Sunday 31st (Sodium Boom n beyond)

Spent the morning very happily going over the potassium footage.  The whole thing is a symphony of physics and chemistry that eventually I decided it would take too long to explain, so I just put up the explosion footage.

It had been raining in Ridgecrest and this clearly was  a freak event.  The standard greeting in Rigercrest between the notably fat folks seems to be ‘hot enough for you’, and not without reason, I think it’s been over 100C every day I’ve been here.  However for the afternoon I decided I would give blowing up the sodium a go.  Now I have lots of sodium, and the scale and geometry is different.  Eventually I decided the way to do it was to get a stick over a reasonable sized vat, which meant that I could lift up the sodium from a distance, have it swing over the vat, then be lowered in.  Sodium is significantly less dense than water, and so would need to be weighted.  The sticks were typically about 10g, so eventually I wrapped up about 4 sticks in aluminium foil, attached weights to them and lowered them in to the vat from a distance.

Initially the reaction seemed really quite slow, to the point where I was wondering how this was going to pan out.  Indeed it took over 10 seconds before the first ‘explosion’ (compared to about 1second for the potassium experiment).  I, for my part am mostly certain this is related to the metal boiling.  However, when it really blew up (and did so quite convincingly) it really made a mess of the container.  Again, the hydrogen burning wasn’t really even a relevant factor, it’s just the adiabatic expansion of the gas released by the reaction.  In this case 40g gives about 40L of gas.  Thats a lot of gas to release in a 5L container!  On inspecting the aftermath it became clear that large chunks of sodium had been thrown clear of the reaction, not just unreacted, but unmelted!  This for me was a stunning observation!  It shows that whatever the reaction that takes place, the rate that heat is generated at the surface is MUCH higher than the rate the heat can be conducted away from the surface.  Sodium is an absolute bitch for making a mess!  Small amounts of sodium had been sprayed all over the tripod, and stripped the paint.  They had then picked up water to make conc. NaOH, draincleaner which will first turn you skin into soap, before chemically burning you.  The stuff was everywhere!  Cleaned up as best I could (again I was on the inaccessible dirt road to nowhere in my little ravine).  Headed back to LA.  Stopped off to see Lisa n Howard n pick up a shower, which I more than needed.  Initially i wanted to get up onto mnt Wilson early, for sunset, but got chatting to Lisa and that never happened.  It was full dark before I set out on the nightmare trek across LA by dark.  It didnt help that I managed to set the GPS wrong, and ended up on the long drive through the horrific twistiy winding roads of the Wilson range (rt 2).  There had been rain here too, and while the road was all but deserted, top speed was about 40 mph and ‘tire killing rocks’ materialized out of the gloom on a regular basis.  Driving that 20 miles was an incredibly intense experience, ultimately driven by ‘do u want it or not’.  I did, I wanted to get up on mnt wilson and do something on light pollution and LA.  I got there about midnight, and got my piccies!

Monday 18th (To California!)

Decided to head to California, picked up gas and a burger and got on the road.  A few hours later I was in Barstow CA.  The brakes have been worrying me for the best part of the last 1000 miles.  There has been an intermediate high pitched whine coming from them (front right), especially at speed as if a wire or something is rubbing against the brake hub.  Figured I’d get it checked out the next time I changed the oil.  Long experience has shown that if you are going to get work done on the wheels, the bigger the civilization the better.  Also turns out that one of my video cameras died.  Worse than that, one of the brand new ones died!  It turns on okay, and off okay, but the second you try to turn it on with the screen open -dead.  Turns out there was a canon ‘walk in express repair center’ in LA.  Figured that would be  a good place to kill two birds with one stone.  Spent most of the afternoon rendering, uploading and writing blog, plus catching up on the mass of emails etc that had accumulated in the 4 days I had been ‘unplugged’.   Then as dusk came on I headed out to the south towards San Bernadino, but turned off before hand for a quiet little place called Wrightwood.  I was v. happy to be heading for LA at this point the brakes are sounding progressively more creaky.  I’ve had a good feel around the back of the brakes but couldn’t find anything obvious, further they look to be carrying quite a lot of corrosion.

Tuesday 19th, saved by grace!

Go up before the sunlight hit the car in the little niche I was parked in.  Some great views heading back to the main road!

View driving back from Wrightwood to the main road.  Those little domes look kinda volcanic to me.

Drive through LA was busy, but not too bad.  Got to the Canon ‘express repair’ at 8ish.  They very quickly diagnosed a ‘LCD’ fault.  250 bucks to replace.  When I asked if it was under warranty (it’s only about a month old, quasi professional 900 bucks canon S20 I think), they said yes, but I would need proof of purchase or similar.  The warranty was an absolute no-go.  I had ditched the paper work to the camera before I started on the roadtrip.  Proof of purchase I could do from emails etc, but they didn’t have wifi.  A little miffed I headed out to find a McDonalds for breakfast and wifi.   Took about 5 times as long as I expected to find the correct email.  I get far too many emails! Like trying to find a fart in a jacuzzi!  Eventually found it (bought in beginning of June, just before I came out!). On returning about an hour or so later there was a significant que, and I had to wait about another hour to get it seen to.  When they did, almost as if to rub salt in the wound, they scarcely looked at the email (sigh).  Then of course it was going to take 5-7 days to repair.  GAHHHHHHH.  I had no desire to hang around LA for the best part of a week.  I handed it in anyways, I mean lets be real, as it stands that month old camera is currently junk to me, and without it I am working off my spare camera.  Maybe best contingency plan I came up with was to get Canon to send the fixed camera to NCSE (IF they need a camera), and just to write it off as a donation from my subscribers to NCSE.

Okay, so order of buisness one in LA concluded.  Next, get the car seen to.  I like Sear for car stuff, most notably after TWICE I had Walmarts engine butchers botch an oil change.  Sear is nationwide, and generally Ive been happy with them.  Nonetheless the first Sears the GPS took me to was ‘out of buisness’.  The second seemed to be some great auto place.  Initally I just wanted an oil change and tire rotation, and while they were at it to see what was wrong with the brakes.  Turns out the brakes were in pretty bad shape.  Much worse than I expected.  Sears also kept coming up with these stories about how the wrong parts had arrived etc.  Looked legit too as it was the same guy working on my car.  In the end pretty much replaced the whole brake assembly at the cost of about 550 bux.  Yup it stings, but skimping on car auto if you’re going to drive your car into the middle of nowhere is what I would go so far to call a suicidal false economy (plus new brakes will make my mother happy! 🙂 ).

By the time they’d finished it was about 5ish, and I really didn’t have anywhere to go or any plan, and had no real desire to drive across LA at rush hour, so I found a cyber cafe and finished the TAM blog.  About 9ish I decided to head up to the Mnt Wilson observatory.  I know the road, it was out of the city and fairly quiet.  The drive across LA was a nightmare, even at this time.  When I got above LA, the view was great, but the sky was washed out with the glow from the city 😦