Vog

(A current animated version can be viewed -Here-)

What is Vog?  The University of Hawaii's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (UH SOEST) defines it as follows:

Vog is primarily a mixture of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas and sulfate (SO4) aerosol. SO2 (invisible) reacts with oxygen and moisture in the air to produce SO4 aerosol (visible). SO2 is expected to be the main problem in areas near the vent (Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park, Pahala, Na`alehu, Hawaiian Ocean View Estates) and SO4 aerosol is expected to be the main problem at locations far from the vent (Kona and farther north and west).

In LA or NYC they'd call it Smog.  The sources may be slightly different, but the effects on people and plant life are largely the same.  In Hawaii it's a natural process and results from eruptive activity at the Kilauea Volcano.  As the graphic above shows, the areas most affected by the vog here are those immediately west of the eruptions themselves that lie on the path of normal trade wind patterns.

Over the years I've posted a number of photos showing what the sky looks like at sunset when vog is particularly evident... but until you see where it comes from and where it goes it's kind of hard to grasp what the effect is here.  The SOEST graphic above is updated frequently and is part of an ongoing Vog Measurement and Prediction Project.  It shows output in graphical form from the HYSPLIT dispersion model.  Those who live here really don't need a reminder.  We've seen it just about every day since Halemaumau blew up in April 2008.

"vog" sunset taken above Puako Mar 7, 2008

Higgs Boson

Oh, great.  Now everybody is going to want one!

The Higgs Boson is no longer the theoretical particle of the Higgs mechanism that physicists have believed would reveal how all matter in the universe gets its mass.  Physicists at CERN pretty much confirmed today that their experiments have found the particle.  They did it with the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland... otherwise known as "the Big Bang machine."

Most amazingly, Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist from England who predicted the particle in 1964 in a paper that was rejected by an academic physics journal edited at CERN, was on hand in Geneva today when the formal announcement was made.  The guy who admitted to being "incompetent" in science in the lab was just surprised to be alive when his theory was proven correct.

You can get your very own Higgs Boson particle at the ParticleZoo while they last.  9.95$US plus shipping... Fair warning tho': They tend to live very short lives! :)

Still don't know what any of this is all about?!  Me either.  But the video below might help.  These guys do know!





Enjoy!

Pendulum Waves

The natural world is just too cool.

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Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.

For more details see the Harvard Natural Sciences Lectures Demonstrations site.

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations.

This apparatus was built from a design published by Richard Berg [Am J Phys 59(2), 186-187 (1991)] at the University of Maryland. The particular apparatus shown here was built by Harvard's Nils Sorensen.

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I am just way too tempted to build one of these for my own entertainment now!