Song Lyric of the Moment (#2)

Another selection from the Halloween playlist and one of the great opening lyrics of all time...

I was working in the lab late one night...

Monster Mash by Bobby 'Boris' Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers

Song Lyric of the Moment

For Halloween, here's part of the They Might Be Giants song Particle Man, which is on my Halloween song rotation.

Particle man, particle man 

Doing the things a particle can

What's he's like is not important

Is he a dot?

Is he a speck?

When he's underwater, does he get wet?

Or does the water get him instead?

Nobody knows

Particle man 

"Silly Putty with a Bang"

I searched for the "silly putty and nuclear reactor" epsiode that John mentioned, but a quick Google search for "MacGyver silly putty" provided the following clip:



Update: I never watched MacGyver much when the show was originally on, but I'm aware of the show's main premise.  Mac is a good guy who puts together spectacular escapes and fixes using the items at hand.

Comic Strip of the Moment

Back in my sales days, I often used the example of Silly Putty to explain the phenomenon of viscoelasticity.  Most people I met had played with the toy at least once, but they didn't remember the mechanical properties.  Everyone remembered the ability of the putty to transfer ink off a newspaper.  As this selection from the comic strip One Big Happy shows, something will be lost when people don't read comics in newspapers anymore.

Capital/Capitol Trivia

A few ramblings about capitals and capitol buildings that are rattling around my head.

• I've lived in two state capital cities: Austin, TX and Richmond, VA.
• I have a cousin whose hobby is being photographed in front of state capitol capital buildings.
• I've visited the state capitols capitals in Denver, Santa Fe, Austin, St. Paul, and Richmond.
• The Texas state capitol building is one foot taller than the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
• My favorite capitol building is in Richmond; it was designed by Thomas Jefferson and has one of his domes hidden inside the building.

Update: the distinction between capital (the city) and capitol (the building) is a fine point.  I'm surprised I didn't have teachers that harped on those words when I was younger.

Capital Ideas

The SOR meeting in Santa Fe begins today.  One feature of SOR meetings is their presence in state and provincial capitals over the past few years.  (I would imagine there's some connection between the location of a state's main research university in the state capital; imagine all those jobs.  There's probably a history thesis in there somewhere.)  Attendees at the past few SOR meetings and International Rheology Conferences have gone to the following capitals--

• Santa Fe, NM
• Madison, WI
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Columbus, OH
• Sacramento, CA
• Boston, MA
• Quebec, QC

Which capital city would you like to visit for an SOR meeting?  My first choice would be Austin; I have fond memories of the food, bars, lakes, and city from my year there.  I would also like to visit Honolulu, but I think my boss would not approve that travel.

Interview of the Moment

Joe Klein of Time magazine and Time.com writes about Ted Kaufman, the Temporary Senator.  Mr. Kaufman is the only member of the U.S. Senate who has worked as an engineer.

Link of the Moment

According to an email from SOR, the web site for the XVIth (that's 16th, for those who don't know Latin) Congress of Rheology is now live.  The Congress will take place August 5-10, 2012 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Benoit Mandelbrot, RIP

Beniot Mandelbrot, the father of fractal mathematics, passed away on October 14th.  Applications of fractals in fluid mechancs can be found in the phenomena of viscous fingering and turbulence.
I learned about Mandelbrot when I picked up a book on the basics of fractals [1].  There's a great story about Mandelbrot at IBM.  Hired into their research division, he discovered that the noise in the data transmission was both regular and erratic.  He found that the standard approach to the noise, increasing the transmission signal, would not fix the problem [1,2].  When I first heard this story, I thought it was a fabulous example of a theoretician finding a solution to a real-world problem.  Such solutions are rare, which is why pure theoretical work is hard to find at for-profit companies these days.

[1] Introducing Fractals: a Graphic Guide by Lesmoir-Gordon, Rood, and Edney (2009).

[2] Introducing Chaos: a Graphic Guide by Sarder & Abrams (2004).
[3] Time.com has put together a slideshow on images spawned by fractal mathematics.

Product of the Moment: Teabag Coaster

This product is designed by Yuree Stacy Lim, Jieun Yan, and Sangmin Bae of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.  It is a specially designed teabag made of compressed paper.  Once the wet bag is put on the coaster, the tea spreads via capillary action through the paper, dying the paper.

Hat tip: The design site Solid State UX