In transit lingo, “multi-modal” trips are those that use different modes to get to a destination. A common version is bike to bus/subway/rail, either taking the bike on the vehicle or locking it before one gets on. Today I had a wonderful trip that was multi-modal by accident.

The “out” trip was planned as multi-modal: I live in Berkeley and had a mid-day meeting in Redwood City. These cities are on opposites sides of the San Francisco Bay, and I decided that I would take two trains (BART subway and CalTrain diesel passenger/commute train) and ride the short distances between destinations and stations. I left home and rode five blocks to my local BART station, where I brought my bike on board and held it while sitting. Not too uncomfortable, not too crowded. When I arrived in SF, I got off at the first station (swiping my “Clipper” “smart-card”), then rode about eight blocks to the CalTrain station. I swiped my Clipper card while waiting, then when the train boarded I got on one of the two bike trains–these trains are specially equipped with bike rack space on the bottom level (the trains have two levels of seating). There were plenty of bungee cords at each bike rack,  and I bungeed my bike to the rack and chose a seat upstairs where I could keep an eye on my bike.

Getting off the train in Redwood City, I almost forgot to swipe my card, but there had been enough reminders on the train that I think it had been embedded in my brain and I remembered just as I was about to ride off. Good thing: They charge you the maximum amount when you “tag on” and give you a refund when you “tag off.” I got $8 back

My ride was about eight blocks to my meeting. We had a good meeting (what would you expect from a bunch of physics educators?), but it went a bit longer than expected (what would you expect from a bunch of physics educators?). So I started about an hour later than I had planned.

My return trip was not planned as multi-modal. I planned on a 50 mile bike ride home.

Dirt road along levee in East Bay; Dumbarton Bridge on right in background.

Although my destination was north, I had to back-track a couple miles to make it to the Dumbarton Bridge (our only E/W bridge across the bay that has a bike lane). The bike lane is wide enough for two bikes to pass comfortably, and has a “Jersy barrier” between it and the traffic. A bit loud, but a  nice ride none the less.

On the other side of the bridge,  I ventured onto a bike route from Google Maps that I had not taken before. It turned out to be a dirt road, along a levee that separates the bay from the abandoned salt evaporation ponds (now nature conservancy areas). It was nice to be in the midst of our megalopolis yet still feel away from it all. I have a 7″ Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab) that has GPS and Google Maps, which helped me believe I was on the right course.

Three pelicans in the protected waters.

After about 30 miles, I had made it to Hayward and realized it was getting later than I wanted, and that I was more tired than I wanted. Luckily, the BART line runs up the East Bay, and after about three miles “inland,” I arrived at the Hayward BART station. This was in the midst of rush hour, but BART revised their bike rules several years ago (or was that a decade or more ago), and restricted bikes only on the most crowded trains. The Richmond/Fremont line, which includes Hayward and Berkeley, has no restrictions on bicycles, so I was able to board the train and zip home.

I thank my local train/subway agencies for the forward thinking to provide reasonable bicycle access on the trains. My trip would not have been possible without them, and I would have been limited to public transit without the bicycle portion.

With the batch of Spare the Air days in the San Francisco Bay Area in the last few weeks, I came up with an idea that would probably save a lot more gas than trying to get people to carpool and take transit (not that I’m suggesting we stop this, but I’m not sure how many people really switch on STA days). My thought would be to change the speed limit to 55 on Spare the Air days.

I’m not sure how legal this would be (with all the permanent 65 MPH signs), but at least all those huge fancy digital boards that CalTrans has could read “Today is Spare the Air: Please drive 55″.

Do you like the idea? Call the Bay Area Air Quality Management District: 415-749-4900

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 would be to target a temperature that is half-way between the “comfort zone” (generally 65-72ºF) and the outside temperature.

An example of a cold day: If the temperature outside is 45ºF, and the comfort zone minimum is 65ºF, the heater would be set to 55ºF.

Progressive vs traditional thermostat

What’s the advantage?

Physics principles state that the greater the temperature difference between two bodies, the faster the heat is transferred between them. Thus, if the outside temperature is 92ºF, it takes less energy to cool a house from 92ºF to 82ºF than to cool it the next 10ºF, from 82ºF to 72ºF. And since hotter and colder days place higher demands out our electrical grid (especially hot days), these are the days where we need to save energy the most.

