E-days!

Today was the carnival, with the cardboard boat race and the soapbox derby and-- most awesomely-- the trebuchet contest. I thought about trying to get one built, but I realized that two weeks was not enough time, and that though they would reimburse me for building materials, I really didn't have the money either. I think I will do one next year.

The weather couldn't have been better for it, bright and sunny but not overly hot-- I wish I had brought sunscreen, though, as I am somewhat burnt now-- and the whole day was a lot of fun. We did not go to the boat race, but got there in time to see the trebuchets doing their calibration shots. There were seven or eight of them, mostly traditionally designed, some floating arm, and one... well. They called their machine "Ambitious Rubbish" and it was certainly that, but it was my favorite of them. It broke half the time they tried to fire it, but dammit, they had come up with an original design. Most of the others could have been build from downloaded plans.

A quick lesson on trebuchets: A trebuchet has two important features, a counterweight and a throwing arm. Most are built, as they were historically, so that the counterweight is on one end of a long, rotating beam, and a sling is attached to the other end. The counterweight is raised, and the sling loaded, and then the counterweight will be released. The counterweight is usually something like sixty times the weight of the ammunition, and so it whips the throwing arm around, flinging the ammunition with a lot of force. A floating arm trebuchet has one rather important change: the counterweight is not attached to the end of the throwing arm. Instead, it is allowed to fall straight down. These are much harder to build, but have a better power output because less energy is lost.

"Ambitious Rubbish" had taken the idea of the floating arm, but had not built it on a vertical track like most. It had a counterweight that dropped vertically, and a separate throwing arm (which had been constructed rather strangely to accomodate the elaborate pulley system they used to raise the counterweight), but in many respects it looked more like a traditional trebuchet. They also had all their power tools, duct tape, and extra wood, in case they needed to repair it... which they did, several times. It pulled itself apart, hit itself with its own counterweight, and, when they did manage a launch, the box they had been using as a counterweight broke from the weight that was in it. They only launched successfully twice, and one of their misfires went backward into the crowd. (Several others had that problem as well, one of them breaking irreparably in the process. This one wasn't the worst of them, just the most interesting.) But I liked it, because the team had actually tried to do something new, on their own.

The best one, of course, was one of the floating-arm types, which probably had a lot more money and time and skill put into its construction.

The competition was interesting, too-- most of the time, such contests are about distance only, seeing who can launch something the farthest. Not ours. Instead, they are given a target, and the target will be set at five different distances. So the trebuchets had to be built for accuracy instead of just distance, and had to be adjutable. Adjusting a trebuchet's distance is fairly easy-- change the weight of the counterweight. Knowing how MUCH to change it is a bit harder, so even the best team didn't hit the mark every time. More often than any other, though. They also had the fastest reset, and in general just seemed to know what they were doing more than anyone else. But they were not my favorite. Competence is great, but it's not always as fun to look at.

After the trebuchet launch we wandered a bit, saw what else was going on. At the soapbox derby there was a car made of a kayak, and one with a couch on it, and one that had its own stereo system. They had brought in donkeys for some kind of obstacle course-- the Burro being our mascot, that makes some sense. There was a mining competition we didn't go check out, but for which there was an ambulance waiting, just in case. There were little carnival games of all sorts, set up by various campus groups. There were inflatable carnival games. In lieu of the large set up where you try to hit something with a hammer hard enough to ring the bell, the geophysics kids had brought out a thing that sensed sound waves through the ground, and used an oscilloscope to measure how hard you'd hit. There was face painting, and free food for students, and cotton candy. And there was of course beer, provided by Coors, for a dollar a glass. Oh, and there was a car show, elsewhere on campus.

All in all, it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I actually went this year.

