I goofed, and I admit it.

I have restored my original site to its normal state. For details, visit www.wheatdogg.com.

Magic iPod Shuffle fixer-upper saves my tunes

Yesterday. I managed to render my new iPod Shuffle into an inert piece of plastic and metal. How? I have no idea, but probably because I pulled it out of the USB port before it was ready. It was so cooked that none of the computers in the house could peek inside it or even format it. iTunes said it was corrupt, but failed to repair it, and the Apple Updater also fell flat on its face.

I was resigned to taking the thing back to the store to get a new one, until I discovered after considerable searching online Apple’s own anti-nuke solution — the iPod shuffle Reset Utility 1.0.1. It saved my little iPod Shuffle from oblivion.

It was just released, so word of its arrival has not spread across the ‘net yet. I am adding a post about to help speed the news to other broken iPod Shuffle sufferers.

So, to avoid this problem, watch the blinking amber light on your Shuffle. Don’t remove the iPod from the USB port until the light stops blinking, or you risk corrupting the flash memory. In my case. the corruption was so bad that Windows and Linux could see the drive, but not recognize the data partition. Result: dead Shuffle.

I read online that many other “Shufflers” have had the same problem, to such an extent that Apple dealers don’t argue or attempt to fix the units. They just exchange them. I guess Apple corporate got tired of the piles of defunct Shuffles cluttering up the back room and asked the firmware programmers to whip up a solution. Thanks for the Christmas present, guys!

And speaking of videos …

Sorry, no sex acts or nudity in these vids. You can find those elsewhere. Check out Anousheh Ansari as she demonstrates some zero-g effects while chatting with her husband, Hamid, from the International Space Station.

Ansari is by no means the first to perform somersaults in orbit or show how to spin an apple in zero-g, but of all the private citizens to have gone into space, she has done more in two weeks to humanize space exploration than all the world’s space agencies have done in 50 years. Read her blog posts. They are eloquent, heartfelt and at times darn poetic. Pretty good for an engineer!

Also, check her flightsuit, which features both the US and the Iranian flags. Rumors were flying before her launch that NASA had nixed her displaying the Iranian flag on her suit. If they were true, then Ansari effectively told NASA to go stick it. After all, it’s not like NASA could send her home.

I’m just plain jealous …

Check this photo from Anousheh Ansari at flickr.com. It’s the view from her bedroom window. A more direct link to her blog from space is http://spaceblog.xprize.org/by-anousheh/

The latest “scientific breakthrough” scam — water gas

The gullibility of the scientifically challenged media and buying public never ceases to amaze. Spurred perhaps by sharply higher gasoline prices, backyard inventors and shady promoters are pushing the latest wonder technology, “HHO gas,” otherwise known as water gas, Brown’s gas or Klein’s gas.

For a tidy investment of a few hundred dollars, one can adapt a car to run on HHO, or for a few thousand, one can buy a device to produce HHO at home for transportation or for welding. Cars apparently can run for miles on mere puffs of HHO, and torches can burn holes in seconds through most metals.

I would encourage anyone buying such devices to first watch videos of the Graf Hindenburg accident in 1937 or the Shuttle Challenger accident in 1986, to get an idea of the Promethean power of HHO gas.

Wait, 1937? Isn’t HHO supposed to be a new technology? you ask. Nope. In fact, the principles behind the production of HHO have been known and used for close to 200 years. If you were lucky, you might have even made some in middle school science class.

If you run electric current through water, you break water down into its constituent parts, hydrogen and oxygen, both gases at standard temperature (20 C) and pressure (1 atmosphere). Very little current is required; a 6-volt lantern battery does the trick nicely, although quite slowly.

The science class experiment generally involves upending two test tubes over the positive and negative electrodes submerged in the water. Hydrogen collects over one electrode, and oxygen over the other one. (Hydrogen ions are positively charged; oxygen ions negatively.) Since there are twice as many H atoms in water as O atoms, the volume of the hydrogen (H₂) gas is twice that of the oxygen (O₂) gas.

