Sailing

There was an amazing article up on Wired today about the America's Cup. It reminded of just how cool competitive sailing is. I wrote about sailing upwind in 2009 before the last America's Cup race and I mentioned a revolutionary solid wing multihull boat created by team Oracle. That boat was in fact as fast as promised and it won the race and by doing so team Oracle won the right to dictate the rules of the next America's cup. What they did was create the America's Cup World Series of standarized fixed wing catamaran sailing boats (you can read more about the entire thing in the Wired article). These boats are super fast and super intense. The America's Cup World Series is the water equivalent of Formula 1, but instead of crashes there are capsizes. Well, actually there are crashes too. Here is a hectic highlight real of these boats racing in the first ever event a few days ago in Cascais, Portugal.

Modern sailing is a paradoxical mix of elements. The boats are designed with advanced knowledge of physics and constructed of carbon fiber, yet they are powered by the simplicity of the wind. I think there is an appeal to working with nature to accomplish work rather than fighting against it. Working with nature always seems to be the most graceful option. In space travel rather than firing rockets to propel ships it is advantages to use gravitational assists by swinging by planets. And then of course there are solar sails in space too. The Japanese IKAROS satellite recently successfully unfurled itself in space and is now being pushed by photons on a unique journey. If you think about it astronomy and sailing go together.

Scratching the Surface

Perth, Australia - I found myself in a coffee shop in downtown Perth today just as I would likely of been in Seattle. It was as if I were in a parallel dimension and indeed I talked about parallel dimensions with some new friends I met. I asked them about places in Perth and they asked me about the Universe; I think I learned as much about Perth as they learned about the Universe.

I walked north towards a pub they recommended, but on the way I discovered something much more interesting. I stumbled upon the Scratching the Surface art show. It was a visual art gallery opening by several young artists just beginning to make they mark upon they world, or as they said just scratching the surface. I was walking along the street when I took a double take upon seeing book pages folded upon themselves in a mysterious manner. It was Pascal Proteau's work from recycled books. One of the most imposing works was a massive balance of books holding upon itself a crooked balance of folded book pages.

Nathan Brooker presented a series of works that were reminiscent of Andy Warhol in their repetition and bright colors. Some of his work was shocking. The image below is tame, but the Nathan did many more interesting things which cannot be shown (here is a seriously not safe for general consumption, very intense and shocking do not click here if you don't want to be offended image of Booker with art).

There was lots of shocking art including strange embroidery by Carla Adams. She used homely materials to create dangerous and daring works. I assure you that the image here is the most tame possible from the work she had on display. I asked her what had turned her mind to think of such juxtaposed concepts and she said that it was exactly that, the juxtaposition itself of feminine handy work and male homosexuality.

I was drawn in by the strange folding of books, but it was Ian Williams piece that really stole the show for me. He called it 'Under the Influence', but whatever the influence was it was inspired. An acrylic on oil board piece it was a work of labor as he told me it was painted with acrylic then sanded down then painted again. The entire piece had a subtle checkerboard texture pattern which resulted. And the eyes. The eyes followed the viewer from every angle. This piece was also amazingly large (1.8 by 1.2 meters) which added to its captivating features. It was a stunning piece. He is a talented artist.

Finally, here is a piece of art created just this evening by a friend who I know only as Silvia. She was an art student at the same school in Perth (CIT) as all the artists featured above. I went to a bar (with the aptly artistic name Ezra Pound) with her after the art show and she drew this for (or rather of) me.

It was a strange day in a strange place, but it was fantastic. Tomorrow, I head north into the desert and the Outback.

QR Codes

Science doesn't stop, but blogging occasionally does. Some good posts are on the way, but for today I have something fun: QR codes. You may recognize them as those little matrix barcodes that carry text, numbers, binary, or URLs that are starting to crop up in the real world in augmented reality or hardlink applications where objects in the physical world get linked to the digital world. If you didn't know already you can use your phone or camera to read these things no matter where you see them. They can carry quite a bit of information and because of fault tolerance and error handling in some cases portions of the QR code can be lost and the data still read. I made a few artistic renditions of a QR code that link to The Astronomist. I removed some of the bits from the center and replaced it with an A and I found I was still able to read them handily with the code scanner on my iPhone so I assume they aren't corrupt. Now I just need to make some stickers out of them or something so the digital and physical world will meet at The Astronomist.

Thirty Five Images of Space Helmet Reflections

Cool. Thirty five images of space helmet reflections via 3 Ton Gallery.

