Over the weekend the weather in Denver was very cold! Wouldn't ya' know it, the heat in our house started acting up... that could fill a book! So, let me just tell you about one problem... a dripping air release valve.
Over the years the little valve occasionally spits and sputters a bit, which is it's only job in our hot water heat system. Last week it started dripping... oh bother! I put a little metal lid under it to catch the water where it could evaporate. I quickly found out that the drip was too fast for that and it overflowed the lid. I put a larger lid under the valve and it only required a paper towel spunge and a few trips to the nearby sink to dump the lid.
Saturday night the drip got so fast that it needed dumping every 2 hours... it was 3:00 AM and how was I going to sleep??? I decided to try a siphon wick to see if that would save me from hving to try to seal a hole around a tube to take the water from the lid into the floor overflow drain.
Siphon wicks are often used around machinery. Basically you have a cup with oil in it and a stand tube from the bottom of the cup up the center. a wick is dipped into the oil, is fed down the tube onto a bearing and the top is allowed to fold over the lip of the tube and dangle into the cup of oil. So, one end of the wick is in the cup of oil and the wick goes up over the tube edge then down the center of the tube and out the bottom of the tube above the bearing. This configuration causes a slow steady drip of oil from the wick and can empty the cup! Amazing! It works by cappilary action. If you think that is not strong enough, think about the fact that the same force pulls water up 200' to the top of a tree! http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/mccoy/wick.html
For my applidation, I changed the configuration some. Like I said, I did not want to punch a hole in the lid and try to seal it - if I wanted to do that, I could just install a tube drain. So, I took some flexible clear plastic tubing with 1/4" id. I tore a 12" x 3" strip of paper towel and rolled it up into a semi-stiff rope. I pushed the dry towel rope into the tube while twisting it until only a tiny end stuck out. I used some scrap copper wire to tie the tube end into a "J" and hooked that ofer the edge of the lid so that the wick got wet. The tube went over the edge of the boiler case and down to the floor drain.
To my great amazement, the wick immediately pulled the water up, over the bend and started soaking the wick the rest of the way down the tube. The next issue was whether the water would drip off the end of the wick and on down the tube to the drain. It took a while and I was a little nervous because the water was rising in the lid! Soon I saw drips going down the tube! Woo Hoo! Was it fast enough?
It was. Actually, I got another surprise. Every now-and-then the water would start to make little "plugs" in the tube rather than running down the tube. That scared me at first until I saw that the plugs were slowly moving down the tube with new plugs forming above. As soon as there were enough plugs, they would weigh enough to actually start a regular siphon that drained the entire lid very quickly. Then, the system would go back into it's slow drip mode. This tided me over until I could get my heater guy over to take a look on Monday. He was very impressed by my siphon wick gadget and very glad that he was not called at 3:00 AM!
While snooping around for other examples of siphon wick applications for this post, I found the quintessential case... enjoy reading about a siphon wick used to dispense "bear repellant"...
http://www.ultimatesportsmen.com/stories2/curley.html (0ops... link is to a general blog and I can not find that specific post... anyway... the guy said that when he camps he "marks his spot" by pissing on trees around the perimeter! Now, when he wants to be sure it stays fresh, he pees into a bottle and hangs a little bit of wet rope into the bottle and down the side. That starts a siphon wick that produces a slow drip!)
Monday, December 22, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The no-nap-cap
I have an amazing ability... I can fall asleep from being wide awake in just a few seconds... but only if I am driving. ugh.
You can imagine that this skill has created some interesting times on long driving trips and even occasionally on my short commute to work. What's a guy to do??? I had a sleep study done and found out that I have sleep apnea. I got a CPAP and that helped tremendously with my daytime sleepiness... except as soon as I touch a steering wheel!
Driving sleepiness is a big problem. http://www.drowsydriving.org/ is a site devoted to helping people be more aware of the dangers. It is as dangerous as driving drunk! Here are a few highlights from the drowsy driving site:
• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that at least 100,000 police- reported crashes each year are the direct result of driver fatigue. (NHTSA)
• Each year drowsy driving crashes result in at least 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in monetary losses. (NHTSA)
• Approximately 11 million drivers admit they have had a crash or near crash because they dozed off or were too tired to drive. (2005 Sleep in America poll)
• According to NSF surveys, half of Americans consistently report that they have driven drowsy and approximately 20% admit that they have actually fallen asleep at the wheel in the previous year.
So, I am not alone. Some states have moved toward serious consequences for sleepy drivers. In Massachusetts in 2007, Senator Richard Moore pushed for a law to make it vehicular homicide if a sleepy driver causes a fatal accident. If passed they would join with New Jersey in charging sleepy drivers.
I "got my wake up call" in a little nicer manner. One year as we were loading up the car to start a long trip my wife set a cold spray bottle on the console between us. She looked me in the eye and said "go ahead, make my day". The fear of having my ear filled with icy spray was enough to keep me awake! It also reminded me of a Japanese invention I read about that I can not find by searching the internet... weird. It was a pair of glasses that had a small refrigeration unit - possibly electrothermal cooling - that cooled the g-jo acupressure points (http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/G-Jo_Acupressure_Instant_Relief_With_The_Touch_of_a_Finger.html) on the forehead to reduce sleepiness. Try as I did, I could not find anything about the right g-jo points either! ..maybe I was dreaming... (Now the Japanese have a new thing with glasses. They sense the tilt of the head and if you nod off they vibrate in your ear! It interrupts the sleep inducing alpha waves! They say it tickles too! If I get sleepy in a meeting, I crunch on carrots! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/1522985/How-the-Japanese-are-getting-a-buzz-out-of-falling-asleep-at-work.html, http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/30/mydo-bururu-glasses-vibrate-your-dome-to-prevent-sleep/)
Anyway, here is what I did to significantly reduce my drowsiness - after working on my sleep problems of course! I decided that I did not need some fancy glasses to cool my pate! Instead, I would use a swamp cooler! That is how I cool my house, so why not my head?
