Winds of Change.NET: Liberty. Discovery. Humanity. Victory.

Formal Affiliations
  • Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto
  • Euston Democratic Progressive Manifesto
  • Real Democracy for Iran!
  • Support Denamrk
  • Million Voices for Darfur
  • milblogs
Syndication
 Subscribe in a reader

Geek Fun

| 3 Comments

Littlest Guy is working on his school science project (making a calorimeter), and so he's starting to learn some of the basics of thermodynamics (it's hard to explain the difference between temperature and heat, isn't it?).

While he was digging he came up with this video, which he's been playing enough to be annoying.

So in the interests of making you annoyed too, I give you - the Large Hadron Collider rap video...


-

3 Comments

This was better than I expected it to be - but the Hayek/ Keynes vid at econstories.tv is still #1.

If you're having problems with an explanation that might make sense to a kid, point out that temperature is what a person would feel if (hypothetically) touching something, while heat is what produces the feeling.

Make an analogy to feeling the breeze produced by uncorking two balloons with the same size tap (or whatever you call it). One balloon is a foot across, with an internal overpressure of one PSI. Untie the balloon and you'll feel a certain pressure (about one PSI) against your hand for a certain time.

The other balloon is 50 feet across, with an overpressure of one PSI. Untie this balloon and you'll feel the same wind pressure, but for a lot longer time, because the big balloon is holding a lot more air (heat) than the small balloon.

This leads to fruitful discussions of specific heat of materials, modes of heat conductivity, and eventually into the superiority of cast iron cookware over flimsy non-stick stuff.

Leave a comment

Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:

*This* puts text in bold.

_This_ puts text in italics.

bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.

To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.




Recent Comments
  • TM Lutas: Jobs' formula was simple enough. Passionately care about your users, read more
  • sabinesgreenp.myopenid.com: Just seeing the green community in action makes me confident read more
  • Glen Wishard: Jobs was on the losing end of competition many times, read more
  • Chris M: Thanks for the great post, Joe ... linked it on read more
  • Joe Katzman: Collect them all! Though the French would be upset about read more
  • Glen Wishard: Now all the Saudis need is a division's worth of read more
  • mark buehner: Its one thing to accept the Iranians as an ally read more
  • J Aguilar: Saudis were around here (Spain) a year ago trying the read more
  • Fred: Good point, brutality didn't work terribly well for the Russians read more
  • mark buehner: Certainly plausible but there are plenty of examples of that read more
  • Fred: They have no need to project power but have the read more
  • mark buehner: Good stuff here. The only caveat is that a nuclear read more
  • Ian C.: OK... Here's the problem. Perceived relevance. When it was 'Weapons read more
  • Marcus Vitruvius: Chris, If there were some way to do all these read more
  • Chris M: Marcus Vitruvius, I'm surprised by your comments. You're quite right, read more
The Winds Crew
Town Founder: Left-Hand Man: Other Winds Marshals
  • 'AMac', aka. Marshal Festus (AMac@...)
  • Robin "Straight Shooter" Burk
  • 'Cicero', aka. The Quiet Man (cicero@...)
  • David Blue (david.blue@...)
  • 'Lewy14', aka. Marshal Leroy (lewy14@...)
  • 'Nortius Maximus', aka. Big Tuna (nortius.maximus@...)
Other Regulars Semi-Active: Posting Affiliates Emeritus:
Winds Blogroll
Author Archives
Categories
Powered by Movable Type 4.23-en