Doug's Sounding Board

When we were working on the Mpemba effect we needed to boil water. It wasn’t a full kitchen, just a sink, a refrigerator, and a microwave. We also had those 15.7fl.oz. bottles of water. First we dumped out a little and put it in the microwave with the top off and after a short time we saw the water spilling over the top. We quickly stopped it and cleaned up the mess, assuming it was bubbling from the boiling that had pushed it over the edge. What we followed though was the top of the bottle was now smaller.

Of course we had to try it on a whole bottle, so we got a fresh bottle, dumped out about a third of the water and put it in. After a few minutes and a little spilled water, we now had a miniature water bottle. The cap still fit but everything else was smaller. It was shorter and of reduced diameter. Try it! I wouldn’t recommend drinking out of the new smaller bottle though.

I just found the experimental results from our testing of the Mpemba effect at my last job. I learned about the Mpemba Effect from Trivial Pursuit when the answer to “According to the MPemba Effect, what does hot water do faster than cold water?” was “Freeze”. Sure enough, after looking it up, hot water tends to freeze before cold water. I told my co-workers and we decided we needed to reproduce the effect.

First we put 4.6oz (not fl.oz.) of water in four 0.4oz styrofoam cups.

Cup 1 was tap cold water.
Cup 2 was room temperature water.
Cup 3 was tap hot water.
Cup 4 was boiling water.

Unfortunately I didn’t record how long we kept them in the freezer, but when we removed them we weighed the total water mass, the ice mass, and the water mass.

I recall the first cups weren’t left in long enough so we went for the 10oz cups. In the 10 oz cups it’s clear that through evaporation the boiling cup has gained surpassed the cold water cup, not in total ice mass, but in remaining water to freeze. It’s clear it will freeze first.

The reasons for the rapid freeze:

1. Evaporation. It’s clear that the water in the hotter cups evaporates more quickly which remove energy from the cup but also reduces the mass requiring freezing.
2. Convection. The hot water has more churning as parts cool at the top they get heated again by still warm water which gives off more energy. Also it keeps the warm water circulating more than the cold water so they warming effect goes on longer and can give off energy faster.

of her cast. Terry signed it this past weekend as you can see here
but that only lasted a few days as the vet came today to free her. The brown thing on the end is duct tape which I had to apply since she wore a hole through the bottom. I actually had to put on a second application of duct tape on Monday.

Anyway, the vet said that it was healing well but that she still can’t run full out for another few weeks. He also said he’s going to keep track of Grover’s cancer treatment progress and that we shouldn’t be surprised if he does get a little sick from the radiation. He thinks Grover will come through well since he’s young and strong. Yay!

Nicole was gone last week so I took the chance to watch V for Vendetta while I was brushing out the dogs. The movie doesn’t just look good, but I was drawn in by the main characters. The rest could have been cardboard cutouts with moving jaws and it would have worked just as well. About 1/3 of the way into it I knew I wanted to watch it again which is good because when I told Nicole I watched it I was informed that I was supposed to wait for her. So now I get to watch it again.

Then this weekend I was in need of a movie and Jet Li’s Fearless (Huo Yuan Jia) was exactly what I needed. It was fantastic in every way and I think it’s a fine film to be Jet Li’s last martial arts flick. The sets, the costumes, the pacing, the action, the story. Just go see it. Why are you still here?

When I was looking for what to make to break the fast this evening I stumbled across a tremendous page of Vietnamese recipes. Seeing as how aside from Lee’s Sandwiches there is no Vietnamese food in Santa Cruz I decided to give it a shot. I made Ginger and Garlic Rice with Chicken (Com Ga) but instead of the chicken there I used Stir-Fried Chicken with String Beans. I’m not generally comfortable with cooktop cooking being more of a shove it in the oven kind of guy, but having done these I feel I understand it better and have gained a new level of comfort.

The rice was good and gives you some idea what it will taste like when I don’t make mistakes next time. The chicken and green beans didn’t have an appealing smell to me while cooking but tasted good. I know it’s not just because I was starving because Nicole got home and enjoyed it too.

