I can barely remember yesterday.
January 8th, 2012
the impracticality of infinite information
I discovered the pictured device — a note-taking machine invented by one Vincentius Placcius — via a nice opinion piece on the BBC website about how we have dealt with information overload up until today.
In 1689 a professor at the University of Hamburg with a passion for new technologies, unveiled a device for managing information overload – a purpose-built mahogany cabinet designed to hold and organise several thousand hand-written notes taken by an individual reader from the books they were reading.
Along the back of the cabinet were narrow vertical posts, each headed by a letter of the alphabet. Running the length of each post was a sequence of brass plates engraved with alphabetised headings designed to capture topics of particular interest to the reader, each heading furnished with a metal hook, to which slips of paper containing information extracted from the owner’s reading were to be attached, ready to be retrieved for re-use at a moment’s notice.
It is not clear whether this rather cumbersome piece of equipment caught on (though apparently the philosopher Leibniz owned one) but the impetus behind it is obvious.
Sounds like a glorious object, no matter how impractical… I want one.
The danger today is rather that we are reluctant to let go of any information garnered from however recondite a source. Every historian knows that no narrative will be intelligible to a reader if it includes all the detail the author amassed in the course of their research. A clear thread has to be teased from the mass of available evidence, to focus, direct and ultimately give meaning to what has been assembled for analysis. Daring to discard is as crucial as safe-guarding, for effective knowledge management and transmission today.
There is all too little danger of the knowledge currently accumulating in floods – multiply-owned, stored and captured – being lost. Rather, if we are going to make sense for posterity of today’s information-saturated present, one of the things we will have to learn to do is decide how to prune the evidence, and ultimately, what to forget.
Addendum: Here’s an interesting article about the Belgian intellectual of the early 20th century Paul Otlet, and his approach to the same problem. Thanks Arnaudt!
December 4th, 2011
pintle and gudgeon
There’s a name for this rudder’s type of hinge. Part 2 is a pintle and part 3 is a gudgeon. Gee thanks, wikipedia.
November 13th, 2011
the joy of spigots
I saw a distasteful facebook page and thought “bigot, bigot, bigot”, which evolved into “spigots spigots spigots”. A happy learning opportunity:
Water spigot; also known as a valve, hose hydrant, hose bibb, or sillcock.
A tap (also called spigot and faucet in the U.S.) is a valve controlling release of liquids or gas. In the British Isles and most of the Commonwealth, the word is used for any everyday type of valve, particularly the fittings that control water supply to bathtubs and sinks. In the U.S., the term “tap” is more often used for beer taps, cut-in connections, or wiretapping. “Spigot” or “faucet” are more often used to refer to water valves, although this sense of “tap” is not uncommon, and the term “tap water” is the standard name for water from the faucet.
And the joy of tap mechanics:
Ecstasy courtesy of wikipedia.
September 10th, 2011
how transistors work
I’m trying to improve my knowledge of electronics but most books tell you either too much or too little and leave you frustrated. This video filled in the missing gaps for me, regarding transistors.
The most beautiful thing about it is how elegant these electronic components are. They each contain very few materials and mechanisms, but demonstrate a tremendous understanding of the physical world.
August 2nd, 2011
more playing with food
Far be it from us to destroy anyone’s nerdy fascination with lighting stuff on fire with a microwave—one of the ultimate proofs of commitment to your geekdom—and what better object to show off this dangerous, potentially poisonous exhibit than with a grape?
The experiment is simple. Take a seedless grape and slice it down its length, making sure not to cut all the way through (this part is important!), so you leave just a small amount of skin connecting the two halves. Put it face-up in a microwave, turn it on for 30 seconds, and presto! A ball of flame.
So what the heck is going on in that thing? Grapes are packed full of electrolytes, an ion-rich liquid (also known as “grape juice”) that can conduct electricity. Each grape-part serves as a reservoir of electrolytes, connected together by a thin, weakly conducting path formed by the skin. Microwaves produce the energy that shove the stray ions in the grape back and forth very quickly between the two halves.
