My family and I went to Dallas recently to visit our friends from church and Tom's brother.  When we were at our friends' house, I went to take a shower and put my contacts in, etc.  When I flushed the toilet, I looked in the bowl and saw something swirling around in it.  I knew it wasn't anything I had contributed, plus it was blue.  Weird, I thought as I watched it get sucked up.  As I was putting my contacts in, it hit me.  It was the 2000 Flushes cake from the side of the bowl!  I couldn't really see it because my contacts were out, and, believe me, I'm practically blind without them. 

I tried flushing it again.  Water filled up....almost to the top....slowly went down.  Oh dear.  One more time.   Up....top...slow.  Great.  Now I get to inform my hostess about it.

I walked up to her and sheepishly said, "Uh, Liz?  I've kind of messed up your toilet."  She laughed and quickly ran and got the plunger.  I said, "Oh.  No!  I didn't do THAT!"  Then I explained what had happened.  She thought the plunger thing might work anyway.  We tried it.  No luck.  She went to check on the setup in another bathroom and sadly said, "It's in a plastic case.  It's not just the blue cake.  There's a plastic part too."  Oh man!  She went to get a wire hanger (look out, Joan Crawford!).  I told her to be careful not to scratch the porcelain.  She tried to get it out, but no luck. 

We deemed the bathroom off limits and she looked up plumbers on the internet.  Surprisingly, not too many answer their phones on a Saturday morning.  Finally, a nationally-owned-chain-that-shall-remain-nameless-but-rhymes-with-Foto Footer, answered.  This guy could not tell Liz when they could come, how much it would cost, or the price of a first-class stamp!

I was feeling just awful.  Now, I realize that this incident wasn't exactly my fault.  I'm guessing I accidentally lifted the lid when I grabbed my towel and knocked it into the water.  I don't know.   What I do know, is I did it.  Now, my dear friend is going to have to pay a plumber who knows how much to fix it.

Never fear, my friends.  I wasn't taking this lying down.  No sirree!  I went on the internet to search for "unclog a toilet" and sure enough, there was a video (I think it was on ehow.com) about unclogging a toilet when you know that clog is caused by a solid object, such as a makeup tube.  Sweet!  I watched and watched until I was ready to present my case to Liz.  "Liz!  I think we can fix your toilet for under $10!"  The look on her face was worth a million dollars.  I told her to call the plumber and cancel.  Then, she became skeptical.  I told her, "Don't sweat it.  I saw a guy do it on the internet.  We just need an auger.  It should cost us about $8.  We'll either pull it out or push it far enough through that it will finally fall through."  I could see her weighing her options...Spend $8 and let Michelle loose on my toilet or spend $200 and wait all day for a guy who knows what he's doing, but has a giant butt-crack, to come fix it...She went with option #1.

We went to Home Depot, bought the auger for $8, and when we got home, I was ready to take it on!  Liz just enjoyed saying "auger" like Shrek saying "ogre."  I shouted to Jayson, her husband, "I just saved you $192, bucko!"  He had no idea what the heck I was talking about, but smiled just so that crazy person (me) would leave the room.

I headed upstairs and got to work.  Huh.  This was a little harder to do than the guy showed online.   Well, I'll do it again.  I cranked.  And cranked.  I sweated.  And sweated.  No butt-crack though.  Otherwise, I was a plumber in action!  Just no action.  I took a little break.  Liz looked a little disappointed.  I promised her I had not given up.  I just needed a little time to cool off.  As I cooled off, I wondered, "What happens if this doesn't work?  Then, she's going to have to pay the $200 and wait around for this plumber tomorrow or tonight.  We've got plans for tomorrow and tonight!  I can't let her down!"

I put on my Supergirl cape and ran back up the stairs!  Da-da-da!!!  Crank...crank...nothing.  Oh, I did break off a piece of plastic on the auger, but it didn't go into the toilet.  I realized I needed help.  I called downstairs for Superman (Tom, of course).  He rolled his eyes as if, "Yeah, like this is going to work," when I told him what we were doing.  He held the plastic part steady while I cranked.  Nothing.  I'm telling him what I'm feeling, and he's just sweating and wishing he were anywhere else besides here with me. 

