Doug Osheroff

We went to Doug Osheroff's interview at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, California, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, M317594586859 Universe, Universe.

In 1976, Doug Osheroff experimented with superfluidity in Helium. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1996 for his work on superfluidity in Helium 3. We went into the auditorium and got one of the best seats as it was really close to the mike. First, a lady introduced someone who in turn introduced Doug Osheroff. Then, he was interviewed and he told his audience about the Columbia space shuttle accident and said something about how to be a good teacher and climate changes. But, he barely talked three sentences about Helium-3 and superfluidity in this interview. But, he talked about his father and mother who were from Europe and about his wife who said "Don't you do that" for investigating the space shuttle Columbia accident.The piece of foam was going at 877 km/hr and it damaged the left wing. This caused the shuttle to heat up on re-entry killing the seven astronauts inside the shuttle.

When the uninteresting interview was over, I went to Dr. Osheroff and when I was about to ask my question, Daddy asked it instead. The question that he asked was on a NOVA program that said that you can cool atoms using lasers. How can do that since lasers are usually used to heat things and not to cool them? He said, "If you tune the frequency of the laser to be a little higher than the atom's frequency, you can slow the atom down."

We came back home.
THE END

"How Mathematics Changed Us" Talk by Keith Devlin

This time, in January, we went to Keith Devlin's talk at Cubberly Auditorium at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, M3 universe, Universe. We were so late that out of the four revolutions he was going to talk about, we missed one revolution already.

He talked about Fibonacci who was the son of an Italian merchant who sometimes traveled to Asia and told Fibonacci about the new Hindu-Arabic number system which used the base 10 system (it was still the 12th century, when people in Europe commonly used the base 5 Roman system). In 1202, Fibonacci wrote Liber Abacci (book of calculations). He said, "Fibonacci uses two or three pages to explain what would be explained to a kid in kindergarden in one sentence." He talked about Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat as they tried different approaches to solve the problem of the points.  The problem of points is: Two players are playing a game which has 5 rounds. When one player is leading 2 to 1 then the game has to stop. How will the pot (the prize for the winner) be divided? Read "The Unfinished Game" by Keith Devlin to find out! This problem was one of the early problems of probability.

Keith Devlin said, "Until now mathematics was developed by physics. Now, we expect it to be developed by biology." After the lecture was over, I put on my rain boots and splashed through the watery parts of the road we had to go on. Just as we were leaving, I called Mummy and I stayed on the phone until we came home.

Dirt to Dinner: The evil squirrels are not so evil anymore

Jan 23, 2010.

I looked towards the front yard, disappointed that all there was near the pea bed was a bundle of bamboo sticks wrapped in grower's cloth. I went inside the house and asked Juli why my greenhouse was dismantled.


Juli said that the wind was so strong that it pushed all the bamboo sticks and growers cloth over the fence and into the sidewalk. She picked them up from the street and put them back in front of the pea bed.


Everyone was drawing something for Mackenzie because this was the last class for Dirt to Dinner. But I drew for just 5 minutes and went out into the front yard to work on my greenhouse.
This time, Daddy suggested that we should first tie the greenhouse to poles that we could stick deep into the ground. We found two metal poles which were exactly the same size we needed. But, we needed two more poles. I found a gigantic metal pole which was 8 feet long. I picked up a large shovel and tried to cut it in half. But, I couldn't cut it. Then, Daddy suggested that we could use blocks of wood for the two additional poles. When we tested the wood block, the results were that the wind could move the wood block. Because the wind could move the wood block, Daddy suggested a different idea. He said that we could use bamboo sticks for the two additional poles. I got two bamboo poles and we stuck them deep in the ground so that the greenhouse will be secure. Then, we asked Juli for some cord. With the cord, we tied the greenhouse to the poles. We wrapped the greenhouse with grower's cloth and secured it with binder clips and clothespins.

Now, the squirrels cannot eat our peas and destroy our soil experiment anymore. Just before we finished building the greenhouse, I realized that the bed wasn't for the soil experiment but it was for the greenhouse. The fertile soil mixed with the non-fertile soil, so the soil experiment couldn't answer the original question it was designed to answer.

Also, in the class, I made fruit leather. I ground apples and pears and added some pieces of pineapples, 2 raspberries and 2 strawberries to give it some flavor. I was forced to put my mixture in a food dehydrator.
It did not make sense to me because it takes two days to make fruit leather with the food dehydrator!

In her blog, Juli wrote, "... and Shreyes kept the evil squirrels from eating the peas." Goodbye, Dirt to Dinner!

