The Phoenix is a homemade electric car made by hobbyists Eric Ludgren and Jehu Garcia. Ludgren is the owner of Waste Recycling and Disposal Company IT Asset Partners and Garcia is a youtuber, making videos where he turns old cars into electric vehicles and making DIY guides. The pair intend to beat the record of 700 miles by almost double with their homemade car, The Phoenix, made from recyclable materials.
“If we can do this, anybody can do this,” said Lundgren. “We’re not some mad scientists in a lab. We’re just trying to push this envelope to the max.”
The two men have created a car which, according to Ludgren and Garcia has already succeeded in breaking the standing record. So-called hypermiling is made possible by driving the car at low speeds to optimise the battery conditions. The attempt made in the Model achieved 669.8 miles, but Ludgren and Garcia claim the Phoenix has already reached 748 miles in similar conditions.
Would be nice to know how low the speeds are. There's a video, but it's 11 minutes long and I don't have time to watch it right now.
Eric Langden explained the process: “The batteries all came from cable boxes for your home TV that had little 18650 batteries in them. 2,800 milliamp, 18650 batteries. We used those. Then we used laptop batteries from a well-known brand that I called up and said, ‘Hey, do you mind if I use your laptop batteries?’ Then we used EV batteries that the EV industry said ‘Nope. They’re dead.’”
“What we found was, when you open up the pack, 80% of the actual batteries are perfectly working. They’re perfect. The problem is that once over 20% degradation occurs in the pack, in America we say it’s trash. We aggregated all these batteries and made this giant 130-kilowatt power battery pack.”
http://www.electrans.co.uk/homemade-ev-to-beat-tesla-record/
Wednesday, 13 September 2017
Tuesday, 12 September 2017
Britain's biggest rocket
The largest rocket to blast off from the British mainland has launched from Northumberland for a test flight, fuelling hopes that it could pave the way for commercial flights into space. Built and privately funded by the Manchester-based firm Starchaser, the Skybolt 2 successfully fired into the sky from the back of a converted flatbed truck in Otterburn, a village 31 miles north-east of Newcastle in the usually tranquil Northumberland national park.
Starchaser !!! Good God, the last time I heard that name was probably 15 years ago when they were setting the same record with another rocket. Nice to know they're still around.
The rocket will now tour thousands of schools as part of an educational outreach programme. Bennett is shooting for the stars with his next project: Nova 2 is “a 12-metre rocket big enough to carry a person” and is intended to launch within the next 18 months.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/11/largest-rocket-to-blast-off-from-uk-mainland-paves-way-for-space-tourism
Starchaser !!! Good God, the last time I heard that name was probably 15 years ago when they were setting the same record with another rocket. Nice to know they're still around.
The rocket will now tour thousands of schools as part of an educational outreach programme. Bennett is shooting for the stars with his next project: Nova 2 is “a 12-metre rocket big enough to carry a person” and is intended to launch within the next 18 months.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/11/largest-rocket-to-blast-off-from-uk-mainland-paves-way-for-space-tourism
The best way to deal with an AT-AT statue
"Dismantled and put in storage..."...? HhWhhhaaaat ? No sir ! You put it on display somewhere, or you blast it to smithereens in a carefully controlled explosion, or topple it by whirling a cable around its legs !
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-northamptonshire-41237682/giant-star-wars-at-at-model-built-in-front-garden
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-northamptonshire-41237682/giant-star-wars-at-at-model-built-in-front-garden
Scientific revolutions are seldom born of lone geniuses
Nice little summary. I fully agree. There are geniuses, and there are scientific revolutions, but they rarely (if ever) come from a single "lone wolf". They're born in at least equal measure by the slow, methodical, tedious work of legions of mostly forgotten researchers.
What would have happened if Einstein fell under a tram in 1900? What difference would it have made, for how long? Not a lot, Poincaré was almost there and others were working on the various problems. I’d guess at most a ten-year delay. So are there any true examples of ‘great men’ or is science all over-determined?
...Without going into a lot of detail it should be clear that Einstein is solving problems on which a number of other people are working and making important contributions. He is not pulling new physics out of a hat but solving problems over-determined by the field of physics itself.
So what about Newton?As should be well known Leibnitz and Newton both developed calculus roughly contemporaneously, even more important, as I explained here, they were both building on foundations laid down by other leading seventeenth-century mathematicians. Newton was anticipated in his colour theory of white light by the Bohemian scholar Jan Marek Marci. Newton was only one of three people who developed a reflecting telescope in the 1660s. Robert Hooke anticipated and probably motivated Newton on the theory of universal gravity and Newton’s work on dynamics built on the work of many others beginning with Tartaglia and Benedetti in the sixteenth century. His first law of motion was from Isaac Beeckman via Descartes and the second from Christiaan Huygens from whose work he also derived the law of gravity. Once again we have a physicist working on problem of his time that were being worked actively on by other competent scholars.
