Coincidentally, my brother Paul forwarded me a detailing of how one can measure the speed of light with a tray of mini-marshmallows!  Check it out at this Science Blog written by theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel.  This sharp-fingered fellow (if you view his blog you will see what I mean) goes on to tout a marshmallow-made diorama that ‘peeps’ recent claims of particles going faster than the speed of light.

That leads me to puffing up my daughter Emily, who achieved the “peeple’s choice” award in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press Ninth Annual Marshmallow Peeps Diorama Contest.  She and two of her closest peeps produced The Mupeeps Take Minnepeepolis.  It looks very much like the view out of my window from Stat-Ease headquarters east of downtown Minneapolis.

By the way, my favorite Muppets are Bunsen and Beaker.  See them demo their invention of fireproof paper here.  At the Muppets Lab one should always be prepared with fresh marshmallows on a stick. I advise going for two at a time. o——<8

Meanwhile (reported on page 44), elsewhere on Gull Lake (far from the 25,000 holes, I hope), Grand View Lodge offered the ideal meeting place for getting away from the office.  See this report from our local CBS television affiliate—you will be amazed.

Sadly it seems that spring is nearly sprung so we must now endure 6 months of warm weather before the fun can begin again.

*Full disclosure: My daughter Emily is Graphic Designer for the production of this publication by Tiger Oak Media of Minneapolis.

But never mind that, I want to pass along some results from another of this younger set, Tracy Lenz, on a more mundane aspect of drinking beer—achieving just the right head of foam on the pour.  For a graduate class in industrial engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) taught by DOE-guru Doug Montgomery, she used Design-Expert® software to experiment on foam height. A local microbrewer suggested that Tracy’s project team study keg pressure, temperature at keg and using Biofoam to make the brew more ‘sudsy’.  The team included two very different beers in the same experiment design, which turned out to be problematic for modeling, so let’s concentrate on one—an American red ale.*

It turns out that red ales foam readily so they need no encouragement with Biofoam.  Take a look at this response surface plot from the ASU study.  Figuring on 2 centimeters of foam as a good head puts the sweet spot (shaded green) at the no biofoam (-1) side with pressure needed to be set low (-1).  This result is achieved only if temperature is maintained at low level.

So there you go—a vital problem (especially for graduate-engineering students) solved.  Just one catch though—how you pour the beer into the glass may be the biggest factor for achieving a good head.  Here again the next generation comes to my rescue, for example last summer at an outdoor reception that featured a beer wagon with my favorite on tap: Lift Bridge Beer Company’s Farm Girl Saison ale.  My glass foamed over no matter how I positioned it under the tap.  It turns out that the trick is pouring along the side and then at just the right moment straightening up the glass while turning off the flow.  See what I mean via this Youtube video.  I found it easier just to stand by the beer wagon with an empty pint and a forlorn look until one of the younger fellows took pity on me.  Cheers!

*I learned from one of my sons that an ale ferments at the top, whereas a lager ferments at that bottom.  This is just one of many differences that are detailed by this beer-faq.

It turns out that this is a practical test of rum to ensure it hasn’t been watered down by a ne’er-do-well hornswoggler, as you can see in this video by experimental archaeologist Jeff Lindow.  After watching this, I decided not to try this at home as it would no doubt shiver my timbers.  However, if it gets cold enough this winter, I might consider a swig of this gunpowder-infused Man O’War rum.  Yo ho ho!

Another client of Stat-Ease, Stratasys, also offers rapid-prototyping machines, but they make use of another technology called fused deposition modeling (FDM) – explained nicely by this schematic from Ferris State University.  I’ve seen these machines at work.  They run from plastic line similar to what’s used in a weed whacker. Based on a computerized blueprint, this material (suitable for functional parts, not just prototypes) is melted layer-by-layer into complex shapes.  Check out this full-scale turboprop engine produced by FDM.

The next step will be the development of machines that can make whatever you need out of whatever you happen to have nearby that can be shoveled in the hopper.  Then people who really want to get away from the crowds can rocket off to any old unoccupied planetismal and set themselves up with house and home.

