Sunday, February 2, 2003

When German and English settlers arrived in North America in the seventeen hundreds they brought the tradition of Candlemas Day which has some pagan origins. It is the mid-point between the solstice and equinox and it was common for Christian clergy to bless candles to ward off the dark of Winter. from an English saying... If Candlemas be fair and bright Winter has another flight. If Candelmas brings clouds and rain, Winter will not come again. How Bill Murray gets tangled in this is for the scholars to consider. 6:22:31 AM     Prof Lyderic Bocquet has published a neat piece on skipping stones. Like so many things in classic physics it has been poorly understood. Very cool! A quick summary for those who aren't into the mathematical explaination. Bocquet finds that skipping a stone (he assumes a flat/thin stone against a still water surface) depends on the mass of the stone, the angle with respect to the horizon, the angle with respect to the water, its spin rate and horizontal velocity. Not surprising small angles and high spin rates work best. The stone must exceed a critical velocity to skip - spinning the stone introduces a stabilizing torque that tries to maintain the initial angle on the first skip, making a second bounce more likely... Bocquet predicts you might have a shot at the world record of 38 bounces with an initial throw of 12 meters per second and a spin of 14 revolutions per second. Time to build a machine... 6:22:14 AM     So why not build something crazy if you must stay indoors this Winter? An entomopter is probably at least four sigma out on the crazy scale. Some very cool stuff lurks here - particularly the movies. 6:21:58 AM     OK - a show of hands -- how many of you feel that AOL-Time Warner will be around in its current state next year at this time? At the time of the AOL/TW merger, its cheerleader/executives were talking about 1+1=3 math. This is the same sort of math that Bush likes. Perhaps we should be worried... 6:21:27 AM

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