Perceiving Itself

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself.

Quote from Alan Watts. Art by Viktor Timofeev.

Detexify: Dymistify your LaTeX symbol

I write a lot in LaTeX and I forget a lot of obscure symbols I need. The solution: Detexify.  Detexify will discover the LaTeX formatting of any symbol you can manage to scrawl with your mouse. If you don't know what LaTex is then your probably not in academia, a student, or a publisher; it is a digital typesetting package.  Ignore this then and move along, otherwise I ask you...
How else would you learn about: \bat

Or have a little: \Heart

Or make real numbers: \Re

Or that one symbol you can't remember: \Denarius

And who can remember angstroms: \aa


Detexify is the work of Daniel Kirsch.  There is an iphone app too, but I am trying to figure out who has LaTex on their iphone?

Smithsonian Air and Space Posters

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has digitized their poster collection online. Above are some of my favorite picks and below a blurb about the posters.

Throughout their history, posters have been a significant means of mass communication, often with striking visual effect. Wendy Wick Reaves, the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery Curator of Prints and Drawings, comments that "sometimes a pictorial poster is a decorative masterpiece-something I can't walk by without a jolt of aesthetic pleasure. Another might strike me as extremely clever advertising … But collectively, these 'pictures of persuasion,' as we might call them, offer a wealth of art, history, design, and popular culture for us to understand. The poster is a familiar part of our world, and we intuitively understand its role as propaganda, promotion, announcement, or advertisement."

Reaves' observations are especially relevant for the impressive array of aviation posters in the National Air and Space Museum's 1300+ artifact collection. Quite possibly the largest publicly-held collection of its kind in the United States, the National Air and Space Museum's posters focus primarily on advertising for aviation-related products and activities. Among other areas, the collection includes 19th-century ballooning exhibition posters, early 20th-century airplane exhibition and meet posters, and twentieth-century airline advertisements.

The posters in the collection represent printing technologies that include original lithography, silkscreen, photolithography, and computer-generated imagery. The collection is significant both for its aesthetic value and because it is a unique representation of the cultural, commercial and military history of aviation. The collection represents an intense interest in flight, both public and private, during a significant period of its technological and social development.

Space Exploration Missions

The image above is a link to a huge diagram showing space exploration missions. I have no idea how comprehensive of missions it is. I think the original source was National Geographic so it must be rather complete. Regardless the image is stunning in a visual design sense and it makes a good desktop background. Enjoy.

Formula One and Technology

When I was so much younger than I am today I went to an open-wheel car race.  It added really fast cars to the list (a list also including, but not limited to: robots, rockets, spaceships, hyperspace) of things I know are awesome.  This weekend is the Monaco Grand Prix.  It is perhaps one of if not the most prestigious racing event in the world (of course it has stiff competition from the 'greatest spectacle in racing' the Indianapolis 500 which is also this weekend).  I am not actually that big of a fan of racing, but the science and technology of racing is amazing so it interests me.  These cars are like grounded spaceships and until we get the Rocket Racing League they are the best thing going.

Formula One cars are ultimate racing machines. They contain state-of-the-art technology that you can't even find on the space shuttle. The philosophy is that you give race teams a rough formula to follow and let them design the craziest car they can. This indeed results in a crazy car, for example one of the regulations is that the engine must only be 2.4 liters, but the cars still produce upwards of 700 horsepower (by the way NASCAR employs a 5.87 liter engine that produces about the same amount of horsepower, however they then force the teams to install restrictor plates in the engines reducing the power to as low as 430 on some tracks. So basically you have a horribly inefficient choking engine pushing a brick through the air. If you still think this sounds remotely interesting you can check out the Physics of NASCAR and please lets never mention it again).  Another example of the design philosophy is that there is no actual limit to the length of the cars. There is a width limit and limits on other various components, but generally the designers again have free reign. The cars look similar because all the teams think they have found the best way to design something that goes fast. If someone could design something faster they would win. That is the philosophy behind Formula One, or we hope it is. This year the rules have changed radically.

Historically rule changes have been met with a lot of grudging compliance and this time is the same. However, rules changes have also spawned innovation. A few years ago the engine displacement was cut from 3.0 to 2.4 liters and performance dropped about 20% accordingly until aerodynamic and tyre technology caught up and lap times for the cars matched the previous 3.0 liter benchmarks. The new rule changes this year are causing big changes in the aerodynamics and energy recovery systems.