I got a cheap, light brown terry cloth towel and cut it into a long rectangle about 4" by 12". I folded the short edges in to the middle, then folded it in half again. Now, I had a nice neat 4" x 3" terry pad. I got the pad wet and let evaporation do the cooling. I put the pad on my head and enjoyed a very awake and comfortable trip -- no spray in the ear!
I sometimes put ice in the upper fold to jump start the cooling, but usually it is not necessary. I keep the pad quite wet - just short of it dripping. I now carry a pad and a re-filled bottle of water in my car at all times. I think it has saved my life! If I see a sleepy driver on the road, I want to roll down my window and tell him about the no-nap-cap, or maybe grab a spray bottle. : )?
btw... One young person was bugging me at work about my cap idea and how it would not work for him. I agreed. He had a very thick head of hair! I told him that memories are processed during sleep and that the more intelligent you are, the more your brain heats up and wants to sleep. That is why God gave older and wiser men a bald pate to help keep their brains cool. In some cases, the intelligence was so extreme that even the bald pate was not enough to cool the brain, so it takes a little help from a moist pad. He just walked away. I suppose it beats slapping someone.
You can imagine that this skill has created some interesting times on long driving trips and even occasionally on my short commute to work. What's a guy to do??? I had a sleep study done and found out that I have sleep apnea. I got a CPAP and that helped tremendously with my daytime sleepiness... except as soon as I touch a steering wheel!
Driving sleepiness is a big problem. http://www.drowsydriving.org/ is a site devoted to helping people be more aware of the dangers. It is as dangerous as driving drunk! Here are a few highlights from the drowsy driving site:
• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that at least 100,000 police- reported crashes each year are the direct result of driver fatigue. (NHTSA)
• Each year drowsy driving crashes result in at least 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in monetary losses. (NHTSA)
• Approximately 11 million drivers admit they have had a crash or near crash because they dozed off or were too tired to drive. (2005 Sleep in America poll)
• According to NSF surveys, half of Americans consistently report that they have driven drowsy and approximately 20% admit that they have actually fallen asleep at the wheel in the previous year.
So, I am not alone. Some states have moved toward serious consequences for sleepy drivers. In Massachusetts in 2007, Senator Richard Moore pushed for a law to make it vehicular homicide if a sleepy driver causes a fatal accident. If passed they would join with New Jersey in charging sleepy drivers.
I "got my wake up call" in a little nicer manner. One year as we were loading up the car to start a long trip my wife set a cold spray bottle on the console between us. She looked me in the eye and said "go ahead, make my day". The fear of having my ear filled with icy spray was enough to keep me awake! It also reminded me of a Japanese invention I read about that I can not find by searching the internet... weird. It was a pair of glasses that had a small refrigeration unit - possibly electrothermal cooling - that cooled the g-jo acupressure points (http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/G-Jo_Acupressure_Instant_Relief_With_The_Touch_of_a_Finger.html) on the forehead to reduce sleepiness. Try as I did, I could not find anything about the right g-jo points either! ..maybe I was dreaming... (Now the Japanese have a new thing with glasses. They sense the tilt of the head and if you nod off they vibrate in your ear! It interrupts the sleep inducing alpha waves! They say it tickles too! If I get sleepy in a meeting, I crunch on carrots! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/1522985/How-the-Japanese-are-getting-a-buzz-out-of-falling-asleep-at-work.html, http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/30/mydo-bururu-glasses-vibrate-your-dome-to-prevent-sleep/)
Anyway, here is what I did to significantly reduce my drowsiness - after working on my sleep problems of course! I decided that I did not need some fancy glasses to cool my pate! Instead, I would use a swamp cooler! That is how I cool my house, so why not my head?
I got a cheap, light brown terry cloth towel and cut it into a long rectangle about 4" by 12". I folded the short edges in to the middle, then folded it in half again. Now, I had a nice neat 4" x 3" terry pad. I got the pad wet and let evaporation do the cooling. I put the pad on my head and enjoyed a very awake and comfortable trip -- no spray in the ear!
I sometimes put ice in the upper fold to jump start the cooling, but usually it is not necessary. I keep the pad quite wet - just short of it dripping. I now carry a pad and a re-filled bottle of water in my car at all times. I think it has saved my life! If I see a sleepy driver on the road, I want to roll down my window and tell him about the no-nap-cap, or maybe grab a spray bottle. : )?
btw... One young person was bugging me at work about my cap idea and how it would not work for him. I agreed. He had a very thick head of hair! I told him that memories are processed during sleep and that the more intelligent you are, the more your brain heats up and wants to sleep. That is why God gave older and wiser men a bald pate to help keep their brains cool. In some cases, the intelligence was so extreme that even the bald pate was not enough to cool the brain, so it takes a little help from a moist pad. He just walked away. I suppose it beats slapping someone.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
I do not exist - Cosmos
It has been a while since I wrote about existence... does being too tired and frazzled support that I exist or that I do not exist??? (Theo... I know I can not be a figment of my own imagination... but maybe I am a figment of someone else's imagination... they think, therefore I am...)
I started this train of thought by demonstrating that I am not sane... I do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result - I expect hot water when I turn on the hot water spigot... are you sane? Then I said that I would give 4 simple arguments that I do not exist... and neither do you...
The first argument had to do with physical perception. Our perception of the environment is a remote sensing scam! Our brains could be hooked up to synthetic sensors and we would not even know it! (Matrix movie stuff!) The second argument had to do with a microscopic view of our bodies. We never think about the fact that we are mostly water, Hydrogen, CO2, and Nitrogen. When we die, we basically drift away - literally! Moreover, while we are alive we are a huge collection of "stuff" that is not us (like little eyebrow worms) and the fact that all of the molecules in our bodies, including our bones are totally replaced at least every 3 years!!!
