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20 February 2004
Wanderings
by Ralph J.
Coppola
r_j_coppola@hotmail.com
Up the road, a wee bit from here, on the shore of the Bras d'Or Lake, is the small town of Baddeck, Nova Scotia. It was here, on 23 Feb 1909, that the Aerial Experiment Association, under the guidance of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell (the telephone guy), flew the Silver Dart , the first controlled powered flight in Canada. There is a museum located there that highlights much of Bell's work.
Lawrence Dillard and Jim Hannon were looking for a source of resistance card to plot equal potential contours. Pasco carries a product called Conductive Paper with Grid #PK-9025. The uses of this paper would make an interesting item for the Bulletin. [Well-written tips and articles on this topic will be welcome. Editor.]
BBC News reports that Hubble has seen the most distant object yet detected in the Universe.
The Nexus Research Group outlines how the amateur biochemist or geneticist can put together a small inexpensive laboratory.
What is electrophoresis? The Rochester Institute of Technology and Davidson College , each, have a version of a Java electrophoresis simulator.
Alan Swithenbank's site contains descriptions of his DIY work with single-phase motor/generators , polyphase motor/generators and, Tesla Boundary Layer Turbine .
Takeshi Akamatsu has designed and built an interesting Desktop Line Following Robot .
If you are into seismometers, tiltmeters or pendulums, then Randall D. Peters site will be of great interest. For one thing, in his paper . The Study of Complex Mechanical Oscillators using an Inexpensive Computer Acquisition and Processing System , he shows us how to use a computer game port as an inexpensive A/D converter. Check out his Home Page for additional interesting links. Such as A Novel EarthWave Instruments and The Stirling Engine-Refrigerator .
A lot of Peter's work involves the use of his S ymmetric differential capacitive sensors (SDC). They should prove to be of some interest to the amateur. For example see Allan Coleman's Broadband Seismometer for an Amateur Application .
A simple design for a Differential Capacitance Measurement Circuit for Tilt Meter can be found on The Discover Circuits web site.
With the rapid drop in the cost of red laser pointers, more applications are beginning to appear on the web.
... Thomas C. Altman's Laser Pointer Applications.
... Rex Rice and Mark Schober's . Double-Slit Diffraction with a Laser Pointer and Printer.
... Andy, Le Magicien's laser pointer driver . . This does not apply to all pointers. My $1 unit does not contain the PDA photodiode. BTW I use a pointer as an optical leash, while walking my dog. She loves to chase the spot and gets about 10X the exercise that she would normally get.
International Light , a supplier of NIST Traceable Light Measurement Systems , offers their Light Measurement Handbook , online, in either pdf or html formats.
Texas Advanced Optoelectronic Solutions (TAOS) carries a range OF LIGHT to FREQENCY, LIGHT to VOLTAGE and COLOR sensors.
Would you like to have your own radar to, perhaps, track a model aircraft or what ever? If so, have a look at Steve Bragg's site Building Your Own Amateur Radar .
Paul Wade's The W1GHZ Online Microwave Antenna Book will be useful to any would be amateur radar builders. Since the book is in pdf format, you will have to download the free Adobe Reader , to view the files.
There are many different types of radar displays or presentations. A few are shown in the US Naval Air Warfare Center's EW and Radar Systems Engineering Handbook .
The Decibel (db) is generally defined as a logarithmic power ratio. The US Naval Air Warfare Center has a good tutorial on this often-misunderstood term.
The US Naval Air Warfare Center, also, has a nice collection of Constants, Conversions and Characters .
Thomas B. Greenslade's Instruments for Natural Philosophy is an online museum featuring a collection of antique physics apparatus.
Are they or aren't they? . Rotating Gears .
The Kids Room
Whether you are preparing a presentation for class, a science fair or the Citizen Science Conference, poster session skills are a valuable tool. The following are a few of the resources that are available on the web:
... Creating Posters for Humanities & Social Sciences . ( Lewis-Clark State College)
... Introduction: Poster Sessions ... ( The Writing Center , Colorado State University)
... Effective Presentations . (The University of Kansas)
... Developing a Poster Presentation . (The University of Kansas)
... The Poster Session . ( A Guide to Writing in the Biological Sciences , George Mason University)
... Professional Looking Posters . (Nexus Research)
Here is a chance to get on the bandwagon and engage in some DIY science. Shawn Carlson's Amateur Scientist Column When Hazy Skies Are Rising featured the low cost atmospheric haze sensor designed by Forrest M. Mims III.
15 Jan '04 The Acid Rain Watch is an international online middle school project that was designed in co-operation with science educators and is sponsored by the Québec English School Network. The project offers your class the possibility of implementing a real scientific inquiry into a real problem: acid rain.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research provides Cycles of the Earth and Atmosphere , an online module for middle school teachers.
Test your physics IQ with The Basic Physics Savvy Quiz .
The Pickle Files . This is part of the Science of Cooking page from the Exploratorium.
Don't Hold The Pickles . This is Dawn Levy's article about theatrics animating chemistry classes.
The Science Connection , a science outreach program by faculty and students at the University of Arizona, has a collection of science related lesson plans .
Abour Scientific's web site is packed full of resources for the K12 science teacher. Especially interesting is their Cool Stuff Newsletter .
Build a Newton Blaster a simple display for the classroom or local science museum.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In that case would a Java Applet be worth a thousand pictures? The following links may provide you with hours of browsing and playing. Enjoy! Dolores Gende's Physics Simulations are a collection of links to a vast collection of physics Java simulations. Further links can be found on Tim Tyler's various domains . A good starting place would be his Simulated Physics Using Virtual Atoms page. Also, see the Physics 1 Applet Page from Cal Tech.
Darwin2K is a free program simulating the automated design and evolution of robots.
The Australian based Technology School of the Future has a collection of resources for science teachers .
FIRST ( F or I nspiration and R ecognition of S cience and T echnology) inspires in young people, their schools and communities an appreciation of science and technology, and of how mastering these can enrich the lives of all. FIRST teams up with the Lego League to host the First Lego League International Challenge 2004. The c hallenge consists of authentic scientific research in the form of a hands-on robotics design contest.
Imagine experimenting with fiber optics and then being able to eat your experiment! See Edible Fibre Optics and other activities from Islamic-world.net.
On The Lighter Side
Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) aka dihydrogen oxide or hydric acid, is a colorless and odorless chemical compound that has been found to be lethal to humans even in small quantities. See the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for dihydrogen monoxide. There are some organizations that think that DHMO is utterly harmless and are fighting steps to ban this hazardous chemical.
Movies will never be the same after reading Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics
Jupiter Scientific has a collection of General Science Jokes If you didn't get the joke; you probably didn't understand the science behind it.
From The Far Side
Cold Fusion ... Fact or Fiction? The controversy lives on. Here are a few of the many web pages presenting both the pros and cons of the debate.
Benny Kee of Lynnwood, Washington, asks Scientific American's Ask an Expert
Is there a conspiracy to kill Cold Fusion technology?
... The War Against Cold Fusion . What's really behind it?
Dr. Edmund Storms's site Taking The Chill Out Of Cold Fusion gives a pro Cold Fusion view.
The New Energy Foundation, Inc.'s Infinite Energy web site contains an archive of selected back articles including Cold Fusion.
Jean-Louis Naudin, of Lifter fame, has also done work with a Cold Fusion Reactor.
Cold Fusion Research A Report of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy prepared by the National Capital Area Skeptics
From MIT Tech Talk The Cold Fusion Mystery Continues .
DIY Try it your self with The
$0.06 Cold Fusion Energy Device . 