nik

Ensign, What's a "Birdie?" The captain?

We go out occassionally. Sometimes, I'll throw barbeques for the students in

my group, and sometimes I'll just go out with the other "doc's" so we can

complain about the students. Good for morale.

The speed of smell is limited to the sensitivity of you nose (the number of receptors and range of smell identified) and the speed of you nervous/respritory system.

This reminds me of something I did a few years ago in college. A couple of friends and I did an experiment to measure neuron transmission speed. We connected mechanical stimulators to various body parts (hand, foot, neck, back, etc.) which remotely pricked the subject, after which the subject responded by pushing a button as soon as the pain was felt. By estimating the distance from the brain of the various receptor points, we were able to get a pretty good linear fit of the reaction time to distance from the brain, and thus subtract the offset of the response time. We all took turns to get averages. I can't remember what the transit speed was, but I think it exceeded the speed of sound in air. I'll have to see if I still have my notes on that. Of course, that's independent of the transmission of particles through air. It was a neat little test, however.

This wasn't a class project, it was just for fun.

Mariners 3, Tigers 1: Oh the humanity!!!!

Twins continue to dominate - getting some good numbers on board. I'm gonna grab a few for my fantasy team if I can. They may run away with the ALC this year. Tigers' lack of a deep bullpen is going to kill us!

hmmmm..... As you can clearly tell, I'm out of my league here. Perhaps we should consult the Jedi Holocron.

By the way, Fenriz, your remark reminds me that many inventions had very strange beginnings - Gatorade for example.

The cool wind whipping past my ears, the pounding of my heart in my chest, breath coming out in gasps, the smooth glide of a well-greased chain, and the low hum of

rubber on pavement.

I see. You would think I've seen that before. Does it contain charcoal? I used to feed charcoal to my birds for things like upset stomachs, etc.

    So what's the deal with 'BEANO' then? Proteins, I thought it was that we couldn't digest the bean 'skin' and that's what was doing all the damage :wub:  :)

Beano! Beano? ....... Beanooooooooo......... hmmmmm?

Touche, encore, Jeanway! Qu'est que c'est le Beano? C'est un jouet pour les enfants?

I'm sorry, Jeanway. You've stumped me again. What's beano? Is that anything like the card game bunco? (This may be one of those cultural differences I spoke of.)

Happy to admit what I don't know, Jeanway! "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

Stardate:214236.7

 

 

Well we beat Baltimore the day before yesterday and lost yesterday.Right now we are down 0-4 in the 4th.The offense just isnt there.

 

And starting tommorow we play a three games series against the Tigers.Since i take it you are a detroit fan Nik me and you are enemies at least for the next three days .

 

Yow! Well, this will be interesting. The Tigers got off to a good start, but have been pretty mediocre in the past 13 games - one 6 wins. April madness is over.

(Oh, yeah... forget all that stuff I said about maybe the M's will sweep a series. )

So is there a song u can relate to?

Yeah, sure..... The the theme song from The Twilight Zone.......

Getting the snot beat out of me in judo. It's the best way to learn. ("Practice with those better than you...." -Jiguro Kano)

Well.... Detroit's still above 0.500, so we're all pretty happy in the Wolverine state. It's sort of funny hearing Trammel interview after the games. Last year, he was just shellshocked after each game, saying things like, "Well, I don't know what's going on...." This year, he's still shellshocked after each game, and still saying things like, "Well, I don't know what's going on...." Now if the Twins could just lose a few.

Yeah, I'm not understanding the M's this year either. They've got great offense all around, and the pitching SHOULD be there, but they just can't pull it out of the bag. It's only April. You never know what could happen. Maybe the M's'll start seeping series, and the Tig's will begin losing on a consistent basis, and everything will be back to normal.

I too am enjoying watching the Yanks go down the toilet. Very enjoyable season.

The X-Files theme song..... to my family.....

Excuse me, nik.  A' low energy beam of protons', that's what you were after You needed for an experiment, right? so what

was that all about, anyway?

Oh, right! Yes, that was successful. As you requested, I posted a summary in the

"Nik at Night" forum. Geesh! I must really be out of the game today..... Everything's going over my head! Sorry!

Thanks nik.  Alot of people will appreciate this. Hey, did you find that atom you were looking for?

Atom? I don't seem to recall looking for an atom..... Perhaps I WASlooking for an atom, and simply forgot that I was. I'll have to go back and check my "to do" list to see if I was indeed looking for an atom, and if so, which one. I hate it when I put things on my "to do" list and then forget to do them, or just lose the "to do" list. If I was indeed looking for an atom, thanks for the reminder.

