An Astronaut's Dream - Animated Interview with Helen Sharman

The first in a series of videos that explores the impact of space exploration on humanity, The Royal Institution presents The Dreams of an Astronaut, an animated interview with Dr. Helen Sharman, a chemist and the first British astronaut. She was selected for the job on live television in November, 1989.

What do astronauts dream of? How do they feel while they float above the clouds? In 1991 Helen Sharman became the first Briton in space; in this animation, hand-drawn by Ri animator-in-residence Andrew Khosravani, Sharman shares a dream she often has about returning to space, and talks about what it’s like to gaze down on the earth from above.

The animation is a part of ‘A Place Called Space’, the Royal Institution’s space-themed 2015 advent calendar. Related infographic: Who’s been to the ISS?

Hayao Miyazaki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

Writer-Director Hayao Miyazaki is renowned for the gorgeousness of his feature length animations, and storylines that combine indigenous Japanese elements with supernatural whimsy. In a world of Disney princesses, let us give thanks for family entertainment in which an eccentric castle roams the countryside on chicken legs, a stink spirit wreaks havoc in a bathhouse, and a fur-lined cat bus transports passengers at top speed.

The first generation of American children to have grown up on Miyazki films - My Neighbor Totoro was released in the States in 1993 - has entered their college years. A portion of them will have eagerly sought out his latest offering, a semi-autobiographical tale directed by his son, Goro. Some will have felt themselves too mature for such fare. Being college students, both groups are likely to be horking down a fair amount of cheap packaged ramen noodles.

As evidenced above, Miyazaki has some pretty specific ideas on what to do with those. Preparing a late night workplace dinner for his Spirited Away team, the great director rivals Good Fellas' sliced garlic maven Paul Sorvino for culinary sang-froid. Stuffing ten blocks of the stuff into a single pot might get an ordinary mortal voted off of Top Chef, but aside from that Miyazaki's staff meal is an excellent, instant tutorial for those interested in souping up low budget, collegiate cuisine.

Why do Autumn Leaves Cause Train Delays?

Why do ‘leaves on the line’ cause train delays, especially in autumn? The serious danger comes from a series of physics challenges: Leaves are sucked onto the tracks by the fast moving trains. The train wheels crush them into a slimy black pulp, releasing leaf oils that lessen friction. Mixed with rain, this super thin lubricant becomes more slippery than soapy water on the tracks.

From the BBC’s Bang Goes The Theory, Liz Bonnin demonstrates just how slippery it can get for a fast moving train (or even a not-so-fast moving train) on leaf-slimed tracks.

Here's the scenario. Leaves fall to the ground and some inevitably land on the train tracks. A train runs over the leaves and compresses them to the tracks where they stick fast due to leaf oils. More leaves fall, or get blown onto the track in the wake of the train, and the process of leaf compression and build up continues. The residue black slime that results is remarkably resilient and rainy weather only adds to the problem.

The surface becomes so slick that trains have to accelerate and decelerate much more slowly than normal in order to avoid slipping, which could cause catastrophic accidents. Many trains, if they detect some acceleration due to 'spinning' wheels, can automatically apply breaks which lock the wheels, only making the problem worse. A locked wheel sliding along a track will wear and deform along a particular side, creating a 'flat'. Damage repair can run into the tens of millions for a single season, along with the frustration of delays.

Commuter trains, with their frequent stops, are affected by this problem much more than freight trains. Often slower travel times are built into autumn timetables, much to the consternation of commuters.

So what's happening here? Time for a bit of mid-week physics!

Trains rely on maintaining a rolling, not sliding, movement along the tracks, in order to avoid uneven wear on the wheels. To prevent the wheels from sliding, static friction between the steel train wheel and the steel track is needed. Normally as the train moves forward, the point at which the wheel touches the track at any given moment is stationary and not slipping, balanced exactly by the static friction force and the force applied to the wheel.

A wheel rolling forwards experiences a static friction force in the same direction of motion, which counters the force driving the base of the wheel backwards, such that static contact is maintained. A slippery surface means that the applied force might exceed the maximum static friction force and the wheel will start to 'spin'.

The strength of friction between any two surfaces is characterized by the coefficient of friction, μ, and this is different depending on whether that friction is static or kinetic (sliding). Some surfaces are 'stickier' than others and have higher coefficients of friction.

