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Gettin' Round

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      Alphabet Internet

      January 11th, 2007 by mike d. in A Day In The Life...

      Currently eating: steak

      Mozilla’s Firefox address bar completion feature will provide for you the most common and recent websites visited (versus I.E. which gives you the recent addresses in alphabetical order only). So I’ve comprised a list of those websites that I go to regularly for each letter of the alphabet. If you see a dash ‘–’ that means that either no websites came up or random one time websites came up that I didn’t think should count.

      Example, for K the only result I got was Katronic.com and I don’t have any recollection of ever going here. So it’s not worth it to put it on my best of the best list.

      Applegeeks.com
      Bodybuilding.com
      Cnn.com
      Defectiveyeti.com
      Expedia.com
      Freakanomics.com
      Google.com
      Homedepot.com
      Itsthepope.com
      Jonabad.com
      K –
      L –
      Mikedidonato.com
      Nwa.com
      O –
      Penny-arcade.com
      Questionablecontent.net
      Rockclimbing.com
      Setgame.com
      Tdameritrade.com
      U –
      Vimeo.com
      Weather.com
      X —
      Youtube.com
      Zanorg.com

      If you’re feeling motivated, post your Firefox internet alphabet in the comments.

      Authored by: mike d.

      The Leidenfrost Effect

      January 11th, 2007 by mike d. in Geekdom, Features

      Heres to sweet phenomenons!

      I’ve been learning a bit about water and its boiling tendencies at my work lately. I thought I’d share with you the Leidenfrost effect.

      The Leidenfrost effect describes the boiling of water on a very hot surface. If you take water and throw it onto a moderately hot pan, the water sizzles away very quickly. If you take water and throw it onto a VERY hot surface something else happens: the water forms into droplets and dances around the pan. Instead of boiling off quickly, it actually takes a significant amount of time.

      What’s happening here?

      It turns out that when the water first hits the pan there is a momentary “initial liquid contact stage”* during which the water that strikes the pan turns into a gas. The rest of the water droplet then sits on top of the gas instead of directly on the pan.

      Heat transfer from metal to water is pretty good, but if you have to go through a vapor barrier first the heat transfer capabilities drop significantly.

      How is this useful? Well, amongst other things, it helps explain things like walking on coals. When you’re nervous and antsy, the sweat on your feet will create little Leidenfrost vapor barriers between your feet and the hot coals. I wouldn’t recommend trying it though, because if you’re calm and the heat isn’t enough to cause you to start sweating, you will be seriously burned.

      *ASM Vol. 4 Heat Treating Metals Handbook

      Authored by: mike d.

      Typical night.

      January 11th, 2007 by mike d. in Quickthoughts

      What do you do on a typical night after you get home from work?

      What do you do on a typical night after you get home from work?

      Authored by: mike d.
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