Tesla coils and a (small) herd of cats

Every spring the Colorado School of Mines takes a weekend to do nerdy things in celebration of E-Days, which is of course short for "Engineering Days." They have a mining competition, pull and ore cart down main street to downtown Golden, build cardboard boats and soapbox cars and trebuchets, and cancel classes for a day and a half to do it. Most of the really neat stuff-- in fact, all of the things I just mentioned-- are tomorrow, but today they had a tesla coil demonstration, and it was awesome.
Tesla coils, for those who do not know, are entirely useless but very cool things which create electrical arcs through the air. That's it. You turn it on and there's lightning arcing up into the air. Or, if there are two of them, across the gap. Useless but very cool. Well, not entirely useless-- some people have managed to turn them into musical instruments, which is awesome. Go to youtube and look up Arc Attack, you'll see what I mean. Anyway, this guy brings in one he built at home, and tells us about Nikola Tesla (look HIM up on "Badass of the Week" for an entertaining read) between turning the thing on and showing us neat stuff it can do-- like putting a little spindle on top with a wire balanced on it, and having the heat from the electricity now arcing off the ends of the wire cause it to spin. Then he let us come up and see the guts and ask questions, and that was awesome, too. Tesla coils are neat, and I want to build one.
Following that I managed to meet up with several of the people I am hoping to organize the SSA group with. The saga continues: we heard from the elusive Matt again, and this time we have a LOCATION for the Tuesday meeting! Hopefully I will yet manage to collapse the wave-function that is Matt, and find out whether we can get all our cats to herd together in a single group. Even so, I met with Nate, one of the people I found while fishing with my button, and two others that are not students but are still quite interested and helpful. We decided that we would like to be sure we are all on the same page before Tuesday, so it's more like two herds of cats coming together, rather than each cat having its own ideas. (At some point I will get tired of calling them cats. That has not yet happened, obviously. I do not anticipate it being soon.) The good news is: the people I met with today are very much on the same page as me, and are people I know I can work with. I hope my observation of the elusive Matt collapses him into a favorable quantum state as well.
We talked about a lot of things-- speakers we would like to get, and a few we might be able to afford sometime soon, ideas for service projects, what our group's official structure should be, good things to include in a mission statement, fun events we could plan on campus, and more. Here is our proposed mission statement at the moment:
"The Secular Student Alliance at the Colorado School of Mines strives to create an welcoming environment for students who embrace a non-religious or skeptical worldview. Our group works to utilize debates, discussion, speaking events, service projects, and cooperation with faith groups on campus to generate a dialogue about supernatural claims, science, ethics, skepticism, and reason."
Hopefully, when we arrive on Tuesday, this will all gel with what Matt and his herd have been thinking, and we can get things moving forward.

Museum hijinks

Tonight the museum (and by that I mean the Denver Museum of Nature and Science) had a sort of "welcome new members" event, where they opened up after hours and had special presentations and other cool things. I love the museum, and my boyfriend recently got us a membership, so we went, and it was awesome.

First things first, we got there just in time to hear one of the resident space scientists talk about Mars, and the latest mission to Mars, which will be landing there (with the newest, biggest, shiniest Mars rover yet!) on August 5. They're going to have an event at the museum that night, and I am pretty sure I have to go. SO COOL. (A word about me: remember how excited I was about the LASERS? Well, I like SPACE even more.) It's nuclear powered! He talked about the evidence of liquid water on Mars in the past, and research being done about it.

Then we wandered about in Space Odessy, the museum's space exhibit, for a while. We were going to see the planetarium show, but the line was ridiculous and it is a regular show we can go see some other time-- not for free, but we can. So we checked out the meteorite cart, and of course I had to show off the spectroscopy cart-- spectroscopy is NEAT and I will blog about it another time-- and while we were doing so, we are visited by... Galileo!

