Chad Orzel's Blog, page 13

151/366: Half an Oak

When Kate and I were looking for a house back in late 2002, one of the things that sold us on this place was the back yard. The lot is very deep, unusually so for this part of Niskayuna, so there’s a lot of space in the back yard, and it was pleasantly shaded by trees. We’ve since taken down the maples that were on the south side, but there’s an enormous oak in the northeast corner that we’ve left in place, which is a really nice tree.

Our neighbor to the north, however, was not as fond of this tree, as she was really into gardening, and the oak casts much of that yard in shade. When we were having the maples taken out, she hinted a bunch that she wouldn’t mind having the oak disappear as well, but we like it. I did, however, tell her that it would be OK to have the tree service trim back the branches that extended over the fence, so long as it didn’t hurt the tree.

This is the result:

The giant oak tree in our back yard, showing the aggressive pruning of branches that stick over the fence.

(That’s at sunset yesterday, but there wasn’t much color thanks to the cloud cover, so I made this a greyscale image.)

From our yard, it’s not really that noticeable– I had to stand in a slightly inconvenient spot to get this– especially in summer when it’s fully leafed out. It’s pretty striking from the back angle, though, especially in the fall and winter. I’ve been meaning to get a photo of this for a while, and yesterday was the first good opportunity.

142-150/366: On-Deadline Catchup

I’ve been neglecting the photo-a-day thing for the last week-and-a-bit, but for a good reason: I had a deadline of, well, today, to finish a chapter I was asked to contribute to an academic book. And while I fully realize that actually hitting that deadline is not typical academic behavior, I have A Thing about that, and was going to make damn sure I finished by the end of the month, as I had promised. So a lot of stuff got neglected, to the point where there were a few days in that stretch where I didn’t take any pictures at all.

So, you get another catch-up post. I owe nine photos, but I have twelve good ones from this stretch, though a few of those are paired. So I’ll somewhat arbitrarily assign numbers to these, and saw that I’m all caught up…

142/366: Carrots

Pictures of carrots. Top by The Pip, bottom by SteelyKid.

The Pip’s favorite restaurant is Applebee’s, God help us, and one of his favorite activities there is using the little at-table tablet things to draw pictures. He almost inevitably decides to draw a carrot, because reasons, and then insists I take a picture of his drawing. And then SteelyKid has to get a piece of that action, too.

So here are some carrot drawings.

143/366: Parkour Kids

We went to a couple of home basketball games over on campus during this stretch, and the kids have discovered the joy of going outside on the patio right off the lobby and doing crazy things. Here’s SteelyKid showing off her frightening agility:

SteelyKid bouncing off a wall.

The Pip doesn’t quite have the same grace:

The Pip trying to kick off a wall.

144/366: Woodpecker

I think I already posted one photo of a woodpecker to this, but here’s another:

Woodpecker on the bird feeder.

145/366: Mystery Birds

One day we suddenly had a big-ass flock of these quail-ish birds all over our yard:

Quail-like birds on the front lawn.

I’m not sure what these are, but when I posted a different image of them to Twitter, the most common guess was starlings, so, probably starlings. I guess.

146/366: Sunrise Bus

Clouds at sunrise, with the bus picking up the kid across the street.

The bus that picks up the kid across the street (who goes to one of the other elementary schools in the district, as we live in a “flex zone” that can feed two of the five, as needed to keep enrollments balanced) arrives a bit earlier than SteelyKid’s which coincided nicely with pretty sunrise colors. This is actually facing west– the sunrise is behind me, but it’s impossible to get a good shot of the sky in that direction.

147/366 Hoops Action

As I said above, there were two basketball games in this stretch. I got some decent action shots at the second:

Opening tip of the women’s basketball game.

Union’s Amy Fisher drives in for a lay-up.

Shortly after the second of these, SteelyKid slipped while climbing up the bleachers and face-planted, scraping up her upper lip. This was not one of the highlights of our week…

148/366: Reading Pip

I try to limit the number of cute-kid photos in these, but they’re so darn cute…

The Pip studying his Lego superhero book with Kate.

