I just learned about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.. I didn’t hear until late this evening because we don’t have TV or cable and I no longer listen to news on the radio. I was really shocked and saddened when I heard. Bhutto was a brave and powerful leader in a part of the world that needed such leaders. I only hope that the outrage from her murder galvanizes people in the region to work for peace. I know that’s not the way it usually works out… but I have faith that were evolving as a species.

The news about the Bhutto tragedy was an abrupt change from the rest of my day, which was very peaceful. My folks are still up visiting, so they hung out with me for the day. We didn’t have much planned. I got an invitation to go visit my friend Scott and his friend Russ to see some cool science geekiness. Around 11, my mom, my dad and I piled in the car and we drove down to Charlotte to Russ’s house. Rus and Scott work together at B.F. Goodrich in Vergennes. Both of these guys are into high energy physics demonstrations on a large scale.

First thing I saw when I got to Russ’s was this huge bank of 4 high energy pulse capacitors.. They were each 230 microfarads at 7000 volts.. that makes each one fully charge capable of discharging (1/2CV**2 = 0.5 2.30×10**-4 x (7×10**3)**2 = 5635 joules… so with four of them charged, that’s 4 x 5635 = 22,540 joules. =~ 22kJ For reference, a 20 joule discharge into your body has a 50 percent chance of killing you.. so this is serious (and very dangerous) power.
Russ and Scott had built them int0 a system they could use to explore high energy pulse phenomenon.

Here’s the rating panel on the capacitors. They came out of an old pulsed laser system from the University of Rochester.

They guys had built as simple 10 kV power supply out of an old neon sign transformer.. It even had a voltage gauge..

The first experiment was exploding wire.. They attached various lengths of MIG wire to a simple jig that was connected to the capacitors by a triggered spark gap. When the chunk of wood was pulled out, the spark gap closed and all the energy in the capacitors was put through the thin piece of wire.

We had to wear protection for both our eyes and our ears.. even if it just meant sticking our fingeres in our ears.. here’s mom and dad preparing for the blast.

The next experiment was ‘coin crushing’ . The idea here is that you discharge the capacitors through a small coil of heavy wire that’s wrapped around a coin such as a quarter or dime. The coin is held between two dowels to hold it steady.

The discharge is so powerful that it blows the coil to bits each time you try it. It explodes with such force that the fragments can travel through a piece of plywood as they did here.

The guys had to switch to using sand as a blast shield to keep from getting covered with shrapnel.

As the coil blows out, the intense magnetic field generated by the high current through the coil creates a tremendously strong radial crushing force that squishes the coin from the edges.. it actually makes the coin smaller in diameter and thicker.. You can imagine doing this with something like playdoh.. but it’s amazing to think of the force needed to do that to a chunk of metal such as a quarter.

We were all hooked up with a quarter and ready to go. Russ hooked the coil with the coin inside to the device and set up the spark gap.. he charged the caps up to 7000 volts

Inside you see our quarter looking a bit squished.

Here’s just how squished it is.. it’s about 30 % smaller and about 30 % thicker, very cool.. Here it is next to an uncrunched quarter.

You can still see the features… but they are distored byt the strength of the blast.

We repeated the experiment with a dime

Here’s a comparison with an un-shrunk dime.

The last experiment was to crush a soda can. In this set up they use a larger, reusable coil of wire. The soda can is put in the middle. If you choose your energy level correctly, it just squishes down the middle of the can like an hourglass. Too much power and the can shreds into two pieces that are shot out like bullets.

It was fun having my folks there, they enjoyed meeting Scott and Russ.. and my buddy Homer who showed up as well. >We then had a great lunch at Good Times Cafe in Hinesburg then came back home. We all took naps.. and I managed to sneak in a few hors to finish up the welding on Gabe’s rail. It should be ready to go tomorrow.

This evening we all went up to Deb’s house for a wonderful dinner party.. Again.. their house was full of our friends.. it feels like home up there. My folks knew many of our friends.. so they had a really good time, too !

Oh wow. it’s late.. I gotta get some sleep.. thar’s all for now. Gnite all, gnite Sam… Love
-me

Today was a wonderfully slow and peaceful day…   We managed to sleep until around 8 when Chai the alarm dog jumped up into bed with us. She’s not ‘sposed to do that.. but .. hey.. this is christmas !

The boys wondered in a little later on.. this is a far cry from the 5:30 or 6AM Christmas mornings of years past. The easy and low key beginning signaled the tone of the rest of the day… 

Diane and I wandered downstairs to find out that Chai had already identified her stocking and had proceeded to pull out her toys..

The guys came down a few minutes later.. we’ve always had the ttradition of video taping them coming down the stairs.That was a hard moment for me…  It was cool to see them bringing one of the Sam lamps down with them.

First things first.. we went for the stockings..    Sam’s is there in the middle.. as is our bird Gabby who passed on more than 2 years ago..  Hey live on with us too…   Gabby’s stocking had a wad of Suet for the birds outside.. Sam’s was filled with the glass SamStones that I made with Chris and cards for the two donations we made in Sam’s honor. One was a years training of a Mayan midwife in rural Mexico we made through the Seva Foundation (www.seva.org) .. And the other was a donation of three goats to a rural family which we made through the Heifer International (www.heifer.org). Both of these charities support sustainable communities in the emerging world. 

From there we launched into opening presents… including this stylish foot ware being modeled by the boys..