Frequently the experiment also involves pulling the H₂ test tube out of the water and placing a burning wooden splint near its mouth to ignite the H₂, producing a characteristic whooping sound and some water vapor that condenses on the glass tube.

Placing a glowing wooden splint into the O₂ tube will result in the splint bursting into flame, as the oxygen-rich environment accelerates the combustion process.

As well as being less dense than air, hydrogen is a highly flammable gas. H₂ mixed in air is a “weaker” form of HHO gas, since air is a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. A spark or a flame will immediately ignite any H₂ around by providing just enough energy for the H₂ and O₂ present to recombine into water.

Test tube amounts of H₂ produce whooping noises. An airship the size of the Hindenburg (at right) can produce a much more dramatic effect, as it did on the fateful day in 1937 when the airship burst into flame as it came in for a landing.

Mixing pure H₂ and pure O₂ increases both the temperature and the speed of the reaction, which is the key to HHO’s success as a welding gas, automobile fuel, and rocket propellant.

The space shuttles use “HHO” in their main engines. At launch, each shuttle is attached to a huge external fuel tank containing cryogenic vessels filled with liquid H₂ and liquid O₂. Igniting the H₂/O₂ mix produces a lot of thrust for the money, and the byproduct is just water.

The downside is the explosive danger of a pure H₂/O₂ mix, as the Challenger accident so tragically demonstrated. Flames from a leaky solid-rocket booster on that day burned a hole through the external fuel tank, which then exploded just minutes after launch (at left), killing the seven astronauts on board.

So, I would I think twice about running around town with a tank of HHO in the trunk of my car, or producing HHO in my basement for storage. Gasoline is safe and stable in comparison.

HHO gas is not the cure-all that its promoters say it is. Sure, it is a clean-burning fuel. It can be an effective welding gas. And cars can in fact burn HHO either mixed with gasoline vapor or by itself. But HHO gas will not end our dependence on foreign oil or substantially reduce pollution, no matter what anyone says.

You need electricity to produce HHO. To produce large quantities of HHO is a reasonable time, say a few hours, you need a lot of current, which does not come cheap. Your power company supplies current to your home and office by burning, for most communities, fossil fuels like coal or oil. If you’re drawing a lot current to fill your bomb-like container of HHO gas, the power company has to burn more oil or coal to supply the electricity. You can’t get something from nothing.

Now, if the power company used hydroelectric generators or a nuclear power plant to provide the current, you might be able to justify pulling all those amperes to electrolyze your water into HHO. You are still gong to have to pay the light bill, though, so the economics of producing HHO at home might not be any better than just filling up at the local gas station for $3 a gallon.

In short, dear reader, caveat emptor. HHO gas is a scam. It is not a miracle technology or a cure for our gasoline dependence. At best, it is a deception, a way for clever promoters to make money, and endanger the unwary consumer.

Do they wash windshields, too?

Two members of the Space Shuttle Discovery crew spent nearly seven hours repairing the International Space Station, accompanying their hard work with some goodnatured repartee.

Like the helpful service station attendants of yore, British astronaut Piers Sellers and US astronaut Michael Fossum joked, while they fixed a cable reel necessary for the operation of a railcar attached to the ISS. The railcar enables expansion of the ISS.

They swapped a defective reel with a new one brought aboard the shuttle; each one weighs 330 pounds on Earth. In orbit, they still have substantial mass and inertia, so there were a few tense moments while Sellers, like an orbital “weight lifter,” held one in each hand.

The two also learned that for space mechanics, elbow grease still works just as well as for earthbound ones. To get the reels swapped, they had to twist harder with a wrench to loosen stubborn bolts.

CNN has an account of the repairs and spacewalk.

Discovery is scheduled to return to Earth on the 17th.