Galileo is, of course, a museum staff member dressed in a silly hat with a platic telescope, and they have this whole skit where a volunteer thinks Galileo is just a disruptive visitor (he's making quite a scene) but the crowd cheers for Galileo to do his experiment-- what he calls the "leaning tower of pizza" experiment, with a big ball and a baby ball, to see which one falls faster. This is all very much for kids, and also awesome. The volunteer says "hang on, this isn't an experiment, we need a hypothesis!" and gets the kids to guess which will hit first. He then talks about how he is a SCIENTIST so he cannot merely THINK through a problem, he has to TEST it. Bravo! And so he drags out a ladder, and a kiddie pool, and it is revealed that his "big ball and baby ball" are in fact water balloons. He gets two people to help him-- he just calls them Kid and Other Kid-- and the volunteer stops him again: they need safety equipment! So the kids put on raincoats and goggles and shower caps, and Galileo takes off his glasses, and then he climbs the ladder and-- what do you know, they hit at the same time! The whole thing was hilarious and awesome.

Then we go to where they've got the backroom of the zoology collection open-- somewhat-- to the public. We get to see some of their invertebrates, and the attack beaver, and bats of every size, and a black rhino skull, and then we went into the room with the bugs and spiders and I had to move on a bit quickly because the brown recluse looked disturbingly like a spider I saw in my apartment last year and that creeped me out... but the giant bird eating tarantulas were neat, and the camel spiders are in fact really freaky looking. After those were the flesh eating beetle colonies. Turns out this is how they clean the specimens-- they skin them, and the skin gets put in the collection elsewhere, and then they throw them in a big box with flesh eating beetles, which clean them down to the bones, without damaging the skeletons. They even have a little taster tank-- if they suspect a specimen might poison the beetles, they throw it in there, first, to see if it kills the few they keep separate. So cool.

At that point we realized we were running out of time-- with me being all about SPACE and my boyfriend studying biology and zoology specifically, it's no wonder we got very distracted by those. We dropped in and saw a little of everything, picking up some swag along the way-- buy one get one free coupons for the IMAX shows, dinosaur posters, "slothtastic" stickers (which I can only assume are about the Snowmass dig, another cool thing I'll get around to talking about later), one of which has attached itself to my phone. We got to see a little more behind the scenes, where we chatted with a guy who works in the collection, and lots of other neat things that I will have to go back and see when we have more time.

All in all, a fantastic night at the museum.

LASERS

You know what is really cool? LASERS.

I put that in all caps for two reasons. One, not everyone knows (or remembers) that the word "laser" was originally an acronym. It stood for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Of course, it has become a word-- everyone knows what a laser is, and it's perfectly fine, grammatically, to write it just like that. I write it in all caps, mostly, because lasers are FREAKING COOL.

Everyone has seen, probably even used, a laser. Laser pointers are common technology (though when I was a kid and desperately wanted one, they were at least $50, I checked), CDs and DVDs are read by laser, barcodes are scanned by laser-- lasers are everywhere. The laser sight on a sniper rifle is such a well known piece of technology that a red dot appearing on someone in a movie is an instant source of tension-- that person is going to be shot!

The scientific uses for lasers are even cooler. The distance from the earth to the moon is measured by bouncing a laser off a reflector left by one of the Apollo missions. Lasers are used in microscopes to image extremely small things with great accuracy. Lasers can cut more precisely than any mechanical process. Lasers can perform surgery where no incision is necessary. They're used in spectroscopy, which is a really cool concept on its own.

So how do they work? Fairly simply, actually. You pump light into a medium that will amplify it, and then focus it out one end as a beam. Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds. You have to find the right medium so the wavelength that you want is amplified, you have to use an external power source, and so on. But really: create a tube, with mirrors on both ends, so light will reflect. Fill it with a gain medium-- it could be as simple as glass or neon, like a neon light, mixed with helium-- and then introduce a light source. For some, it could be an electrical pulse, like the helium-neon mix. For others it's a light, or a chemical reaction. It depends on what you're using as a gain medium. Make sure that one of the end mirrors is partially transparent, so the amplified light can go somewhere, and you've got a laser. Many will then put a cap on the end so that the light can only go out through a small hole, making the beam small and focused.

