Kate Rauner's Blog, page 36

Views of Reality #sciku #haiku #science #maths #math

f-R-gravity

Einstein’s relativity

State reality

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Only in the language of math can you discuss gravity – sadly, beyond me. But we can all enjoy a classic experiment on the moon, in the absence of air…

Citizen Scientists! Tackle this hundred year old question – can you fry an egg on a summer sidewalk? #citizenscience #summertime

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A pan and a cooktop definitely will be easier

Since at least 1899, Americans have speculated about frying an egg on a summer sidewalk. Can it be done?

Short answer – no. Long answer – it depends. Ah! The joy of “it depends.”

You can’t believe YouTube! You didn’t really think you could, did you? You’ll have to try for yourself.

Do this at home, if you don’t mind making a mess. First – set the parameters of your experiment. How cooked must your egg become?

When you cook an egg, the heat transfers energy to the molecules, causing the proteins to unravel. After a few minutes, the strings of proteins weave and bind together, and most of the water evaporates.

Yolk proteins begin to condense near 150 degrees Fahrenheit, while the albumen proteins ovotransferrin and ovalbumin thicken near 142 and 184 degrees, respectively. smithsonianmag.com

Let’s say you like runny yolks. Maybe softly-set egg whites too. So aim for… oh, let’s round it off and say, 140 degrees F.

I know from my wildland fire fighter training that dry grass baking in the sun can routinely reach 100 degrees F. A record for the highest official temperature on Earth comes from Death Valley USA:  134.1 degrees F (56.7 °C) That’s the temperature of the air, not a solid soaking up photons.

People quibble over that record, and you may not want to take your egg to Death Valley, but this seems promising.

It’s not just temperature that matters, it’s heat transfer. Ever bake a cake? Did you tap the cake’s top to judge if it’s done? Would you tap the pan? The difference is heat transfer rates.

So how about the sidewalk? Concrete isn’t the best material to transfer heat to a food item, which is why we don’t have a lot of concrete fry pans.

Asphalt would be better, “smoother and tighter, and also going to be hotter and hold its heat better… If you’ve got a road that’s at 150 or 155 degrees and you crack an egg onto it, it’s going to lower the temperature [at that spot], and that temperature’s not going to heat back up anytime soon.”

My home town in upstate New York, USA, has sidewalks made of slabs of black slate. Better than concrete for sure, but I don’t know how it compares to asphalt.

There are lots of ways to cook with solar ovens, and mirrors, aluminum foil, and magnifying glasses can help too. Is any such equipment allowed for your experiment?

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I made one for you too

I tell you what. I’m going to sit in the shade with a cold drink. Let me know how your experiment turns out.

Thanks to smithsonianmag.com for their article.

Bananas – favorite fruit – an endangered species? #banana #biology

This isn’t the first time I read such a dire warning: will bananas vanish from the breakfast table?

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I didn’t go far for this picture – into my own kitchen pantry

The Cavendish, which makes up most of the global market — is under assault from insect infestations, declining soil fertility and climate change. But the biggest hazard by far are two plant pathogens that are scavenging their way through vast monoculture (large scale, single-crop) plantations of this fruit worldwide. livescience.com

Industrial farming means machines do a lot of the work, and that means farms are created for machines. Because to be efficient, machines must be both smart and stupid. Where they’re stupid, we simplify and change the environment to fit their needs.

I don’t know how mechanized banana farming is, but the monoculture approach has generally produced huge amounts of cheap food. It’s a great success until it isn’t.

I doubt banana are doomed. We’ve been through this before. In the 1950s, the Gros Michel variety was attacked by fusarium wilt, and so the Cavendish was bred to replace it. This lovely fruit now accounts for what we in America see in our stores. Still harvested from huge monoculture farms.

Today, with hundreds of varieties of banana, the beloved fruit will survive and probably never leave our shelves. In another few decades, we’ll breed another new variety to dodge another threat. We know how to breed bananas.

Now if we could only learn how to grow them sustainably. Maybe smarter machines are the answer. Or maybe smarter humans.

Happy July 4th America #July4 #JulyFourth #Parade

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Fire trucks line up on the side street – ready to enter the parade

Independence Day in my small town means a parade that starts at 10am, because summer mornings are brilliantly clear and the day is hot by noon. My volunteer fire department and most departments in the county participated.

We don’t need a European style parade-of-weapons to celebrate. Local political groups, softball teams, and other businesses and organizations fill the street and set up booths in lovely Gough Park where food vendors join the celebration. Share my snapshots and Happy 4th.

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Parade marshal and flag honor guard prepare to begin

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Silver City police lead the flag at start of our small town parade

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They’re off!

Fill Your Summer Reading With Stories of Assassins, Spies, and War!

[image error] Get your bargain book today! Only 99 cents each. Military, historical, and science fiction stories. Click Now

Don’t miss my friend’s book, No Charity.