If a train driver wants to avoid 'spinning' the wheels, then she or he must not accelerate or decelerate too quickly. The maximum force a rolling wheel can withstand before sliding at the base is given by this equation:

This says that the maximum static friction force depends on how sticky the interface is between the wheel and the track and, on flat terrain, the weight of the train (mass times acceleration due to gravity).

What happens when slippery leaves are added to the surface of tracks? The coefficient of friction between the wheels and the track surface decreases dramatically. Determining the value of the coefficient of friction is something that has to be done experimentally, and depends on the exact material composition, amount of leaves, level of moisture, temperature, and so on. 

But we can do a rough estimate:

The British train company, South West Rail, likens the slick compressed leaves on the track to a layer of teflon, creating a 'non-stick' surface. 

Following this analogy, we can turn to a look-up table of friction coefficients. For dry steel on steel, as would be the case on an ideal train track, μ is between 0.5 and 0.8. But for steel on teflon, this value falls to between 0.05 and 0.2. 

Let's say we have a railcar with a mass of 80,000 kg (this is roughly the mass of a fully loaded Pennsylvania regional Silverliner V). How quickly can it stop from an initial velocity of, say, 80 miles an hour without sliding? 

The work required to stop the railcar is equal to its initial kinetic energy:

The kinetic energy is related to the mass of the train and its velocity, while the work done on the train is force times distance traveled:

In our case, we want to apply has much braking force as possible without actually causing the wheels to slip, so we plug in the force from the first equation: 

Now we simply cancel out the mass of the train on both sides, and solve for 'd', the distance required to stop a train without sliding.

And that's it! We can already see that if a train is traveling twice as fast, then it would take four times as long to safely bring it to a halt. 

(Side note: this assumes that all of the wheels of the railcar are equally capable of braking and that the weight of the train is evenly distributed over the wheels. If only some cars or engines can brake, then we cannot simply cancel our masses on either side of the equation.)

Now let's consider our leaf scenario:

On a dry, summer day with clean tracks, the coefficient of static friction might be 0.5 while on an autumnal day with lots of wet, compressed leaves on the track, the coefficient of friction might be as low as 0.05. 

If the mass and initial velocity of the train are the same in both scenarios, then the stopping distance for a slippery, leafy track would be 10 times greater than on a dry, clean track. So if the train on a dry track only takes 130 meters to stop, then a train on a leafy track will take 1.3 kilometers! That's a huge difference and means train drivers tend to travel much more slowly rather than risk missing their next platform altogether.

This seasonal problem is not going away anytime soon and rail companies have tried a number of different techniques to combat the foliage problem. Of course, trimming back the actual source of the leaves along the track is an obvious solution. In the days of steam-powered trains, this was done routinely by large teams of men since grass and leaves could easily catch fire from stray sparks and coals. Today the fire risk from diesel and electric engines is minimal and the large amount of manual labor required would be hugely expensive.

Alternative methods of clearing the track tend to be more temporary. Some companies employ 'leaf buster' trains which blast the tracks with high-power jets of water, sometimes in addition to 'sandite' trains which apply a sandy paste to the tracks to increase friction. There are also passenger trains that automatically release sand when they detect wheel slippage. Even intense laser beams have been shown to effectively disintegrate and blow away the leaves, but at a high cost.

All this from a simple autumnal leaf. Next time your train is delayed by 'leaves on the line' you'll have much to ponder.

History of the Utt Juice Co.