Dirt to Dinner: The Greenhouse is built

Daddy said that we can go to The Home Depot at 8:00 am and pick up the materials we needed to build the  greenhouse that we would use to keep the squirrels away from the bed where we planted peas for the soil experiment (wood, 2 plastic pipes, 1 tarp, and plastic). But the plan did not work out well. Daddy forgot to wake me up at 7:30 am and woke me up at 9:30 am instead. We were 11 minutes late for the class and when we arrived, everyone was inside. We did not bring our materials with us so Daddy thought that the fastest time we could finish the greenhouse was 3 days from now. But Juli had 2 bamboo "tepees" that we used to make our greenhouse. But the tepees had holes in them so we covered them with cloth. Then I ran to the kitchen to make crackers. Then we had crakers at the kitchen.

Book Summary: Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH

Book Summary: Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien



The mouse, Mrs. Frisby's child Timothy, has pneumonia and the farmer of the farm they live on will plow the farm in 5 days. Timothy has to recover and 5 days isn't enough. Fortunately, Mrs. Frisby contacts the rats of NIMH - huge, smart and strong rats, who move her house to a particular spot on the farm which didn't get plowed. But the farmer ordered a doctor to remove the rosebush where the rats of NIMH lived. Most of the rats escaped to their new home in Thorn Valley, a nearby valley where wild animals grazed. There were ponds in Thorn Valley for water and soil for planting crops.


The most surprising part of the story was when the mice gnawed the iron wire to escape from the NIMH lab to the city outside it. Who knew that the rats can gnaw through iron!

In this story, a doctor uses cyanide gas to remove the rosebush. Using cyanide gas to kill a rosebush is crazy and unnecessary! A pair of big garden shears would have done the job very well.


No. of pages in the book: 233
STATUS: READ

Book Review: 21 Balloons by William Pe'ne du Bois'

Book Review: 21 Balloons by William Pe'ne du Bois'

Summary by Shreyes Nallan, 6 1/2 yrs old

"Let's go to Gilroy Gardens", said Daddy. "And, by the way, I created a problem for you, Shreyes", he said. After we climbed into the van, we took off. I looked at the problem.


It said:
"Shreyes is travelling on an airplane going at 622 mph. Roshan is travelling at 7 mph on his scooter. He sees Shreyes on his airplane and notices that he is coming down to land. Shreyes has an altitude of 797.2357346 ft when Roshan saw him. The distance to the airport to where Roshan saw him is 15.28 miles. How much time will it take for Shreyes to land?"
_________________________
You might now say:
Sorry for interrupting, but
there's nothing about 21 Balloons here!
Your book review style is also rarified!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! \
______________________________
"Uh!", I said. I never did any work on that problem. Finally, we arrived at the awesome theme park. Daddy and I got onto the STRAWBERRY SUNDAE ride. When we got onto #6, Mummy and Sugi climbed onto #7. Suddenly, the two strawberries collapsed into one. I looked around and noticed that the background had changed. Gilroy to San Francisco. 2009 to 1880 or 1875. On the side of the road was a building labeled HIGGINS BALLOON FACTORY. Mummy opened the door. We all saw a giant balloon attached to a small house. The balloon soared up in the sky. We decided to follow the balloon. The balloon flew over the Pacific, over the Phillippines, over Borneo and the balloon popped on an island called Krakatoa. It looked like it was uninhabited because of a volcano. The man inside the house, William Waterman Sherman, was greeted by a man who called himself "Mr.F". We walked further and saw restaurants and houses representing 20 countries. We realized that each day all 80 people ate at one restaurant. The order was alphabetical. One day the volcano blew up the island and all 81 people escaped. Of those, 76 people escaped to India, 4 to England and one (Prof. Sherman) to the Atlantic and later back to San Francisco. After watching this adventure, we came back to Gilroy. Then, I woke up from my dream.

Rating: 98.99371 Status: READ

Poem: Lunch Choice Today

Lunch Choice Today- by Shreyes Ram Nallan

Crunch and munch
Hatch a plan with it
Oh, the delicious pizzas,
Olives, lettuce and jello
Salads, ice-cream and soup
Endless choices of food
Fruits, breads and carrots
Red jello is the top pick
Eating there is the best
Soup comes in random choices
Hot pizzas are the best
Carrots directly from farms
Hard to beat the service
Oranges with a sweet taste
Interlocked are the chairs
Cucumbers directly from plants
Easy to create your own food!