Think About It

I am so close to finishing, I can almost taste it. I cannot wait until 11:15 Thursday when my final normal class lets out.

And, because I'm playing with my new computer and I ran across this...

How many unnamed faces do you know?

All Heart

Ice. (ice baby...)

It's actually pretty interesting. So! This will be fun facts of water and ice. More small talk conversational material.

www.benbest.com

Why do lakes smell worse in the fall? Because water is most dense at 4C. (39F for you english people) When the temperature of the ambient air approaches that temperature, the water from the bottom rises to the top since it has been storing all of the summer heat and is above 4C. This is known as lake turnover. And the smell is everything being brought up from the anaerobic conditions at the base of the lake.

This is also why lakes freeze from the top down. The water at the bottom is warmer than 0C.

When water freezes, it forms a hexagonal close packed structure. See the image at the right. All of those black dots are water molecules, and the whole hexagon is an ice crystal. Ice likes to grow out of the vertical faces of that molecule. They don't have to be oriented vertically, but in the image, they are. When it forms off of one face, its a grain of ice. A ton of grains put together is called columnar ice.

Other types of ice:
Granular ice forms from freezing slush, creating porous ice.
Frazil ice forms in rivers that have supercooled below freezing. Ice crystals form erratically in the water, float to the top, then clump together to form sheets of ice.
The supercooled condition creates an environment for ice to form on the riverbed. Yes, freeze at the bottom of the river. This has been known to cause rocks to float when a large amount of ice is formed on the rock face.

Why all the ice?
For starters, its being taught in Arctic Engineering. And theres a bunch ice floating down the Chena. I went and stood by the river to watch. Its rather relaxing just watching it all go by. You can hear all the ice absorbing water as it goes by. It sounds like thousands of those wooden wind chimes. Pretty cool.
The picture above had a cool phenomena going on. That black line is a tree stuck on shore and the river is flowing from left to right. The ice behind the tree is being drawn/trapped there by the eddy that the tree is creating, causing the ice to flow up river behind it.
Also see the columnar ice.

What has become of my computer dilema?
Well, my computer has been reduced to the hard drive. It's all heart now. Though, it will be much cheaper than expected to fix it, so it might be resurrected after all.
My saving grace in this troubling time was family in Anchorage and ENSTAR! My mom went and bought me a macbook air. It's slick, small, light as a feather, and super quiet. Plus one battery charge lasts me about two and a half days. Thats sporadic usage, but still impressive.
ENSTAR gave me a computer in the fall, and without it, I wouldn't be able to continue my reports because that machine has Word and Excel.

Pressure. Pushing down on me...

I can hear the champion whirring.

Til Death Do Us Part

Google is aggravating me. They changed their look officially. Now navigating gmail for me is a pain. And this blog. I fail to see how the new set up is optimized. I liked the way it was.
Put it back.

I think it's strange how someone who puts minimal effort into something can be recognized with those who did everything. Case: Student Advocacy - Point: 2 guys went to Juneau, those two and many others wrote letters to legislature and testified in a public hearing about the need for a new engineering building and I get credit for it.
I got all of the original details and disseminated them and asked for volunteers to go on the trip. I showed up to three meetings, unaware and unprepared. They wrote all of the letters. They went on the trip. We got the certificates of appreciation at the awards banquet.
(at this point, I am searching for the preview button. Stupid google... Ooo just in: Google is a word. google has the squiggly red spell check line under it.)
Case 2: My Tau Beta Pi presidency
I delegated nearly everything because I was busy. My officers were probably more busy but picked up the pieces. I got a lot of face time due to the presidency. I got to travel. I got to know the Dean's office assistant who is always happy to see me and went out of her way to make sure that the 3 guys and I on the advocacy team made it to the banquet.
Life isn't fair, I guess. It's about showing up at the right place at the right time.

Sunburn itches. It's on the front of my shoulders where all of your shirts sit and rub. Luckily it's not all that bad of sunburn. But I've been out in the sun.
Again, life isn't fair. This last week was sunny and beautiful. Today, when I try to bike, a sport that should be pretty fast paced, it is cloudy, windy, and cold. I fought head winds for 35 minutes to have a 20 minute return trip.

Milestone: I ran 12 miles yesterday at 1 second faster than I want my marathon pace to be. I really think that I would've matched the pace if I had ran one more mile.

Wondering what the title means?
My computer died. The first. The original. The champ. The beast. (The beautiful keyboard)
I was using it this morning and and I put it to sleep and went to do something else. I came back, flipped open the screen, and it never woke up. It died in its sleep with a fully charged battery gearing up to go. Moment of silence.