Riding Rockets : The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years — The Astronauts\’ Experiences in Their Own Words

Blocked blogger files lawsuit against Gov. Fletcher

Mark Nickolas, whose site BluegrassReports.org state administrators have blocked from state-owned computers, filed a suit today in US District Court, contending that Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher has violated Constitutional guarantees of equal protection and free expression.

State web blocking software allowed state employees access to mainstream news sites and many conservative blogs, but prevented employees from accessing Nickolas’ site and other less conservative blogs.

BluegrassReports.org has been sharply critical of the beleaguered Fletcher, whose administration has been sullied by accusations of preferential and discriminatory hiring practices. State GOP leaders have recently distanced themselves from Fletcher, who intends to run for re-election next year.
Details about the lawsuit and the events leading up to it are here.

Now that the Shuttle is in orbit …

Despite all the media frenzy about the risks to the crew, Discovery successfully made orbit Tuesday and docked with the International Space Station this morning. So far the mission of STS-121 is so routine as to be boring. And that’s good.

The big issue in media reports centered around the foam insulation surrounding the external fuel tank – the rusty-red cylinder carrying the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen “fuel” for the shuttle’s main engines. The insulation is necessary to keep the liquified gases cold.

It also has a tendency to fall off during launch. A large chunk of insulation hit the Shuttle Columbia on takeoff, damaging its protective, heat resistant tiles. The Columbia disintegrated on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, as a result of the damage. Atmospheric friction burned holes through the metal skin of the spaceplane, killing all on board.

NASA officials, not known for their eloquence, reported that inspection of Discovery‘s external fuel tank had revealed some fracturing or loosening of the foam insulation, but that the faults would not endanger the mission.

They said nothing about endangering the crew, although it is probably what they meant. The media nearly went ape-shit, claiming NASA officials were more worried about making a return to space after a three-year hiatus than about ensuring the lives of the seven-person crew.

Engineers and military types, in my experience, tend to focus on missions in an overly abstract sense, seemingly distancing themselves from the obvious truth that human lives are involved. Space exploration, after all, is a voluntary occupation. Astronauts choose their profession, knowing the risks involved. Their support crews also understand the risks, and of course value the astronauts’ lives. They just seem to have difficulty expressing that concern during media briefings.

As far as anyone can tell at this point, NASA called it right, as there seems to be no damage to the ship’s tiles. This shuttle landing will be as smooth as all the 113 previous ones, with the sole exception of Columbia and Challenger, which exploded soon after takeoff on Jan. 28, 1986. While one might want better odds, considering the parameters of these flights, the odds are still in the astronauts’ favor.
Risk is unavoidable in spaceflight. If we eliminated all risks, we would never have crossed oceans, flown in rickety planes, and sent men to the moon.

Bon voyage, Discovery, et bonne chance!

Shuttle Discovery a ‘go’ for launch at 2:38 pm EDT today

After threatening weather scrubbed Discovery’s July 1 takeoff, NASA postponed the first shuttle launch in months until (perhaps symbolically) July 4.

I’m planning a more detailed post once the shuttle (shown here on the launch pad) is actually safely in orbit.

Hard to believe, but you’re mostly empty space

That’s what I tell my students each year: matter is mostly empty space. The concept is hard to accept, especially if you have ever hit your head on something, but nonetheless true.

As an analogy, I have used a scale model for the hydrogen atom I picked up from somewhere now forgotten. Place an ant on the 50-yard line in a football stadium. The atom represents the proton. The electron is just outside the stadium, in the parking lot. In between electron and proton is space.

Now I have a new scale model to use. It’s online, to appeal to the digital generation. The creator has represented the electron as a one-pixel speck on the webpage, and far, far away the proton as a much larger ball. The distance and sizes of the particles are on the same scale.

The model, of course, is not to be taken literally. Atoms are not really miniature versions of solar systems. Electrons are strictly speaking not little specks traveling in neat little orbits around a spherical proton (or nucleus) that looks like Neptune. That conception (minus the Neptune part) dates back almost 100 years.