Aerodynamics is really the name of the game. At high speeds your wasting the majority of your engine's power fighting air. There is a need to keep massive amounts of power to the wheels at all times in order to keep pushing the air out of the car's way, but in order to apply this power to the road there must be sufficient traction between the tyre and road.  The trick is to use the air slowing the car also to one's advantage.  One way to increase grip is to increase downforce, however there is a basic trade off designers face which is downforce vs. drag.   Drag increases a vehicles high speed grip, but reduces that top speed.  Adding wings to the front and the rear of the car increases the grip at high speed by creating downforce, but also creates drag. You see performance gains with every nuanced design aspect of the car particularly parts of the car you rarely see, those are the undertray and diffuser. The undertray is simply the bottom of the car, all race cars have pretty much smooth undertrays, but they may also have special grooves and guides for air that suction the car onto the road surface. The diffuser is the trailing edge of your undertray (it is highlighted here) and has led to some controversy this year because some teams have designed questionable diffusers that are improving their lap times. Aerodynamics is a complicated and interesting field that may make for beautiful looking vehicles, strange looking vehicles (like the Aptera), or it may look like nothing at all until it all goes wrong.

Notice this is not a Formula One car. This is a Le Mans car and coincidentally 24 hours of Le Mans is also coming up very soon.

Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems, or KERS are kind of a big deal. Some teams embrace the technology others shun it, KERS is basically just saving the kinetic energy your car would otherwise waste in the form of heat from your brakes when you stop or more technically it is called regenerative breaking and is just like what you would find on a Prius, although with cutting edge F1 technology and weight savings schemes and of course more danger. Although the most common commercial application to consumer vehicles has been electric not all KERS are electric. Any method of storing energy can be applied engineers have tried many approaches including: chemical batteries, supercapacitors, and flywheels.  In the Formula One world they are most interested in specific energy and specific power. Specific energy is the amount of energy per unit mass that the system can store. And specific power is the rate at which that energy can be put in or taken out of the system per unit mass. Chemical batteries have the greatest specific energy. Flywheels have the greatest specific power. Supercapacitors are like the opposite of batteries with great specific power, but low specific energy. Each Formula One team can choose to use KERS or not and what type of KERS to use.  Their choice depends on many real world factors and on how these systems work under different conditions. For example batteries are dependant on such environmental factors as the ambient temperature or humidity and they have a limited lifetime determined by the number of charges. Supercapacitors can pack a deadly shock and at least one engineer has already been shocked. And flywheels can fly apart like a bomb. So KERS are tenative for most race teams, but more practically it may be the beginning of ultra light regenerative breaking systems that can be applied to all vehicles.   The physics and economics of specific energy and specific power are driving the electric car industry's bottom line when you think about it.

The 2009 McLaren team car.

One last thing is the design. Car people for all their talk about performance have an obsession with looks and design. Perhaps the whole sport is really just about glamour  (try watching the 08 Monaco for a glimpse), but they have found performance is glamour?  There is a huge uproar at the absurdity of the tiny rear wing and simply the fact that the cars look 'different'.

Formula One may yet have some kind of odd relevance to consumer technology and what you will be driving or flying in the future. It hopefully integrates design, technology, and relevance seamlessly. I have sworn to never buy a new car that runs on gasoline and so I welcome innovation from every perspective. Lets just hope they don't regulate the teams too much because for many it is as much about the technology of the racing team as it is a test of the drivers. The less rules imposed the more room there is for revolutions or is it with each rule imposed another revolution is forced?

Sailing Upwind

Modern sail boats have more in common with airplanes than ancient ships. How do you design a sideways flying airplane? I have always found this a fascinating topic so I was very happy to see an article about the physics of sailing by Bryon Anderson a couple of months ago in Physics Today.

This image from Anderson's article demonstrates something profoundly unintuitive about sailing. Sailing downwind is not the fastest direction.




Not everything sails on water though. A land yacht called the Greenbird has just broken the wind-powered vehicle world record. The Rochelt Musculair sails through the air, flys, solely on human power.

These examples lead us to a paragon of design that has yet to prove its mettle, the BMW Oracle 90, a truly devastating machine. It is at the center of the America's Cup controversy. The controversy not withstanding this yacht is something to be in awe of: the BMW Oracle 90 is the size of a baseball infield, it has a mast taller than the statue of liberty (that is 48 meters, the Statue of Liberty is 46 meters not including the pedestal), and is one of the fastest sailboats created by man (what is the fastest?) . Please watch this video and behold.