We pull the auger out and I decide to see if I can feel the plastic thing with my hand.  Of course, this is when Jayson walks in.  "Eh.  How's it going?"  Supergirl replies, "Fine!  Just fine!  I'm just seeing if it's close enough now for me to feel with my hand!"  "Uh huh."

I looked at Tom and said, "Okay.  Three more times and then we'll quit, okay?  Just three."  After the first crank and pull, we saw a little piece of blue come out into the bowl.  You would have thought we had found gold!  I was soooo excited!  I got down on the floor and put my hand up the pipe and exclaimed, "I can feel it!"  We inserted the auger one more time, and "Voila!"  There it was!

I was jumping up and down, screaming!  (Publisher's Clearing House should have been there with their balloons, I tell you.)  I ran downstairs to show Liz.  She laughed and laughed.  Then she said, "Do you want me to take your picture?"  My response was, "DUH!"

This time it's a piece of garbage that's been around for a bit, but they've brought it, & him, back out. An auger that's supposed to pull weeds from the yard, the flower beds, gardens, or anywhere. Except for 1 thing. It's more of a con from sleazy people that employ Mays.

When we saw the ad on TV, we both noticed this thing was "plowing" through loose potting soil. Even established flower beds aren't that loose. Brand new ones, maybe. And the $120.00 value for $19.99 (plus shipping & handling) is a joke. I saw the drill. I know what will happen. Being married to a plumber, I've been tool shopping with them, many times. I know what happens when a person buys a cheap drill. It burns out fast. I've listened to their complaints about that often enough to be sure, don't buy cheap. It's not worth it.

Even if I had money to throw away, I wouldn't throw it in the direction Mays is pointing at.

Plungers and Peril

Don't you just LOVE it when you go to brush your teeth and all the yuck doesn't drain out of the sink?

Even nicer when you go to brush your teeth and you notice that someone ELSE'S yuck didn't drain, and they DIDN'T notice.

Good morning.

Time to pull out the gear. Fortunately, you may not need too much, if you're lucky -- and luckily, you usually are.

If you're an instant coffee (or tea) drinker, you may be even luckier: you've already got the teapot on it's way to boiling. So grab it (with a potholder -- remember, you might only be half awake) and start pouring.

Yep, a little VERY hot water might be all you need to get that drain going again.

If that doesn't do the trick, grab the plunger. (If you've thought ahead -- and you just might want to do this for next time, if this sink tends to be tricky -- you'll pick up a smallish plunger, just for sinks, so you don't have to resort to the toilet plunger.)

Plunge the little devil. Careful, though, that water might still be hot.

Did that do it for you?

Rats. Try again, a little harder this time.

No?

Oh well, time to disassemble the cleanout pipe underneath the sink. Don't worry, you don't really need to shut the water off for this -- just DON'T turn it on while you're working, and DON'T forget to shove a bucket underneath FIRST THING, because a lot of schmutz is going to come tumbling out as soon as you put wrench to pipe and twist it off.

Once that curved pipe underneath is off, and the slop is done(ish) dripping, you can take your choice of implements to scrape out the gunk:

• old screwdriver
• wire hanger (one of my faves, since I don't own an auger)
• or, a real, live, drain auger. If you do use a drain auger, the best method for this is to feed it in a little way, then twist it again. This allows you to shove it in a lot further.

Once the mess is cleared (and you'll find that most of the mess has collected in the bottom of the curve), you can simply re-assemble the pipe, clean up whatever didn't make it into the bucket, put your tools away (I'd say the wire hanger can be thrown away), and then break out the Comet and hand it to whomever left their yuck in the sink. THEY can be responsible for THAT part of the cleanup job.

Share and share alike, after all.

For YOUR part? You get to swagger out of the bathroom, pretending that what you just did was incredibly difficult, only to be hazarded by experts like yourself. You are now the new household hero(ine).

Feels good, doesn't it, being a Cool Tool Girl (or Guy)?

