London Design Museum
Somewhere we missed when we were in London: The London Design Museum. Next time!
Add comment July 11th, 2005
Archive for July 11th, 2005
Weird Theories & Fire
Somehow I jumped from studying flame and fire, and ended up on some site promoting weird theories : Zero Point Energy and from there went on to find out about some tiny town called Methernitha in a remote part of Switzerland that lies in seclusion and runs their ‘Christian’ community with some sort of static operated electricity generator called a Testatika. Interesting stuff - Who knows if it’s real science though! [Lotsa Pics & some Vids] [Vid Clip]
Oh yeah, fire/flame. From what I understand, a substance is heated up and then decomposes. This releases the molecules in gaseous form, which are then broken down by the heat and recombine with oxygen molecules and create some other by products. Seems to me that the ‘flame’ is the incandescence/color that results from some leftover carbon and other by product molecules being heated as they rise due to heat movement in gravity (up to less dense areas). The stuff left behind which dosnt itself burn is called Char (for wood burning) Heat / glow with no flame (For example Charcoal) happens because the material has already had the stuff that changes to gaseous form burned off somehow or has none present in it (stove element?), so the material itself heats and incandesces with no flame.
Will have to look more into this to make sure I understand correctly how it all fits together.
Some info I found about this that seems to confirm that this is basically how it works
Add comment July 11th, 2005
Too Small to See
The range of our perception of light and some details on how small an object we can see : Limits of Vision
And from a conversation the other day : What is a flame?
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Big Sphere
When I visit New York, I’ll have to check out the 90 ft diameter sphere and the SonicVision show at the American Museum of Natural History. Looks worth a visit!
Add comment July 11th, 2005
Color Blind
I came across this neat tool that lets you simulate what a website would look like to a color blind person. What’s cool is that it will process images too. Colorblind Filter. This site has a web safe color chart that also incorporates a mini-chart that shows what those same colors would look like to a (certain type of) color blind person.
I’ve always wondered if we are able to communicate about colors in a empiric way. Being colorblind is a pretty serious alteration of the spectrum, but what if every person’s color understanding was skewed just a little bit? What one person might see as red might look orange to another person. But since we have all been brought up with the same labelling system for colors, we would call it the same name nonetheless. One particular thing that I always fight about is the color of the middle light on a traffic light (USA) - i call it orange. Most other people I know call it yellow. What’s the deal with that?
And it is very easy to alter your color perception - cover one eye for a few minutes (so it is in darkness). Then uncover the eye and look through only left, then only right. I find this creates some fairly significant color shifts in my vision.
Next question : what is the limits of our visual perception? What color is right before a ‘color’ or wavelength we cant see? What if some people have a wider range of wavelength that they can see?
Add comment July 11th, 2005