I tried turning off and on. Tried plugging it in. Took it to the MacHaus and they did a quick test and nothing happened. It only had 3 weeks left to last... After almost 5 years of heavy use, they think the logic board is fried. It powered through all of my work almost as fast as the newest computers throughout its life. It ripped dvds at the speed of those new computers up to the end. Ate batteries as if they were candy. Outlasted its own charger.
I shall miss it; I always wanted to stay classic.

But! "Hollywood, we're never going down."
The next one is on its way. Hopefully its as good.

R.I.P.

Tis the Season to be Jolly

I live 2.65mi round trip from the store

It's an entire 59 F here! Well it was at 6:53pm at the airport.
Now is the season that everyone should be rejoicing! The sun is up, cabin fever cases are high, and the roads are dry! Mostly. Enough to bike.
Today was the first day that I got to bike to school. It was also the first day that I got to bike to the grocery store. Did you know that you can go to the customer service desk at Fred Meyer and they'll hold your giant backpack while you shop? Pretty handy. Then you go retrieve it after you're done and bike home!
And I got to use my nifty new watch.

What I learned today: The repeat lesson that moms are awesome.
Mine texted me today, it went a little something like this:
"What doing?"
"Sitting in class getting my last project." (Last project of my degree!)
"Really? What on earth do they think you'll learn? Nobodies paying attention." (jaw dropping amazement happens here)
She nailed that on the head. After our FE exam, all of my classmates and I are just along for the ride. If I wasn't such a driven individual to get good grades, I would probably stop doing hw and going to class. I've rocked my classes up to this point, that I'm confident that I could get a C in all of them by doing nothing from now until the end. (And since I can't graduate Summa Cum Laude because of having a B+, does anything really matter anymore?)
Plus, mine provided great roots for me. I read her "about me" section on google friend connect (that's how you follow my blog, by the way) for the first time. "We love the outdoors and the city life as well." Ohhh... Now I see where I get it.

What makes a Nathan:  Happy is a yuppie word...
I was given the biggest compliment today. I got home from my bike/grocery shopping escapade and Steven says, "Dude, you're such a yuppie."  (Cha-ching. Score one for me) His reasoning: I've got on plaid shorts, a polo, and I am riding around a beautiful 1984 Raleigh Alyeska. The only thing missing on that bike is leather wrapped handlebars.  ...Such a nice bike... (daydream off into the distance)
The situation that he complimented is a perfect example of who I would like to be: someone without a care in the world. (my definition of yuppie)
Someone who has those obscure trinkets (and uses them) that you thought were cool, but didn't buy. Someone with that leg up on life.
I'll take any hints on how to get to that point that I can. Offer away.

Summer Time!

I survived an 8 hour exam! (Everybody can celebrate now)
The best part is that I feel confident that I passed. The premise of the exam is a little ridiculous: instantly know which formulas to use to solve the test question. For 8 hours. We're engineers, we are taught to think objectively to solve problems: Google!
"Gaze into my crystal search engine to see the solution!"

In celebration of my semester rapidly coming to an end, Sean and I decided to hold a beach party. Or more appropriately, back deck party.
Is there anything better to do on a sunny Sunday than barbeque with friends? The only thing missing was the kiddie pool filled with warm water.

The great American past time

You could tell that it was a man-sponsored event because the meal was mostly meat. Peppered bison steak, chicken kabobs, chicken breasts, and salmon. And chips and dip. Oh! And Kevin made amazing hand squeezed lemonade. Poor fellow didn't realize that we had a juicer. His labors were greatly appreciated, though.
We just got to sit around in the sun, munch all afternoon, and ignore homework.
To make it more of a beach party, Sean moved the truck into the back yard, we opened the doors and windows, then blasted music. Pretty sweet boombox, eh?

What makes a Nathan: Toys!
So I still suffer the urges of a boy when it comes to shiny things and other toys. I must have it. The trick is to resist the urge for meaningless things. (Hot Wheels and Legos are not meaningless and are great purchases at any time)

My new toy: a Garmin Forerunner 610

It's freaking sweet. It tracks total time, pace, distance, heart rate, percentage of maximum, time behind a virtual partner, where you're going, how you can get back to a certain place, where on a course you are... and so on. For both running and biking.
The best part: It's touchscreen.
It has too many features for mere watch buttons.

When your finished with your run, it links wirelessly to my computer and then uploads it to the Garmin website where it displays all this awesome information.

Definitely one of the coolest toys ever.

The 2nd mile here was one of my fastest recorded.

Life is Good

Nothing to be learned tonight.

I'm running low on "care".
How do you... I don't care.
Hey! There's homework due... I don't care. (a lie, my homework always gets finished)
School this, school that... Eh. Whatever.

I'm not sure if I'm swamped beyond belief and stressed, or if I see the light.
On the graph here, I'm either cresting the last peak, or I'm far below the x-axis.