Time was, scientists did conceive of the atom as a solid ball. That picture changed in 1897, when J. J. Thomson identified the electon and proposed that it was part of the atom, rather than separate from it. He proposed a “plum pudding” model, in which the negatively charged electrons were embedded in a positively charged matrix.
In 1911, Ernest Rutherford tested this model with his famous gold foil experiment. Briefly, Rutherford bombarded an extremely thin sheet of gold foil with positively charged alpha particles, expecting that most would just pass through the “squishy” pudding.

Instead, some alpha particles veered off at substantial angles and a few came caroming back toward their radium source, as if they had hit something very hard. Rutherford said it was as surprising as if someone had shot a cannonball at a piece of tissue paper and had it bounce right back.

Rutherford proposed his own model, a planetary or nuclear one. The nucleus was positively charged and around it orbited the negatively charged electrons. This simple model is one that sticks in many minds as the way atoms “look.”

The Rutherford model had its problems, which Niels Bohr’s quantum model of the atom helped fix a year later. Bohr’s model was extremely successful in explaining the relationship between atoms and light emission and absorption, but there were two puzzling features.

For one, his model required the electron, a particle with mass, to disappear from one orbit (energy level) and instantaneously reappear in another. Not only did this behavior defy common sense, it violated a few laws of physics too.

Another issue was the requirement that the electron could only have discrete values for its total energy and angular momentum. Assuming this behavior yielded a successful model, but there was no physical explanation for that behavior.

In 1924, a French physics student proposed an explanation for both issues. Louis de Broglie hypothesized that a moving electron had wave-like properties, turning around earlier conclusions that light and energy had particle-like properties.
Waves have no intrinsic mass, so an electron wave can instantaneously disappear and reappear, solving the teleportation problem. As the electron wave changes its frequency, it also changes its energy. The different waves correspond to the Bohr model’s discrete orbits.

Each electron wave wraps around the nucleus and has to meet itself in the right way to create a standing wave. (A vibrating guitar string is a combination of several standing waves corresponding to the fundamental pitch and the harmonics.) The radius of each Bohr orbit then must be equal to a whole-number multiple of an electon wavelength, or the standing wave “dies out.” With this simple, though bizarre concept, de Broglie provided a physical explanation for Bohr’s discrete electron orbits: the first Bohr orbit corresponded to one wavelength, the second to two wavelengths, and so on.

Electron waves were detected in 1927. Two years later, de Broglie won the Nobel Prize in Physics. The first technology to harness electron waves was the electron microscope, developed soon afterward in the the 1930s.

Other physicists, Erwin Schroedinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and Wolfgang Pauli, among others, refined the quantum model of the atom further. The Schroedinger equation enables us, for example, to predict the probable location of an electron around its parent nucleus.

The key word there is “probable.” Because of the electron’s dual wave-particle nature, we cannot pinpoint its location and speed simultaneously with the same precision (that’s from Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty.)

So, the electron is not really a speck orbiting a much larger sphere. For that matter (pun intended!), the proton is not really a solid sphere, since it also has a dual wave-particle nature. A better picture would be of a dense, slightly fuzzy-around-the-edges cloud surrounded by a larger, fuzzier cloud that gradually thins out at its outer perimeter.

Further, there is no requirement that the electron cloud be spherical. Electron probability clouds can have a variety of shapes, including dumbbells, donuts, teardrops and spheres.

Have we ever seen atoms? Yes. Electron micrographs reveal atoms (actually their outer electron clouds) as, well, fuzzy balls.

So, not only are atoms mostly empty space, their constituent parts are not even solid! Intermolecular forces give us the illusion of solidity, and prevent our constituent molecules from ever actually touching any other molecules. Nevertheless, those forces can be pretty substantial as two surfaces approach each other, such as a bat hitting a ball, or a head hitting a table.

Atoms may be mostly empty space and mostly ephemeral, but they can still leave nasty bruises. Watch your head!