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

All the best,

elizabeth

El vacío, en física cuántica, "no está vacío." Esta sorprendente característica de la física cuántica es consecuencia directa del principio de incertidumbre de Heisenberg y ha sido verificada experimentalmente en múltiples ocasiones: dos placas conductoras no cargadas separadas por el vacío "sienten" una fuerza de atracción debida al vacío, fenómeno descubierto en 1948 por el danés Hendrick Casimir.  

Muchos han tratado de obtener energía "gratis" del vacío utilizando el efecto Casimir o sus variantes (por ejemplo, el "Research Laboratory for Vacuumenergy"). Los detractores de la idea, amparándose en la termodinámica, consideran que es imposible generar un "perpetuum mobile" ya que la fuerza de Casimir siempre es atractiva, luego para conseguir un movimiento útil (oscilación) hay que revertir el movimiento logrado añadiendo energía, con lo que en promedio la "energía gratis" obtenida es cero. ¿Realmente no es posible obtener "energía gratis" del efecto Casimir?

Incluso si se pudiera, la fuerza de Casimir (y la energía a obtener) es extremadamente pequeña. Se necesitarían dos placas de 200 kilómetros cuadrados separadas por una micra (millónesima de metro) para conseguir energía potencial suficiente para encender una bombilla de 100 watios durante un segundo.

Afortunadamente, una energía (fuerza) tan pequeña podría servir para poner en funcionamiento un sistema microelectromecánico (MEMS), pequeñas máquinas de tamaño micrométrico, normalmente implantadas en chips de silicio y fabricadas con la misma tecnología (fotolitografía) que la CPU de nuestro ordenador. Esto no es utópico. Ya se hizo hace casi una década. H. B. Chan, V. A. Aksyuk, R. N. Kleiman, D. J. Bishop, Federico Capasso, "Quantum Mechanical Actuation of Microelectromechanical Systems by the Casimir Force," Science, Vol. 291. no. 5510, pp. 1941-1944 (2001), construyeron un dispositivo de torsión micromecánico en el que una placa de polisilicio rota alrededor de dos hilos finos "gratis" gracias a las fuerzas de Casimir debidas a la presencia de una superficie esférica metálica cercana (a pocos nanómetros de distancia). Las figuras (A) y (B), arriba, muestran imágenes del dispositivo. El dispositivo, como muestra la figura inferior (arriba) es un torsor que se mueve un ángulo extremadamente pequeño (micro-radianes), sometido a fuerzas de nanoNewtons.

Un artículo que muestra como ha avanzado la microelectromecánica y la nanoelectromecánica basada en fuerzas de Casimir es "Casimir Forces and Quantum Electrodynamical Torques: Physics and Nanomechanics," Capasso, Munday, Iannuzzi, and Chan, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, Volume 13, Issue 2, Page(s):400 - 414 (2007).

Estos ejemplos ratifican que el vacío en la teoría cuántica del electromagnetismo, llamada electrodinámica cuántica, realmente no está tan vacío como cabría esperar. El principio de incertidumbre de Heisenberg permite que en espacios o en tiempos muy pequeños la incertidumbre en momento lineal o en energía permita la constante creación (y subsiguiente destrucción) de partículas elementales de todo tipo, pero que no son medibles experimentalmente, se denominan virtuales. En promedio se crean tantas partículas (energía) como se destruyen, luego en circunstancias simétricas el resultado es exactamente cero.

Pero, volvamos al principio, ¿podemos extraer "energía gratis" del vacío? En este sentido el artículo de R. D. Schaller and V. I. Klimov, "High Efficiency Carrier Multiplication in PbSe Nanocrystals: Implications for Solar Energy Conversion," Physical Review Letters, Volume 92, Issue 18,  186601 (2004), ofrece una respuesta interesante. En una célular solar estándar cada fotón excita un sólo electrón y se puede demostrar que su eficiencia teórica máxima es del 35% (energía generada a partir de la recibida). En las células solares basadas en nanocristales desarrolladas por Klimov en el Laboratorio Nacional de Los Alamos, un fotón es capaz de excitar más de un electrón. ¿Cómo es posible? La explicación cuántica es que el electrón excitado "desaparece" en el vacío e interactúa con otros (hasta 7) electrones del vacío (virtuales) y extrae energía de ellos. El coeficiente teórico de eficiencia máxima es por tanto del 700% aunque en la práctica sólo se alcanza del orden del 100% de eficiencia, eso sí, gracias a "robarle" energía al vacío. Técnicamente el proceso se denomina "recombinación de Auger".