So, one of the really cool things about studying physics at this school is that there are a lot of opportunities to play with lasers. All of the labs on the top floor of the physics building have warnings posted on the doors about lasers. And we have some really, really cool lasers. We've got one setup that's doing microscopy-- that is using a laser as a microscope-- that literally counts photons, yielding a much clearer picture than other systems that amplify to that degree. They've got one that can give a 3 dimensional image of a fly's brain. But the coolest one is the one doing something unexpected.

They created a setup that focuses a beam in four dimensions-- that is, in the three spatial dimensions, and also in time. If you're not used to thinking of time as a dimension that's going to either sound nonsensical or extremely simple. In practice it is neither; this was quite an accomplishment. So they did what any good physicist would do with a brand new, very cool laser: they pointed it at stuff. One of the things they pointed it at was glass. Glass is an interesting thing-- it is structurally the same in all directions, because it doesn't have any sort of crystallization. It's kind of an amorphous blob, really. So, one would expect that, when carving things into it with lasers, the direction the laser was moving wouldn't matter-- the whole area touched by the laser is affected the same way. Generally, that's true. Not with this one. With this one, they get one kind of mark when moving to the left, and an entirely different kind of mark moving to the right. The conclusion they came to: their laser is somehow tiled in TIME. One side of the laser is hitting the glass slightly before the other. And they do not know why. So now there's a senior design project trying to take pictures of this phenomenon. And succeeding. At taking pictures of LASERS.

My school is awesome.

Fishing for Cats

The past two days I've worn my new SSA button on campus, hoping that people will recognize it and talk to me about it. The good news is that it has worked: I have had two people ask me about it, and we exchanged contact information and it looks like I'll have more than enough student signatures. This is what I have come to think of as fishing: wearing, doing, or saying something that will elicit a response from the kind of people I want to talk to.

For example, fishing for friends might involve wearing a nerdy t-shirt. Only nerdy people will get it, and by wearing it, I am signalling to them that I am also a nerdy person. They can therefore smile at or comment on my shirt, signalling to me that they got it and are nerdy. In this fashion I can find nerdy people with whom I might want to be friends. Other such strategies would involve listening to a certain kind of music, having a book on a table next to me or an image on my desktop that they might comment on. Or, for the more outgoing type, saying strange things loudly and in public, hoping people will comment. A favorite of ours, when there is a group of us, is to have one of us say "All together now," and for all of us to chime in with the word "Lesbian!" ... we haven't made any new friends this way, come to think, but we have gotten a lot of entertaining reactions, so it works out.

Anyway, I've been wearing the button as a sort of fishing. It's not exactly good manners to walk up to random people and ask if they're an atheist, or whatever other label you want to put on it. Hell, it's not even good manners to ask your friends, though I suppose with your close friends you probably already know. This is part of what had me stalling a bit on getting those student signatures-- how do you go about FINDING these people? The only reason I had any idea who to apprach for a faculty adviser is that I knew one of the physics professors had published a few books that were, at the very least, sympathetic.
So I've found two people, and by extension, probably enough charter members. Of course, it can't be that easy: both of these people have told me they had a friend who was "trying" to start an SSA group, and neither of those friends was the elusive Matt who initially ordered a group starting packet from the SSA. I, it seems, am the only one of the now FOUR people "trying to start" such a group that has been in contact with the SSA. Did I say it was like herding cats? And of course I know each of these four people will have a different vision of what this group ought to be, so I am hoping that the people I am bringing on board will, at least, be willing to be flexible, if not simply accept my leadership because I'm the one actually DOING something.

I'll be meeting again with Nate, the SSA board member, on friday, and I've invited the two I've found to join us. It is my hope that if we are meeting together from the beginning, there will be fewer clashes over differing visions down the road.