Other adjustments/design alternatives

• This new design could allow for adjusting the percent difference for hot and cold days individually. For example, if a person can handle heat better than cold, s/he might change hot days to only 25% of the way from the outside temperature to the comfort zone (using the previous example, cooling the house to 87ºF), but on cold days s/he would set it to 75% (the example above heat to 60ºF).
• The thermostat could easily be designed to have a maximum hot temperature allowed (e.g. never over 82ºF) and/or a minimum cold temperature (e.g. 50ºF). This would be useful in extremely hot or cold climates.

With wireless technology as simple and inexpensive as it is these days, it would be easy to place the outside temperature sensor in an appropriate location, not necessarily right outside the thermostat.

Questions/comments

Please leave your comments below. I’d love to hear what others feel about this idea.

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 after typhoon Morakot slammed into China’s east coast. It was the island’s worst flooding in 50 years and left dozens missing and feared dead.

Watch CBS Videos Online

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

Update: December 2010: I have created a web site, uprisingsbakersbook.org, where I’m adding recipes and other pages from the book. I’m working on permissions from the publisher and bakeries, so I’m starting with bakeries that are closed. Look for weekly updates.

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 away. There were 32 collective/cooperative bakeries who contributed to the book, many of which are still in business. Collected below are a list of links to the bakeries that are still operating. If I missed any, please fill in the form at the bottom so I can update the page.

The book is a valuable resource for bakers and wannabe bakers. One of its strengths is the index—including the traditional categories of major ingredients and types of foods, but also including a special section on Recipes by Special Dietary Characteristics such as No Eggs or Dairy; No Dairy (but contains Eggs); No Eggs (but contains Dairy); No Wheat; No Sweetener, or Fruit-sweetened; No Added Oils or Fats (may contain high-fat ingredients); No Baking; and No Salt, or Optional Salt.

While Uprisings is out of print, many used copies are available. If you can’t find it at your local bookstore, try abebooks.com using the search box here. abebooks.com is a network of independent bookstores around the country, your independent alternative to Amazon.com.

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 test their hypotheses. Here’s the article about the video.

For an end of the semester project in my physics classes, I posed the following question to my students:

Students were asked to look up a car they would be interested in buying, but the car has to come in both hybrid and traditional engine models. They were asked to look at the price of the car and the cost of gas over the 100,000 mile “life” of the car (OK, some are going to sell it at 50K, and others hold onto it until it dies, but 10,000 seemed like a good average). We just finished a unit on energy, and I thought this would be a good way to get them thinking about energy and money.

If you want to know their results, you’ll have to keep reading, but I’ve since had time to think about making this question more open-ended, inquiry (thanks to Dy/Dan for keeping my on my inquiry toes). So now I’m thinking of the questions that could be raised in a class discussion:

• Write an equation for the cost of each car as a function of the miles driven.
• Using these two equations, solve for the intersection of the lines. What does this intersection represent?
• Car mileage is rated in both highway and city. Expand your equation to include a variable for the percent of driving that is city.
• How many extra fill-ups will it take to drive the traditional engine car? If your time is worth money, how much will this cost you if you make $50,000/year?
• How much gas is saved by driving the hybrid? What percent is this?

The list can go much further than this. Leave it up to your students to develop more.

Students did calculations from the Honda Civic to the Cadillac Escalade (yes, it comes in a hybrid). None of the hybrids broke even with the traditional engine in cost for 100,000 miles. Students were asked to write a short paragraph saying if they thought buying the hybrid was “worth it.” They gave great responses, including those who even looked at the gas they would save just from switching from the car they are now driving to a more fuel efficient car (one student said it wasn’t worth it to buy the hybrid, but certainly was worth it–financially and environmentally–to buy a new car to upgrade her mileage.

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 find all sorts of treasures. A couple months ago I got a “new” CD/tape/radio player that a neighbor had nicely set out on the curb (replaced with an iPod and speakers?). Then, a couple bike wheels. Today, a nice hand-vacuum.

So, help keep these items from the scrapbin of history; give them another life in your house.

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 place in May as part of National Bike Month.

Complete details here: http://btwd.bayareabikes.org/