Comments on: Amusement With Physics

By: Kea

Kea — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:35:57 +0000

Iâ€™m going to go on a hike real soon now and put the photos up on my blog.

I look forward to that! Funnily enough, since I live near the US Antarctic base, many of the Americans I meet are from up that way. I would love to get there sometime.

By: Carl Brannen

Carl Brannen — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:57:27 +0000

I’m “VP Engineering” for a very small company that sells very big used industrial equipment. We collected together the stuff to build an ethanol plant. It has a grain elevator that can empty one of those 110 car trains in 10 hours. I’m quite afraid of rickety towers with rusty ladders so I always snap pictures of me on ‘em.

Moses Lake is in central Washington. Without irrigation, it would be part of the great American desert: sage brush and tumble weeds. In the self picture you can see the edge where the rape field ends and the desert begins. The region has a remarkable combination of hydrology, sunshine, and climate that make it perfect for irrigated agriculture. The water source is the very pure Columbia river (glacier and snow melt). The soil has incredibly good drainage so it doesn’t build up salts. Grant county has the US record for corn produced per acre.

The Cascade mountains are some of the most beautiful in the US. I’m going to go on a hike real soon now and put the photos up on my blog. The locals are paranoid about influencing too many people to move here.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:16:47 +0000

Ah… such fields are a common sight on train journeys in the UK! I miss seeing them… where did you see yours?

-cvj

By: Carl Brannen

Carl Brannen — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:33:19 +0000

I used to regularly buy toys like marble rolling assembly sets to amuse my fellow engineers at various companies. It typically turns into a challenge to see who can make the most amazing thing during lunch. Hot shot engineers are quite good at that sort of thing.

And today I saw my first field of rapeseed. Now I’ll know it when I see it. It’s the source of canola oil.

By: Yvette

Yvette — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:39:58 +0000

Sorry Clifford, I was dead-set to be an astronomer ever since I was 13 years old.

Though as far as “programs which influenced Pittsburghers to become scientists” go, I shall direct your interest to the Westinghouse Science Honors Institute, for which hundreds of high school students wake up to attend Saturday morning lectures focusing on physics/engineering, sometimes driving hours and accross state lines for the chance to do so- http://www.wecnq.com/Community/WSHI/ Probably one of the best things to happen to me in high school as far as learning science goes, and I can’t tell you how many students got jumpstarted on science/engineering as a result.

By: spacewriter

spacewriter — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:45:12 +0000

This is fun! We did something like this when I was in high school physics and went to an amusement park. Not quite as detailed, but lots of fun.

Also, the Issaquah High School physics department (Washington State), has a physics scavenger hunt. (Link to abstract: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AAS…209.5901H). The teacher described it at a press conference at the Seattle AAS meeting last January.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:51:25 +0000

Wise… I think that the word you’re looking for is “wise”… not “old”….

-cvj

By: Supernova

Supernova — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:48:22 +0000

Hey, I took high-school physics in Utah and never got to do this!

Oh, wait a minute… that was more than 17 years ago. Damn, I’m getting old.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:48:27 +0000

Hi! Thanks. Oh no, I did not mean to imply that it was new at all. The fair described above is their 17th annual one, for example. I think that the NPR reporter knew this too. It is just nice to hear about it, that’s all. I’m glad to hear you were a participant…. would you say it helped put you on the physics path, or were you already firmly on it when you went?

-cvj

By: Yvette

Yvette — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:09:46 +0000

I didn’t know you hadn’t heard of these Clifford, else I would have told you! In Pittsburgh it is a rite of passage that every physics student gets to have free admission on “Physics Day” towards the end of the year to Kennywood, the local amusement park. The physics teachers are ultimately in charge of what the students need to do before going off to have fun, but the standard is to fill out a worksheet on a particular ride (working out the angular velocity for the merry-go-round, the stresses on a particular roller coaster, etc), and then do 3 Fermi problems. (”How many pepperonis are used on the pizzas in the park every year?” “How many trash lampposts are there in the park?”) Good times had by all, and it’s not unusual for the rest of the summer to overhear teenagers trying to outdo others with their knowledge by saying “guess how many seconds of freefall the Pitfall goes through every year?”

Anyway, moral of the story is that Physics Day in Pittsburgh has been well-established as long as I knew what physics was, so it’s nothing really new. We just don’t make as big a fuss about it as others, I guess.