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Today the girls an I did a really cool experiment to measure the speed of light. All waves in the electomagnetic spectrum (light, x-rays, radio waves, microwaves, etc.) travel at the speed of light c=299,792,458 m/s. For any wave, the wavelength times the frequency yields the speed:
Microwave ovens operate by creating a standing wave inside of them. Different parts of the wave cook better than other parts - imagine a three dimensional grid of evenly spaced dots where the cooking is best. The distance between these dots is the wavelength λ. Our microwave operates at f=2.45 GHz as most convential ones do, so this yields a wavelength of
Of course, the spinning tray in the microwave is put there to offset the uneven cooking. Removing this tray, you can measure the speed of light by cooking a bar of chocolate for about a minute and half. If your bar of chocolate is big enough, there will be two circular areas where the chocolate has melted and the distance between their centers is about 4 inches. Multiplying that by the known frequency f of the microwaves yields the speed of light!
There are over 285 apartment complexes in the Palo Alto area. I have visited at least 50 of them and called well over two hundred. Less than ten percent of them (26 to be precise) have 3 bedrooms and fall into a reasonble price range. None currently have vacancies and 6 are fairly certain they won't have any when we move here in June. Admittedly, I was unable to get any information from around a hundred places other than their answering machines which more often than not informed me that they have no current vacancies. If the BaBar collaboration meeting events weren't so interesting it would have been a depressing week indeed. I do not yet despair finding somewhere to live this Summer, but I am very glad that I was able to winnow the pack so greatly this week.
It's nice to talk to your kids when you call home from far away California, but often they don't share that desire. For the girls it is their busy-ness which sometimes precludes talking, but for Maxwell I think it is different. Today when he finally deigned to speak to me, he had but a brief message: "Dad, come back my house." I think he is mad at me for not being there. Next time I go out of town I shall have to better explain what I am doing to him.
There's nothing quite like living in a "smaller" city. Knoxville's McGhee-Tyson airport only has twelve terminals, so, to avoid making a connection through Chicago which in the winter can be risky, this morning I flew to Charlotte to catch a connecting flight to San Francisco. There's nothing quite like flying for an hour in the wrong direction. At least I got a good nap in on the extra long flight. This afternoon I'm apartment hunting for our forthcoming move west this Summer. Life is an ever-increasingly difficult problem in logistics.
I felt bad leaving Cara with 4 sick children this morning, but I was also glad to escape that den of disease, even if only for a short time. They'll all be going to the pediatrician today. Maxwell and Brittan have sinus infections (which you can deduce by trying to hang them upside-down, something they usually enjoy), Brittan also has pinkeye to boot, and Zara has been coughing and crying a pitiful little hoarse cry. However much I miss being there to comfort them, I do not miss their complete snotrification. If I am lucky it will have passed by my return.
East Tennessee weather has been very obliging these past two weekends: snow every Saturday! Yesterday we built a snowfort in the shade of the house so hopefully it will last longer than the last one. Maxwell has also learned how to snow fight rather well. Perhaps a little too well . . . While I was pushing a large snowball for the fort across the lawn, Maxwell snuck up behind me and put a handful of snow down the back of my pants. Laughing, he exclaimed "I get you daddy!" Cara says I deserved it. All I could do was laugh.
As an aside, when I wrote snuck above, I was not sure if the spelling was correct, so I looked it up. Apparently this is yet another example of where American English has diverged from usage elsewhere. Historically, sneaked has been the proper past tense and is still used almost exclusively outside of America. The word snuck first appeared in the late 19th century and had become the dominate past tense for sneak by the 1950s. Personally, sneaked sounds as wrong as swimmed or sleeped, but I will admit to having a soft side for such irregular verbs.
Zara pulled up to a standing position for the first time today. It's amazing how much her mobility has increased in the past month. Since then she's developed the ability to sit up by herself, then crawl, then pull up to a kneeling position, and now this! Even watching it for the third time I'm still impressed with how quickly she developed all these skills.
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Zaraboo is teething. She cut her first tooth on the ninth, and today a second one next to it in the middle on the bottom started coming through. You can see the left one a little, but unfortunately Zara drool tends to reflect the camera's flash.
I haven't had time to write much lately, so here are some more pictures of recent events, specifically, the science fair and last weekend's snow: |
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Brittan
Alora
Our snowmen and their constructors. Later they were cannibalized to build a snowfort.
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Words of Wisdom from Maxwell while watching a James Bond movie:
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Today was our very exciting snow day for the year. It snowed all through last night and left us with at least an inch by morning, even though alot had melted off the ground - there was more on the trampoline, tables, etc. The picture above was around 7:30, as the sun's rays began to peek over the ridge running toward the southwest behind our house. That melted rectangle on the roof tells you that I took a shower already, because that's the part of the bathroom ceiling contiguous with the roof. I'm not sure exactly what the circle above it is.
Maxwell got his first taste of sledding, and loved it! He went down the hill with his sisters and by himself. What he does not like is cold. Even all suited up he won't stay outside for more than 20 or 30 minutes. The girls, however, play right up to the edge of frostbite. When they finally come in they are caked in snow from head to toe. This morning Brittan's hood kept falling off during their snow fight on the trampoline, so that when she came inside her hair was encased in a flexible snow helmet.
Our Zaraboodle is really getting around these days with increasing facility. Just look at her come after the camera! This has meant we've had to get serious about baby-proofing yet again.
Work continues at a slow and halting pace on our new laundry room. Homeownership has allowed me to indulge in my desires to build and create things. Every year I embark on a new major project to add value to my abode. Last year it was the Fibonacci patio. This year I am turning the end of our very long one car garage into a new laundry room. Right now our laundry room is a small pantry adjoining the kitchen. When I am finished with the new laundry room, this will become a food pantry. The six of us need alot more food around than fits our current cabinetry, so this is the main impetus for constructing the new laundry room. The new laundry room will also provide a centralized storage location for the craft supplies which are currently stuffed in various places about the house.
Maxwell, who has since Christmas become obsessed with Bob the Builder, is very excited about the construction project. "Dad, you build my house?" he said to me yesterday while I was cutting floor joists. He listened attentively while I explained that I was building a new laundry room and what it would be used for. After that he proudly declared "Dad build mommy house." providing a summation, in his mind, of what I was doing.
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Previous Years' Blogs:
2004
2005