Here we are at the other end of the process.. It was a very nice morning.. I really liked that Diane got me gun powder and a welding torch.. Did I marry the right girl or what ?!  (ok.. so I chose them.. but still… )

Around 11is we had breakfast.. our holiday tradition of crepes and smoked salmon . We kept one of Sam’s lanterns burning throughout the day (it’s still burning.. I note at 9PM) .

The rest of the afternoon was amazingly quiet.. the boys got immersed in a new video game..

Diane went out for a snowshoe with Chai and I fell asleep for a couple of hours.. My fever seemed to break and I woke up feeling pretty good. I managed to get a few hours of welding in on the rail I’m building for Gabe.

Around 6 it was time to eat again…. 

Now we’re all about to settle in for a movie..’The Hebrew Hammer’ ..that Max got for me.  a Saturday night live spoof on a Jewish action hero.. yeah.. right.. .. The quiet end of a quiet day..

So much has changed with our family.. yet.. we are still so lucky.. We have so much love between us..

Merry Christmas everyone.. Merry Christmas Sam.. we love you very much
-me

It’s almost 2AM on Christmas Eve and I’m just lying down to do this blog. I apologize if it’s rushed. Another Christmas and with it come such a mix of emotions. We’ve had a really good day just hanging out with friends, wrapping presents, eating.. like just about everyone else we know… At the same time, missing Sam is taking nearly all of my energy .. Still it feels OK to me in some other worldly sort of way. I feel  like Sam would be (is) proud of us for enjoying ourselves as much as we are.

We had a steady stream of drop bys today. It was great having these short visits with friends just to say happy holidays…   Just after lunch we ventured out to decorate our tree in the woods.

On our way over, Gabe took us on a short detour to see a beutiful christmas card herd made for all of us in the snow. I never new you could use spray piant on snow.. but look, it works !

Decorating a tree outdoors  is a tradition we’ve had for many, many years.. we take our old baked goods, smear some of them with peanut butter and birdseed and hang them on this one evergreen back up in the woods. It was a tough climb getting there today without snowshoes. The snow was still 1,5 feet deep and crusty.. We kept falling in.

We got to the tree and laid out our goodies and proceeded to decorate. Gabe developed a cool way of hanging bagels and donuts.. You tie two together and through it like a bolo. Works every time !

We had the tree looking beautiful in no time. It was fun being there today. I was also  thinking of Sam in that beautiful spot.. and all the times he was with us there… 

We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out and wrapping presents. Around 5 we all went up to the Black Bear inn on Bolton Mountain. Tim, Jen , Coc . Marie and Nate had invited us to meet them up there..I’d actually never been in the place.. even though Brian and Jill, the owners, are  friends of ours.It was a really, really  wonderful meal.  I strongly recommend the place !

We got back to the house abotu 8.. and played a quiet game of who-Monopoly , (Gabe won).. Around 10 everyone decided to go to bed. It’s been a good day..
I”m looking forward to Christmas day…

Merry christmas everyone. Merry Christmas Sam. You’ll be there in our hearts tomorrow…

-me

It was a rainy and gloomy day outdoors.. the perfect kind of day to work indoors.
I spent a good part of the day working on the shotgun rail that I’m making for Gabe. I love trying to figure out how to get the shape in my mind to come together for me in metal. It’s like the ultimate ‘making’ material because anything you can imagine, you can make quickly.

Here I am dressed up for metal mayhem.. I still can’t get the smell of burning steel out of my skin and clothes,

I had some MIG metal bending parts to make.. luckily the wood stove was hot enough to work the steel. Someday I’d like a bigger torch so that I could control the heating better.. For now, this will have to do.

 I had a couple of those dope-slap moments today.. first I couldn’t figure out why my metal drop saw wasn’t cutting anything very well.. I looked in and saw that the blade was worn down to a tiny fraction of it’s original size. here’s the old blade and a new blade side by side.

Then … all of a sudden my welds started spattering really badly.. I tried adjusting current and the feeds.. then realize..Doh !… I’m outta gas again. I hope that one of the welding shops is open tomorrow morning so I can get some more.. Id’; like to get this rail finished tomorrow

Gabe and Trevor finally surface about mid day an made themselves a feast.. They went up to the mountain despite todays rain..

In the early afternoon,  our friend Heather from Dragonfly gifts came over to deliver a special gift from Aunt Shaun (thanks Shaun !!!!). We had a great conversation with Heather. She’s a connected spirit for sure. ..

Chai bore the brunt of today’s bad weather. she just had to hang out inside.. Awwww poor Chai !….

THis evening we went to the Hester’s Christmas party.. on the way there I happene to notice the outside temperature.. it was 50 degrees !!!About 30 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year.. Luckily.. the snow cover seems to be holding.. we’ll have to see what tomorrow brings in terms of weather before we can clain that we’ll have a white Christmas.

It was great going to the Hester’s.. There were so many people there that I hadn’t seen in a long while.. I spent a bunch of time talking to my old IBM boss Les and his wife Mimi.. I love those guys and had sort of fallen out of touch. it was great catching up.  

George, Hannah D’s Ob/Gyn was there.. right after I talked to him. My phone rang. It was Hannah !.. She is in the hospital and dilating !  She’s going to have that baby tonight !!!!   Good luck Hannah and Dave.. talk to you in the morning !
 
There was a great sing along at the party.. many voices and some beautiful songs..

One of the songs they sung was Shalom Chavarim ..   the old Hebrew standard, sung as a round.

Peace out everyone.. Peace out my Sam..
-me