[I should add that in Timaeus, Plato describes the First Law of motion perfectly :
For it is difficult, or rather impossible, for something to be moved without something to set it in motion, or something to set a thing in motion without something to be moved by it. When either is absent, there is no motion, but [when they are present] it is quite impossible for them to be uniform.
This also hints at the Second Law, that applying a force changes uniform motion, though of course only qualitatively.]
Put simply it is not the originality or uniqueness of their work but the quality and depth of it that makes these researchers great men.
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/the-great-man-paradox/
What would have happened if Einstein fell under a tram in 1900? What difference would it have made, for how long? Not a lot, Poincaré was almost there and others were working on the various problems. I’d guess at most a ten-year delay. So are there any true examples of ‘great men’ or is science all over-determined?
...Without going into a lot of detail it should be clear that Einstein is solving problems on which a number of other people are working and making important contributions. He is not pulling new physics out of a hat but solving problems over-determined by the field of physics itself.
So what about Newton?As should be well known Leibnitz and Newton both developed calculus roughly contemporaneously, even more important, as I explained here, they were both building on foundations laid down by other leading seventeenth-century mathematicians. Newton was anticipated in his colour theory of white light by the Bohemian scholar Jan Marek Marci. Newton was only one of three people who developed a reflecting telescope in the 1660s. Robert Hooke anticipated and probably motivated Newton on the theory of universal gravity and Newton’s work on dynamics built on the work of many others beginning with Tartaglia and Benedetti in the sixteenth century. His first law of motion was from Isaac Beeckman via Descartes and the second from Christiaan Huygens from whose work he also derived the law of gravity. Once again we have a physicist working on problem of his time that were being worked actively on by other competent scholars.
[I should add that in Timaeus, Plato describes the First Law of motion perfectly :
For it is difficult, or rather impossible, for something to be moved without something to set it in motion, or something to set a thing in motion without something to be moved by it. When either is absent, there is no motion, but [when they are present] it is quite impossible for them to be uniform.
This also hints at the Second Law, that applying a force changes uniform motion, though of course only qualitatively.]
Put simply it is not the originality or uniqueness of their work but the quality and depth of it that makes these researchers great men.
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/the-great-man-paradox/
Monday, 11 September 2017
Taking back control of patriotism
As usual, accept the fact that the New Statesman is an angry ranty blog rather than proper journalism and move on. Because sometimes angry ranty blogs are correct.
If ministers really wanted us to believe it’s on our side, they probably should have spent less time calling us saboteurs, citizens of nowhere, terrorist sympathisers or whatever else it thought might get the Daily Mail and its readers to start frantically fanning themselves on any given day.
The government would have a stronger claim to be “us” if it actually had a mandate, of course, but, for entirely hilarious reasons, it doesn’t. Leave keep demanding we respect the will of the people, and fair enough – but if June’s election taught us anything, it’s that the will of the people was very specifically not to give the government a blank cheque to do whatever the hell it wants. Alas, however, Theresa May views political opposition with the mixture of bafflement, scorn and blind terror that tech bros reserve for women, so instead of reasoned argument intended to bring the country together, we get a bunch of nonsense like this.
Here’s the thing, though – even if Remain supporters were actively supporting the EU in negotiations in some way, that would be completely and utterly fine. Partly because this is still a free country, at least for the moment; partly because patriotism isn’t mandatory. But mostly because patriotism does not in fact mean “my country, right or wrong”, it just means wanting the best for it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/09/remind-me-why-i-have-support-useless-bloody-government-brexit-negotiations-again
If ministers really wanted us to believe it’s on our side, they probably should have spent less time calling us saboteurs, citizens of nowhere, terrorist sympathisers or whatever else it thought might get the Daily Mail and its readers to start frantically fanning themselves on any given day.
The government would have a stronger claim to be “us” if it actually had a mandate, of course, but, for entirely hilarious reasons, it doesn’t. Leave keep demanding we respect the will of the people, and fair enough – but if June’s election taught us anything, it’s that the will of the people was very specifically not to give the government a blank cheque to do whatever the hell it wants. Alas, however, Theresa May views political opposition with the mixture of bafflement, scorn and blind terror that tech bros reserve for women, so instead of reasoned argument intended to bring the country together, we get a bunch of nonsense like this.
Here’s the thing, though – even if Remain supporters were actively supporting the EU in negotiations in some way, that would be completely and utterly fine. Partly because this is still a free country, at least for the moment; partly because patriotism isn’t mandatory. But mostly because patriotism does not in fact mean “my country, right or wrong”, it just means wanting the best for it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/09/remind-me-why-i-have-support-useless-bloody-government-brexit-negotiations-again
The evolution of a miniature cold-blooded goat
Well that's just weird.
