Comments on: Friday quickies

By: RAD

RAD — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 09:52:06 +0000

Every time I read stuff like this I think of the Darwin awards site. Sometimes its amazing to think more people don’t kill themselves doing stupid things. At my work we have a cleaning crew that uses about a million gallons of water each night to clean the facility, we make stoffers foods. One night I observed a member of that crew hosing down an open 120 volt outlet. Why is he not dead? I asked him if he thought that seemed like a good idea and he said everything is waterproof here. I doubt anyone here would think of dragging your garden hose in your house and hosing down one of your outlets but to this guys it seemed like the thing to do. I do love a good experiment too. I had a chemistry teacher blow up a beaker in class, I think she then went to change her underwear. Anyway, cool stuff, I still check out that optical illusion daily, its awesome

By: Jianying

Jianying — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 03:32:03 +0000

Re Amara,

What is new, is that they were finally able to read the enscription that was actually on the device itself that described what the device is for.

Since it has being found, people mostly reverse engineered its mechanism from its physical construction to figure its usage.

Finally we are now able to see if it match what the device says it is for. It is like discovering the original manual for the device. And from what I read it mostly confirms the results from the physical reconstructions.

It is quite amazing that they used an eight ton CAT scanner to accomplish this feat.

I wonder if this thing could have being accurate enough and tough enough to be taken out to the seas to measure longitude with?

By: Amara

Amara — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:28:36 +0000

Hmm, that’s odd. The Antikythera device has been known for at least 4 or 5 years to track a particular form of the epicylic motion of planetary bodies (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1337165),
and it has been studied since the 1960s as a very interesting geared ancient Greek mechanism, so I wonder what it is that is new.

By: spacewriter

spacewriter — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 15:12:07 +0000

Evelyn Plait:

Phil was with all of us in Cape Canaveral Florida at a Planetarium meeting.

He behaved himself and gave a good talk.

You woulda been proud (again).

Spacewriter

By: Kaptain K

Kaptain K — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 06:51:32 +0000

Liquid nitrogen in the pool is neat…but not as neat as one I saw a couple of days ago about using liquid oxygen as charcoal starter!!! Used a cheap, stamped metal grill. Nothing left of the grill, just a pile of briquette ashes on the ground!

By: John B. Sandlin

John B. Sandlin — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 04:44:26 +0000

I just saw a note on CNN’s web site that the primary camera is out of commission, at least temporarily, on the Hubble. Apparently it stopped working on Monday. They’re evaluating the situation to see if it can be fixed. Meanwhile, the other instruments are still working.

Click here for the CNN page

jbs

By: Chris CII

Chris CII — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 18:09:48 +0000

Quote
Iâ€™m disappointed. I was hoping to see the pool frozen solid in an instant and the pool walls crack, as I am told will happen if you dump a thermos of liquid nitrogen into a toilet.
/Quote

A thermos is roughly 1 liter, and a toilet bowl is roughly 5 liters. So you have a 1/5 ratio in volume, and high walls that trap the nitrogen inside and magnify the cooling.

A Pool is roughly 500 000 liters and the bowl is roughly 10 liters. So you have a 1/5000 ratio, and a very high surface area and low walls which permit a quick dissipation of the Nitrogen, so you have two very different problems. Add to that the whole pool area is at a much higher temperature (around 26Â°C) than the toilet (around 19Â°C) and that the air over the pool is saturated with humidity, which immediatly condenses as fog, giving up a lot of heat.