Environment

“Progressive” thermostats to save energy

September 12, 2009

Sitting in my cold, air-conditioned classroom the last week, while it was 85-95ºF outside, a design for a new thermostat came to me. Currently, thermostats cool (or heat) a building to a desired temperature. My new design would create a floating target temperature, that moves up and down as the outside temperature changes. The goal [...]

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Great “raw” video footage from typhoon in China

August 9, 2009

The video below is just “raw” footage from CBS News. There is no narration, just a collection of images. I really enjoy this format, you can focus on the images and not on what the newscaster is saying. Powerful. Typhoon Slams China Sun Aug 09 11:26:08 PDT 2009 “CBS News RAW”: Millions evacuated the area [...]

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200 people can commute in:

June 25, 2009

Great poster from Seattle demonstrating the space it takes on a street to move 200 people in various modes. Share this post:

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Uprisings: The Whole Grain Bakers’ Book

June 24, 2009

In 1983, the Cooperative Whole Grain Educational Association published Uprisings; The Whole Grain Bakers’ Book. The Foreword of the book is at the bottom of this page. As a former collective member of Uprisings Baking Collective in Berkeley (one of the contributors to the book), I didn’t want this book and organization to just fade [...]

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The physics (and biology) of snake movement

June 12, 2009

Science Friday had a great piece on snakes slithering today. The main researcher in the video is Dr. David Hu from the Applied Mathematics Laboratory, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, New York, NY. Turns out it’s much more compicated than one would think. The scientists used smooth surfaces and even Jello to [...]

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The math in a hybrid car

June 2, 2009

For an end of the semester project in my physics classes, I posed the following question to my students: If you put 100,000 miles on a car, which is a better deal, a hybrid or a traditional car? Students were asked to look up a car they would be interested in buying, but the car [...]

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Free shoppping?

May 17, 2009

It’s that time again. Time to wander the aisles of the college town “free stores.” These stores don’t pay rent, and the aisles move daily (if not hourly). The merchandise are the items the students don’t feel like taking with them. Walk around student neighborhoods as finals and graduation come to an end, and you’ll [...]

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The 15th Annual Bike to Work Day is Thursday, May 14th, 2009

May 8, 2009

The San Francisco Bay Area’s 15th Annual Bike to Work Day will take place on Thursday, May 14, 2009. Bike to Work Day is the premier bicycling event taking place in all of Northern California with all nine Bay Area counties participating in the celebration. The event is just one day of many events taking [...]

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Peets or Starbucks? An organic coffee review

July 25, 2008

Yesterday I stopped by my local Peets (Walnut and Vine, the original) to see if they had organic decaf beans (about 7:00 pm, very slow inside). The bean counter worker looked at the selection and said “No, not certified, but they’re all basically organic except for the certification.” I said thanks and left the store, [...]

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Carbon sequestering in the seabed, nice video too

July 25, 2008

Science Friday, my favorite radio show when I’m not teaching on Fridays, had a great piece today on carbon sequestering on the ocean floor. What if you could take CO2, pump it down a deep hole in the sea floor and turn it into something harmless? New research suggests the idea is not so far-fetched. [...]

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