Archives for May 2007
Gas and Oil Prices
Published on 24 May 2007 at 3:44 am.
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Filed under Energy, Uncategorized.
Gasoline prices are skyrocketing. In some parts of the country, the price of gasoline is expected to hit $4.oo a gallon. Furthermore, while there is a correlation between oil and gas prices, there has been an alarming net increase of gas prices with respect to oil. Here I show that 60 cents per gallon of today’s […]
Building Lego Robots with Java Brains
Published on 18 May 2007 at 2:51 am.
2 Comments.
Filed under Exploration, Fun, Intelligent Systems, Lego, NXT, Physics, Research.
I finally received my long-awaited copy of Maximum Lego NXT: Building Robots with Java Brains by Brian Bagnall. I was pleased to see that in addition to the in-depth discussions regarding writing code for these robots in Java, that there were also some interesting projects.
My favorite was the Lego implementation of the Rocker-Bogie suspension, which […]
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Behold the Gorgeted Puffleg
Published on 15 May 2007 at 12:45 am.
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Filed under Birds, Wildlife.
Ornithologists Alexander Cortés-Diago and Luis Alfonso Ortega recently announced the discovery of a new hummingbird in the cloud forests in the Serrania del Pinche in south-west Colombia. The bird was sighted three times during surveys of the region in 2005.
Surveys in 2006 yielded photographs of the bird, which enabled scientists at the International Bird […]
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Lorentz Attractors, Topology and Modular Flows
Published on 11 May 2007 at 3:11 am.
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Filed under Mathematics.
While working with POV Ray, I stumbled on this great article from the American Mathematical Society’s Monthly Essays. This article examines the Lorenz attractor and its periodic orbits. It turns out that the periodic orbits form knots, but not just any knots. They comprise only a very small subset of possible knots.
The article continues to […]
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The Blossoming Lotus
Published on 10 May 2007 at 3:28 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under Fun, Lego.
This is a fun Lego creation of mine. Basically it is a large 2D version of a Hoberman sphere. Why did I not make a large Hoberman sphere? First, the parts to make the circle cost almost $80 US. Second, I have other more pressing projects I am working on.
So here is what I call […]
