Wordless Wednesday - Photos of Nebraska

Burwell Park

Corn

North Loup River

Calamus Reservoir

Calamus Reservoir

Sunrise in the Sandhills

Outer Banks Sunrise

Nags Head, NC

Outer Banks Sunrise

August 2008

Brookgreen Gardens

Sculpture at Brookgreen Gardens

Live Oak

Brookgreen Gardens

Alligator

These are some photos I took with my cell phone at Brookgreen Gardens this weekend.

Another Green Fire Video

I’ve been playing around with text in videos and learning more about editing and formats. Now… I thought about making an evil unflattering video of a family member and playing with that, but I figured it would be better to make a nice harmless fire video instead.

While I was at it, I found another video about green fire on YouTube. This one isn’t quite so harmless. If you try this project yourself (I did), be advised that the vapor pressure of the flammable compound is very high and you can expect a blast of green flame to shoot from the top of your Florence flask. Use tongs to drop the match, not fingers.

Wordless Wednesday - Georgetown SC

These photos were taken at the Georgetown, SC park (July 2008).

Wordless Wednesday - Cloudy Sky

Make Glowing Water

I’m gearing up for my usual Wordless Wednesday photo for About Chemistry. This week I am aiming to post a picture of glowing bubbles, with instructions for how to make them. All I need now is the perfect picture, but I went ahead and made a video of one of the easiest “tricks” for making liquids glow. You make glowing water, which you can add as an ingredient in just about anything. Does it take hard-to-get chemicals? No. I bet you have everything you need sitting in your desk drawer.

Innovative Intersection Solution

Here is an idea that I wish would make its way to Myrtle Beach so that I wouldn’t have to get stuck in traffic until the end of time after leaving the mall heading south on highway 17. All those cars turning left toward the Commons and whatever else is over there bring traffic to a standstill more often than not. Not that I don’t love watching my engine temperature light creep up as I wait and wait and wait to clear that intersection and proceed on my merry little way.

How this idea works is, rather than wait forever for a left turn signal, left-turning traffic actually turns right and makes a sort of u-turn to head in the intended direction. Eliminating the left-turn signal means you don’t have to wait as long for a light, so traffic doesn’t get backed up. Plus, I just like the idea of making u-turns legally. The inventor is brilliant, and I’m not just saying that because he is a friend. Every time I get stuck behind backed up turn-lane traffic I think how great it would be to not have to wait for those lights.

The embedded video doesn’t do the idea justice, so click the image and go to YouTube to view the traffic simulation in a higher resolution. The left side of the video shows the two-phase intersection with the u-turns. The right side of the video shows the same traffic navigating the usual mess we all know so well, which works fine when there is no traffic, but I don’t do much driving at 4 am when that presumably happens. Notice how the street that has a lot of left-turn traffic (green cars) gets backed up in the usual intersection? There is even a way to do away with lights altogether, but wow… I don’t know if I could handle not hitting every light. That would be too radical.

Slimy New Video

You don’t need to be a kid to make slime, though I confess I don’t get as much out of playing with it as my teenage sons, who are particularly fond of slime that is ‘booger-colored’, as they call it. This translucent slime is made using Elmer’s school glue gel, which can be tinted using food color. It works the same as the slime made using white school glue, just with a different appearance (that slime is opaque). Slime is a great project because it is practically impossible to mess up plus it doesn’t make a mess.

Wordless Wednesday - Tigers at Barefoot Landing