149/366: Fort Steelypips

SteelyKid has been obsessed with building forts of late. Here’s the latest of them:

A particularly large blanket fort in the living room.

I crawled inside this one, and made an attempt to capture the inside:

Interior of the giant blanket fort.

150/366: Secret Message

We had a big flurry of “secret message” writing yesterday, using a spy kit that SteelyKid got for… Christmas? Her birthday? I don’t remember; we’ve had it for a while. This involved writing in one color, then scribbling over it with red, which vanishes when viewed through a red plastic filter that came with the kit. She and I did a bunch of experimenting to find crayon combinations that worked well, and here’s one of the better attempts:

Test of the “secret message” kit; in normal light at the top, through the red filter on the bottom.

And that catches us up through yesterday, assuming I’ve counted days correctly. And even if I haven’t, it ought to be enough pictures to prove a point of some sort. My book chapter will get sent out this afternoon, after which I’ll be a little calmer, and expect to resume more regular blogging.

Fluid Dynamics Is Weird: Bathroom Sink Edition

One of the things about being a physicist that makes it tough to have any sensible work-life balance is that I’m constantly seeing little things and thinking “Oooh! Physics!” then getting distracted from what I’m actually supposed to be doing. Take, for example, our bathroom sink.

I have noticed, from time to time, a weird effect where the stream of water coming out of the faucet, which normally is fairly straight, will spread out when the water level in the container below gets close to the faucet. This turns out to be damnably difficult to replicate, though, and I’ve spent more time than I care to admit screwing around with the sink trying to get it right. I finally got it yesterday, though, as you can see in this video (which also has a clip from a later failed attempt):

And here’s a couple of screencaps (also visible as the “featured image” above if you’re not reading via RSS) showing what I’m talking about:

Two screencaps from the video showing the way the stream from the faucet spreads when water level of the container gets close to the nozzle.

On the left, the cup of water is lower down, and not completely full, and the stream from the faucet is basically straight, narrowing slightly. On the right, the cup’s completely full, and close to the faucet, and you can see that the stream fans out just before it enters the water.

The one semi-consistent thing I’ve noticed is that this seems to only happen with hot water; I’ve never gotten it to work with cold (the second clip is cold water, done deliberately to show that it’s not a consistent thing). The flow rates in the two clips probably aren’t identical, but that’s a hard thing to match with the handles on our sink.

Anyway, I have absolutely no idea why this happens; I’m mostly just glad to have evidence that I didn’t imagine it. So I’m going to throw it out there and see if any of my wise and worldly readers can explain what the hell is going on.

And now, actual work.

Quantum Short Fiction, Voting Open Now

The Center for Quantum Technologies is running a “Quantum Shorts” contest, where they solicited short stories exploring some aspect of quantum physics. They cut their large number of applicants down to two short-lists of ten, one for the “Open” category, and one for the “Youth” category. They’ll be giving out a “People’s Choice Award” based on Internet voting, so you can go over there and vote for your favorite.

There are also judged prizes, and I’m serving as a judge for the “Youth” category (and already sent in my rankings), so it would be inappropriate for me to plug any particular stories as really good. I can, however, point you to all of the finalists, to help you procrastinate on a Friday morning by reading fun stories about quantum physics:

Another Eloise
Eyes of Infinity
Fundamentally Flawed
Guess the door
The Qubits of College Acceptance
Trans-dimensional resuscitation
Twinzies
Unrequited Signals
W.A.R.
When Physics Became Chemistry

Advice to the Past

Over at Scientific American, Amanda Baker has a story about what scientists say they would tell their younger selves.

I reached out to eight of my colleagues who are currently in STEM fields and asked them a series of questions about their childhood interests in science, school experiences, and roadblocks that they faced on their path from elementary school to their current positions. […]

Their feedback covered not only what drew them to science, but also what had almost pushed them away. Below I have consolidated the feedback into five main points, including the advice they would give their middle school selves if they could do it all again.

It’s sort of interesting, and a lot of what they talk about resonates with my own experience– like her colleagues, I always wanted to do something science-y, which included a paleontology phase, and I had my own issues with dry and abstract math classes. And, of course, this naturally leads to idly musing about what I’d tell myself back in middle school.