The History of the Utt Juice Company

The Utt Juice Co. plant, which ran along the west side of Prospect between Main and Third streets, produced 7 million gallons of juice during the 50 years it was in operation. C. E. Utt, who developed the San Joaquin Fruit Co. along with Sherman Stevens and James Irvine, experimented with a number of agricultural crops, citrus, peanuts, chili peppers and grapes during his lifetime, but his involvement with grapes continued for many years. It all began when he leased property on Lemon Heights from the Irvine Co. in 1915 and planted two acres of Concord grapes. By 1918 when the vines came into production, he had more grapes than he could find a market for. His solution was to start making grape juice at home, using the back porch for his kitchen. When he had more juice than his family could consume, he bottled the excess and started giving it to his friends. People raved about the drink and told him he should bottle it commercially. Soon he was marketing a drink labeled Home Made Grape Juice. On Sept. 9, 1918, he founded a new enterprise, which he called the Utt Juice Co. When it outgrew his back porch, he moved to a Victorian-Italianate building on the northwest corner of Main and Prospect. The building, which he had owned since 1907, had been the home of Sauers and Berkquist grocery. Set up with boilers, vats, presses and bottling equipment , it became the Utt Juice Co. Sheds and additional buildings were added as the company grew. Arcy Schellhous, a young man of 27, bought a quarter interest in the business in 1922 and took over the management, giving Utt more time for his duties as president of the San Joaquin Fruit Co., president of the First National Bank of Tustin and owner of Tustin Water Works. They adopted the brand name of Queen Isabella and added pomegranate, rhubarb and guava juice to their inventory. Schellhous bought out Utt in 1931 although the company continued to use the Utt name. Production reached a peak of 200,000 gallons of juice in 1965. The company was ahead of its time in producing juices that could be labeled �100% Pure, No Sugar Added.� Queen Isabella jams and jellies were added to the product mix as well as boysenberry products that carried the Knott label. However, grapes and other fruits produced locally became increasingly hard to find and Schellhous was forced to buy fruit from other parts of California. Utt died in 1951, but Schellhous continued to run the company until he died in an automobile accident in 1970. Jack Hall who had joined the company in 1946 as office manager became president and served until 1973 when a scarcity of fruit and increasing competition forced the company to close. It was calculated that Utt Juice Co. had produced 7 million gallons of juice in 50 years. Cleared of equipment, the building stood empty until a few years ago when building began on the recently completed Prospect Village complex.

Wild Geese - Mary Oliver

Wild Geese

By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Modernizing the New York City Subway

“People know that the system is old, but I don’t think they realize just how old it is… in our system, it’s not just the architecture that’s 100 years old. It’s a lot of the basic technology, as well. The infrastructure is old.”

From the MTA in New York City, this is CBTC: Communications-Based Train Control, an astounding behind-the-scenes video about the technologies running the NYC subway system. Get a gander at West 4th Street station’s electromechanical relays, a pre-1930s technology that’s no longer supported by anyone but the MTA themselves. Plus, learn about their multi-decade plan to modernize the traffic control system, and see the Corona Subway Maintenance Shop, temporary home of the new CBTC-equipped subway cars.

As Service Delivery Division VP & Chief Officer Wynton Habersham explains, Communications-Based Train Control provides constant, centralized data about a train’s location, direction of travel, and speed, a leap forward from the safe but less precise fixed block signaling of the current system. The MTA invested seven years into converting the L train (14th Street – Canarsie Local) to CBTC, and is currently working on the 7 line (the Flushing local and express).

Original Winnie-the-Pooh Drawings

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/11/original-winnie-pooh-drawings.html

When the Day Breaks (Short) - 1999

In this animated short, Ruby the pig seeks affirmation in the city around her after witnessing the accidental death of a stranger… and finds it in surprising places. With deft humour and finely rendered detail, When the Day Breaks illuminates the links that connect our urban lives, while evoking the promise and fragility of a new day. Winner of over 40 prizes from around the world, the film also features singer Martha Wainwright. Directed by Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby - 1999

Thoughts of the California Desert

Thoughts of the California Desert

by Reed Whittemore

Under palm trees, oranges, olives and pears

The indolent desert slouches, half an eye closed

And half an eye out for men of affairs whose cares

Keep them from keeping their gaudy gardens hosed.

Slouches and yawns, that clown.  Leaves in disdain

Gaseous dragons their nauseous knights to nettle.

Flips his tail coyly, rolls over, says he would fain

Die a dry death.  Haw! browning a petal.

Has it too good, too good.  Is vastly diverted

Watching his merchants and bankers stumble out doors.

Parries their blows, says he loves, loves to be squirted

As at him they fiercely empty their reservoirs.

Sleeps a great deal, drinks deep, drinks deep and makes hay,

Thinking he'll swallow the bankers and all one day.

Crab Canon on a Möbius Strip - How a Bach Canon Works

Brilliant. This moving manuscript depicts a single musical sequence played front to back and then back to front. Give the video a little time to unfold.

Oregon's Lost Lake

Every spring in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, Lost Lake begins to drain down naturally occurring lava tubes. A six foot wide lava tube hole was featured in this 2015 video from The Bulletin, which notes, “The water is most likely seeping into the subsurface below and refilling the massive aquifer that feeds springs on both sides of the Cascades.” MentalFloss explains a bit more:

Lava tubes are a common feature of Oregon’s geology. They form after a volcanic eruption, when flowing lava cools and hardens near the surface while hotter lava continues to flow down below, carving a path as it goes. Occasionally, one of these tunnels will even break through to the surface, as in the case of Lost Lake.