OK, so I do not exist in the way that I think I do when I look in the mirror - eh? So, now let's look farther. The 3rd argument I promised was Cosmology. You know, Carl Sagan's star stuff. "The cosmos is all the stuff that ever was or ever will be." Really? Let's think about how empty the cosmos is. They say that the best vacuum producible on earth barely approaches the vacuum of space. Yet, since 1960 Robert Bussard and other dreamers have been looking at an ionic propulsion system that carries energy (nuclear), but no "fuel" to eject to propel the space craft. Instead, the craft would use an electrostatic field to suck in ionized interstellar hydrogen molecules (2 per cm³). The engine would use another strong electromagnetic system to eject the ions out the back or form a fusion reaction and eject the hot, heavier combinants. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A600436, http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Bussard-ramjet) Wow! They are counting on there being a lot of "stuff" out there!
Another blogger posted a few weeks ago about black holes from "badastronomy.com" (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/30/ten-things-you-dont-know-about-black-holes/ (I was sure it was Stapler, but search and Google can't find the post!)). If you were to fill a sphere as big as the orbit of Pluto with air, there would be enough mass to be a black hole! So, while black holes are the densest thing we know, if we look at them as being everything inside the event horizon, then they are very non-dense! We think of air as being light and with no substance, yet air holds up a super-cargo plane!
We think of space as "empty", but is it?. We visited the Mount Palomar observatory in California. We sat on a half-room sized bench which we later found out was a replica of the mirror! We looked at an amazing series of photos taken by the telescope. They surveyed the sky with low magnification and picked the dimmest frame, say f1. Then, they bumped the magnification up and surveyed that frame to select the dimmest sub-frame f2. They bumped the magnification again and surveyed f2 to find it's dimmest sub-frame, f3... etc. through an amazing series of, as I remember, 12 frames. The amazing-est thing is that once they were "blown up" each frame was just as "busy" with "stuff" as the original! The sky is a dense soup of stars !!! Yet it is empty... The last frames showed mostly far away galaxies and quasars!
Did you see the amazing photos that made the email rounds last year showing the relative size of the various planets and stars? It showed our tiny sun was a single pixel on Antares (http://www.webxact.co.uk/2008/08/these-pictures-will-humble-anyone.html). Even though we think of the earth as huge and the sun as very huge, there is so much empty space between us and the moon that it takes days to travel there! Even at the speed of light it takes 8 minutes to get from the sun to the earth! It would take 4 years to get to our nearest neighbor star. Our solar system, our galaxy, our cosmos is just a bunch of specs held together by gravity.
So now, lets look closer. How about that table in front of you? It is solid - right? It is probably strong enough that you would sit or even stand on it... but, does it exist? I mean in the way you perceive it? Take a microscope and bump up the magnification. At not very high magnification, the surface is no longer flat, but is a rough landscape of knotted strings! Bump up the focus more, and the strings become coils of connected dots. Further, and the strings are only specs connected by strong electric fields. Actually, the molecular particles are even smaller, relative to the "orbits" of the electrons than the vast separation of the planets in the solar system! (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/nuclear/nucuni.html) What??? that table is like empty space! It is just a bunch of specs held together by electrical attraction!!! When did you think of that last? You have know that since elementary school, but do you see that when you perceive that table? Nope. But really, that table does not exist!
The first time I realized this was when I was about 12. I was on one of the very few, long driving trips I took with my parents. I was reading Jules Vern's "Around the world in 80 days", a great science fiction story, which got me into the mood to think... OK, so I was dozing off... We had been studying molecular structure at school (No one told me it was a lie! Next argument about waves...) I remember looking at the plastic cover on the back of my dad's seat and imagining it being a sea of vibrating, spinning, crashing atomic particles... quite an impression! If you know me, think about me growing up "knowing" that the chair I sat in did not exist! Now I make more sense to you - eh? Feel the vibes???
It is actually amazing that we do not just slip through each other, drift right through the earth, or fly apart! Then, there is the issue that the protons, neutrons, and electrons don't exist either... but that is another day, and another post. I do not exist - Condensate.
I started this train of thought by demonstrating that I am not sane... I do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result - I expect hot water when I turn on the hot water spigot... are you sane? Then I said that I would give 4 simple arguments that I do not exist... and neither do you...
The first argument had to do with physical perception. Our perception of the environment is a remote sensing scam! Our brains could be hooked up to synthetic sensors and we would not even know it! (Matrix movie stuff!) The second argument had to do with a microscopic view of our bodies. We never think about the fact that we are mostly water, Hydrogen, CO2, and Nitrogen. When we die, we basically drift away - literally! Moreover, while we are alive we are a huge collection of "stuff" that is not us (like little eyebrow worms) and the fact that all of the molecules in our bodies, including our bones are totally replaced at least every 3 years!!!
OK, so I do not exist in the way that I think I do when I look in the mirror - eh? So, now let's look farther. The 3rd argument I promised was Cosmology. You know, Carl Sagan's star stuff. "The cosmos is all the stuff that ever was or ever will be." Really? Let's think about how empty the cosmos is. They say that the best vacuum producible on earth barely approaches the vacuum of space. Yet, since 1960 Robert Bussard and other dreamers have been looking at an ionic propulsion system that carries energy (nuclear), but no "fuel" to eject to propel the space craft. Instead, the craft would use an electrostatic field to suck in ionized interstellar hydrogen molecules (2 per cm³). The engine would use another strong electromagnetic system to eject the ions out the back or form a fusion reaction and eject the hot, heavier combinants. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A600436, http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Bussard-ramjet) Wow! They are counting on there being a lot of "stuff" out there!
