Friday, April 16, 2010

why be serious?

why? 'cause its for chumps, if I want the stress from workouts to follow me after the workouts, I'll do a longer warm down.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Don't..Don't even worry about it...

1. concrete and asphalt have relatively similar friction coefficients when dry and warm, however concrete has a better friction coefficient when wet compared to asphalt, the down side to this is concrete is formed in slabs and placed on to the ground with the addition of expansion gaps unlike asphalt which as an oil product can be "spread" in a sense on the surface. the conundrum is whether you would want more grip with bumps, or less grip and a smooth surface in wet conditions.

2. ceramic bearings are the new "it" item, they are very dense, very round, and when used with synthetic oils have superior rolling resistance compared to standard steel bearings, less kinetic energy is converted into sound and heat energy. The top honours for bearings goes to NASA for ones used in a satellite to test frame dragging of space time, the bearings themselves being just bigger then a golf ball were to be enlarged to the size of the earth the highest peak would be 1m tall.

3. american anti-ballistic missiles are true marvels of how far rockets have come and rocket science being applied. The SM3, launched from an AEGIS battlecruiser is no longer then 6.55m yet can reach a target radius of 500km at an altitude of 250km, the kinetic warhead attached to the top of the missile searches for its targets in the form of ballistic warheads, and decoys, the temperature difference between the decoys and the warheads is what the the kinetic warhead looks for. It chooses a target based on its collected data, corrects its course, and collides at closing speeds reaching 8km/s, this whole procedure takes place all within a matter of seconds.

the above can been seen as taking something the size of a kitchen sink the distance from vancouver to kelowna, to a height the same as the distance of vancouver to seattle. then pick out something the size of a desktop computer surrounded by other items the same size from a distance of 160km away and hit it travelling at a relative closing speed of 28,800km/h, oh and all this done within less then 90 seconds.

4. Viroids are short stretches of circular, singles stranded RNA base pairs without a protein coat that is typical of viruses. viroids capable of infection are at shortest only 2000 base pairs. the viroid reproduces by using itself as a template for new viroids of assemble on the outside of its circular structure. who knew that just a couple thousand molecules assembled in a certain way can be capable of so much.