With the FE looming, I'm not sure how anything is getting done. I feel like a zombie who's eaten too many brains and gained too much knowledge. Not a sponge. A zombie. (I don't care; also a lie but slightly true since it will be a huge load off when I finish it)

But! Hey! Life is good!
What makes a Nathan: I got myself a new fan dangled GPS watch thing with waaaaay too many features. It's amazing. I've been mapping my runs before I embark on them; I've blindly done one run so far. I like to know that where I'm going to be running is going to get me the necessary distance and not just run in circles until I hit the mileage.
As a sort of update on my running: I ran 7mi yesterday in under an hour for the second time ever. The run made me feel like I only have one speed since I didn't really slow down, despite going up a large hill.
Today I ran one of my fastest recorded mile times, in the middle of a run. Oh yeah.
Basically, my mileage is up and my pace is down. And my heart rate, according to the watch, is peaking at 102% of my maximum. Hmm... Something needs adjusted. They said it will "learn" me.

Also, its nice and warm here in the day. 45-55 may not sound warm, but 3 months ago it was near 100 degrees colder. Its so nice in fact, that I get back from running and lay on the back deck to cool off. I spent 2~3 hours outside today grilling and such and...
I wouldn't say that I'm sunburned completely, but I have pinkish skin, sensitive to the touch. On April 11th. Life... is so good.

*Update: In the last 5 days I've ran 27.4 miles in 4:08:34.  (Did I say how cool this watch is?)

Don't Try This At Home

Okay, this is my warning.  What follows is the theory behind something.  I am in NO way endorsing that you try this.  If you do try it, it is not my fault.

www.learnthermo.com

How to walk on fire:

First, let me explain boiling. Thermodynamically, boiling occurs when a solid surface in contact with a liquid is at a higher temperature than the saturation temperature. Saturation temperature is the point when the liquid has absorbed as much heat as it can. Any more and it vaporizes.  On that nifty diagram to the right, everything to the left of the arched curve is a liquid.  Everything under that arched curve and is shaded is a liquid-vapor mixture.  Point 1 is a saturated liquid.  Boiling occurs as soon as we go from point 1 on the graph to the right, and become a mixture.

There are three modes of boiling: convective, nucleation, and film boiling. Convective boiling occurs just when the surface temperature is above the saturation temperature of the liquid. Convective currents form (think wavy heat lines that you see rising from blacktop on hot days) and carry the "boiled" liquid towards the surface until it's cooled.  Nucleation boiling is when the bubbles start to form.  There is no clear point that defines the separation of these first two.  First there aren't bubbles, then there are.  The last, and most awesome, (and relevant to my point) is film boiling.  Film boiling is when there is a vapor layer separating the surface from the liquid. Think of a long thing bubble covering the bottom of the entire pot.  Because air/vapor is an excellent insulator, heat is no longer transferred into the liquid, instead the surface temperature of the pot increases until the heat transfer overcomes the insulation and the temperature of the liquid starts to rise again. (There's a nifty graph that illustrates this too but short of me drawing one, I don't have one)

What does this have to do with walking on fire, though?

There is moisture on your skin.  Presumably, if you are going to attempt this for the first time, there's a lot of moisture due to perspiration from nervousness.

When you step onto the fire, the moisture goes through the first two modes of boiling and arrives at film boiling.  You get a nice insulating layer in between your foot and the coals.

Tread softly, and carry a big stick because if you stand for a prolonged period of time, you go passed film boiling and the insulating layer disappears and you'll want to pole vault off the fire.

Oh, and you need a $^@%&* hot bed of coals.

(Kids, don't say $^@%&*.  And please, please don't try walking on fire)

One of Life's Lemons:

As witnessed in a hotel room.

 What makes a Nathan:

Chilling out. I love just sitting around or wandering with no agenda and no cares. (no homework) It has it's place. There's a point where this becomes boredom, then you better add some sort of agenda or it could lead to trying to walking on fire. Until then, it can clear your mind, realign your thoughts, take you to some deep, dark corner of your head you forgot was there...

I don't have the liberty to do this much anymore, more specifically right now, but it sure makes me appreciate it. My recommended places to try it:

around a fire, just sitting

wandering around bookstores

running (what else do you have to do while moving)

walking

friends living rooms (this occurs when they think that there's an awkward silence or that you're bored. They often try to fill this void. Silence is golden)

I guess I should add at this point that most of these occur alone or in silence.

Ahh... Silence.

Getting to the Meat of Things

We're just going to skip over any personal update or commentary and cut straight to the chase.

What you will learn today: Why condensation occurs.