Another blogger posted a few weeks ago about black holes from "badastronomy.com" (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/30/ten-things-you-dont-know-about-black-holes/ (I was sure it was Stapler, but search and Google can't find the post!)). If you were to fill a sphere as big as the orbit of Pluto with air, there would be enough mass to be a black hole! So, while black holes are the densest thing we know, if we look at them as being everything inside the event horizon, then they are very non-dense! We think of air as being light and with no substance, yet air holds up a super-cargo plane!
We think of space as "empty", but is it?. We visited the Mount Palomar observatory in California. We sat on a half-room sized bench which we later found out was a replica of the mirror! We looked at an amazing series of photos taken by the telescope. They surveyed the sky with low magnification and picked the dimmest frame, say f1. Then, they bumped the magnification up and surveyed that frame to select the dimmest sub-frame f2. They bumped the magnification again and surveyed f2 to find it's dimmest sub-frame, f3... etc. through an amazing series of, as I remember, 12 frames. The amazing-est thing is that once they were "blown up" each frame was just as "busy" with "stuff" as the original! The sky is a dense soup of stars !!! Yet it is empty... The last frames showed mostly far away galaxies and quasars!
Did you see the amazing photos that made the email rounds last year showing the relative size of the various planets and stars? It showed our tiny sun was a single pixel on Antares (http://www.webxact.co.uk/2008/08/these-pictures-will-humble-anyone.html). Even though we think of the earth as huge and the sun as very huge, there is so much empty space between us and the moon that it takes days to travel there! Even at the speed of light it takes 8 minutes to get from the sun to the earth! It would take 4 years to get to our nearest neighbor star. Our solar system, our galaxy, our cosmos is just a bunch of specs held together by gravity.
So now, lets look closer. How about that table in front of you? It is solid - right? It is probably strong enough that you would sit or even stand on it... but, does it exist? I mean in the way you perceive it? Take a microscope and bump up the magnification. At not very high magnification, the surface is no longer flat, but is a rough landscape of knotted strings! Bump up the focus more, and the strings become coils of connected dots. Further, and the strings are only specs connected by strong electric fields. Actually, the molecular particles are even smaller, relative to the "orbits" of the electrons than the vast separation of the planets in the solar system! (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/nuclear/nucuni.html) What??? that table is like empty space! It is just a bunch of specs held together by electrical attraction!!! When did you think of that last? You have know that since elementary school, but do you see that when you perceive that table? Nope. But really, that table does not exist!
The first time I realized this was when I was about 12. I was on one of the very few, long driving trips I took with my parents. I was reading Jules Vern's "Around the world in 80 days", a great science fiction story, which got me into the mood to think... OK, so I was dozing off... We had been studying molecular structure at school (No one told me it was a lie! Next argument about waves...) I remember looking at the plastic cover on the back of my dad's seat and imagining it being a sea of vibrating, spinning, crashing atomic particles... quite an impression! If you know me, think about me growing up "knowing" that the chair I sat in did not exist! Now I make more sense to you - eh? Feel the vibes???
It is actually amazing that we do not just slip through each other, drift right through the earth, or fly apart! Then, there is the issue that the protons, neutrons, and electrons don't exist either... but that is another day, and another post. I do not exist - Condensate.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Male and Female... why???
Ge 1:27 - So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (NIV)
Right up there with "Why do I exist?" There is the question "Why did God make women? (or men)" Some like to think about why God made mosquitoes, but I guess women are more interesting to me...
Really, it is sort of odd that he made Adam and then said "It is not good for man to be alone." Did he make a mistake? All the other times he said "It was good." It seems to me that God had not completed his work with Adam. Oops.. now I am back to why he made me... ah Adam... It was very early in the bible, but rather late in the creation: late in the 6th day. After that even He had to take a rest!
In Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible he notices that God changes from "Let there be..." to "Let us make..."
"In the former he speaks as one having authority, in this as one having affection; for his delights were with the sons of men, Prov. 8:31. It should seem as if this were the work which he longed to be at; as if he had said, "Having at last settled the preliminaries, let us now apply ourselves to the business, Let us make man.""
So, if we take Henry's view, God provided all the rest of creation as a setting for his real purpose - to create His image in man... male and female he created them... back to that now... why male and female? Why did it take 2 creatures to image God?
(NIV)
25. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
26. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
As I pondered this last week. I was thinking about carving... give me a minute...
A while back we took a driving trip up through South Dakota. It was the first time I saw Rushmore! We spent a night in Custer and visited the "National Museum of Wood Carving". That was really cool and contains many amazing works by Dr. H. D. Niblack who worked closely with Disney on many projects. http://www.blackhills.com/woodcarving/tours.htm.
They had classes about wood carving and one of the pamphlets showed some of the creative "simple" techniques to make a successful image. Most things have simple keys once you see them. With carving and sculpting, one way to proceed is to work in 2 dimensions at a time. Imagine that you have a saw blade and you move the wood long that blade using a jig so that it follows the profile of an existing 3D object - like a face. Put the original into a holder and a blank into another holder. Move the jig so that the profile of the 3D face is cut into the blank. Flip it over and do the back of the head. It will not make much sense if you look at it from the front or back, but if you look from the side, you will clearly see the figure. Now, rotate the blocks so that the two sides of the head are cut. Now look! It makes sense! There is a lot of trim work to do, but you have the basic idea.
It is too hard for everyone to have the jigs and power saws, and besides, this is supposed to be carving! So, what they do is have 2 outline pictures of the original one from the side and one from the front. Mathematically, these are two projections of the 3D object onto a 2D space. The carver first cuts the block to match one profile, then turns it in the hand and works on the other profile. Unlike the saw technique, they constantly rotate the wood and jump from one projection to the other, but it is the same idea.
Now... back to the Adam/Eve thing... starting to get my thought? The 2D image of the carving could not contain enough information to image the 3D shape, so they provide 2 different perspectives. The thing that clicked into my brain last week is that this is one reason why God made both Adam and Eve to display his image! So, he used 2 images to display himself more completely in our space!
