Category: Fun Stuff

Who are those remarkable individuals that had ideas that changed the world?

One individual is a man named Gordon Gould.  Ever heard of him?  His genius that profoundly impacts your daily life came from an idea of energy levels from “exited thallium”.  Initial uses were planned for spectrometry, interferometry, radar, and nuclear fusion.

But now virtually everything used in modern electronics uses his invention.  Do you listen to CD’s?  Have you had surgery lately?  Do you know the most accurate way to measure something?  Copied something?  Leveled something?  Printed something?

Gordon Gould called it Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.  Basically his idea was to take electromagnetic radiation (energy – or more commonly known as “light”) and separate the combined energy using an open resonator into individual wavelengths which are measured in nanometers.

I hope you caught the name of this remarkable invention from above.  If you missed it I’ll give you the name again:

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

Did you see it that time?

AZ bob

There is so much sunshine in Arizona that we can plan a picnic on just about any day of the year months in advance.  Go ahead, pick a date sometime in 2009, mark your calendar and check the weather when that day comes around.  Over 330 days a year we have sunshine at least half the day.  An additional 22 days that the sun peeks through for a short time.

But guess what?  It’s December 12th and there’s cloud cover this evening and I can’t see the giant full moon at perigee rising in the east that is discussed in the previous post, Drop Your Drawers For The Biggest Full Moon Of The Year.  Sigh

What’s this have to do with a free nights stay at the Pilot Knob Hotel?  Normally clear whether in Arizona.

In Yuma, AZ, the Pilot Knob Hotel had this offer across the top of the building.  Prettie safe bet that they collected the rent most every night, although Yuma does average some 5 whole days a year that the sun never peeks through the clouds.  The hotel closed and was torn down over 50 years ago, but they didn’t go out of business because of the weather, just changing times.