Western Oregon’s rainy months—beginning in the fall—yield such a massive amount of precipitation that the basin fills in at a faster rate than the tube can drain it, and the lake reappears. It freezes over in the winter months, followed by a spring thaw that leads into summer when dry weather results in a (sometimes muddy) meadow. Then the cycle begins again.

Jude McHugh, a spokeswoman for the Willamette National Forest, says it’s hard to predict when the annual drain will occur. While the video makes it seem like a single, continuous flow akin to water in a bathtub, it’s actually a much more gradual process with ebbs and flows that vary from year to year.

Here’s another Lost Lake drain video from September 2010:

Birdbox Studio‘s viral animated short, Wildebeest.

Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux - Gwenn Germain

Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux from Gwenn GERMAIN on Vimeo.

He has an almost shamanistic reverence for nature; rocks, trees, rivers, and oceans all seem to be alive and aware. And he populates his world with shape-shifting creatures like the ravenous masked blob No-Face in Spirited Away; the Great Forest Spirit in Princess Mononoke, which looks like it was yanked straight out of Japanese mythology; and perhaps his most delightful creation, the Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro, complete with headlight eyes, a Cheshire grin and a warm, womb-like interior. It was this whimsical creation that reportedly impressed The Emperor himself – Akira Kurosawa.

It’s no wonder why Japanese netizens went crazy for “Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux.” Germain’s short seems sprung from the same world as Miyazaki. The giant bugs look like something out of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The ambiguously European architecture looks like something from Kiki’s Delivery Service and those purple amorphous worms look like something from Spirited Away.  Heck, Miyazaki himself even seems to be in Germain's short – that bearded old guy at the end of the movie is a spitting image of the famed animator.

Germain credits other influences aside from Miyazaki: Syd Mead, the concept artist who created those flying cars in Blade Runner and the city of the future in the upcoming Tomorrowland, and particularly the boundlessly imaginative French illustrator Moebius. Their influence might not be as obvious as Miyazaki's, however.

In any case, I am seriously looking forward to seeing a feature length version of “Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux.”

Anne Sexton's Poetry

Many a writer has said they write to save their lives. And many a writer has died by suicide. In few cases has the connection been so direct as in that of the poet Anne Sexton. Encouraged in 1957 by her therapist to write poetry to stave off her suicidal ideation, she eventually joined a group of mid-century “confessional” poets based in Boston—including Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath—whose personal pathos, family pain, and severe bouts of depression provided much of the material for their work. Despite Sexton’s tremendous career success at what began, more-or-less, as a hobby, she became overwhelmed by her illness and committed suicide in 1974.

There are those who wish to debate whether so-called “confessional poets” were truly tormented individuals or navel-gazing narcissists. This seems fair enough given the willing self-exposure of poets like Plath, Lowell, and Sexton, but it kind of misses the point; their losses and transgressions were as real, or not, as anyone’s, but we remember them, or should, for their writing. Instead I find it interesting to see their public selves as performances, whatever the autobiographical connections in the work. A former fashion model, Anne Sexton was particularly adept at self-presentation, and as her fame as a writer increased—she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 and a succession of grants and awards throughout the sixties—her poetry became less focused on the strictly personal, more on the cultural (she has become well-known, for example, for a sardonic, feminist perspective in such poems as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”). A good deal of her work was pure invention, despite the illusion of intimacy.

Nonetheless, the short, 1966 film "Anne Sexton at Home" (top, with Spanish subtitles, continued below) lets us engage in some voyeurism. It begins with Sexton’s irritation, as she’s interrupted by the dog. Then the film cuts away, the scene has changed, and she frankly acknowledges the poet’s voice as a “persona” (from the Greek for mask); her poems are “monsters,” into which she has “projected herself.” When we cut back again to the first scene, Sexton confidently reads her “Menstruation at Forty.” And we cut away again, and Sexton, her familiar cigarette never far away, riffs on “family & poetry” as her husband Alfred tries to avoid the camera. We see the poet with her daughter, their interactions playful (and also a little disturbing). Throughout it all Sexton performs, seemingly pleased and enjoying the camera’s attention.

This is my favorite Anne Sexton poem. Rowing

by Anne Sexton

A story, a story!

(Let it go.  Let it come.)

I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender

into this world.

First came the crib

with its glacial bars.

Then dolls

and the devotion of their plastic mouths.

Then there was school,

the little straight rows of chairs,

blotting my name over and over,

but undersea all the time,

a stranger whose elbows wouldn't work.