As a consequence, the current that’s produced pumps excess energy into the skin bridging the grapes, heating it up to 3000 degrees and eventually bursting into flame. Meanwhile, the traveling electrons arc through the flame and across the gap, which ionizes the air around the grape creating a bright blue burning plasma (phew!).
And what about the poisonous gas tainting your roommate’s dinner? Well, he’s talking about the ozone (O3) generated when the air inside the glass is ionized (think lightning storm). While not directly poisonous, ozone in high doses can cause issues with your lungs and just isn’t the best thing you could breath. And the smell isn’t all that appealing either.
From here via reddit/askscience
July 27th, 2011
those thingies at the end of power cables
I wanted to make a joule thief (a voltage booster) for an experiment and noticed that I required a ferrite bead. I went to the electronics store but they didn’t have ferrite beads. This led me to google the term, upon which I discovered… that’s what those cylindrical components at the end of commercial electronics cables are! In a little plastic jacket.
In this particular application (power cables) they are just a simple cylinder of ferrite (metal alloy) around the cable, but they have an important and fascinating function.
Computers are fairly noisy devices. The motherboard inside the computer’s case has an oscillator that is running at anywhere from 300 MHz to 1,000 MHz. The keyboard has its own processor and oscillator as well. The video card has its own oscillators to drive the monitor. All of these oscillators have the potential to broadcast radio signals at their given frequencies. Most of this interference can be eliminated by the cases around the motherboard and keyboard.
Another source of noise is the cables connecting the devices. These cables act as nice, long antennae for the signals they carry. They broadcast the signals quite efficiently. The signals they broadcast can interfere with radios and TVs. The cables can also receive signals and transmit them into the case, where they cause problems. A ferrite bead has the property of eliminating the broadcast signals. Essentially, it “chokes” the RFI transmission at that point on the cable — this is why you find the beads at the ends of the cables. Instead of traveling down the cable and transmitting, the RFI signals turn into heat in the bead.
Explanation via howstuffworks.
Imagine how much interference there’d be in an electronics store or computer lab without ferrite beads choking the RFI transmission.
July 10th, 2011
the mechanics of nightjar noises
The sounds of the common nightjar/nighthawk explained.
June 8th, 2011
medieval dentistry
I like this medieval illustration of dentistry.
Miniature on a initial ‘D’ with a scene representing teeth (“dentes”). A dentist with silver forceps and a necklace of large teeth, extracting the tooth of a seated man.
From Wikipedia.
June 8th, 2011
an explosion a million kilometres wide
Geek.com:
As you can see in these videos, not only is some of the surface ejected into space as a result of the explosion, some of it returns to crash back into the Sun. The videos are being provided through Helioviewer.org which is an open-source project, funded by ESA and NASA, for the visualization of solar and heliospheric data. It seems the video of the solar flare was so popular on Tuesday that some visitors to Helioviewer.org had long movie waits due to the increase in traffic.
More video, photo and background info at geek.com.
May 24th, 2011
pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop
Pop Pop Boats are toy boats that run on a very simple heat engine. Instructions for how to make a copper coil (as opposed to boiler tank) pop pop boat here.
May 23rd, 2011
like finding that one elusive lego block
Graphene has been touted as the “miracle material” of the 21st Century.
Said to be the strongest material ever measured, an improvement upon and a replacement for silicon and the most conductive material known to man, its properties have sent the science world – and subsequently the media – into a spin.
Graphene sounds like the one wildcard solution to everybody’s metaphorical lego constructions. Exciting stuff to read about.
Posted in Misc. Science | No Comments »
April 16th, 2011
a tremendous mess of light
I posted about these Richard Feynmann clips before but I somehow missed this one amid that first spate of videos. In this one Feynmann describes the way we perceive light, and he does it in such a way as to inspire (to me at least) new wonder regarding the matter.
March 2nd, 2011
light to sound translation
Colin from Make magazine modifies a Korg synthesizer to respond to light.