Todavía queda muho para que estas primeras experiencias sobre "cómo extrear energía gratis del vacío" alcancen dispositivos comerciales que todos podamos aprovechar. Pero los avances, aunque lentos, van en la dirección de una respuesta afirmativa a nuestra pregunta inicial.

ACTUALIZACIÓN (1 de marzo de 2008)

Se ha propuesto teóricamente un nuevo mecanismo de movimiento "gratis" basado en fuerzas de Casimir (ver dibujo arriba): MirFaez Miri, Ramin Golestanian, "A frustrated nanomechanical device powered by the lateral Casimir force," ArXiv preprint (Submitted 28 February). Todavía no se ha construido físicamente (experimentalmente) y no sé si se logrará próximamente pues los dispositivos nanotecnológicos corrugados son difíciles de fabricar.

One way to try and find out is to observe a number of them and point them back to their origins, checking to see if they match up with any conceivable source objects. The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory has done just that, and has a new result out on the distribution of the highest energy cosmic ray events it has detected (above 5.7 × 10¹⁹ eV), showing an anisotropic distribution of the directions of the particles:

(In the plot, the blue is the part of the sky that Auger can see, the black ovals are individual cosmic ray events, and the red stars are the locations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) — galaxies with active supermassive black holes in their centers — within 75 megaparsecs.) In particular, when cross-correlated with a database of AGN, they see many more events within three degrees of known objects than they would expect from a flat distribution. The choice of object to correlate with was made on a pilot sample and their final statistical significance comes from a second, independent dataset, making this sort of a grey box analysis.
Now, apparently, the question is how the AGNs can generate the extreme energies involved...

Read more at the Auger press release and the Science summary (subscription required for the latter — sorry!) Also, for your musical diversion, Muse.

Vue du côté sud du chantier du pont du village. Comme on peut voir, ça avance lentement.

Autre vue du côté sud, cette fois depuis le parc André Auger. On voit ici la structure temporaire aménagée pour permettre aux travailleurs de bien faire leur travail.

La passerelle, flottante et brinquebalante, qui permet aux piétons de traverser la rivière de l'Achigan. Du côté sud, elle est au niveau du sol,...

...mais en arrivant du côté nord, attendez-vous à monter quelques plusieurs marches afin d'atteindre le plancher des vaches.

Le chantier du pont, vu de la passerelle. Eh oui, je m'y suis risqué. Sur la passerelle, pas sur le chantier!

Cette fois, on voit très bien que ce n'est pas demain la veille de l'ouverture du nouveau pont du village, le côté nord du chantier ne pouvant toujours pas recevoir les poutres.

Vue du chantier, du côté nord. Excusez-moi pour le poteau, mais c'était ça ou des branches encore très feuillues qui bloquaient la vue.

Autre vue du côté nord du chantier du pont du village de Saint-Lin. On doit se rendre à l'évidence que ce pont n'ouvrira probablement pas avant l'été de 2008.

Le plus cruel de l'histoire, c'est qu'au début, le pont existant devait rester ouvert à la circulation pendant la construction du nouveau pont, comme on le voit assez souvent un peu partout, par exemple avec le pont de l'île Charron, sur l'autoroute 20, à Boucherville. En cours de travaux, le MTQ a déclaré qu'il fallait tout fermer, le danger étant trop grand. Alors du jour au lendemain, les gens de Saint-Lin se sont retrouvés sans lien inter-rives. Au moins, le pont temporaire leur permet de se rendre de l'autre côté de la rivière de l'Achigan par un détour de moins de 5 kilomètres.