Vivek's Breaking News Report

Vivek: “ZOMG TOP STORY! It has been reported by friendly, as well as hostile news affiliates that there is a tremendous decline in the scientific arena.

“Scientific research reaches luxury as proper funding can no longer keep pace with inflation. Fewer Nobel Prizes are offered, and published scientific research went down from 61% to a measly 29%.

“Wait, this just in…

“Japanese researchers have just completed their first working prototype for the ultimate, indestructible, infallible, unassailable, impervious, metallic, rock-solid, ubercool, ultra dooper…robotic super doggie.

“Could things get any worse?

“Fortunately, we have Dr. Knowsitall here with a solution to this…catastrophe. Dr. Knowsitall?”

Dr. Knowsital: “mmmblmbblmblmbalmbmblmlmeblmlmlmlbm... the only solution is to join the nearest science club!”

Vivek: “That’s it folks….JOIN the NEAREST SCIENCE CLUB. Back to you Toph!”

BSEC Year 2: Twice the Membership, 10x the Fun (or so we hope...)

Today, club presidents announced the year's clubs and people signed up. Following a report on the state of scientific affairs in the United States by correspondent Vivek Pai, featuring an interview with acclaimed researcher Dr. Michael Firer, Ph. D., on his response to the latest developments in Japan. We'll try to get a full transcript online ASAP.

People were apparently so traumatized that they signed up in troves - we have twice as many members as last year. Hoorah! Glad to have you all aboard. :)

Last year one of our issues was that we had large gaps in between fun activities. This year, we're going to do something cool every single meeting. That's our pledge to you.

So start thinking about fun ideas, and we'll see you all at our first meeting. (That'll be either this Friday the 29th or the week after, October 6th, depending on how the A Block/B Block thing works out. I'll post that here and on the club board when we find out.)

Gearing up for Another Year

As I write them I'm also working on the club application form that I hope will allow BSEC to continue for a second year. I'll admit that we didn't get a whole lot done last year, but we have much more lined up this time. We'll call last year a training run. :)

In other news, here's a pretty nifty video some guy put on Google Video - 8,500 bottle rockets:

Hydrogen-Powered Rocket Video

A launch of a hydrogen-powered Estes rocket, which works by splitting the hydrogen and oxygen in water and igniting the resulting hydrogen gas. It's kinda hard to see, since it's just filmed on a phonecam, but it's something. :)



It made a nice satisfying "whumpff" when it launched. Not quite as dramatic as a solid-fuel rocket launch, though. It's more like a stomp rocket.

Simple Little Engine Test

Well, school's out, but the fun never stops. We'll be bringing you several videos over the summer, if things go as planned, possibly including:

1) More rocket stuff
2) More potato gun stuff
3) More flour stuff (ahem... Vivek....) ;)
4) Diet Coke & Mentos

If you have any other ideas, post them in the comments. Now, here's a simple little video that just shows a Estes "A" engine duct-taped to the side of the rode, in case you ever wanted to see what they looked like while burning but can never get a good look at it during flight.



Of course, that pales in comparison to this monster of a bug:



We *need* to try that.

;)

Concrete, Mice, and No Videos

No club update here, folks. Just checking in...

Faithful reader Dafir sends in these links:

Light-Transmitting Concrete
Mouse Robots

The latter might be an interesting project. The former is just cool. :)

Meanwhile, J.P. pointed out the other day that "iRobot is putting serial ports on all the new Roombas and they have an SDK :-). The cheapest one is $150. Just something to think about if we want to do robot stuff."

As for the videos of our newest ethanol & flour exploits, they're coming. :) There's a fair amount of video to get through, and we all know how busy two weeks off from school (!!!) can be... ;)

(I'm actually quite serious, by the way. It's incredible how free time fills up. Infuriating, too. We need more vacation time...)

But anyway, that's coming. :D

More Ethanol and More Flour, plus Mini-Heli and Brownies

Yesterday we had another great BSEC meeting -- our third good one in a row! :) We had gotten stuck in a bit of a rut with endless Egg Drop delays, but the payoff was good, and now we're on a roll. ;)

PRELIMINARIES

This time, we started off by playing around a bit with Peter's mini-helicopter, a simple styrofoam disc with a remote-controlled propeller facing down. Pull the trigger on the remote, it rises. Pull more, it rises more. Let go a bit, it drops. No steering, but very very fun. It also works as a top if it lands upside-down.

Then the camera and ethanol arrived. We went outside and attempted to burn some flour, but had no luck. Too much wind? Maybe. We doused a brownie in ethanol, though, and burned it in the tin popcorn can. At first we didn't think it was burning, but it was -- boiling, bubbling and blackening, in fact. Only, we couldn't see the flame. Hm. Peter soon discovered, though, that if you drip ethanol on the brownie, you can see a brief flash of flame.

SUCCESS

We went back into the Physics room, turned out the lights, closed the doors, and pulled down the shades. We repeated last meetings' successful formula -- Mr. Clippenger hold the flour in his hand, Peter blowing it over ethanol-fueled burning paper. Only, this time, Peter decided to surprise us -- ESPECIALLY Mr. Clip and Vivek, who was filming in the line of fire -- with a much bigger-than-usual bang. We could actually feel the heat; the light was amazing. MUCH better than last meetings' puny poofs. We did it a few more times; we discovered that Peter could blow a bit, then blow a lot through the mini-fireball and get a nice big fireball stretching out toward Vivek. :)

I'd say our boom was at least ten times as big as the one in the last video. What would you say, Vivek? (I know you're out there...) I think it was probably about as big as my dog. Vivek has the video, so we'll just have to see.

WRAP-UP

After that we went back outside for another brownie-burn and more playing with the hovercraft. We were quite satisfied by our triumphs, and managed to fill the Physics room with a lot of smoke... incredibly, without setting off the smoke detector. (Hmmmm..... methinks we may have faulty equipment....)

All in all, much fun. I'll report in when we figure out what we'll do next time, and with luck Vivek will get some video up here some time.

Ethanol and Flour (with video!)

Our plan for today:

1) Play with LEGO Mindstorms set
2) Blow up flour

Flour, you see, is quite flammable in airborne-dust form. So, we got into the Physics classroom and took out a tin popcorn can, some flour, and the LEGO kit. JP immediately got to work on a robot, and we started looking for key ingredients in our experiment.

We got a candle and some matches. We went outside, put the candle in the tin, and lit it. We tried dropping some flour in and we tried blowing on the layer of flour at the bottom of the tin. All was to no avail; we got no reaction. We went back inside and determined we needed a bigger flame. Vivek left to get a bunsen burner and came back with some ethanol. We tried adding a bit of that to the candle, but to no avail. A small crowd gathered but dispersed after multiple failures.

We still needed a bigger flame -- and less wind. We went back inside again and watched this video for inspiration. New strategy: we put the tin on the ground, soaked a piece of paper with the ethanol, dropped it in the tin, lit a piece of paper, dropped that in, and had a nice little fire going. We then sprinkled flour on -- a little bit at first, and then some more.

We had no real video camera, so we used the camera rocket's nose. Quality isn't great, and you don't see some of our best ones, but it's better than nothing! :)



Next meeting we'll be doing this again, since almost everyone had left by the time we succeeded. Maybe we'll get a slightly bigger boom. :)