Proceedings of the Harrogate Lunar Society from #166
1) Enhanced Games – cf transhumanism.
2) Beavers keep a stone in a pouch under an arm to break open eg shellfish; sometimes have a hoard of stones – that they pass on to offspring.
3) Whirlpools of the world: Corrievrecken, Maelstrom; location of Attenborough’s prog.
4) Bokeh – shallow depth of field.
5) mal de debarquement Versus somatic memory: Robert Frost's poem After Apple Picking. Seeing blackberries after picking them. But not books after being in library. Sensation of bed moving like small boat in Ullapool. Change in gait after carrying heavy load.
6) Bridges (Val); Arnside Bridge – use of water jets.
7) Crossings in general: invention via classification and analogies.
8) Ecuador's Rights of Nature. Sumak Kawsay. Also regions of Canada and USA.
9) Philip Versus Theremin - round 2.
10) True altruism : sacrificing yourself for (someone else’s) baby. Taking one for the team. Giving blood. Doing “the right deed for the wrong reason” – the greatest treason.
11) Irrationalities: coins in Giant’s Causeway (and in logs at Bolton Abey); effect of packaging, advertising.
12) Cheiral effects in ocean – sorting of left and right shoes – see attached file.
13) Counting on fingers in different cultures – see link in attached file. Chinese method compared to Yorkshire farmers counting sheep.
15) Titanium ores (in China, Australia, Norway: ilmenite (92%) and rutile (TiO2)
16) Home-made lo-tech magic eye pictures.
17) York festival of ideas: accidental science. Tim James, author of Accidental, for a rip-roaring adventure through science gone wrong.
22/11/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §176
The Lunar Men made some fireworks in the lab using glycerin and various oxidizing agents viz potassium permanganate, ammonium dichromate and vanadium pentoxide. They took flame, boiled and bubbled in a congealing mass of smoke and froth – quite exciting to watch. Best was the third as it had most oxygen per mole. Terry brought in a fascinating mystery object – a conical pulley with a helical groove around it used in antique clocks to control the torque of the spring. It’s called a fusee and is also used in overhead garage doors. An earthed braided sheath isolated at one end displays Poisson ratios from zero to infinity. Printing ink was found to be the most expensive liquid in the World retail price £1,000 per litre!
Hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties of different elements reflect the valency (1-7). Alkalies decompose water whereas the halogens have a great affinity for it. Aluminium-nickel powder ‘refuses’ to coat polystyrene balls no matter how forcibly they are pushed together. The reluctance is similar to wasps and bluebottles in being extremely difficult to flush down the toilet. This is hydrophobicity. Insects like wasps and bluebottles are full of air pores preventing water contact. The Lunar Men also made more chromatograms with hydroxylamine and ammonia. Thay added a variety of chemicals notably thulous nitrate, a colourless liquid which turns brown or black (similar to silver) on contact with ammonia. One way of classifying games is to place them on a spectrum that has totally symbolic at one end eg chess and totally physical at the other eg wrestling, sumo. There seems to be an absence of games in the middle ie part symbolic part physical, but pool or snooker would be examples of this.
8/10/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §175
A Stirling engine is a heat engine that is operated by a cyclic compression and expansion of air or other gas (the working fluid) at different temperatures, resulting in a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work. It’s a hot air engine with a regenerator, a type of internal heat exchanger. Like James Watt, Robert Sterling, is considered one of the fathers of hot air engines. The Lunar Society has some beautiful examples of Sterling engines. These are attractive moving ornaments in their own right – ideal as household decorations. Originally seen as a rival to the steam engine, its practical use was largely confined to low-power domestic applications for over a century.
Fibres from clothes in a tumble-dryer accumulated in a confined space, and after 20 years of tumbling aggregated into perfect felted spheres of diameters from 5 to 20 mms. A similar phenomenon has been observed in an old vacuum cleaner. The Johnson-Rahbeck effect, while barefoot differs between domestic sockets. Touch lamps operate like this and a peculiar sensation of ripples can be felt with this operation – a bit like goosebumps. Archimedes Principle has been recognized as a statement of a Galois symmetry. The same principle applies to rotating fluids, fluids in non-uniform gravitational fields, holes in soap films, and objects hanging from chains.
Coiled ropes are used as mattresses for rescued passengers on freight ships. An example of 2D things made from a 1D thing, like weaving, knitting, fencing &c. Many bills and receipts esp at supermarkets are made of thermal paper which is sensitive to heat. They turn black in the flame and on adding hand sanitizing gel they turn white. The same happens with alcohol and nail varnish remover. Other observations and ruminations of the Lunar Men include seeing a helium cylinder give up more helium when its empty! Difficulty in looking at a Kellogs packet and a plug of water in a capillary tube running freely when tilted but stopping 3 cms from the end.
25/10/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §174
Reports are afoot that ~90 million gallons of water are leaking from British loos everyday! That’s enough for 6 major cities or 3 million people! This could easily be prevented by replacing faulty loos (dual flush) with good old-fashioned siphons. Such a simple solution puzzles the Lunar Men as to why it hasn’t been implemented. Another bright idea that they had was to use smoke detectors to make a cup of tea! They planned to remove the americium from the smoke detectors and use them to produce electricity from the radioactive decay of Am-241. A quick back of the envelope calculation proved that you’d need a billion smoke detectors to light a candle! However, the Lunar Men weren’t deterred – they realized that there’s an undervalued source of power – fat people! Every kilogram of excess weight = 5 kilowatts of electricity. Link crematoria to the National Grid!
At Swinton Park in the dales, there’s an overgrown pillar with a heliochronometer on it. This is a remarkable find – its a sundial built in 1906 which is as accurate as a mobile phone in keeping time – 100 years ahead of its time! Its even more surprizing a find as most of them were scrapped during the metal shortage in the war.
Repeat observation and independent confirmation at Angram reservoir have revealed the echo of Canada geese honking sounds like barking dogs. Also, using a special ring tone, it has been confirmed that duck quacks do echo, despite reports to the contrary. The Dudley trilobite – a giant marine woodlouse, over 500 million years old, was found with dark green stripes on Filey Brigg! Another unusual observation included a pink egg, in a clutch of 12, which turned brown when exposed to light.
11/10/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §173
It is often forgotten that religion is a branch of philosophy - not the other way round! It would seem that science began with the Greeks when Dioscorides first used the Doctrine of Signatures: that plants that resemble a body part are good for ailments of that body part (because God had placed their signature on them to guide us). Eyebright looks like eyes, pulmonaria looks like lungs, &c. This was 2,000 years ago in the age of philosophy or more exactly natural philosophy - one of the many branches of knowledge introduced by the Greeks. It managed to survive the first millennium into the Middle Ages, though smothered by religion, it bloomed in the Renaissance to become science.
The secondary winding of a microwave transformer was measured by imposing a 50Hz voltage across it in series with a known resistor. The ratio of the two voltage drops is then equal to the ratio of the two AC impedances (because the current through both of them is the same.) Using the AC impedance and DC resistance of the coil, its inductance could be calculated. Various voltage drops were used across the winding (from 0.7 volts to 9.7 volts) and the inductance varied (non-linearly) from 11.3 henries to 14.3 henries. Non- linearity is commonly encountered in magnetic phenomena. The currents through the coil were around 2 milliamps.
Beautiful colours were observed in strong sugar solution between crossed polarisers.
Gravestones are never vertical, and tend to fall forward onto their face (and onto the grave). Some lean left or right, but never backwards; why is this? (perhaps because the grave tends to settle more). Many examples are at Follifoot. Lichens spreading across a slab of stone meet at a curve which is initially a circle, then becomes an equiangular spiral.
20/9/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §172
A new kind of fire tornado has been discovered. Known as a blue whirl of completely burnt soot in a spiral version of vortex breakdown. It is remarkably stable and flits into a yellow flame. What is surprising is that it has never been seen before. A theorem about stacking balls in a tray that is too wide has a surprising result. If you have 4 balls on the bottom, then add 3 on top, then 4 then 3 then 4 then 3 then 4; all the rows are higgledy-piggledy but the seventh row (of 4 balls) is dead straight and horizontal. Very surprising but "easily" proved. This highlights the activity of the Lunar Men - some would say what could be more pointless than this but it’s ideal for stacking oranges &c. Chromatograms are beautiful images of mixing chemicals. A few drops of a solution of lead nitrate were added to potassium iodide on a filter paper. A brilliant yellow precipitate of lead iodide was produced and slowly spread in a kittle pattern like a thingo plant in an unknown jungle. Similar experiments were done with ammonia and cobalt chloride, and copper sulphate; and aurichloric acid and potassium bromide. Solutions were also placed on microscope slides and the Lunar Men saw Liesegang bands! Also - when you slide the plates over each other the liquid (and air spaces within it) move at half the relative speed of the two sheets of glass but otherwise retain their shape - quite odd. Vivid colours were produced by transition metals which have very mobile electrons. The Lunar Society has a beautiful collection of chromatograms pioneered by Ferdinand Runge (§75, §85, §134) who first identified caffeine and coal tar dye; and the mydriatic effects of deadly nightshade.
Stones found on a small dam at the top of Angram reservoir have a thick glossy coat of jarnbrak. Fascinating puddles near Scar House reservoir: solid particles suspended in the water in very slight wind adopt shapes reminiscent of the various types of cloud (as classified by Luke Howard). In one puddle a perfect semi-circle was clearly visible, concave towards the prevailing wind direction. Similar effects can be recreated at home by blowing on clay slurry.
6/9/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §171
The Lunar Men spun shiny, silvery objects in the dark and shone a bright light at them. The images produced were fantastic – the shining, refulgent light contrasted with the dark shadows to a surprising degree. Such was the intensity that vanta black occurred! The presence of such darkness in nothing made it all the more real! Contrast is a parameter used to describe reality and even consciousness. One of the objects spun was a wire eggcup which produced glittering reflections but the most startling effect was a large black hexagon right in the middle of it. The Lunar Men were very puzzled by this. In what way was an eggcup the shape of a hexagon?
A fluorescent light was switched on and a slomo video of it was made. Yellow light goes up and down the tube because of the low voltage which eventually evens out. Terry brought a skipping rope, and in skipping, the rope was flattened into a U-shape but at the feet it was pointed. In fact a skipping rope has a very complicated wave due to the many interruptions and changes in torque. I watched a stage-coach on the telly and the wheels appeared to go backwards even though the coach is moving forward at speed. Slight change in the speed can be picked up on a slomo camera and the spokes of the coach ‘appear stationary’ – the stroboscopic effect. Again, a slight variation of speed makes it seem to be rotating slowly backwards or rapidly forwards depending on the frame speed of the telly and the revolutions of the wheels.
Other topics that came up included alternative maps (§127) – the British ordnance survey has half a billion features; elementary anagrams and rainbows caused by lightning.
19/8/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §170
Can you tell from an abstract painting or sculpture whether the artist was left-handed? A recent radio programme highlighted a story about forensic knot analysis. Police had a list of suspects and one was an expert in tying knots. The murder victim was strangled using a very unusual knot - which would only be known to experts. The list of suspects was narrowed down to 1! Similarly, can you tell whether a person on the street has just got off a bus? Gait identification is almost as specific as fingerprints - illustrated by Maria in Twelfth Night Act 2 scene 3: “I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love; wherein,....by ….the manner of his gait….he shall find himself most feelingly personated”
The invention of zero allowed us to replace absence with the presence of nothing! Absence of motion became motion with zero velocity. Is not deciding the same thing as deciding to do nothing? Zeno’s paradoxes are based on ideas like this. Other items that interested the Lunar Men included the vortex in a Dyson vacuum cleaner which creates 79,000 g. Every mammal, and lots of other species, has a lifetime of around a billion heartbeats. The ratio of speed of flight, running or swimming motion to heartbeat is 2½ - a dimensionless number, that is unique for all animals; known as the Strouhal number.
Other topics discussed at the zoom meeting included gods, colour names for emotions and the Spectre of the Brocken which can be seen in bonfire smoke in the film Cabaret. The Harrogate Lunar Society also have a list corner including haw-haws and dewponds in Yorkshire.
3/8/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §169
A second zoom meeting started with a paradox displayed by Terry. He showed us a picture of Albert Einstein and gradually withdrew it from the camera. The features of the photograph evanesced and merged into a picture of Maralyn Monroe! Clifford showed us a superb shadow of steam rising from a teacup which looked remarkably like a galaxy in miniature. Richard performed an illusion with a cogwheel. He measured the circumference with a strip of paper. He then rolled it around another cogwheel of the same size – and it only went half way round! Philip showed us pictures of dandelions and a curious apparatus across the river Ure. We dont know what it is but it may well be new research into feferrocology.
Other pataphysical ideas included: a haggis made from a blue whale’s scrotum would feed 150 people! If you switch on the light fast enough, you can see what the dark looks like! The sun is very bright, so if you want to get close to it, you have to go at night!
Chess has been found to have great cultural significance throughout society because it faithfully reflects the character, psychology and personality of people. This is encapsulated in the acronym OCEAN or CANOE, details of which are on the Internet. Take a pawn away from a chess set and you have a symbolic rugby team!
169 is the atomic weight of thulium – the rarest rare-earth metal. It is surprising to read that it is soft and tarnishes in air. This is what the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (Weest) says about it! It is not soft, it is hard and lustrous. As declared in Knaresborough in 2018 – it is the new gold!
19/7/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §168
Near the village of Conistone, Monday 1st June, 2020: the regions of scree have very sharp edges, contain no vegetation, are deeper where two scree flows meet and clearly demonstrate size sorting (a known phenomenon of scree slopes), ie smaller stones concentrate at the top edges, but also at the meeting of two scree flows (ie a rytre). Attempts to recreate these effects with lentils failed. Breaking into one end of a fluorescent tube caused the internal powder coating to be swept away by the inrush of air; the tungsten filament was used as a radiometer by focussing sunlight onto it (its resistance increased by a factor of 3, indicating a temperature of 1000 ⁰C); if done under water, a measurement of the tube’s internal pressure might be obtained; partly filling the tube with water demonstrates “the spring of the air”. (Robert Boyle, 1660)
The shadow of an array of holes cast by twin light sources is easier to understand than that cast by the sun. Light sources of different colours create novel effects. You can separate hexagonal nuts from square ones by placing them on a high friction board inclined to the horizontal by more than 30 degrees but less than 45: the hexagons roll down, leaving the squares standing. Once again, function follows form. Astronomers have discovered a black hole that is only 1000 light years away – so close in fact, it is invisible to the naked eye!
25/6/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §167
A game operator converts a game into a different game. An example is quattrification, which alters a game by sharing the decision-making between players. A second example is an operator called ‘physicalization’ that changes symbolic aspects of a game into physical features eg applied to chobe (a purely symbolic game) it would create a game where physical pieces (“atoms”) are pushed around a board and can “lock” together somewhat like Tetris, but with valency restrictions similar to chemistry. Physicalization of tiddlywinks (a partly symbolic game) might replace the winks with button batteries to introduce a physical electrical aspect. A third operator example, which is a reverse of physicalization is symbolization: introducing purely symbolic features, applied to tiddlywinks; this might confer a number to each wink, rather like pool balls. Game operators have much in common with Analogy. By pursuing the analogy that connects Velcro to zips, thatched roofs to tiled roofs, shotguns to rifles, a probabilistic lock has been invented/discovered. A more complex form of analogy: obscure glass relates to sunglasses as quality/quantity relates to quantity/quality ie what sunglasses do to light, – reduce the quantity while maintaining the quality, obscure glass does the reverse: it reduces the quality of light while maintaining the quantity. We might say that obscure glass is the mirror image of sunglasses (in the “quality/quantity mirror”) A circular rubber band of square cross section has two stable configurations: A) its normal circular flat shape and B) a non-planar shape like the chair form of cyclohexane. If the band is not perfectly circular, it will squirm to achieve the lowest energy form of B). Archimedes’ screw can be used to move granular solids eg at Masham brewery, barley is driven along a pipe by a screw pump; and the toner powder in some copiers is spread across the width via a screw. If you focus sunlight onto a finger wrapped in aluminium foil, you will feel only mild warmth; but the same finger held in a flame will get burned. Aluminium reflects radiant heat very effectively, but conducts heat also effectively.
11/6/20 Harrogate Lunar Society §166
As a consequence of the lockdown, technology came to the aid of the Lunar Men. Tho’ not a jot on the joys of visiting the pub, zoom, the new technology, sufficed to demonstrate a tolerable get-together. Terry, the host, invited Mike, Nicky, Richard, Clifford, Phil & me, Gordon to the meeting. We all exchanged greetings and pleasantries and the first item on the agenda was cicadas - huge grasshoppers - which are ‘hatching out’ for the first time in 17 years. There are millions of them. The period of 17 years is significant in evolution as it is so unusual. It avoids the greatest predators and is resourceful enough to provide for them. Mathematical explanations for this were put forward but no distinct agreement was found at the meeting. Coloured pools were observed up in the dales and this was put down to the presence of iron minerals in the rocks. A long discourse on Estonian cases was given by Clifford and we also discussed the A-Z of words: antithimeria which is using a noun as a verb and zeugma - a figure of speech whereby a word is used to modify others in different ways eg she left in a flood of tears and a taxi. Astrophotography was also discussed - the difference between candles and stars is extreme - but candles have more physics than stars!
A fascinating description of a robotic lawnmower was given by Phil and some charcoal was shown in the lab with the residue of turpentine as a black fluid in a saucer. All in all, it was a good meeting esp the novelty of zoom however it could easily turn into a shambles but thanks to all members and to host, Terry, for a successful first zoom.
Louis Pasteur separated out right and left tartaric acid crystals demonstrating their chirality. Nuts occupy a minimum area by moving them around a square. You might separate hexagonal nuts from square ones by agitating them whilst, simultaneously forcing them together eg laying them on a slope. The minimal area will be when the square ones aggregate together and likewise the hexagonal ones. Function must follow form.