Unfortunately, I’m not very interesting in this regard. I’m basically happy with my place in life (the occasional period of work-related depression aside), and there’s not a lot I feel I missed out on, in terms of career preparation. A lot of the advice suggested by Baker’s colleagues is stuff I did already– I was never a grade-grubber, I went to a liberal arts college, and I got really into basketball starting in middle school so I’ve remained physically active, more or less.

And lots of the things I didn’t do were not-done more or less consciously as trade-offs for something else. I probably should’ve taken some chem or bio classes in college, to understand those fields better. But then, I probably should’ve taken art history in college, and I didn’t do that either, for the same reason: I was avoiding time-consuming classes outside my major to allow time for playing rugby and socializing. And I don’t think I’d trade those experiences for a slightly wider knowledge of science. There are some other gaps that would require much larger changes– my knowledge of field theory and general relativity is pretty sketchy, mostly because they didn’t regularly teach those subjects at Williams. I could’ve learned more about that stuff, but I would’ve needed to go to an entirely different college, and I wouldn’t make that trade, either.

Though that’s also a kind of funny way to talk about things. Because I don’t doubt that I could’ve made any of those trade-offs and still ended up basically happy with my place in life. I’d just be a very different person, being happy in a very different place.

Really, if I were going to go back and give advice to my middle-school self, it wouldn’t be about career preparation. I had a few unhappy years in the middle-school sort of time frame, but that was a matter of social things, not anything educational. I got a handle on that stuff a little later, but if I were going to try to get seventh-grade-me to do something different, it would be to try to speed that process up a bit. Specifically, to recognize that a big part of the problems I had getting along with other kids was self-inflicted.

But, you know, sorting out that sort of thing is part of what middle school is about, and I’m not convinced that seventh-grade-me would believe 2016-me, anyway. Seventh-grade-me could be an insufferable little shit. Which was a major source of his problems.

So, like I said: boring.

I will, however, endorse the general advice given in that post. And, in fact, I’ve said that at much greater length, here and here. So, if you’re in middle school now, take that stuff to heart. Learn some programming, chill out about grades, study a broad range of subjects, and find some physical activity you enjoy. You’ll be glad you did.

Also: work on not being an insufferable little shit, okay?

141/366: Holes

As mentioned last week, SteelyKid is doing Odyssey of the Mind this year, and her team has elected to build a balsa wood structure. The goal for these is to support the maximum possible weight, and the first step of the testing is to put a “crusher board” on top. This is a couple of 18″ square sheets of plywood glued together with a hole through the middle for the safety pipe that runs up the center of the structure to keep everything aligned.

Since one part of the team had a test structure ready at the end of the last meeting, I wanted to have something we could use to see if it would hold weight. So I went to Lowe’s and picked up a few 2′ squares of particle board and committed some rather trivial carpentry:

View through the hole I cut through some pieces of particle board to use testing SteelyKid’s balsa-wood structure for OM.

(I also took a randomly artsy picture of my work, because that’s what I do…)

The final structure is limited to 15 grams of balsa wood and glue; SteelyKid’s test structure weighed in at 6g. It held two sheets of particle board with a weight of a bit more than 9lbs each (so a total mass of about 8.2kg). The problem calls for taking weight off the structure, then putting it back again, so we tried that; the second time we put the boards on, one of the cross beaks cracked a little, and the third time one of the cross braces popped off.

Still, that’s a pretty impressive ratio, and it was a first attempt. They can more than double the mass of balsa wood they use for future structures, too, so there’s a decent chance they’ll be able to make something that can hold a member of the team…

140/366: Dog and Volcano

When I arrived to pick SteelyKid up the other night, she and her friends were light-saber fighting with long balloons, which is fairly typical of that bunch. While I gathered her stuff up, though, she stopped and twisted her balloon into an animal shape:

SteelyKid’s balloon dog, and The Pip’s clay volcano.