The animals have male and female too, but I was not just thinking about the physical image although the carving example is just physical. His image is not just the physical aspects but his very nature. There is more to me that just my physical 3D/4D projection in this universe. Even so, our set of dimensions was incapable of displaying his image.
He says that when we marry we become one flesh. What an incredible blessing and responsibility it is to bare his image and what a great work it is to ensure that my marriage also displays him in a more complete way.
btw... I use CrossWalk for most of my online bible work. Check it out!
http://www.crosswalk.com/
http://biblestudy.crosswalk.com/
Right up there with "Why do I exist?" There is the question "Why did God make women? (or men)" Some like to think about why God made mosquitoes, but I guess women are more interesting to me...
Really, it is sort of odd that he made Adam and then said "It is not good for man to be alone." Did he make a mistake? All the other times he said "It was good." It seems to me that God had not completed his work with Adam. Oops.. now I am back to why he made me... ah Adam... It was very early in the bible, but rather late in the creation: late in the 6th day. After that even He had to take a rest!
In Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible he notices that God changes from "Let there be..." to "Let us make..."
"In the former he speaks as one having authority, in this as one having affection; for his delights were with the sons of men, Prov. 8:31. It should seem as if this were the work which he longed to be at; as if he had said, "Having at last settled the preliminaries, let us now apply ourselves to the business, Let us make man.""
So, if we take Henry's view, God provided all the rest of creation as a setting for his real purpose - to create His image in man... male and female he created them... back to that now... why male and female? Why did it take 2 creatures to image God?
(NIV)
25. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
26. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
As I pondered this last week. I was thinking about carving... give me a minute...
A while back we took a driving trip up through South Dakota. It was the first time I saw Rushmore! We spent a night in Custer and visited the "National Museum of Wood Carving". That was really cool and contains many amazing works by Dr. H. D. Niblack who worked closely with Disney on many projects. http://www.blackhills.com/woodcarving/tours.htm.
They had classes about wood carving and one of the pamphlets showed some of the creative "simple" techniques to make a successful image. Most things have simple keys once you see them. With carving and sculpting, one way to proceed is to work in 2 dimensions at a time. Imagine that you have a saw blade and you move the wood long that blade using a jig so that it follows the profile of an existing 3D object - like a face. Put the original into a holder and a blank into another holder. Move the jig so that the profile of the 3D face is cut into the blank. Flip it over and do the back of the head. It will not make much sense if you look at it from the front or back, but if you look from the side, you will clearly see the figure. Now, rotate the blocks so that the two sides of the head are cut. Now look! It makes sense! There is a lot of trim work to do, but you have the basic idea.
It is too hard for everyone to have the jigs and power saws, and besides, this is supposed to be carving! So, what they do is have 2 outline pictures of the original one from the side and one from the front. Mathematically, these are two projections of the 3D object onto a 2D space. The carver first cuts the block to match one profile, then turns it in the hand and works on the other profile. Unlike the saw technique, they constantly rotate the wood and jump from one projection to the other, but it is the same idea.
Now... back to the Adam/Eve thing... starting to get my thought? The 2D image of the carving could not contain enough information to image the 3D shape, so they provide 2 different perspectives. The thing that clicked into my brain last week is that this is one reason why God made both Adam and Eve to display his image! So, he used 2 images to display himself more completely in our space!
The animals have male and female too, but I was not just thinking about the physical image although the carving example is just physical. His image is not just the physical aspects but his very nature. There is more to me that just my physical 3D/4D projection in this universe. Even so, our set of dimensions was incapable of displaying his image.
He says that when we marry we become one flesh. What an incredible blessing and responsibility it is to bare his image and what a great work it is to ensure that my marriage also displays him in a more complete way.
btw... I use CrossWalk for most of my online bible work. Check it out!
http://www.crosswalk.com/
http://biblestudy.crosswalk.com/
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Stalkerator update
Hi stalkerator fans! ...Ah... Nois... what is a stalkerator???
Don't you read all of my posts throughout all time??? And the comments??? : )?
In the responses to my post "Kepler, what a buoy!" I revealed my invention of a generator based on a stalk of grass. One reader, greentheo, liked it so much that we continued discussing it in the comments. The design went through several stages and I have now gotten some numbers together... Oh buoy! (Actually, the same idea could generate electricity on a buoy.)
The current design is to have our pseudo stalk be a graphite kite tube about 4' tall, perhaps with a ping pong ball on the top for extra drag - like a thistle stalk (make it a steel ball on the buoy). About 3" - 4" from the bottom you attach some kind of gimbal to hold the stalk while allowing it to bob in the wind as stalks do - ya know? Below the gimbal you build a coil around the stalk and glue a nail up the tube shaft inside the coil. below the nail you attach a floating magnet so that the bobbing stalk flops the magnet around under the nail - Cool! An inductance generator!
OK, fine, so would it be any good? I decided it was time to do a little experimenting. I had a nail on a coil from some earlier experiments (Gary's "Gary Effect" was a little far-fetched I think... the nail was just following the field lines... another post another day...) If I put the nail end near a stack of my Neodymium super-magnets, I get a measurable current.
Last year or so I tore apart some computer hard drives and saved the very strong control magnets. They are mounted to steel plates which I think is to strengthen the magnet so they do not explode under their own stress. They are polarized with the two opposite poles near the middle of the bar with maybe some "dead" space between them. I decided to try the induction coil on that and got an interesting sensation... The nail head was big enough to span the DMZ, so it just felt like 2 strong magnets, but the nail point gave a different result. The dead zone almost felt like repulsion as I moved the nail over it. I do not think it was actually repelled, but I was having to hold the nail away from the magnet, so the reduced pull in the DMZ gave the sensation of repulsion. As I moved the nail point across the zone it snapped sharply across to the other side! Ah ha! Just what the stalkerator needs! I can get up to 16 mV even with my poor coil set up. I did not measure milliamps.
