Aeroelasticity is probably one of the most mathematically complex fields in aerospace. At least that’s how it seems to me in one of my last courses in RPI’s undergrad program. It’s complex because it combines three areas that are already hard enough: elasticity (basic static beam bending), dynamics (motion of a beam, etc), and aerodynamics (forces caused by fluid/air). The interaction of these is what aeroelasticity aims to understand — with the overall goal of preventing flutter (see below) and divergence (wings ripping off within seconds) in the design of an airplane or anything for that matter. The most famous case of aeroelasticity in action is the Tacoma Narrows bridge, which I’m sure you’ve seen. Another example that I always notice is when you tie something on top of your car with straps and the straps vibrate. That is caused by the interaction of aerodynamic forces and dynamics/tension of the strap. Aeroelasticity is fun, or so I’ll keep saying to myself.
**Flutter at a Glance**
**Longer version:**
*Note: Videos originally made by Bill Reed, AU/AE ‘46, now retired from NASA. I found them here and uploaded them to google video since windows media files suck.*
If there’s any one skill I admire, it’s storytelling. Think about your favorite people, I bet they are good storytellers. If you look at successful people, they are amazing storytellers. Some say Steve Jobs has a reality distortion field. I attribute that to skilled storytelling. Skilled storytellers make even the smallest things fascinating.
Think of anyone — the best scientists (Feynman) are (was) able to tell amazing stories. Programmers like Paul Graham or Steven Yegge can write about anything and it’s still fun to read. They are excellent storytellers.
Enough famous people though. How about someone unknown? It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but I’m thinking of Violent Acres. She’s definitely a little off, but highly entertaining. After a couple months of writing she’s now internet famous for little reason other than she can turn her crappy ass days into amusing stories. It’s an impressive skill.
I like people who can tell good stories. I think I’m pretty decent at reading, listening, laughing and enjoying them. On the other hand, telling them certainly isn’t one of my strengths and improving that is one of the reasons I set up this blog. So far I’m doing a pretty terrible or at least highly inconsistent job. There are a whole lot of little things that are always happening, I just need to start writing them down.
I’m writing a script that scrapes a couple news sites so I’ve been looking at the Fox News website more than I’d like. Their html is crap and they can’t even resize an image right. See:
Recently I posted a paddling video me and some friends put together. We spent a lot of money and wanted to ask for donations. I logged into my paypal account and made a donation button. Easy and simple.
Chipin (earlier post about them) relaunched with the catch phrase “The easy way to collect money“. So now they make cool little widgets to take donations. Nifty, unfortunately with the paddling video it doesn’t matter if people know how much money is donated and there are no particular goals for the amount to raise… so no chipin.
However, I wanted to see what they were up to so I’m fundraising for some new socks. The one thing that bothers me is that the thing doesn’t say ‘donate’ anywhere. If I’m only gonna spend 9 seconds on a website, I’ll probably look at the widget for 1 second and that’s not long enough to figure out what chipin could be. It would be nice if there were some unbranded widgets that say ‘donate’.
I’ve grown up on a lot of islands and at one time lived on an island of about 2000 people. I was only in 5th grade, but even then, the biggest problem I heard about life on a small island is that people talk. If you fart one day, the next day evvvery one will know how bad it smelled. My conclusion then was that as long as I don’t do anything terrible life will be good.
Today things are a bit more complicated. It’s the age of the internet and the ‘coconut wireless’ has had some upgrades. At any party you can expect pictures to be uploaded the next day to facebook, myspace, or one of those other (lousy) sites. At any place or time you can expect any conflict or exciting event to be documented by camera phones or written in a blog/forum at the very least. People not only talk — they make all the information available to the whole world!
I’m shy person and for the most part incredibly private. When I first saw facebook my thought was “what kind of nut-jobs would put themselves on here!” And yet everyone does it — it’s pretty popular too. So maybe I’m the unusual one there. I finally broke and made a facebook too. I decided that there are only two reasons it would be bad to have information on the internet: 1) someone wants to physically attack you or 2) some authority wants to arrest you. To prevent either of these two situations my thoughts are the same as when living on a small island: don’t be an a**hole.
It’s pretty clear this information everywhere, anytime, about anything and everyone is here to stay. For the assholes of the world, this is a problem. Either learn to be nice real quick or hope we start colonizing space so there is someplace to move and start your life over.
Monday: homework due
Tuesday: work on lab report
Wednesday: lab report due, lab class, study for test 1
Thursday: test 1
Friday: work on websites, eat pizza, respond to email, try to study
Saturday*: study for test 2
Sunday: study for test 3, study more for test 2
Monday: test 2, study more for test 3
Tuesday: test 3, study for test 4, take test 4, start lab report
Wednesday: work on lab report
Thursday: lab report due, work on homework
Friday: homework due