Then there was life

with its cruel houses

and people who seldom touched--

though touch is all--

but I grew,

like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,

and then there were many strange apparitions,

the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison

and all of that, saws working through my heart,

but I grew, I grew,

and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,

still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,

and I grew, I grew,

I wore rubies and bought tomatoes

and now, in my middle age,

about nineteen in the head I'd say,

I am rowing, I am rowing

tough the oarlocks stick and are rusty

and the sea blinks and rolls

like a worried eyeball,

but I am rowing, I am rowing,

though the wind pushes me back

and I know that that island will not be perfect,

it will have the flaws of life,

the absurdities of the dinner table,

but there will be a door

and I will open it

and I will get rid of the rat inside me,

the gnawing pestilential rat.

God will take it with his two hands

and embrace it.

As the African says:

This is my tale which I have told,

if it be sweet, if it be not sweet,

take somewhere else and let some return to me.

This story ends with me still rowing.

Pygmy Sloths - Cal Academy

These are pygmy sloths and they’re only found in one place in the world: a Caribbean island called Escudo de Veraguas. Academy research fellow Bryson Voirin introduces this critically endangered species, and explains how he’s studying them in their natural habitat, despite their elusive nature. From CalAcademy: Science Today – Pygmy Sloths.

Paper City - Maciek Janicki

The fragility, the intricate detail, and “the charming rise and fold” of a Paper City. Animation by Maciek Janicki.

Systems at Work - United States Postal Service

In an incredible display of high-tech machinery, United States Postal Service: Systems at Work takes us step-by-step through their assembly lines, from the Advanced Facer-Canceller System (AFCS) — capable of processing 30,000 pieces of mail per hour — to the men and women of the USPS who keep things running smoothly from mailbox to mailbox.

The high-drama music might seem a bit over the top in the beginning, but by halfway through, we were absolutely riveted by the high-speed, clockwork capabilities of how mail, magazines, and packages of all sizes are delivered all across the country, all thanks to the United States Postal Service.

Theodore Gray's Periodic Table Table

Wolfram Research co-founder and author Theo Gray has made the most amazing Periodic Table table for his collection of elements! And he’s collected so many in a variety of forms over the years… liquids, solids, bottles of gases, crystals, and cheeky substitutions. What a great, hands-on way to experience what could otherwise just be a bunch of memorized letters and numbers.

Related reading: Gray’s wonderful book The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe.

DIY Egg Geode

A pretty spectacular science experiment: how to make an Incredible Egg Geode. 

Your egg geode is formed through a process called sedimentation. The heated alum solution contains suspended particles of alum powder and as the solution cools, these particles of alum begin settling. When the alum particles settle towards the bottom of the beaker or glass, they begin crystallizing. With the alum-covered egg at the bottom, the alum particles from the solution begin attaching themselves to the egg. Covering your egg in alum powder beforehand gives the suspended alum particles a surface to which they can more readily attach themselves. The particles that settle onto the surface of the egg crystallize, and you will also see crystallization on the bottom and sides of the beaker or glass.

Animated Hair Cartoon (1925) and History of Early Animation from UCLA

From the UCLA Film & Television Archive, this is Animated Hair Cartoon, No.18 (1925), from Max Fleischer‘s Red Seal Pictures. Beyond it being fun to watch one face change into another, these images also come together as a pop culture time capsule from the early 20th century. From the historian’s notes:

The “Animated Hair” films, featuring artwork by “Marcus” (not well-known animator Sid Marcus, but a caricaturist for the original humorous Life Magazine) were relatively easy for the studio to produce, using one artist (his hand usually seen on screen drawing the image) and the gimmick of manipulating one caricature with stop motion to create a second caricature (usually by rearranging a hair-do). For example, in this entry, playwright George Bernard Shaw becomes baseball commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis, and Charlie Chaplin morphs into Buster Keaton. Audiences were thrilled. Fifty one “Animated Hair” shorts were produced between 1924 and 1927. This entry (No. 18) was released on July 11, 1925.

Also featured: Christy Mathewson, John McGraw, Samuel Gompers, Elsie Ferguson, and “Babe” Ruth.

And here’s more about UCLA’s Archives of Animation, from Fig. 1:

Bob's Birthday - 1993

This film took home an Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film. When Margaret plans a celebration for her husband Bob, she underestimates the sudden impact of middle age on his mood. A witty, offbeat animated portrait of a frustrated dentist wrestling with the fundamental issues of life proves that birthdays (and surprise parties) can be very tricky indeed. Directed by David Fine & Alison Snowden - 1993