I grabbed my stack of tiny Neos and made 7 stacks of 4 each. I arranged 6 of them in a circle around a heavy iron washer with #7 up the middle. I tried having all the same polarity up, but the nail just sort of smooshed from stack to stack with not much generation. So I flipped every other stack. That was better, but what ever pole I picked for the center stack still created sort of a magnetic plateau for the nail to ride. I eliminated the center stack and got much better action. The nail seemed to hop from one stack to the next as it had hopped across the DMZ on the HD magnet. Also, if it did go across the middle it now had a "hole" with significantly lower field strength, so I got some generation even while crossing the center.
With the final configuration and just holding the nail in my hand I easily got 10 mV and .25 mA. I just measured it with my voltmeter, so these numbers would need to be confirmed with a known load to get accurate results. Anyway, using those numbers, .010 V x .00025 A = .0000025 Watt. Wow! That's Some Pig! Let's just say that with a great coil, great magnets, and optimized construction we can get that up to 100 times that... why not? That is .00025 W.
OK, so according to "The Physics Factbook" (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/BoiLu.shtml) the average house uses a bit under 9,000 kWh in a year! Ugh! There is a long way between those decimal points! However, one guy cited got that down to 1,000 kWh per year. If we assumed that we can generate power about half the time and save it until needed, we have 365.24 x 12 = 4383 hours for generation. That would require generation of 228 W (plus change). Lets see, at .00025 W/unit, that is only 912,617 units! OK, 1,000,000 units. (1.09575 Watts per unit per year)
If I put a stalk at the corner of each square foot I could have 1000 stalks in a 100' x 10' plot. Woo Hoo 1 W/year! Let's suppose I build a papercrete house and a bunch of greentheo energy savings strategies to reduce my need to 1,000 kWh/y. That is only 1000' x 1000' for the 1,000,000 units! Gee... if it takes me 1 hour to make, connect, and install each one (after getting the parts and the bridge rectifiers...), then if I have to repair each one after x hours of operation...
My goodness... this is not going well. A common solar cell gives 1.2 W for each 4" square! That one cell working for a year would make just over what 500 square feet of my "grass" would make... with no moving parts... not good news for the stalkerator... : )?
Don't you read all of my posts throughout all time??? And the comments??? : )?
In the responses to my post "Kepler, what a buoy!" I revealed my invention of a generator based on a stalk of grass. One reader, greentheo, liked it so much that we continued discussing it in the comments. The design went through several stages and I have now gotten some numbers together... Oh buoy! (Actually, the same idea could generate electricity on a buoy.)
The current design is to have our pseudo stalk be a graphite kite tube about 4' tall, perhaps with a ping pong ball on the top for extra drag - like a thistle stalk (make it a steel ball on the buoy). About 3" - 4" from the bottom you attach some kind of gimbal to hold the stalk while allowing it to bob in the wind as stalks do - ya know? Below the gimbal you build a coil around the stalk and glue a nail up the tube shaft inside the coil. below the nail you attach a floating magnet so that the bobbing stalk flops the magnet around under the nail - Cool! An inductance generator!
OK, fine, so would it be any good? I decided it was time to do a little experimenting. I had a nail on a coil from some earlier experiments (Gary's "Gary Effect" was a little far-fetched I think... the nail was just following the field lines... another post another day...) If I put the nail end near a stack of my Neodymium super-magnets, I get a measurable current.
Last year or so I tore apart some computer hard drives and saved the very strong control magnets. They are mounted to steel plates which I think is to strengthen the magnet so they do not explode under their own stress. They are polarized with the two opposite poles near the middle of the bar with maybe some "dead" space between them. I decided to try the induction coil on that and got an interesting sensation... The nail head was big enough to span the DMZ, so it just felt like 2 strong magnets, but the nail point gave a different result. The dead zone almost felt like repulsion as I moved the nail over it. I do not think it was actually repelled, but I was having to hold the nail away from the magnet, so the reduced pull in the DMZ gave the sensation of repulsion. As I moved the nail point across the zone it snapped sharply across to the other side! Ah ha! Just what the stalkerator needs! I can get up to 16 mV even with my poor coil set up. I did not measure milliamps.
I grabbed my stack of tiny Neos and made 7 stacks of 4 each. I arranged 6 of them in a circle around a heavy iron washer with #7 up the middle. I tried having all the same polarity up, but the nail just sort of smooshed from stack to stack with not much generation. So I flipped every other stack. That was better, but what ever pole I picked for the center stack still created sort of a magnetic plateau for the nail to ride. I eliminated the center stack and got much better action. The nail seemed to hop from one stack to the next as it had hopped across the DMZ on the HD magnet. Also, if it did go across the middle it now had a "hole" with significantly lower field strength, so I got some generation even while crossing the center.
With the final configuration and just holding the nail in my hand I easily got 10 mV and .25 mA. I just measured it with my voltmeter, so these numbers would need to be confirmed with a known load to get accurate results. Anyway, using those numbers, .010 V x .00025 A = .0000025 Watt. Wow! That's Some Pig! Let's just say that with a great coil, great magnets, and optimized construction we can get that up to 100 times that... why not? That is .00025 W.
OK, so according to "The Physics Factbook" (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/BoiLu.shtml) the average house uses a bit under 9,000 kWh in a year! Ugh! There is a long way between those decimal points! However, one guy cited got that down to 1,000 kWh per year. If we assumed that we can generate power about half the time and save it until needed, we have 365.24 x 12 = 4383 hours for generation. That would require generation of 228 W (plus change). Lets see, at .00025 W/unit, that is only 912,617 units! OK, 1,000,000 units. (1.09575 Watts per unit per year)
If I put a stalk at the corner of each square foot I could have 1000 stalks in a 100' x 10' plot. Woo Hoo 1 W/year! Let's suppose I build a papercrete house and a bunch of greentheo energy savings strategies to reduce my need to 1,000 kWh/y. That is only 1000' x 1000' for the 1,000,000 units! Gee... if it takes me 1 hour to make, connect, and install each one (after getting the parts and the bridge rectifiers...), then if I have to repair each one after x hours of operation...