Uh.... yes. "Sprint" Sorry. I recommend that one SPRINTs accross a crowded room. However, the application could also apply to spitting across a crowded room. Yeah sure. Give that a try too!

Oh, I get it! Why are beans associated with bad smells! AHA! Beans are loaded with protiens AND the digestive process involved produces a lot of methane and some other stuff (I can't remember the reaction at the moment, dang!). It's like a fermenting process (ever had natto?). On the same subject, I used to hang out with a lot of weight lifters, and they would drink high protien drinks (more than 20 grams a shot). This would have the same effect as beans. Even worse, some of the drinks had egg protein in it, and the process to produce this resulted in a little extra sulfur in the powder, so the... ahem.... results would smell like sulfur too. They couldn't just eat a lot of chicken. We kept the windows open a lot.....

  Also how do you dissolve mineral salts?  I mean rock hard stuff?

Here's the table I promised. Actually, it's the online version of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics - a nice compilation of tables and general information.

CRC Handbook

Click on the link that says "Properties of Inorganic Compounds" and you will get a PDF file (careful... it's 537 pages). The last column in the table describes experimental

solubility of various compounds in various substances. Not to bad. I hope this helps.

Oh yes, the kinetic energy of individual particles in a gas at room temperature is surprising, but keep in mind the gas has other molecules as well. Imagine trying to spint in a crowded room at a party (Try it. It's fun.)

I don't know too much about how the nose works, but I could probably make an educated guess (OK, semi-educated). Since the sensors in the nose transmit electro-chemical signals to the brain, we consciously sense them (the frontal cortex), many time experience a response (the hypothalamus amygdala), and remember them (the hippocampus), I imagine that that the center of the brain responsible for smell develops an adaptation mechanism to decrease the response to the chemical response of the sensory neurons in the nose. This response is probably similar to the adaptation to the sense of touch. Do you know what it's like to get a new watch, new shoes, glasses, or contact lenses. You are always aware of them when wearing them, but after a while adapt to them. Could you imagine what it would be like to constantly be aware of our clothes all the time as we are wearing them. We'd go nuts! The brain must develop a similar response to smell. As I said, I'm not too knowledgeable about this. I bet Unadopted Angelic or The Unicorn Hunter know about this, as they've studied this sort of thing.

I did not know this fact about being able to discern a maximum of three simultaneous scents. Interesting! Very interesting!

Do you know anyone without a sense of smell or a very poor sense of smell? I know a few. Fascinating people!

Beans? I'm sorry, I'm at a loss as to what you're talking about. I must really be out in left field on this..... Do mean like "running on someone's bean?" Is this a subtle hint?

Anyone who had to use a tricorder that looked suspiciously like an old 8-track player ripped out of a car has got to be good.

He's a miracle worker! Scotty could install a warp drive on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if he had to.

Crane shots. Flying leg kicks. Ordering the Enterprise to target his location... how could you not pick Kirk?

Riker's tough.

McCoy. Any doctor that can hook a Vulcan body up to a remote control, and then reattach the brain is awesome. McCoy could cure an overcooked steak if asked to.

Gotta go with Sulu. Anyone who can execute "emergency landing plan B," fly ancient equipment, and use a sword as well as Sulu can't be all that bad. Sulu could fly a hamburger if he had to.

Uhura can clear up any transmission. Cripes, she could successfully open a channel to a pancake if Kirk told her to.

:: whispers, you know he's a physicist, don't you:: 

How did you know this? I don't recall telling you this.... (of course, I tend to forget seemingly trivial things a lot) But of course, you are correct. Good deduction! People like me appreciate good deduction.

At least one of you have posed questions regarding what I really do in my job.

One of the nice things about my job is that I get to travel quite a bit. I travel to lend expertise in other experiments, give talks, go to conferences, or otherwise hobknob with my fellow physicists. This week, I took a small trip to a very small nuclear structure laboratory to help with the thickness non-uniformity measurement of reaction targets. In order to study nuclear structure, many experiments involve hitting a thin target or material with a beam of nuclei. We almost always want to know the thickness of this target, but we also want to make sure that the target is the same thickness over the entire target (within 1 or 2%). To measure the thickness, we scatter protons off various positions in the target. We produce a beam of low-energy protons incident on our target. Many will pass through (an atom is mostly empty space), and some will scatter while passing through. The energy of the scattered proton depends on two things - the target thickness, and the scattering angle (kinematics). By placing detectors at specific angles, we can detect the proton, and thus the only variable is the thickness. This is how I spent the first three days this week. It's actually a pretty simple test, but we really enjoy doing this stuff, and we run around the clock - tiring but fun. Ask any physicist why he became a physicist, and one of the answers you will hear is, "I like pressing buttons."