and rinse with cold water. Toss with a bit of sesame oil
° Whisk together the sesame oil, soy sauce. rice vinegar, sesame paste, pb, sugar, ginger, garlic, and chili-garlic paste.
° pour the sauce over the noodles and toss. Garnish with cucumber and peanuts.
We're beginning to see the rise of electric vehicles. They have certain advantages like power train efficiency, simplicity and enormous torque at low speeds. While many people have a reasonable understanding of how an internal combustion engine works, motors tend to be a bit mysterious. Central to the mystery is understanding magnets.
I started a post about magnets as they are a beautiful example of relativity showing up in our mostly non-relativistic world. After spending thirty minutes on some drawings I decided to see if there was anything I could borrow. In the process I stumbled into two simple videos that offer a great non-technical explanation - much clearer than anything I could easily write. Video is powerful.
first how an electromagnet works:
and once you have a grip on electromagnets, permanent magnets can make sense
This doesn't get into many other issues associated with electrification, but magnets are central to motors and generators and the modern world. We wouldn't be talking about the wonders of computation and the Internet without that foundation.
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Since this is so short, I'll throw in a a bit of gee-wiz that can lead to a much longer conversation. It has nothing to do with magnetism, but is the prelude to a response to a question that came up... 'what is mass?' ...
About 0.03% of your mass comes from our electrons. Most of us have less than an ounce of electrons - for me it is about 23 grams.
You've undoubtedly heard about the Higgs particle discovered at CERN a few years ago ... It was generally explained that the Higgs field gives particles mass, but that's not quite where most your mass comes from. Your electrons get mass from the Higgs field and only about 2% of the rest of you .. your protons and neutrons ... gets its mass from that mechanism. Other things are at work and that could make a post one of these days, but in the meantime be thankful for your mass. You wouldn't be here without it.
Massless particles zip around at the speed of light and nothing else. Having mass means your particles have the freedom to travel, in theory at least, at any speed below the speed of light. This means they can travel so slowly with respect to each other than groups of them can get together. Sort of important if chemistry and biology is to happen.
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So many variations. Mixing corn, avocado and tomatoes works very well. If you have a vinaigrette you like it is really easy, otherwise the one shown here works well. If the corn is exceptionally fresh I like using it raw, otherwise grilling it is great. Mixing in a cup or so of chopped pecans makes it a main course.
Yet Another Corn Salad
Ingredients
° 2 big ears of corn (3 if small)
° 2 cups fresh tomatoes diced
° 1 ripe avocado
° 1/2 cucumber peeled and seeded
° about a cup of chopped fresh basil
° freshly ground black pepper
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° 2 tbl red wine vinegar
° 4 tsp Dijon mustard
° 2 small shallots minced
° 1 tsp sea salt
° 3/8 cup olive oil (about)
Technique
° shuck the corn for raw kernels or grill the corn lightly oiled to get a light char
° peel the avocado, dice the meat - cut the cucumber to the same size
° put the kernels, tomatoes, avocado, cucumber, and basil in a bowl. Add pepper.
° in a small bowl make the vinaigrette with vinegar, mustard, shallots, olive oil and salt. Whisk, pour over the the salad and mix gently. Adjust salt and pepper.
Dianna Cowern's work is great. Such delight and enthusiasm - it speaks highly of MIT:-) Her work, imho, is more important than that of people like Neil deGrasse Tyson as it is so much more accessible and manages to communicate the wonder on a personal level. I've met her and you're seeing an authentic science lover. She's also a terrific role model for girls. Her YouTube channel has grown to the point where she now has the support to do this for a living.
Formal K12 science education generally focuses on memorizing 'facts' and is too often distant and dry. There is no better way to kill an interest in physics and astronomy than a first semester course in physics that focuses on statics and math technique. The other sciences don't seem to fare any better. It isn't any wonder that many people who go on to science talk about learning outside of school when they were kids.
Over the years there have been attempts to support teenage amateur science. Unfortunately some of it misses the mark. The big ticket items when I was young were telescopes, microscopes and chemistry sets. Inexpensive optical instruments are usually bad and manage to find their way into the basement or the back of a closet. The chemistry sets weren't much better with manuals that replicated the non-excitement of a high school chemistry lab with boring cookbook experiments. The only attraction for some kids was the the fact that it could be a bit dangerous, but over time safety concerns rendered the kits about as interesting as a cake mix.
Such a shame as chemistry can be beautiful to the point of revelation. People have talked about a clueful chemistry set for teenagers and adults for decades, but that would take a serious commitment of time and money.
You'd be hard pressed to source the bits and pieces for less - I'd recommend going all the way if you're remotely interested. A responsible teen will probably manage to keep all of their fingers and eyebrows, so there isn't much worry. An adult with any imagination might discover a part of the world they didn't know about. For some this may be more exciting than a trip to an exotic location. But I'm talking about potential - the information so far is promising, but the important part will be the suggested experiments and explanations. Perhaps an online community will form around the project to add some depth.
It makes me wonder about what it would take to build a kit to explore physics at home.1 Much of physics involves seeing the unseen and smartphones have the computation power and a display that can dramatically lower the barrier. It just isn't physics. Instruments that extend or add to your senses are fundamental to the study of nature. The ability to do time lapse photographic studies, good enough digital microscopes, ultrasonic microphones, spectrographs, ir image sensors, and more. I was even able to find the normal modes of vibration of my living room during a hurricane using the three axis accelerometer in my iPhone. Much of this is pure gee whiz play early one, but some will want to understand at a slightly deeper level. The same instruments still work. Even serious mathematical investigation is being made more accessible with student versions of tools like Mathematica.
Perhaps there are even social uses. I didn't date until well into grad school. Dianna has a nice video showing something I used on my first date. (ok - I was pretty clueless).2
This is great stuff.
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1 I could get serious about this. As a kid I was fascinated with vacuum tubes, light and sound and spent a lot of time playing. Prisms, mirrors, a camera, filters, a borrowed tape recorder and so on were important tools. All of this along with amateur radio and learning how components work singly and together. You end up building a physical intuition that comes in handy at later stages when you get into more mathematical theory. You manage to gain a sense that you are asking the questions rather than just following someone else's cookbook.
2 An interview of Physics Girl Listen and imagine what science education could be like if at least ten percent of the instruction time focused on wonder. We need a group of treasures like her. Sort of RadioLab for lean forward science teens.
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Corn Soup
Ingredients
° 4 oz pound butter
° 1 cup thinly sliced leeks, whites only
° 1/2 cup thinly sliced yellow onions
° 2 cloves garlic, minced
° 4 cups corn kernels, cobs reserved, plus another 1/2 cup kernels (it took 4 huge cobs)
° 4 cups vegetable stock
° 1/2 cup cream
° Salt and freshly ground black pepper
° 1 lime
° 4 tablespoons olive oil
Technique
° Melt butter over medium heat. Sauté leeks, onions and garlic until onions are translucent, about 6 minutes.
° Add 4 cups corn kernels, reserved cobs and just enough stock to cover corn. Increase heat to medium-high and simmer until stock absorbs flavors of other ingredients, about 35 minutes. Stir in cream and simmer until soup thickens, 10-15 minutes more. Remove cobs and discard.
° Purée soup until smooth. Season soup with salt, pepper and lime juice to taste. Return soup to pan and keep warm over low heat.
° Prepare garnishes: Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a small sauté pan over medium-high heat. Sauté remaining corn kernels until warmed.
° Season with salt.
° Ladle soup into bowls. Drizzle each serving with some of remaining olive oil and garnish with sautéed corn kernels.