My goodness... this is not going well. A common solar cell gives 1.2 W for each 4" square! That one cell working for a year would make just over what 500 square feet of my "grass" would make... with no moving parts... not good news for the stalkerator... : )?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Brown has gas...???
My post about the SMOT had several comments. In one response I mentioned Brown's Gas and got a request to blog about that... so...
Brown's gas is the electrolysis output if do not use a partition so that the hydrogen and oxygen are separated. So, the hh and o are all mixed together... kabOOM!!! No, not really. It does take something to ignite the reaction, but still it is highly explosive.
One of the cool things about this explosive mix is that you can make it on the spot with really simple, home made equipment. A favorite setup I have seen is to buy a bunch (10?) of steel switch plate covers from the hardware store. You stack them up and clamp them together, then drill one of the hole stacks to about 1/4". Next you unclamp them and flip every-other-one around so that the holes are stacked small-big-small-big... Next you assemble the reactor core by using threaded rod or long bolts with insulating 1/16"washers. So, you screw the bolt through a washer, then the first hole, then a washer, 2nd hole, washer, 3rd hole, etc. finally you put on a washer and nut to finish the stack. After you do both sides you have a stack with each bolt in contact with every-other plate on both sides... does that make sense?
If the right screw touches the first plate it misses the second plate then touches the 3rd, etc. At the same time on the left, the bolt misses the first, touches the 2nd, misses the 3rd, etc. If you apply 12v DC with right + and left -, then the plates alternate +, -, + ,- etc. All you do is put this core into some water with a little baking soda, apply 12 v and you get Brown's gas! ( 15 - 20 amps) You should bubble the gas through a water valve so that if it does ever flash back, only the gas in the tube will burn, not the larger amount in the reactor... little boom is good. Here is an example... there are many... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDpNUtXbz9U
So, what do you do with the stuff? Some people are making car kits that use the alternator to generate hho near the air intake. BG creates water when it burns, so you get the cooling and steam expansion benefits of water injection but with the added power of the burning hho. Some people hope to make the system so efficient that you can drive forever on just water... uh guys... remember it takes energy from the alternator to run the electrolysis core... One person said that the energy going into the core was just waste energy that would be going to heat. If that is true then this would be a great advantage indeed. However, it seems to me that whatever energy being used by the core will put additional drag on the engine - have you ever tried to light a bulb with a hand generator??? The energy to make the gas has to come out of the engine power via the alternator. I suppose you could charge a deep cycle battery at home, then use it to generate hho to burn. That can not be as good as just doing an electric drive. Plus in the electric scenario you could use regenerative breaking to recover a large percent of the kinetic energy you put into the car. http://www.runyourcaronwater.com/, http://www.hytechapps.com/, http://aardvark.co.nz/hho_scam.shtml
I am not planning to use hho in my car, but it sure seems like it would be great around the shop! If you have a small unit on your bench you can use a simple brass tube nozzle with a flow control. It burns clean and hot. There are a lot of stories about the unusual properties of the flame. For example, it seems to only heat certain things, like metal. You can cut a piece of steel, but not burn yourself if you touch the tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKoU1Fp3gs&feature=related
Near the bottom of the "runyourcarononwater" site there is another very interesting device. They have some sort of electrolysis catalyst cell. The unit is about the size of a drip coffee maker. You buy a "cell" and fill it with any water. Then, for about a month you can plug in devices up to 270 Watt-Hours! After that, you return the cell to the store for a replacement for about $20. (A standard AA battery has about 2.6 WH. http://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Energy-tables.html) If you buy several cells, you can take them all with you and just swap them out for continuous power. - Very cool! That would sure be a lot lighter to carry than my 60 lb 105 WH deep cycle battery up to the camp site! : )? http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/portable_power.htm
Brown's gas is the electrolysis output if do not use a partition so that the hydrogen and oxygen are separated. So, the hh and o are all mixed together... kabOOM!!! No, not really. It does take something to ignite the reaction, but still it is highly explosive.
One of the cool things about this explosive mix is that you can make it on the spot with really simple, home made equipment. A favorite setup I have seen is to buy a bunch (10?) of steel switch plate covers from the hardware store. You stack them up and clamp them together, then drill one of the hole stacks to about 1/4". Next you unclamp them and flip every-other-one around so that the holes are stacked small-big-small-big... Next you assemble the reactor core by using threaded rod or long bolts with insulating 1/16"washers. So, you screw the bolt through a washer, then the first hole, then a washer, 2nd hole, washer, 3rd hole, etc. finally you put on a washer and nut to finish the stack. After you do both sides you have a stack with each bolt in contact with every-other plate on both sides... does that make sense?
