Science Fun

The caching activity for this past week has been a struggle to round up due to inclement weather and conflicts at work with the regular routine that I run on Tuesday. I did manage to squeak out one on Friday of last week.

The cache for the week was another in the continuing ‘Rail Trail’ series. In the good old days of yesteryear, New Hampshire was blessed with an abundance of rail road activity, after all there were not many cars on the road and one of the main mechanisms for commerce was to move goods from community to community by rail.

The cache was about a 15 minute drive from work (had to go the long way due to road construction). Upon arrival at the parking area, it was time to set out on the trek – almost ½ mile walk to the cache. Now, this particular rail trail – the rails were still in place even though no active train traffic traveled on this track. It is known that there are small carts that will travel along this particular rail.

It was gorgeous early Fall day with a crisp feeling in the air and just a tinge of color in the trees as the foliage is just starting to change. The cache was easy to find once we arrived at ‘ground zero’ and I am glad that it was not too far off from the trail as the property that boarders the trail is state prison property and it has the big signs ‘no trespassing – violaters may be shot’!

Fall has definetly arrived here in New England, both by the weather and by the calendar as we transtioned from Summer to Fall earlier this week on the Vernal Equinox. The weather has been on the Fall side with cooler temperatures and bright sunny days.

We started out the work week with Monday being a sunny day with a high of 72F and the low was 39F. Tuesday continued the sunny pattern with a high of 68F and a low of 53F. Wednesday, another repeat of the previous days with a high of 74F and the low was 62F.

Thursday was the last of the ‘warmer’ days for the week with a high of 72F and the low was 58F, the day was sunny. Friday was a transition day as it was cool with the high only getting up to 58F and the low being 43F. Saturday was the coldest day for the week as the temperature bottomed out at 34F and the high once again reached only 58F. Sunday is forecasted for rain and the high in the 50s. How was your weather?

On this day in weather history, a great hurricane struck out at New England! September 23, 1815, a hurricane strikes as it makes landfall at Long Island and crosses Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It was the worst tempest in nearly 200 years, equal to the hurricane that struck in 1938, and one of several severe summer and autumn storms to affect shipping lanes that year. Historical information from the archives of Intellicast.

Long long ago, back in the early days of our country, we did not have the convenience of the modern marvel we call the Telephone. Also, there was no internet, television, radio or other means of mass communications that we enjoy today.

Instead, there were smoke signals! No, not quite that far back, but on this day in 1851, the Telegraph was first used to dispatch train schedules. When you wanted to call grandma, you would head on down to the telegraph office and have a telegram sent. Morse code was language of the telegraph. Dits (dots) and dahs (dashes) made up this unique language that worked for many years to provide communications, and is still in use today, although mostly for fun by the amateur radio community.

SOS – the common mayday call for help is sent as …—… or di di di dah dah dah di di di

Cloaca is our word for the week from the big book of science terms.  It is the common posterior chamber of most vertebrates into which the digestive, urinary, and reproductive tracts all enter;  a cloaca is found in most reptiles, birds, and amphibians; many fishes; and to a reduced degree, marsupial mammals.  Placental mammals, however, havea separate opening and urinogenial opening.  The cloaca forms a chamber in which products can be stored before being dispensed from the body via muscular opening, cloacal aperture.

Word for the week is an occosional posting on Science Fun.  Words are chosen by opening the big book of science to any page at random and pointing to the page - whatever word is pointed at, it comes the word of the week.

Last week we started a review of the power behind the Saturn V and started a look at the design of the F-1 engine that was used in the spacecraft. There were five of these monsters in the first stage and boy did they have a ferocious appetite for fuel!

Just the mechanics of one of these mighty engines was a marvelous invention for the time it was created. Fuel and oxidizer were forced into the combustion chamber by pumps that were driven by a gas generator and a turbine. The turbine was driven at 5500 RPM to produce 55,000 horsepower to run the pumps. The fuel pump produced 15,471 gallons of RP-1 fuel per minute and the oxidizer pump 24,811 gallons of liquid oxygen per minute. Fuel traveled through tubing to cool the turbine.

The F-1 engine burned 3,945 pounds of liquid oxygen and 1,738 pounds of RP-1 per second, producing 1,500,000 pounds of thrust. This consumption equaled a flow rate of 413.5 gallons of liquid oxygen, and 257.9 gallons of RP-1 per second – now, that was just one engine, remember there are five of these in the first stage.

The first stage fired for 2.5 minutes, at which it carried the vehicle to an altitude of 42 miles at a speed of 6,164 miles per hour. The combined propellant flow of all five engines was 3,357 gallons per second, which would empty a 30,000 gallon swimming pool in 8.9 seconds. Each F-1 engine had more thrust power than all three main space shuttle engines combined.