OK, so I’ve been gone for a while. Between selling the house, the move to the apartment, problems over the money I spent setting up the blog and other life issues, I decided taking the time to do a blog was a bad idea.
OK, so I was wrong. Possum Holler is back with a vengeance.
The first few articles are designed to be fun; I especially like the one titled “Excited Thallium”. See if you spot the name of the invention talked about in the post.
Ready or not, here we go…
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
What’s more uniquely American than the American Cowboy? Try to think of anything that defines this country more than punchin’ cows across northern Texas into places like Oklahoma, Missouri, Colorado and Nebraska carrying a six-shooter and a Winchester. The American Cowboy is the iconic image of this country throughout the world. Go to any other country, and I mean ANY other country and ask what is known about 19th century American history. Yep, it’s the cowboy. Romanticized on stage, screen and film.
But was the “cowboy” always a respected member of the cattle drive? Hardly; you can thank Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show and Hollywood for changing the term into something romantic and heroic. Truth is that the term cowboy was used as a derogatory term in 2 different ways.
1st: like a shepard in the bible, cattle drivers were on the bottom of social rung. Dirty, poor, ruffian and couldn’t get any other job.
2nd: cowboy was often used to describe a troublemaker, outlaw or thief. In Tombstone the McLaury’s and Clantons were cattle theives and therefore referred to as “cowboys”.
So, Yipee Ki Yo Ki Yay – get along little dogie.
AZ bob
My last post in January, Saturn Goes Commando, is about Saturn at its equinox. This means the rings are now edge on with the sun and at their thinnest from our vantage on earth. You cannot see the rings at all from my astrobinoculars. Check out this picture from Ciclops http://ciclops.org/view/5815/Shadow_South_of_Another?js=1
Ciclops.org is the official website for the Cassini mission. Check it out.
If you look on the sphere of the planet you can see the razor thin shadow line of the rings. That little bump on the ring shadow is the shadow of the moon Enceladus. Enceladus is not in the picture since it orbits beyond the rings but it still casts a shadow on Saturn.
Man I love this stuff.
bob