The goat, Myotragus balearicus, lived on what is now Majorca, a Spanish island. The island had scarce resources not yet become a thriving tourist haven, and there was no way for the goats to leave, and so scientists wondered how they had thrived for so long. A recently published research paper reveals the extinct goat survived by adjusting its growth rate and metabolism to suit the available food, becoming cold-blooded like reptiles.
The bones of warm-blooded animals show uninterrupted fast growth, while the bones of cold-blooded animals have parallel growth lines showing interrupted growth corresponding to growth cycles, rather like the rings seen in tree trunks. Growth and metabolism rates are adjusted to suit the amount of food available, whereas warm-blooded animals require food to be available continuously. The Myotragus bones showed the same interrupted growth as reptiles.
Myotragus are the first mammals ever known to have achieved the same flexibility, and hence survivability, as reptiles. They also saved energy by having a brain half the size of hoofed mammals its own size, and its eyes were only a third of the size.
https://phys.org/news/2009-11-extinct-goat-cold-blooded.html
The goat, Myotragus balearicus, lived on what is now Majorca, a Spanish island. The island had scarce resources not yet become a thriving tourist haven, and there was no way for the goats to leave, and so scientists wondered how they had thrived for so long. A recently published research paper reveals the extinct goat survived by adjusting its growth rate and metabolism to suit the available food, becoming cold-blooded like reptiles.
The bones of warm-blooded animals show uninterrupted fast growth, while the bones of cold-blooded animals have parallel growth lines showing interrupted growth corresponding to growth cycles, rather like the rings seen in tree trunks. Growth and metabolism rates are adjusted to suit the amount of food available, whereas warm-blooded animals require food to be available continuously. The Myotragus bones showed the same interrupted growth as reptiles.
Myotragus are the first mammals ever known to have achieved the same flexibility, and hence survivability, as reptiles. They also saved energy by having a brain half the size of hoofed mammals its own size, and its eyes were only a third of the size.
https://phys.org/news/2009-11-extinct-goat-cold-blooded.html
The real Mrs Lothbrok.
I propose we call her Lagatha, or possibly Mrs Lothbrok.
"War was not an activity exclusive to males in the Viking world. A new study conducted by researchers at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities shows that women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield.
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, who led the study, explains: "What we have studied was not a Valkyrie from the sagas but a real life military leader, that happens to be a woman"."
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-09/su-aoa090817.php
"War was not an activity exclusive to males in the Viking world. A new study conducted by researchers at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities shows that women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield.
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, who led the study, explains: "What we have studied was not a Valkyrie from the sagas but a real life military leader, that happens to be a woman"."
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-09/su-aoa090817.php
Sunday, 10 September 2017
Saturday, 9 September 2017
Exit Brexit
At least not everyone is completely stupid. Can't say I was ever a fan of Cable, but he's dead right about this.
"They (the government) are not listening - they've got tin ear," he said. "They're making a complete mess of these negotiations - totally disunited, dysfunctional, a lack of preparation. Even if you believe in Brexit you must be in despair at the way they're approaching these negotiations." He said the Lib Dems would working with other MPs towards another vote - on an "exit from Brexit".
Bbrreexxiitt ? Brexexit ? Brexit 2 : The Quickening ?
Also nice to see that even the Tories aren't completely insane, even if their current "leader" is nearing foaming-at-the-mouth level of nuttery.
Tory peer Baroness Patience Wheatcroft told demonstrators that Remainers needed to keep campaigning to stay in the EU. She said: "We have to stop Brexit. Since we joined the EU we've had an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. It must be right to try and maintain that. It's not undemocratic to try to persuade the electorate to think again about Brexit. That's democracy at work."
Damn straight.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-41212505
"They (the government) are not listening - they've got tin ear," he said. "They're making a complete mess of these negotiations - totally disunited, dysfunctional, a lack of preparation. Even if you believe in Brexit you must be in despair at the way they're approaching these negotiations." He said the Lib Dems would working with other MPs towards another vote - on an "exit from Brexit".
Bbrreexxiitt ? Brexexit ? Brexit 2 : The Quickening ?
Also nice to see that even the Tories aren't completely insane, even if their current "leader" is nearing foaming-at-the-mouth level of nuttery.
Tory peer Baroness Patience Wheatcroft told demonstrators that Remainers needed to keep campaigning to stay in the EU. She said: "We have to stop Brexit. Since we joined the EU we've had an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. It must be right to try and maintain that. It's not undemocratic to try to persuade the electorate to think again about Brexit. That's democracy at work."
Damn straight.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-41212505
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