Failure to Communicate

On our first teacher workday of the year, we had an icebreaker activity.  The staff wanted a chance to catch up across departmental lines and so they did the old draw-numbers-out-of-the-hat.  The idea being to get random groups together to talk about their summers before the school year inevitably separate us into departments again.

I drew 25, which I signalled to the room at large with my fingers as in the istock photo on the left.  Of course, my good friend Paul who also teaches physics, shares 3 classrooms with me and has a desk next to mine in the science office also drew 25 and came right over.  We scanned the room looking for some more group members and saw someone waving to us from across the room.  He flashed the same sign and insisted we join him.  So we worked our way across the room and said "you guys are 25 too?" and they looked at me like I was crazy and said "No, we're group seven".

R.I.P. S.E.G.

Stephen E. Graham 1969-2010

Stephen has been a friend of mine for 26 years now.  We met in band where we had both found refuge from the stress of P.E. class (marching band got you out of PE in those days).  I tell people now-a-days that I was the next to worst trumpet player and Steve, well - let's say he kept me company down there at the end of the line.

I found in him a kindred spirit.  We were quite different but we shared those common teenage feelings of not quite belonging coupled with a great desire for change.  He single-handed created the Math Team, and in his last two years of high school, he taught me all the tricks of being a "Mathelite". 

Looking back, I don't think I ever quite put it together that I dropped out of band my senior year in part because he had left and gone to college.  Who was going to make snarky remarks with me and mock everyone else, if not Steve?  Who else would look at me as we both dropped out and simply pretended to play during the difficult passages? 

I have been lucky enough to continue crossing paths with Steve through the years: in Huntsville, in New York, in Georgia, and, for the last 8 years, in Boston.  Along the way he has taught me what it means to be a good friend.  Being a good friend takes work; it takes effort to maintain a connection through the years, over distance, through life's changes and challenges.  How he understood this so long ago I will never know, but I do know that I am thankful he did. 

Stephen, always one step ahead of me, now has gone on and taken the final step and shown me something remarkable once again.  His legacy is all around us: his friends, his family  - all those he touched with his kindness, his wit, his understanding... he leaves us all the richer and the wiser.

I take comfort in knowing that these final months have been his happiest, his most peaceful, and that he knew he was surrounded by friends and family near and far who loved him and counted themselves lucky to be loved by him.

Rest in peace, Stephen Emerson Graham, and thank you for being such a good friend.

A mug Steve gave me for my 40th birthday. 
The faint writing you see on the left is a copy of a funny note (long forgotten by me)
I gave him for his 17th birthday
"Rules for how to stay cool"

One Token Each

As we say in the Riddy house: "Tank U Chuck E Cheesits"

Do the Living outnumber the Dead?

In a word, no.
However, it is an interesting thing to think about.  For so long, the population of homo sapiens sapiens was extremely low, then the scientific revolution came along, allowing modern medicine & agriculture to develop and BOOM!  the population explosion we are in happens.  Check out this graph from http://www.sustainablescale.org:

Even if you were to extend the time axis backwards to around 200,000 BC when we think our subspecies evolved from the simpler, archaic homo sapiens, the populations were so low that there would not be much area under the curve.  However, the popular number for all homo sapiens sapiens dead is around 60 billion (that's for around 7500 generations between you and the first "modern" man).  That's less than 10 dead for each one of us alive today.  Kind of creepy the way we are swarming the surface of this planet, eh?

Yes - life can be this good!

Chongers sees the next wave coming

Moonths

Time for Earth to orbit the Sun: 365.25 days

Time for Moon to orbit Earth: 27.3 days

365.2/27.3 = 13.38

And therein lies the problem. There is no neat way to make lunar –based time (“moonths”) mesh with solar-based time (“years”).

I have blogged about various aspects of time ( days of the week, lunar vs. solar calendars, origin of 60 seconds and 60 minutes as units of time), but Irene brought my attention to another arbitrary unit: that of 12 months. Since the Romans decided to go with a solar calendar, I always wondered why they didn’t go with a nice, round ten months. Well, they did:

1.Martius (March)

Mars - god of War

2. Aprilis (April)

Aphrodite- goddess of love & beauty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Maius (May)

Maia - goddess of spring

4.  Junius (June)

Juno - goddess of marriage

 

5.  Quintilis (July)

Fifth Month, renamed by Julius Caesar

6.  Sextilis (August)

Sixth Month - renamed by Augustus Caesar

  

7. September  - the seventh month

8.  October - the eighth month

9.  November  - the ninth month

10.  December - the tenth month

A nameless winter stretch of days followed to round out the solar year until Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome circa 700 BC, added the two winter months at the end of the year:

Januarius "January" (Janus is the Roman god of gates and doorways, depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions) and

Februarius "February" (Februa is the Roman festival of purification).

The nameless stretch of days needed to keep the seasons lined up was kept at the end of the year (after February). This “filler” period was not used every year and was sometimes called Intercalaris "intercalendar" or Mercedinus (“payment for work” was the time when property lessees paid rents due to their landlords). This is the reason leap days come at the end of February even in modern times.

After the introduction of January, Romans began to transition the beginning of the year to Jan 1, but the process took 100's of years to become standard and official.

In modern times we still have to work hard to keep our lunar cycles and solar cycles lined up.  We have our complicated leap year rules and our leap seconds

They let me teach this stuff?

During a very successful pilgrimage to Storyland, I noticed the rear hatch of the minivan (AKA the "Swaggerwagon") would not stay up.  Upon our return, I decided to change out the supporting struts myself. 


Of course the friction force between the hatch and the supporting plank is dependent on a strong normal force at that point of contact, duh! 

Of course the glass in the hatch window is thin and will break as the plank slips and hits it!

A little shaking of the car while replacing a strut and you get this:

In the end, my insurance covered the window replacement.  Next time, I'll draw a force diagram first!