Herding Cats

Today, I'm wearing a button with the logo of the Secular Student Alliance. This makes me a little nervous, for a couple of reasons. One, I'm not the most naturally social person, and I am wearing this button in the hopes that people will ask me about it and I can tell them about the group I am trying to start. I am a little afraid that it will have the effect I want, and also a little afraid that it will not, and then I'll have to find a better way. Two, I'm not certain what I will tell people if they do ask me about it; there's been some difficulty with communication, which I will talk more about it a bit. And three, of course, I wonder if it will change people's perception of me in a negative fashion. It is not so obvious as the sticker I'd put on my tablet if I were sure it would stick-- that one says "I'm an atheist! Ask away!" or something of the sort, because the SSA likes to host "Ask an atheist" events. In fact it's probably too subtle for anyone who didn't know what to look for to recognize, which means most of the people who would know what it meant would be friendly, but...

Story time. I've been an atheist for much longer than I have known I was. Once I realized I was an atheist, I didn't have a big coming out or anything. Nor did I feel I was hiding-- my closest friends knew how I felt, why should I tell everyone? Then one night, after a few drinks, I had someone ask me straight up if I was an atheist, and I told him yes, I was... and he stopped talking to me. He avoided me for weeks. And then when he did start talking to me again, it was weird and awkward, like he didn't know how he was supposed to treat me. That is far less severe than I know others have faced. Public perception of atheists is extremely bad-- a recent survey said people trust us about as much as they trust rapists. Things are improving-- where we used to be the most hated group in America, we've now been displaced by the Tea Party. Of course, that could just be because they're louder and more obnoxious. There are a lot of people who are afraid to let the world know that they don't believe in god.

In part, I am afraid of how people will react, too... but in part, I am simply unsure if I want to take this on. It seems a bit like tilting at windmills, trying to alter public perception of such a group of people. I will take it on, though. I made that decision before I set the wheels in motion to start this group. Speaking of which...
Organizing atheists, it has been said, is a little like herding cats. We all very much value our own thoughts and reason, and therefore getting us to follow anyone else is a bit difficult. At least, that's my theory on why we're so difficult to organize. Anyway. When I arrived at Mines and found that there wasn't an atheist/secular/nontheist/skeptics/ANYTHING group, I was a bit miffed. Surely, at a school where everyone is studying science in one way or another, there would be more of us? But no. There are eleven Christian groups, one Muslim group, and nothing for the rest of us. So, when I was getting things in order this semester, I thought I would see about finding others here, maybe starting a group. That set things in motion-- a board member from the SSA contacted me, I met with him as soon as spring break was over, and things are going well. Mostly.

Another person on campus, it turns out, requested a group starting packet back in January. Nate promptly emailed him about meeting and talking about things. And then heard nothing, until last week. Matt (this other student) says that he's gotten a lot of the legwork done, he's found other interested students, and he apologizes for not replying and invites Nate to a meeting on Tuesday... but does not say where this meeting is. Now, I would be happy to collaborate with other students, especially if they've done the part that I find hardest already. But if he vanishes for two months and then doesn't even give us a location... well, the kindest thing I can think of is that he's a space cadet, who forgets things when he's busy. Which makes me wonder how suitable he would be for running a group of this kind. Nate, it seems, is as wary as I am. If we cannot reach Matt to find this meeting tomorrow, how long should we give it before we give up on him and I just do it myself? I don't know.

I would rather avoid this drama. There's bound to be drama enough once the group gets going (it's inevitable, really), I'd rather not have any before we even get off the ground. *sigh*

Starting again

This semester has been a very interesting one so far, both in the subject matter of my classes and in the less academic parts of school. Last spring did not leave me in a terribly good place emotionally, and the forced semester off this fall didn't help matters at all. Fighting clinical depression (as I have for years), I became convinced that I didn't belong at Mines, that I wasn't good enough and that I just didn't fit. So when I went back this spring, I decided I was going to try to work on that, in addition to my academics. Last spring I often came home between classes to take a nap or eat lunch; this time I built my schedule to not allow that. Last spring I hardly talked to anyone in or out of class; this time I began attending clubs and hanging out with people. Last spring I fought through my depression on my own; this time, I got a counselor the first week of classes and got on zoloft a week later. It has made this spring a very different experience than last.

