From: ROY MAYEDA (roymayeda@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Apr 04 2004 - 20:39:44 PDT
Message-ID: <20040405033944.48551.qmail@web20415.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 20:39:44 -0700 (PDT) From: ROY MAYEDA <roymayeda@yahoo.com> Subject: Brazil nut effect illustration
Hi all.
Well, the fields have thawed and the corn, beans,
wheat, etc. are going in all around here. Not sure if
I shared this last fall (now I'm starting to think I
did -- oh, well). Around here in the Northern Plains,
the land has been farmed for many decades. Still,
many of the young people make some extra money
"picking rock". Every year before final preparation,
farmers remove rocks of various sizes (up to several
feet across) from their fields, either by machine or
by hand. These rocks were not at the surface at the
beginning of the last season. I think this is an
illustration of the Brazil nut effect. The subsoil is
full of rocks in this area (glacial till), and the
rocks are forced to the surface by expansion and
contraction during freeze/thaw cycles, with smaller
particles slipping under larger rocks.
Also, I was finally able to try the boiling water in
cold dry air stunt. It is traditionally done by
tossing a cup of boiling-hot coffee into the air and
having none of it hit the ground. I did see a tiny
bit of material hit the ground, but most of it simply
evaporated rapidly into the cold, dry air. What did
hit the ground was a tiny bit of ice. This doesn't
really work well until the air temperature gets down
around -30 F or so. Actually, the most amazing thing
about seeing this stunt is that a resident of
Minnesota would actually throw a perfectly good cup of
coffee out!
Roy Mayeda
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