Cool Science

There's always a place for 'firsts' and this post is my first time spreading a viral video (which means you've probably seen it already). Yeah sure, it's a promo, but it still has that satisfying reality distortion effect where you're just trying to wrap your brain around what's going on and wondering how they did it. If you're a purist, the non-massaged version with live sound is arguably better. Then of course you're going to have to watch it a few times to see just how layered this thing is. You gotta love those Belgians. Now that I have passed it on, I can finally be free of it.

Hmmm, need some science here. Well, I just rejected a paper that I peer reviewed and luckily that doesn't happen much, but when it does it puts me in a funk. It's a lot like grading. Correct assignments are easy to grade. But when a student homework or exam goes way off track, it's really time consuming to work through it all, make sure they get the benefit of the doubt, and figure out a fair grade.

A weak paper is similar - you have to look up a bunch of their references, read lots of extra papers, and realize that you better be sure the paper is too weak to publish and exactly why it is, because there's a really nice research group out there that's going to be very disappointed. Well, it's way too late again, so I'd better turn off youtube and hit the hay.

Posted by Dave at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

So I just boarded a gigantic, crowded plane in L.A. bound for Boston, and the stewardess is going through the usual information such as what weather to expect when we arrive in Boston. "It's still raining in Boston..." she concedes, knowing that we have all been basking in west coast sun. Saving the only shred of good news for last, she adds "but it's about 45 fahrenheit in Boston, which is 7 Celsius, and if I'm doing my math right, that's 280 Kelvin". She was d**n well doing her math right and I felt this awesome rush just like those old Klondike Bar commercials. Out in the real world, not in some nerd-infested conference like the one I was returning from, some totally random person perfectly and casually used the absolute temperature scale.

If you too wish to do this, then take the temperature in Celsius, add 273.15 (it's a lot easier to skip the .15 for convenience - do you really care if you are off by a tenth of a degree?) and voila. So 7 C turns into (7 + 273) = 280 K.

Some temperatures that every chemist should commit to memory in Kelvin: (many of these assume 1 Atm ambient pressure).

0 K (-273.15 C, -459.67 F) - absolute zero; funny thing about this is you can never reach absolute zero in the laboratory (or anywhere else for that matter...) - that's a law. But you are allowed to get as close to it as you like.

4.2 K (-269 C, -452 F)- boiling point of liquid helium, very possible nature's most precious resource for supporting modern science and medicine.

77 K (-196 C, -321 F) - boiling point of liquid nitrogen; this is the temperature you need to reach to liquify nitrogen.

90 K (-183 C, -298 F) - boiling point of liquid oxygen; yup - when working with liquid nitrogen, you can liquify oxygen out of the air.

273.15 K (0C, 32 F) - freezing point of water; ho-hum.

298 K (25 C, 77 F) - the classic default temperature we all call 'room temperature'.

310 K (37 C, 98.6 F) - body temperature!

373.15 K (100 C, 212 F) - boiling point of water; yawn.

Posted by Dave at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)