June 2008 Archives

So, I went to church. Not exactly what you thought would be the start of a story, huh? It was an interesting conglomeration of Chinese and English, and in a flashback to Rolla, I was the only girl. Prior to beginning, the priest, who came to Taiwan from France 8 years ago, handed me an English Bible with the scripture readings so I could follow along. I even joined in during the Alleluia since I recognized the tune (and the fact that it’s still ALLELUIA kinda helped).

Yay! There ARE people reading this! It’s so much more fun to write when you know you have an audience.

Rachel, the rabbit. I just saw it as we were walking around the Dragon Boat festival, and had never seen one so tiny before. When I cropped the picture, I purposely left the Coke bottle in the frame for a size reference. Just one of those random things that I found entertaining.

And for anyone who is unaware, we left the U.S. on May 26, and will be returning July 22. So we’ll be here for eight weeks, with about a week in the middle where we’ll be taking a ‘vacation’ to Kenting National Park and visiting another university.

David Rogers is one of our most prolific experts here at Missouri S&T. He knows as much as anyone about things relating to levees, floods, hurricanes, and so on. So, after pumping out the ex-wife's flooded basement for the fourth time in four months last week (this is in Springfield), I sent Dr. Rogers an email to ask him some questions about basements and water. I'm passing his response on as a sort of public service announcement:

In regards to your basement:

1) We have had record rainfall this year, even greater than in 1993, so it should be no surprise that you are experiencing some seepage
2) seepage always occurs "bottom-up", just as you describe, because of hydraulic pressure increasing with depth, at rate of 62.4 pounds per cubic foot per foot of depth. The more hydraulic pressure you get against the basement wall, the more seepage that can pass through a hairline crack at the base of the wall stem, where it joins the foundation footing. There is usually a "cold pour" joint at that location which develops a shrinkage crack, and that's where the moisture typically seeps in. So, seepage is all about hydraulic pressure (depth of water on opposite side of the wall), more than any other factor. We've had a really wet year, so all the pores in the soil become saturated, incapable of accepting additional moisture. When it rains the water presure increases very quickly. The other problem is anteceedant mositure. When the ground is near-saturated, rain can't be absorbed by the soil, so runoff increases, dramatically. That's why it floods with a so-called "normal storm (about 1.5 hrs duration), that never previiously caused problems. In the Midwest all of the flooding is intimately tied to anteceedant moisture levels, looking at the past 72 hrs, 1 week, 2 months, and even past 3 months, depending on the size of the watershed.

The bad news is it took months to get into the predicament we find ourselves in right now, and it will take another 6 months or so for us to get out of the "flood danger window," because the anteceedant moisture levels are so high. For example, the Gasconade River experienced its highest recorded flow this past spring, greater than 1983 (the previous record) or even 1993. So from here on everything devolves down to the rainfall patterns that develop this summer, with the most important factors being the duration of dry spells between storms.

Hope that info helps you understand what's going on.

Guest blogger Jaime Statler continues to share updates from Taiwan.

HEY! I know you are reading this, so talk to me! Leave me comments, ask me questions, let me know I’m not talking to myself here. I’m writing about what I think would be interesting to read, but if you are curious about anything, or want to hear more about something, just leave a comment. I’d love for this to be more interactive.

Alright, to start, I want to explain the picture of the fish from the last post, in case anyone else is confused. Yes, that is a tiny fried fish. There was a small pile of them on my plate of lunch the other day. I’ve been pretty willing to try just about everything that’s been thrown at me, but the exception is seafood. Not only do I not like fish, but I have a problem eating something that can stare back at me. So shrimp, one of the few kinds of seafood I actually do like, is also usually not an option, because they are typically served whole, heads, legs, roe, and all.

Maybe solar cars aren't so impractical after all:

Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden are testing a spruced-up Toyota Prius, a plug-in hybrid sedan complete with a solar panel attached to its oval roof and a bigger battery in the trunk to supply power in lieu of the gasoline-fueled engine.

Read the full story from the Rocky Mountain News.

Explosives Camp director Paul Worsey instructed one of the high school students to get ready to activate the firing unit, which was connected to the shot cable, which was connected to the detonator, which was connected to the detonating cord – which, finally, was connected to several cans filled with ether. After Worsey’s last warning of “Fire in the hole!” was sounded, a frighteningly loud boom erupted, accompanied by a huge ball of red fire and black smoke.

Jaime's post from Taiwan continues.

So I was wrong in my count of lab members. There’s not twelve. There’s eighteen. But I’m doing much better on names, although by no means do I have all of them yet. Every Monday starts with a lab meeting, where each member discusses the work they did over the previous week. It was a long meeting this Monday, because they are not used to presenting in English. There have been some interesting mix-ups in translation, although the only one that immediately comes to mind was substituting “machine” with “mushroom” when explaining the menu at a restaurant.

A group of Missouri S&T students are in Taiwan this summer for a research project. Here's the latest on their journey from Jamie Statler.

So I’ve heard it said that every plan has to have its glitch, and I think our trip has already had its share, just from the travel to get here in Taiwan. First, Angela has a ridiculously turbulent flight from KC to Detroit, while Isaac, Dr. Huang, and myself decided that we had a new pilot for our flight from St. Louis, judging from the weaving on the runway at takeoff, and the bouncing on landing. If that had been all, it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning. But after that, our flight out of Detroit was delayed for three and a half hours due to a broken plane. We are all boarded, head out to the runway, accelerate… and stop. Some light is apparently going off, so the pilot tells us we are going to try again, see if it was just a computer malfunction. Such a reassuring turn of phrase when dealing with air travel, wouldn’t you agree? Well, it happens again, so once more we just accelerate down the runway only to stop and head back to the terminal. After holding us on the plane for an hour while they try to fix the problem, but they end up making us deboard and move to a new plane. Which we have to wait another hour to board. This one at least works the first time, and we finally take off. Oh, and I’m being blamed for the glitch, seeing as the same thing happened to me when I traveled to China a few years ago.