Nan Shepherd on dimensions

In Nan Shepherd's novel The Weatherhouse, she writes "You're a dimension short", he continued "Or no. You have three dimensions right enough, but we've a fourth dimension over there. We've depth. It's not the same thing a height ... You people who live in a three-dimensional world don't know. You can't know. You go on thinking this is the real thing, but we've discovered that we can get off every imaginable plane that the old realities yielded". Does this show she was familiar with Einstein's work? Certainly prefigures modern physics!

William Cavendish in Eastbourne

 

Appropriately we were staying at The Cumberland Hotel. The statue outside in Devonshire Place rang some bells as did the Cavendish Hotel opposite. The statue is of William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire and listed as FRS. He is the one of the family who was Second Wrangler at Cambridge - ie second best mathematician in his year - and who founded the Cavendish Laboratory and endowed a Physics professorship. The man was a friend of physics, and also of Barrow, it seems. His investments in Barrow-in-Furness are remembered in names like the Devonshire Dock. He lived at Holker Hall - and the Bluebirds play in Holker Street!

Vernier Barometer at Eastbourne Lifeboat

 

I've never seen a Vernier on a mercury barometer but I found this in the Eastbourne lifeboat shop. Bottom of the sliding scale shows you where to read on the fixed scale (red arrow 30.3) Then find where the lines on the two scales match up and take the number from the sliding scale (blue arrow 2). Put them together to get 30.32.

You can't stop time

I liked the phrase above this sundial in Tunbridge Wells. It says 'you can waste me but you can't stop me'. Waste is a subjective human idea. Can you stop time? They say that relativity says time stops on the event horizon of a black hole. But whose time? It seems that way to an outside observer.

Looking at the Beacon in the rain

 

It rained all the way back from the south. Here is the view of Penrith Beacon. I amused myself by timing the wiper blades. It took 24.28s for 20 cycles. My reaction time on that watch is 0.25s. That means the percentage uncertainty in the reading is 1%. I can just about justify 3sf. One cycle is 24.28/20 = 1.21s. By timing multiple cycles I can justify a time to hundredths of a second even though I am not physically capable of timing one cycle on its own to that precision.

Linear expansion and Brighton i360

 

This is supposed to be the most slender tower in the world in terms of height to width ratio. I take that means without additional support because Caldbeck mast is more slender but has ties to hold it. I saw a suggestion that the Sun on the south side makes that side expand more and so the tower leans slightly north. Coefficient of liner expansion for steel is about 12 x 10^-6 m per degree Celsius for a 1 metre length. The tower is 162 metres high. This means the south will expand by 2mm more than the north for a temperature difference of 1 degree Celsius. Metal conducts so there can be a massive difference so perhaps the difference will be 1 or 2 cm on a hot day.

My first ever game of bingo

 

I played bingo for the first time at the weekend. Once I got my head round it, I was fascinated by the numbers. I started to gather data far too late in the proceedings but found that on two rounds, it took 30 numbers out to get a line and 70 to get house. That from the maximum of 90. I was wondering whether it would be quicker to house with more people playing so I tried to calculate how many possible sets of 15 bingo numbers there are. The constraints were pointed out to me. There has to be something in each column which are set out units, tens, twenties etc. 6 columns have two numbers and 3 have only 1. I got 8.3 x 10^12. This wonderful website gives 24 x 10^15 - rather a lot more. I think they are asking a subtly different question because they factor in where the blanks go.