The rotation video you can find under nitrogren on my site was in fact taken under a bell jar, with the bell jar in turn heated by a hair drier blowing at it to keep off condensation on the outside. But that video didn't come out nearly as well as the picture in the poster, which was taken on a dry winter day but otherwise out in the open. It took several hours to get it just right, and also involved the use of a hair drier to chase condensation off the Dewer between attempts. I was a bit nervous blowing a heat gun at an unshielded glass Dewer full of cryogenic liquid, but fortunately Pyrex is amazing stuff (and I was wearing a full face shield and leather welding coat).
I never thought of making solid samples, I'll have to see how practical that might be.
(And read the description on my site for a shameful admission about the oxygen photo.)
I would just like to say in my defense that in the form I submitted the story it wasn't just a shameless plug for my poster. It was a shameful plug disguised with interesting links to the recent Brainiac alkali metal explosions fiasco, which I'm genuinely surprised didn't get any attention on slashdot. Sorry about the server, again. It was supposed to be able to handle it. Unfortunately they have their hands around my bandwidth neck because for some reason our sysadmin department feels it's more important to keep wolfram.com running than my periodic table table site. Where is the appreciation for fine art in this world? If only people would buy my poster, I could afford more bandwidth for sodium explosions. There, now you have a truly shameless plug to complain about.
Very good estimates! The actual volume of the lake is 4.5M gallons, approximately, and I got about the same figure when I did the pH calculation, which is one reason I dropped it first into a floating pool, which I could neutralize before dumping into the lake. In point of fact, however, the carbon dioxide in the water would buffer it, as would any phosphorous, so the actual pH effect would probably have been completely insignificant. And there was no fish kill.
Sorry, I'm afraid I didn't make that joke in the table.... Although it looks like that in the photo, it's just the lighting. It's actually just a B. Would have been an OK sort of joke, though...
By the way, if you see any typos or incorrect data in the pictures, please DON'T TELL ME. I really don't want to have to remake any of those tiles, and I'm more than happy to live in ignorance of any errors there may be, not that there are any.
Of course, last time I posted something to this thread people doubted it was me, so, well, maybe that actually *is* an 8, and I'm an imposter. Should I leave it as a mystery or ask Ed to update his web page? Hm.
Theodore
Funny you should mention Uncle Tungsten.... I built the table under discussion because I mis-read the first paragraph of the chapter where he discusses the "table" in the museum. For about 10 seconds while reading I though he was talking about a horizontal table, not a vertical frame on the wall. By the time I figured out I was confused, it was too late, I knew I had to build such a table.
Theodore
Re:I hope this thing stands up to the elements.
on
Periodic Table Table
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I'm not sure which time stamps you're looking at, but actually the log was cut over a year before being worked, and it was dried at least semi-properly. Also, that log was maple used only for the noble gas element tiles, not for the body of the table. The body of the table is walnut that was sawn in 1993 and actually kiln dried twice at the yard before I got it at auction.
(Oh and by the way, the Wood-Mizer isn't mine, but I wish it were....)
Slashdot Mirror
For what it's worth, the equivalent input in Mathematica is a bit simpler:
q = RotationMatrix[t, {0, 0, 1}];
Simplify[q . Array[t, {3, 3}] . Transpose[q]]
The output is:
{{Cos[t]^2 t[1, 1] - Cos[t] Sin[t] (t[1, 2] + t[2, 1]) + Sin[t]^2 t[2, 2], Cos[t]^2 t[1, 2] - Sin[t]^2 t[2, 1] + Cos[t] Sin[t] (t[1, 1] - t[2, 2]), Cos[t] t[1, 3] - Sin[t] t[2, 3]}, {-Sin[t]^2 t[1, 2] + Cos[t]^2 t[2, 1] + Cos[t] Sin[t] (t[1, 1] - t[2, 2]), Sin[t]^2 t[1, 1] + Cos[t] Sin[t] (t[1, 2] + t[2, 1]) + Cos[t]^2 t[2, 2], Sin[t] t[1, 3] + Cos[t] t[2, 3]}, {Cos[t] t[3, 1] - Sin[t] t[3, 2], Sin[t] t[3, 1] + Cos[t] t[3, 2], t[3, 3]}}
And it doesn't crash.
The rotation video you can find under nitrogren on my site was in fact taken under a bell jar, with the bell jar in turn heated by a hair drier blowing at it to keep off condensation on the outside. But that video didn't come out nearly as well as the picture in the poster, which was taken on a dry winter day but otherwise out in the open. It took several hours to get it just right, and also involved the use of a hair drier to chase condensation off the Dewer between attempts. I was a bit nervous blowing a heat gun at an unshielded glass Dewer full of cryogenic liquid, but fortunately Pyrex is amazing stuff (and I was wearing a full face shield and leather welding coat). I never thought of making solid samples, I'll have to see how practical that might be. (And read the description on my site for a shameful admission about the oxygen photo.)
I would just like to say in my defense that in the form I submitted the story it wasn't just a shameless plug for my poster. It was a shameful plug disguised with interesting links to the recent Brainiac alkali metal explosions fiasco, which I'm genuinely surprised didn't get any attention on slashdot. Sorry about the server, again. It was supposed to be able to handle it. Unfortunately they have their hands around my bandwidth neck because for some reason our sysadmin department feels it's more important to keep wolfram.com running than my periodic table table site. Where is the appreciation for fine art in this world? If only people would buy my poster, I could afford more bandwidth for sodium explosions. There, now you have a truly shameless plug to complain about.
Very good estimates! The actual volume of the lake is 4.5M gallons, approximately, and I got about the same figure when I did the pH calculation, which is one reason I dropped it first into a floating pool, which I could neutralize before dumping into the lake.
In point of fact, however, the carbon dioxide in the water would buffer it, as would any phosphorous, so the actual pH effect would probably have been completely insignificant. And there was no fish kill.
Sorry, I'm afraid I didn't make that joke in the table.... Although it looks like that in the photo, it's just the lighting. It's actually just a B. Would have been an OK sort of joke, though... By the way, if you see any typos or incorrect data in the pictures, please DON'T TELL ME. I really don't want to have to remake any of those tiles, and I'm more than happy to live in ignorance of any errors there may be, not that there are any. Of course, last time I posted something to this thread people doubted it was me, so, well, maybe that actually *is* an 8, and I'm an imposter. Should I leave it as a mystery or ask Ed to update his web page? Hm. Theodore
Funny you should mention Uncle Tungsten.... I built the table under discussion because I mis-read the first paragraph of the chapter where he discusses the "table" in the museum. For about 10 seconds while reading I though he was talking about a horizontal table, not a vertical frame on the wall. By the time I figured out I was confused, it was too late, I knew I had to build such a table. Theodore
I'm not sure which time stamps you're looking at, but actually the log was cut over a year before being worked, and it was dried at least semi-properly. Also, that log was maple used only for the noble gas element tiles, not for the body of the table. The body of the table is walnut that was sawn in 1993 and actually kiln dried twice at the yard before I got it at auction. (Oh and by the way, the Wood-Mizer isn't mine, but I wish it were....)