She got a “How to Make Balloon Animals” kit a few years ago, but she doesn’t often do anything with it. So I was pretty impressed that she did this completely from memory. (Of course, I’m easily impressed when it comes to my own kids doing stuff…)

The balloon dog (we’ll call it a dog….) doesn’t quite stand up on its own, so it’s propped on one of The Pip’s class art projects. They’re working their way through the alphabet in pre-school, and the letter of the day was “V” a few days back, so they made volcanos out of clay. And did the baking-soda-and-vinegar “eruption” thing, which made a huge impression.

So, there’s the latest in kid art…

137-139/366: Vermont

This past weekend, Kate went to Arisia, and in order to get a change of scenery and a bit of adult backup, I took the kids up to visit friends in northern Vermont. They have two boys, the younger of whom is just a few months older than SteelyKid, and I was pretty sure the kids would hit it off. I turned out to be right about that, as SteelyKid and C. spent hours engrossed in the construction of an elaborate pillow fort:

SteelyKid is really happy to be making a pillow fort.

This is a very early stage of the construction, from Friday night. They continued working on it all weekend, and at one point had to be dissuaded from attempting to add a second storey.

On the way up Saturday it was grey and rainy, so I couldn’t see much, but Sunday dawned very prettily:

View of the Green Mountains from near Waterbury.

That’s looking over the back yard of my friends’ house. We spent much of Sunday afternoon sledding at a nearby golf course, which isn’t really a camera-friendly activity.

The other big highlight of the trip, for The Pip at least, was the outdoor hot tub:

The Pip doing a happy dance inside the outdoor hot tub.

(That’s taken with my phone, because again, not a camera-friendly activity…)

It took a little coaxing to get him in– we had to “cool” the water by adding trivial amounts of snow to the spot where he was putting his feet in– but once he was in, he loved it. He chattered happily the whole time, and kept bringing handfuls of snow and pieces of ice in to watch them melt. We couldn’t get SteelyKid in, but he’s definitely a hot-tubbing Little Dude.

So, a good time was had by all. The one down side is that the kids treated the whole thing like a trip to Fairyland, as if they might be trapped in Vermont forever by eating any food they found there. Fortunately, I had brought some staple foods from home (such is life with absurdly picky eaters), but they were a little underfed and overtired by the end. We got them to bed early last night, though, and off to school this morning, so life is back to sort of normal. And SteelyKid is already agitating for a return visit…

136/366: Gotta Fly

We have a couple of bird feeders near the house, one just outside the bay window in the front of the house, and the other on the side of the house right next to the dining room. (That one used to be farther out in the yard, where it functioned well as a means of luring bunnies and squirrels into the yard for Emmy to chase, but we took out the trees it was hung from, so had to move it…)

I try to remember to keep these filled up, because they’re a reliable source of entertainment, even in the winter months. We got a bunch of activity at the feeders today, including a blue jay, and I ended up with a couple of good pictures, including this action shot:

A bluejay taking off from the bird feeder outside our dining room window.

I was really happy to get this, because the jays never stay on the feeder long. And they’re very pretty birds, even if their calls are horrible.

Programming note: Kate’s off at Arisia this weekend, and I’m taking the kids to Vermont to visit a friend from college who has kids about the same age. I do plan to take the camera, as I’m sure there’ll be pretty scenery, but I likely won’t have time to post any photo-a-day images while we’re up there, let alone anything more substantive.

135/366: Gold Star for Robot Boy

SteelyKid is in second grade, and The Pip goes to full-day day care at the JCC, so we get a LOT of kid work sent home– various homework assignments and class worksheets for her, and assorted art for him. A lot of the art is just a few random crayon scribbles on paper, but some of it’s pretty good. Like this robot that came home the other day:

The Pip’s construction-paper robot.

(The shiny thing at the bottom is one of the cut-glass “jewels” that Kate got for the kids at the Corning Museum of Glass…)

Huge piles of this stuff build up, and every couple of months I’ll go through and photograph the best pieces before sending it all out to the recycling bin. But I needed a picture for the day, so this one gets in early…

Also, I wanted to use the title, because as soon as I saw this, I was earwormed: