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06/30/09 - Ballard Locks

We happened to catch the Ballard Locks in action. There was a tugboat pulling a pair of barges and a host of smaller craft in the lock waiting for their trip down to the level of the Puget Sound. After a bit, they closed the far gate of the lock. Then, the bells rang, and the lock drained. When the water level in the lock matched the lower level, they opened the gate and let everyone out. It doesn't sound like much, but it is kind of amazing to watch. It works just the way it does in those science book illustrations.

A tugboat waiting for the lock: Note the high water level.

The water starts going down.

These sprayers keep gulls from attacking the salmon.

The water is farther down.

The gate opens and the tug goes through.

Keywords: science, seattle, salmon

04/03/09 - Morse Creek

Just a brief note on the Morse Creek trail, which is what we call the section of the Olympic Discovery Trail that runs west of Morse Creek. On our last visit:
  1. We spotted scientists at work. We thought they were fishermen, but they had awfully science-y looking gear. We asked, and they explained that they were studying the water chemistry and the like.
  2. We spotted kelpies. We thought they were otters, since we often see otters along the trail. They weren't otters; they were just clumps of kelp, but they kept us guessing for a bit.
  3. We spotted pretty ducks in Morse Creek. We're guessing that ducklings are in the offing.

Scientists in the wild

Kelpies

Ducks

Keywords: morse creek, science

04/01/09 - Unusual Potato

At one time we had hoped our web site would never become one of those sites packed with photographs of curiosities like this unusual potato we spotted at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. Unfortunately, we have succumbed to temptation.

That sure is an unusual potato. Potato courtesy of Westwind Farms.

Keywords: farmers' market, food, science, westwind farm


Apple sure makes tough computers.

03/11/09 - Seen Along Route 112

There used to be a trailer on this platform visible from route 112 out towards Joyce. The trailer has been gone for a few years. It was destroyed either by a windstorm or perhaps the county. In any event, this little Mac has outlived its home. It has been sitting along the roadside for nearly two years now. We figured that we should get a picture of it before the platform crumbles underneath it.

Keywords: art, science

02/26/09 - Weather Radar Is Back

We out a brief email outage which was made all the more mysterious by a simultaneous weather radar outage. Instead of the usual green and yellow spatters of precipitation set against a gray and blue map of our area, we saw only a large overlay explaining that our local station, KATX, was out of service. We clicked the little legend for an update:
  • KATX will be down until further notice due to a mechanical failure of the radar.
  • Radar will be down until at least Thursday afternoon, Feb 26th, for repair. The mechanical failure for the radar is more extensive than previously thought ... and more parts are on order.
  • Radar will be down until Friday morning. New part has been installed. Radar needs to be calibrated during the daylight hours.
Our email recovered a bit before the radar came back on line. We assume that there was something going around.

Keywords: weather, science

02/18/09 - Upgrade Your Tribble

After the recent demonstration of cooking with triticale at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market, we decided to take a good look at our tribble. You have to be a Star Trek fan to understand, but this is a reference to one of the great comic episodes in the original series, The Trouble With Tribbles. The tribbles are organic eating machines, and Captain Kirk was assigned to protect the precious store of a newly developed grain, quadrotriticale.


In any event, we have a tribble, one of the many sold by Thinkgeek. That's our tribble above. It doesn't seem to purr, but it does chitter noisily whenever one of us sneezes. We decided it needed a new look. As chance would have it, we had just the thing, a fox fur hat suitable for a Russian princess, or a tribble. The fit was perfect. Not only is our tribble larger, indicating that it is getting all the quadrotriticale it needs, but it is also softer. It still chitters something awful when disturbed, but otherwise doesn't seem to have minded the modification.

Keywords: art, science, humor, russian easter

01/06/09 - Christmas in a Jar

This little lamp doesn't look like much. It fits inside a little jam jar which happens to have two flat faces. The works include a battery, six LEDs and two mercury switches. Upright the lights are off, but as you rotate the jar the red and green LEDs go on and off. Rest it on one face to see red. Rest it on the other to see green. If you turn it just right all of the LEDs glow red and green. What could be more Christmas-y than that?

It doesn't look like much in broad daylight.

One angle turns on the green LEDs.

Another angle turns on the red LEDs.

Keywords: lamps, science, christmas

01/01/09 - Remote Controlled LED Lamp

Our multi-color LED candle lost its green a while back, and they don't make multi-color LED candles anymore, but we recently got our hands on one of those remote controlled LED lightbulbs and built a lamp out of it. Now we have something even better, a multi-color remote controlled LED lamp, and all it took was the LED bulb itself, $10 worth of hardware, a glue gun, wire strippers and a screwdriver. The picture should give you an idea of the effect. To find out more, take a look at our multi-color remote control LED lamp build page.

Keywords: lamps, science

10/20/08 - The Thirteenth Stroke of the Crazy Clock

We don't set our clocks back an hour for nearly another two weeks, but we've been reading up on daylight saving time anyway. From the 1950 World Almanac on the Ups and Downs of Daylight Saving Time (p535):
In 1949, Grand Central Terminal Station in New York City, used by more passengers than any other railroad station in the country, adopted two sets of summer time. The New York Central adhered to eastern standard time. The New Haven changed to daylight saving time. While trains departed on their regular schedules, they were apparently an hour apart. To accomodate travelers, all clocks were furnished with an extra hour-hand.
It has to be true. I read it in the World Almanac.

Keywords: science, humor


Click to enlarge the chart

09/01/08 - The Nenana Ice Classic

Every year since 1917 there has been a contest betting on the date the ice melts on the Tanana River in Nenana, Alaska. Since gambling is involved, and the stakes are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, this contest has provided an excellent record of warming in Alaska. People may debate global warming, but gamblers bet their money on it.

If you look at the chart, you can see which day of the year the ice melts. They time it to the nearest minute, and you can see a broad cluster of dates, but a general decline as the river melts earlier in the year than it used to. The equation near the upper left of the chart shows a trend with a slope of -0.0721 which means that the river melts about one hour and 44 minutes earlier each year. The river thaws, on the average six and a half days earlier than it did in 1917.

Needless to say, there is a lot of noise in the melting date. On the other hand, the smart money has been betting on earlier dates than in the past.

Keywords: science

07/26/08 - Trampoline Tower

Here it is, the latest addition to our K'Nex menagerie. We've finally built the last of the great "big builds", the Trampoline Tower. The balls ride up the chain in the center and come down along the various pathways, including a few leaps into one of the two hoppers. The eponymous action involves the two symmetric trampolines above the middle hopper. The balls take a big bounce right in the middle of things. We've been busy, what with the Hawaiian Luau and all, but we should have video at some point.

Keywords: science, art, k'nex

07/23/08 - Another OED Failure

We had another Oxford English Dictionary failure today. Not only does the supposedly most comprehensive dictionary of the English language have words it has no definitions for, but it also lacks definitions for perfecty reasonable words. For example, everyone has heard of ships being "clinker built", meaning that their boards overlap in construction. What is another method of construction? That's obvious; it's "cravel built". Ask any seaman. What does cravel mean? Well, don't ask the OED. It doesn't have a definition, nor does our Funk and Wagnall's. (That's a real dictionary, not just a Rowan and Martin's Laugh In punch line). What's even worse is that the jack craven are a type of game fish, though good luck finding them in any dictionary. You're more likely to find them off the coast of Guatemala. So, what's the word of the day? It's "cravel", and good luck finding out what it means.

Keywords: science, art

06/18/08 - The Three Laws Of Accounting

Accounting has three inviolable laws:
  1. Your books must balance
  2. All the books must balance
  3. The books aren't going to balance themselves
If these look familiar, they are based on the three laws of thermodynamics, except with the second and third laws in reverse order:
  1. You can't win
  2. You can't break even
  3. You can't get out of the game

Keywords: science

06/13/08 - Cutting An Odd Figure

Actually, we printed, cut and taped this rather odd figure. It's a Szillasi polyhedron, and with the hole in the center, it is equivalent to a torus. It has seven faces, each touching the other six, so it demonstrates that you need at least seven colors to color a torus, unless you don't mind adjacent patches having the same color. It's also kind of odd looking, so it makes a pleasant addition to Domaine Cliché's collection of oddities. If you want to find out more, and maybe even make one of these for yourself, check out our Szillasi Polyhedron page.

Keywords: art, science


Courtesy of the National Atlas

03/18/08 - Precipitation Map

People tend to assume that if you are on the North Olympic Peninsula, then it is raining. This isn't actually true. If you look at the map, you can see the well known Sequim rain shadow, and you can also see that Port Angeles, towards the west is not all that much wetter. In fact, unless you are actually in the mountains, in which case all bets are off, it doesn't really start to rain until you get west of Lake Crescent.

Each color gradation represents a difference of ten inches of rainfall per year, so it can be quite dry around Port Angeles, even when Forks and the West End are getting soaked.

Keywords: science, atmosphere


Courtesy of Google Trends

03/13/08 - Signs of Global Warming?

We did a Google Trends lookup of "olympic national park" to see what peaks and valleys the great search engine has found. You can see the graph to the right. The peaks aren't as high as they used to be, but the valleys aren't as deep either. Is this increasing year round interest a sign of global warming, or are people just getting the message that Olympic National Park is open all year?
By the way, the second most popular language for queries about the park is German.

Keywords: science

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