The picture on the left is a control panel to an extreme temperature simulator.  If you can't read what it says, the set temperature (top number) is -45.0 C.  The next number down is -45.3 C. (current temperature)
My senior design group wanted to see how much a heat pipe would shrink if we froze it.  That's why I got to play with the freezer.
All that aside, to the point!
Relative humidity is the amount of water vapor in air compared to the maximum amount of water vapor in air at the same temperature; that is to say the current vapor pressure of water divided by saturation vapor pressure. In a formula:
P[H2O in air]/P[saturation @ temp] - (if the top value is at 70 F, then you want the saturation pressure at 70 F)
This changes with temperature; as temperature rises, relative humidity goes down.  Conceptually: you have a cube of air with a given amount of water in the air.  You heat it up.  The amount of water in the air stays the same, but the air can now hold more water, and the number on the bottom of that equation increases. (the result shrinks)  And the opposite is true.  You freeze the cube and the amount of water it can hold decreases. (value up)
Okay, now you a master at relative humidity.  You pour yourself a glass of ice cold... Water.  The ice cold glass is surrounded by hot air.  The amount of water in the hot air is equal to the amount of water in the cold air surrounding the glass, but the saturation pressure at the lower temperature is less.  It is so much less, in fact, that the relative humidity goes above 1 so water has to come out of the air and you get...

Condensation

You now have something interesting to explain to everyone when you feel like you can't make small talk and there's that awkward silence. ...

What makes a Nathan: (more appropriately, what Nathan makes)

I love to cook and I love to eat.  (which came first, the appetite or the hobby?)

This is my take on food: it's fuel, but fun to experiment with. Here are my fundamentals:

These are carbs. Left is complex, right is simple. (kudos if you know what they are)

Complex

Simple

Simple is good for filling you now and giving you energy now. Complex is good for keeping you full and giving you energy later.

Blueberries, Anyone?

(In my head simple: good for training now, complex: good for the long run this weekend)

Due to caloric density, you must eat a large volume of complex for it to really matter.  Actually, that makes sense since most complex carbs weigh quite a bit less than simple ones.

Another rule: Color is good. Eat the rainbow, just not skittles.

I was complemented on my rainbow today.

Ways to get affects from both complex and simple carbs? Eat both. Duh.

But to me, no meal is truly complete without meat. I love meat. Mmmmm... Steak.  Or in this case, fish.

Hey, my grill had to make it in somewhere.

Oh! And as you see from the above, you can grill a lot of things, like pineapple! Its amazing. Trust me.

As you can see from the mass of pictures, I really love food.

And the best part, food is like math.  Its just simple addition.  Salad+pineapple+fries+salmon = YUM!

Don't worry.  I only ate half the pineapple and salmon. Everything else, though...

And remember, tip your waiters and waitresses.

Enduring - aka A Long Ways to Go

Right-o. I was looking at my past race stats that I have accomplished and determined that I have a really, really, really, long ways to go to get my pace time down to what I was running two years ago.
1st 5k (and first ever race): ~27min (i.e. 8:39pace)
2nd 5k: ~23min (7:22)
3rd race, 12k: ~59min (7:53)
I'm not fast. By any means. My marathon time that year was 4:56, a pace of 11:30.
Why am I divulging this information? (besides the fact that divulging is fun to say?)
Because as it currently stands, my 5k time right now is ~28min (8:58) and I want to run a 4 hour (9:09) marathon in less than 3 months. 82 days to be precise.
Yeesh. Better get moving. Literally.

Educational Section:
Enduring is a nasty word. It means suffering patiently or remaining in existence. How very depressing. But! (there is always a but in this blog) It is similar to word such as: continuing, persisting, constant, stable, steady, steadfast, fixed, unwavering, unfaltering... (Thank you dictionary app)
Now are those some words that you would like to be known by? I know I would.

What makes a Nathan:
It's time, to introduce you to my lil' friend.
"Will the usher's be so kind as to lower the lights?"
"Those of you with weak electronic and mathematical skills may wish to close their eyes."
(Get to the point already...)
"Ladies and Gentlemen, my right hand, the 'heavy weight' champion, the Ti-84 Plus."
I've had this thing since my freshman year of high school, and I still don't know everything that it does. I know that I can solve equations that people with those newer fandangled Ti-89's can't. (Clever manipulation of graphs) It's flat out amazing.


...silence falls upon the crowd... What is this appearing in the opposite corner???

"Someone to challenge the title???"
"This is going to be an epic fight"

This is my new Ti-36X Pro. With all of those extra letters, it must be amazing, right?
Bottom line: It is. I'm contemplating cutting off my right hand for this thing; this newer, slimmer, faster, fewer menu'd, solar powered thing of beauty.
Why? It does nearly everything that I used the 84 for and more. (except graph) We're talking integrals, derivatives, solving polynomials, matrices, and more! Plus its allowed on the FE. And smaller so I can take it to work if need be.

We'll see how this battle turns out. The last week the 36 has been pretty impressive.

(Hey, I'm an engineer. I can love my calculators)

Last word: why am I writing in my blog when I'm so busy? I had 20min before my personal hw cut off time which isn't enough to start anything. When is there any better time to blog?