April 26, 2013

amusicalconfessional:

Billy Squire - My Kinda Lover

You got my motor racin’
I find my thoughts embracin’ your every move
I wanna set you reelin’
I wanna make you feel the way that I do
And oh-
I been thinkin’ ‘bout you for so long
I don’t wanna lose ya—you’re my kinda lover”

Last night I was listening to Radiolab and I swear they were incorrectly using the scientific terms stochastic and chaotic. I was drunk so maybe I misunderstood. Anyway I started writing a post explaining it. But really who wants that. If someone who’s not a computer scientist ever says the word stochastic you know with 95% certainty they’re full of shit, what better definition do you need?

12:10pm
(Notes: 12)
  
Filed under: science clear science people in business like to say 'stochastic' buzz words buzz worfs radiolab 
April 5, 2013
“You could say that the massive portable computer revolution happened because batteries got smaller and smaller. Batteries are the limiting factor.” Check me out. Username: chels who works at Brookhaven National Lab wrote a nice story about my battery work there with my friends Can (who is Turkish) and username: steingart (not pictured). Science: it is a Tumblr Party Come To Life, man.

“You could say that the massive portable computer revolution happened because batteries got smaller and smaller. Batteries are the limiting factor.”

Check me out. Username: chels who works at Brookhaven National Lab wrote a nice story about my battery work there with my friends Can (who is Turkish) and username: steingart (not pictured). Science: it is a Tumblr Party Come To Life, man.

1:36pm
(Notes: 41)
  
Filed under: science batteries energy Brookhaven National Synchrotron Light Source 
March 2, 2013
Women in Chemistry

Have I ever told you guys about the time that I got a very long and formal email from my friend D. Janes about Women in Chemistry and how their numbers are increasing and it’s important we keep up the trend?

And I had no idea why he was sending me such a long, formal, sincere email, which was completely out of character? And so I replied and said “I think women who do chemistry are pretty hot!” because that’s the kind of thing he might expect from me?

But then did I tell you how the President of the American Chemical Society was D. James and the email was actually from him?

And I sent him that reply I thought I was sending to my friend D. Janes? Who was writing me long formal emails for some reason? Did I ever tell you that?

8:46pm
(Notes: 19)
  
Filed under: science chemistry kant remember if I told you that 
February 26, 2013
A big battery, for the grid scale

A big battery, for the grid scale

3:26pm
(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: science battery pretend I linked to Battery by Metallica 
February 23, 2013
KcD drew the periodic table as characters for her senior thesis project at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. So of course I immediately clicked though to see what osmium looked like. The project website is here. (Kc you could have just asked what I look like okay?)

KcD drew the periodic table as characters for her senior thesis project at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. So of course I immediately clicked though to see what osmium looked like. The project website is here. (Kc you could have just asked what I look like okay?)

10:48am
(Notes: 12)
  
Filed under: science chemistry art 
January 10, 2013
“Superimposed isocontours of a growing dendrite from a set of 30 frames digitized at fixed interval Δt = 0.5 s.”

“Superimposed isocontours of a growing dendrite from a set of 30 frames digitized at fixed interval Δt = 0.5 s.”

8:26pm
(Notes: 6)
  
Filed under: science zinc dendrite electrochemistry 
August 11, 2012
RESULTS: OSMIUM’S BEST TRIP TO WORK Dedicated readers might recall my experiment to determine the best trip from home to work. I compared 5 different routes, and even though I don’t yet have the same sample size N for all trips, I am declaring the experiment conclusive: The Yankees Gambit is the quickest route. The 7th Son is the slowest. Old Reliable, King of Queens, and The Duke Ellington are all basically equivalent at 54-55 minutes. With one caveat: If you just miss an A train The Duke Ellington can be quite long. You may notice most of the standard deviation error bars overlap, so the differences here are somewhat slight. The Yankees Gambit does feel noticeably quicker, so I feel like I learned something from this experiment. That particular route is so weird trying it didn’t occur to me for years.

RESULTS: OSMIUM’S BEST TRIP TO WORK

Dedicated readers might recall my experiment to determine the best trip from home to work. I compared 5 different routes, and even though I don’t yet have the same sample size N for all trips, I am declaring the experiment conclusive:

  1. The Yankees Gambit is the quickest route.
  2. The 7th Son is the slowest.
  3. Old Reliable, King of Queens, and The Duke Ellington are all basically equivalent at 54-55 minutes. With one caveat: If you just miss an A train The Duke Ellington can be quite long.

You may notice most of the standard deviation error bars overlap, so the differences here are somewhat slight. The Yankees Gambit does feel noticeably quicker, so I feel like I learned something from this experiment. That particular route is so weird trying it didn’t occur to me for years.

2:02pm
(Notes: 11)
  
Filed under: osmium's best trip to work science mta subway nyc 
July 30, 2012
Major Shit I Learned Today

  1. 9 M potassium hydroxide dissolves Kapton
  2. If you ride your bike to work don’t actually wear the dress shirt you plan to have on all day

9:00pm
(Notes: 6)
  
Filed under: Science 
July 23, 2012
Sally Ride ?? What have I missed today

7:21pm
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: sad face time to go to sleep science 
July 12, 2012
I haven’t clicked this, but I teach this question in my class. Specifically I ask Why does a 90-degree bath feel good but 90-degree air feels hot? It has to do with the heat transfer coefficients (usually denoted h, with units of W/m^2/K) between skin and water and skin and air. This field is called interphase transport phenomena, and if you major in engineering you can spend an entire semester on it. Should I go see whether Slate got it right or not?

I haven’t clicked this, but I teach this question in my class. Specifically I ask Why does a 90-degree bath feel good but 90-degree air feels hot? It has to do with the heat transfer coefficients (usually denoted h, with units of W/m^2/K) between skin and water and skin and air. This field is called interphase transport phenomena, and if you major in engineering you can spend an entire semester on it.

Should I go see whether Slate got it right or not?

12:46pm
(Notes: 11)
  
Filed under: science transport phenomena