If the right screw touches the first plate it misses the second plate then touches the 3rd, etc. At the same time on the left, the bolt misses the first, touches the 2nd, misses the 3rd, etc. If you apply 12v DC with right + and left -, then the plates alternate +, -, + ,- etc. All you do is put this core into some water with a little baking soda, apply 12 v and you get Brown's gas! ( 15 - 20 amps) You should bubble the gas through a water valve so that if it does ever flash back, only the gas in the tube will burn, not the larger amount in the reactor... little boom is good. Here is an example... there are many... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDpNUtXbz9U
So, what do you do with the stuff? Some people are making car kits that use the alternator to generate hho near the air intake. BG creates water when it burns, so you get the cooling and steam expansion benefits of water injection but with the added power of the burning hho. Some people hope to make the system so efficient that you can drive forever on just water... uh guys... remember it takes energy from the alternator to run the electrolysis core... One person said that the energy going into the core was just waste energy that would be going to heat. If that is true then this would be a great advantage indeed. However, it seems to me that whatever energy being used by the core will put additional drag on the engine - have you ever tried to light a bulb with a hand generator??? The energy to make the gas has to come out of the engine power via the alternator. I suppose you could charge a deep cycle battery at home, then use it to generate hho to burn. That can not be as good as just doing an electric drive. Plus in the electric scenario you could use regenerative breaking to recover a large percent of the kinetic energy you put into the car. http://www.runyourcaronwater.com/, http://www.hytechapps.com/, http://aardvark.co.nz/hho_scam.shtml
I am not planning to use hho in my car, but it sure seems like it would be great around the shop! If you have a small unit on your bench you can use a simple brass tube nozzle with a flow control. It burns clean and hot. There are a lot of stories about the unusual properties of the flame. For example, it seems to only heat certain things, like metal. You can cut a piece of steel, but not burn yourself if you touch the tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKoU1Fp3gs&feature=related
Near the bottom of the "runyourcarononwater" site there is another very interesting device. They have some sort of electrolysis catalyst cell. The unit is about the size of a drip coffee maker. You buy a "cell" and fill it with any water. Then, for about a month you can plug in devices up to 270 Watt-Hours! After that, you return the cell to the store for a replacement for about $20. (A standard AA battery has about 2.6 WH. http://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Energy-tables.html) If you buy several cells, you can take them all with you and just swap them out for continuous power. - Very cool! That would sure be a lot lighter to carry than my 60 lb 105 WH deep cycle battery up to the camp site! : )? http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/portable_power.htm
Friday, November 14, 2008
What we've got is a demon...
Per Wikipedia: "Maxwell's demon was an 1867 [1] thought experiment by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, meant to raise questions about the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon
I remember studying the demon in high school and thinking how "cool" it would be... and impossible, to have a little "demon" that could sort air into hot and cold molecules! Wow!
Years later, before cyclonic cleaning was common, I learned how a vortex could be used to clean machine cutting oil. I first figured out how it worked at a manufacturing convention when I was a quality engineer at Gerry Baby Products (now defunct... remember the umbrella baby strollers and baby-backpacks they invented?) They had a display with a clear cylinder and dirty cutting oil going in the top. the oil spun and formed a vortex that went back up a center tube in the opposite direction. The oil stopped momentarily then violently spun in a vortex up the center tube and out. With the slowing at the turn and the spinning vortex the fine metal particles were thrown outward and could not go up the inner tube. Voila, clean oil! We see this same idea all the time now in cyclonic, bag-less vacuum cleaners.
Wait, you say! You were talking about Maxwell's demon... how did you get off onto vortex cleaning??? Well, because the vortex is the demon! Just think, it can separate the heavy metal particles from the lighter oil molecules. Interesting. Later, still at Gerry, I discovered that that cleaver demon can indeed be used to sort air molecules into hot and cold sides, just like Maxwell proposed! Incredible!
Here's how it works... you hook up "shop air" at around 80 psi to a vortex tube. Generally the air enters at one end off center so that it spins. Near the far end some of the air turns a corner and goes up a center tube and out while some continues to the end of the tube and out an adjustable hole. Sound familiar? What is amazing is that the "cold" molecules, that is the slower ones, are more likely to be able to turn the corner and spin up the center, while the fast ones can't quite make the turn, so they exit. See the demon at work? You don't? He just sorted the air molecules into two streams with the cold ones coming out the near center and the hot ones going out the far edge. Very smart that demon.
Vortex cooling is used a lot for various things like spot cooling machining operations and cabinet cooling. Check out one vendor http://www.vortec.com/vortex_coolers.php They even have vortex cooled vests that let people work in 200 degree environments! (with protective clothing.)
Maxwell did not say that the demon did not use energy to open and close the tiny door. It was just that the demon was not putting energy into the air to heat it. One side got cold and one got hot but neither heat nor cold was created by the demon, both were already present in the incoming air. What sort of efficiency do you suppose this process gets?
Heat pumps are similar in that they use some energy to move heat from one place to another rather than creating the heat. A refrigerator is a compression-cycle heat pump that takes heat energy from inside the cabinet and pumps it into your kitchen air. Heat pumps for home heating use an almost identical process and apparatus to move heat from the outside air into your house. You could just as well use a thermoelectric cooler or a vortex cooler. However, the good old compression method is around 65% efficient while the thermocouple is lucky to make 8%! Vortex coolers can drop the air temperature by 80 degrees with an efficiency of up to 16%... not bad I guess... (http://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2440/43646/1/hdl_43646.pdf).
You could try to use the heat differential to do work. However, if the hot and cold side are in a fixed volume, then the pressure on the hot side would increase. The demon would need to operate the door more and more, and thus use more and more energy to run the door to keep those fast molecules from passing through to the cold side. A vortex demon needs a free flow of air, not a fixed volume. You could use the hot and cold air streams in the open on a thermocouple to make electricity, but then you would suffer from the poor efficiency of the thermocouple. Hummm... maybe you could use a Sterling cycle engine! Theoretically they can be 100% efficient, but for now, 30% is good... not so good...
Maxwell talked about sorting the molecules, not creating the energy... so if the energy that the cleaver little demon needed to open and close the door was small enough, maybe he could harvest a little heat differential from the hot to cold side to run the door mechanism, and then I could use the rest of the differential to do other things. I could heat my house in the winter and cool it in the summer by just changing some dampers! That would not be violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics any more than using some sunlight to power a photocell (about 10% efficient), after all, sunlight heated the air - right? OK, so it looks like the little vortex is a demon, but he needs too much energy to operate his door... do you know any other demons looking for work???
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