[image error]A murder. An insurgency. A spy. A diplomat. A boss that expects her to stop a war. Some things are just not possible. And she could die in the attempt.

 

What the heck! Let’s look at funny fish #nature #fish #marine #ocean

I was going to be serious – but lets look at funny fish.

I found this interesting article on prehistoric crocodiles that were vegetarians. I was going to post about a comparison of carnivorous and herbivorous teeth, and how research can quantify the complexity of each tooth…

Shoot. I spent yesterday hauling sixty-pound batteries up the side of a cliff for the radio repeater for our volunteer fire department – we have a solar powered system. Today, I just wanna have fun. How about we look at weird marine life?

I really do have an excuse for the coffinfish. “A new study has revealed another coffinfish adaptation—massive, inflatable gill chambers that expand the animal’s body with seawater, allowing them to take up more oxygen and hold their breath for up to four minutes.”

Why would a fish want to hold it’s breath underwater? We can be a bit more serious about the coffinfish if you want:

Enjoy your day

Sorry guys – Wildfire grabbed my day

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Such a steep rocky approach to the fire! Looking down to the engine…

My determination to post regularly got a kick in the butt today – wildfire in a neighboring district took my department out for many hours. Somehow when I get home, I don’t want to do much else.

Out here in rural New Mexico, we aren’t affluent. Without volunteers, life would be much harder.

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Still farther up to the fire…

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Finally! Wet stuff on the hot stuff! There was flame, but I was too tired to climb around for a better picture

There are lots of volunteer opportunities in your community. You don’t have to be a fire fighter, but find something that calls you.

Your Bones Tell Your Story – what modern life is doing to you #biology #health #bonespurs

A mutant goat led the way to understanding how your lifestyle changes your bones.

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No lounging on a sofa for our Neanderthal cousins

This has led to a discipline known as ‘osteobiography’ – literally ‘the biography of bones’ – which involves looking at a skeleton to find out how its owner lived. bbc.com

In addition to teaching a new word, the article notes the changes in modern human skeletons. These aren’t genetic changes, they reflect our environment, our modern life.

A spike grows at the lower back of the skull – the “external occipital protuberance,” another great phrase. The spike anchors extra-big muscles that develop because you hunker over your phone all day.

Okay, that particular hypothesis makes me wonder… people hunkered over weaving, smithing, and carving in ancient times without growing the spike. Does text-neck make sense?

I accept some of the other effects more easily, which doesn’t mean they’re proven:

Our jaws are thinner, weaker, and the front incisor teeth no longer meet. You can thank farming for the overbite that we consider to be normal today. And which, BTW, may have added a few consonant sounds to our speech.
Sixteenth Century legends of “strong men” on the island of Tinian are no myth – they got that way through heavy labor.
Today’s children have less robust bones throughout their skeletons, thanks to less exercise. They’re growing a couch-potato frame.

This article is about bones, but I’ve read elsewhere that our brains are smaller too.

Hmm. Pass me the potato chips. A rerun of Star Trek TOS is about the start. (I actually watched I, Mudd last night.)

Quiet Fire Season Doesn’t Mean Zero #wildfire #wildfires

[image error]We had good luck with rain this winter in southwest New Mexico and spring was delayed. Now, Summer is just getting started – late – and the monsoons (which mean rain for us) are due in a couple weeks. But that doesn’t mean there are no fires at all. This picture shows smoke that floated in overnight from fires in Arizona.

That light colored finger is the edge of a stockpile at the local copper mine.

Nothing is Black and White or Good and Bad – Darn It – plastics in organic farming #environment #organic #plastics

What could be better than organic farming? Improving the soil our food depends on while reducing chemicals that add cost and damage the environment.

[image error] Nothing is all sunshine and unicorns.

Organic operations like farms in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Florida, spread plastic mulch over thousands of acres. And when the season is over, it ends up in landfills. npr.org

Mulch is vital to organic farming. It suppresses weeds (replacing herbicides), reduces water usage (water is increasingly in short supply), and warms the soil to produce crops faster (which increases profits and keeps farms in business).

But, but, but… you’ve heard about biodegradable mulches.

Ah, biodegradable mulches are neither rainbows nor unicorns. Not according to the rules.

Natural mulches like straw and paper that break down in the soil do exist, they are too costly and labor-intensive for many farmers. But if a plastic mulch could slowly degrade over the course of the season, disappearing into the field and eliminating waste, it would amount to a dream solution…

One conceivable solution, biodegradable plastic, isn’t allowed under organic rules… biodegradable mulches on the market all contain petroleum-based materials. npr.org

Well, drat. Perfect often chases away good.

Of course, research for a perfect solution continues. Until ideas become solutions in the fields, should we change the rules? Pay higher prices for food? Get better today and look for even-better ideas for tomorrow? All of these? As you stand in your grocery store contemplating a tomato, what’s important to you?