Cool Things

Thought I'd do a bit of an entry on things I find extremely cool (but not mentioned a lot in my other entries, ie, not archery or raptor-related) after an entry on things that were beyond un-cool. So here goes:

Toilets -- There's just something inherently interesting about these water-filled devices with pipes that bring water in and send water out. Maybe that's why I enjoyed some of the chemical engineering classes I took at Caltech and why I'm so fascinated with fluxes. I like to imagine mass-flow through the pipes and then going into one holding chamber for the reaction to occur and then being extruded into the next holding chamber for the next set of reactions. Now I'm thinking about nifty things like plug-flow reactors, batch reactors, constant-stirring tank reactors, and turbulent flow. And then thoughts of differential equations and steady-states also fill my mind. I also remember an old game, NetHack, where there was one variant where the character could do some cool things with toilets like poisoning their weapons by dipping them into the toilets. But really, toilets make for interesting thought experiments as far as fluid mechanics and differential equations go. And they also make for great analogies for developing any kind of flow model!

Multitools -- I like moving parts. And I like to be prepared for just about anything that may come up. A multitool, like a Gerber or a Leatherman, is something I'll almost never be without. The only times I won't have one on me are on an airplane (for obvious reasons) or when I'm swimming (but it'll be nearby). I always seem to run into a need to repair something and 95% of the time, the multitool will have the right tool in it to take care of it. All I'm missing on them are allen wrenches and pepper spray! Anyone want to try to design one that has those things too?

Mountain bikes -- The ultimate form of transportation for distances of 10 miles or less. I love the breeze in my face and the exercise I get from racing around. They're also very portable and generally comfortable. Only problem is that for some reason, the cops like to harass people on bikes if they're trying to save their own hides from all the aggressive vehicles, especially those darned short yellow buses and monster tanks full of children and being driven by people who I swear have the wits of fermented radishes.

Carnivorous plants -- They're all really cool, but my personal favorite are in the genus Drosera, or sundews. I love watching bugs get caught in the sticky leaves because they mistook the glistening red droplets for the local bug buffet. It's even cooler watching them struggle to get free when they realize that the bug buffet is hard to get out of and then watching them get wrapped up in the leaf and slowly get suffocated and digested until all that's left of the bug is an indigestible, chitinous exoskeleton. I get a serious kick out of waving a fairly large Drosera capensis (Cape sundew) around a cloud of Drosophila (fruit flies) and then watching the plant feast on the little bastards. Dionea (Venus flytrap) is also really cool to watch, although not quite with the same glee as with the Drosera. I like watching some arthropod crawl into these traps and getting munched on. I'd love to see a good-sized carnivorous plant catch something larger than the standard arthropod, like a mouse or something.

There's a lot more cool things, but I'll save them for future posts!