Some people are surprised at my low (42%) nerd score. Let me help assure you of my nerdiness through a little nostalgia…

The other day I decided to search to see if any information was out there for the TRS-80 Color Computer. My first computer was the TRS-80 Color Computer. You can see a picture here but the information isn’t quite correct since ours came with 32K RAM. The CoCo2 was just a smaller package and nicer keyboard. The CoCo3 offered a faster processor, more memory, and better graphics. How much better was it? People are still hacking away on it! In 2000 a game similar to Castle Wolfenstein 3D was made for it. Sure it was low resolution, but this is a 2MHz processor we’re talking about here and it does it! People have also built IDE controllers for it, SCSI controllers, someone is working on ethernet. It makes me want to pull out the computer, get this stuff, and start playing again!

Why does this add to my nerdiness? I still have mine all boxed up in the shed because I can’t bear to throw away my first computer and I went to two conventions centered around these computers when I was in high school.

Today I got about 6 solid hours of weeding in and my hands are feeling it. I know I should wear gloves, but the gloves make it harder to get a hold of things to pull out. Maybe if there were microfiber gardening gloves. Is there such a thing? I think I’ll have to look into that.

Also while at Costco I found a new motion sensor light to replace the one in the back yard that just decided that something was always moving. It was fairly inexpensive and came with bulbs but I put in compact fluorescents instead.

I don’t feel like I’ve done enough, just some errands and sit in meetings all day.

Since I’ve started a more sensible eating plan I’ve been losing some weight I should lose. This morning I was finally below 210. My plan? I eat when I’m hungry, not when I’m just ‘not full’. I don’t eat until I’m full, just comfortable. If I’m unsure I wait a little and eat more if I need to. So really, it’s just me paying attention to my body and not stuffing food into it.

Now I just have to work on the weeds tomorrow and do the cleaning I was supposed to do this week before Nicole gets home.

How White and Nerdy Are You?

I was archiving things off my hard drive on to dvd and I was reaching for the disc folder so I didn’t just leave it laying around to collect dust, but that made the top of the tower of of jewel cases fall down, some with discs in them. As I was picking up the mess (and of course putting it right back in the tower) I saw two movies I had set aside for later.

The first was the mockumentary It’s All Gone Pete Tong. It’s about a DJ who goes deaf and tries to find a way to do what he loves. It isn’t consistently funny but that doesn’t matter since it’s all just really well done. It actually pulled me in as a story and I appreciated that. I loved watching his battles with cocaine. That’s probably one of the few times that sentence has existed.

The other was The Aristocrats. Which is probably the most concentrated verbal description about bodily fluids and sex acts I’ve ever experienced, all in the telling of a joke. My the end there is little that’s disgusting about it because you’re brain starts looking for the variations and how they approach the joke on your mental check list. This film must have been a nightmare to edit. Deciding on order and what to keep had to be difficult. Phyllis Diller has the best laugh. It was worth seeing her and Bob Saget in the special features for their full recorded bits. The mime in the special features did an act that made me feel sad, and not because I was watching a mime, it was just a strong performance. And then I also realized that we as people must get a lot of our cues from other people through hands since that’s most of what you get from the mime.

Finally, here’s Chad Vader – Day Shift Manager (Episode 1). There are three episodes so far, but I’m just linking to the first one.

In the on-going Star Wars saga in writing, this takes place in the latest series which is about 35 years after Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode 4). As the second book of a 9 book series I really wasn’t expecting so much to happen. It seems wide open now, like anything could happen.

As for the author, I haven’t read Karen Traviss’ Republic Commando books but I’m looking forwward to them now. The story started a little slow but when it got moving you had to hold on with both hands. She has a special interest in writing about the Mandaloreans like Boba Fett and I think she handles those parts the best. The other parts aren’t far behind though.

I was going to go into spoilers, but I’m probably the only person I know who knows what’s going on in the stories by now.