It started slowly; I began hanging out at the bagel shop on campus, where the workers (who are not themselves students) befriended me almost immediately. They got me chatting with other people, too. Then I started attending the local chapter of the Society for Physics Students. When they asked for volunteers to go judge a science fair, I actually went-- last year I would not have done so. And it was a great time.

Now, spring break has passed, and I've got even more happening. I'm working on starting a group on campus, an affiliate of the Secular Student Alliance. I met with a board member (and current grad student) about it, exchanged emails, talked with a potential faculty adviser, and am working on figuring out the rules for advertising-- I've got the price for classified ads in the paper, I need to find out rules for posting fliers. I've never even been an officer in a club before (though I am thinking about running for secretary in the SPS), and here I am, getting ready to start one and run it, and doing pretty damned well. The fact that the SSA has an insane amount of support for affiliate groups helps, but that doesn't make me feel any less fantastic about how well this is all going.

And on top of that, while looking at the school newspaper's website, I saw that they said they were "always hiring staff writers" and that anyone interested should email. They probably don't pay much-- it doesn't say on the site-- but it's by the word, which means that it would be as much or as little as I thought I could handle. So I decided to send them an email. I mentioned a bit of my background, but I'm not sure I needed to have done so-- within a day I got a reply that they would love to have me on the team, and that I should come to a staff meeting on Monday.

What a difference from a year ago.

Welcome!

Hi. If you've come here, you probably already know who I am, but who knows-- I might wind up with readers outside my friends, at some point, so I might as well have this first post here introducing myself.

My name is Diana, and no, I am not especially afraid of sharing that online. I actually use my real name in several places on the internet. I'm not scared of ghosts or things that go bump in the night, why should I be afraid of the nebulous dark things people tell me lurk on the internet? I'm rambling. I do that a lot, you'll find, as you read my blog. Fortunately for you, I tend to notice it fairly early on and get back to the subject at hand.

I am, as of this posting, a sophomore at the Colorado School of Mines, majoring in Engineering Physics. If that doesn't tell you that I'm crazy, well, stick around. You'll catch on soon enough. I say that I am a sophomore-- I'm not actually certain. See, I transfered in, and I can't for the life of me remember how many credits I have. But we'll stick with sophomore. It sounds better than freshman, given that I'm old enough for people to assume I'm a grad student. Not going to post my age-- I may not fear dark shadows on the internet, but I'm a woman, and it's my right to hide my age.

Actually, scratch that. I can't stand things that make fun of the supposed "war of the sexes." This is one of the topics I will be talking about on this blog, because it is one of the things that I think about a lot: gender. I am not a feminist; there are too many nutjobs that call themselves such for me to be pleased wearing the label. Other things I am likely to address include anything interesting I learn in my classes (whether they relate to my major or not-- I find a lot of the things I learn in Earth and Environmental Systems interesting, for example), interesting things I have learned elsewhere, political issues I have latched onto (that one is likely to be rare-- I really don't care for politics or for stating my opinion on them), or, and this one's going to be pretty prominent for a while, atheism and skepticism. See, I'm working on starting a group on campus that is affiliated with the Secular Student Alliance-- it's something I care about, that I think about a lot, and it's a big part of my life at the moment. So expect to read a lot about that.

Also, I'm 27. Women who lie about their age are silly.

Some of this blog might be personal, but mostly it is aimed at other people, and hopefully will be interesting for them. Hopefully I will succeed-- or rather, have succeeded, for you new people that found me somehow.