“It’s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material – rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids – process them inside and produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.”

- Physicist Theodore Taylor (1978)

The first one details Martin Griffiths, a math lecturer at U Manchester, “trying to pull out of the drive” (pp 89-91).  This poor fellow must wait upwards of 2 minutes just to get on the road from his property.  Imagine the frustration of a somewhat random stream of cars blocking your way out.  Then, just as you see a gap, another car comes along to fill it.  Griffiths provides a very impressive formula for average wait time based on a Poisson distribution. He factors in the average number of cars passing by as well as the time taken to pull out into the flow.  The bottom line: It does not pay to be timid. You’d best mind the gap (inside joke for anyone who’s traveled London’s subways) and make a move!

The second study* comes from a biker, Dr. Jeremy Groves, who spends up to 2 hours or more commuting to his work at Chesterfield Royal Hospital.  Thankfully his ride gets considerably shorter in summer when he needn’t wear baggy outerwear, which creates a real drag (Groves estimates 30% more wind resistance).  This cycling enthusiast bought a new bicycle recently – one that featured a carbon frame, as opposed to the steel one he’d bought second-hand.  Being a fan of randomized (“randomised” in UK spelling) trials, Groves completed a series of runs with one or the other of his bikes – measuring the times taken for the ride from his home in Sheffield to his work at hospital.  Seeing his run chart starting off very raggedly at the high end in January, I transcribed only the latter 28 runs (14 of each) for the chart shown.  Obviously from the overlap in the least-signficant-difference (LSD) bars the results remain inconclusive.  (If you have trouble seeing this, click the graph for a larger view of it.)  The difference is less than 1 minute in favor of the very costly carbon-framed bicycle.  Given a 3.5 minute standard deviation under summer conditions, it would take 400 total runs (200 each) to resolve whether this is a true advantage, according to a power calculation I did with the aid of Design-Expert® software.  Dr. Groves has moved on to another experiment for this summer – he plans to randomly load a 4 kg weight on his bicycle (the carbon one, I presume).  Aside from being a glutton for punishment, I suppose this fellow wonders how much it slows him down when he must carry in his laptop.

* “Bicycle weight and commuting time: A randomised trial,” pp95-96.

Of course I had to try this for myself.  However, not being one who ever leaves well-enough alone, I tried light beer (Miller, bottled in clear glass) side by side with the recommended Corona – two of each.  Could this be a factor (light versus regular brew)?  After being careful to wait at least 3 hours for the quartet of brews to super-cool, I brought them out for a family party.  Two of the beers crystallized when smacked on our kitchen cutting board, but the other two did not.  Here’s a twist, though: None of the bottles were uncapped first, so how does that gibe with the PV-nerd’s explanation?

Alas, one of the light beers crystallized and the other did not – ditto for the Corona, so my results, albeit semi-successful, were indeterminate on the issue of light vs regular brews.   The good news is that we salvaged two bottles of beer (the frozen ones become undrinkable).

Feel free to weigh in with your theories and experimental results from this beer trick.  One thing I learned from my first try – a lot more beer would be good, along with a walk-in freezer (or the backyard in mid-winter).

By the way, be careful with the green jelly beans – they cause acne (p<0.05) according to this exhaustive statistical-study of every available color.

The Junk Charts blog, one of my favorites, gave a generally favorable review of the “Nat-Geo” name chart, but they recommended an even-better one – the Baby Name Wizard, which plots the popularity of first names over the last 130 years. 

I am expecting my first grandchild this summer, so there’s been lots of talks about names lately, thus this statistical chart caught my eye.  You, too, may find it interesting. I suggest you start by hovering mouse over the widest streams (blue for boy, pink for girl) at the left (John, Mary, etc)* and then see how their popularity changes over the past 130 years.  A tip: Click the graph to see trends for any given name, or enter it directly.  Press “x” to get out of any specific name field (or type in another).  I typed in my name and saw an explosion of popularity in mid-20th century, but now it’s fading away.  The same holds true for my sister Nancy and my wife Karen – we all get tagged as baby-boomers straight away.

If you think there’s any chance of your name ranking in the top 1,000 for popularity in the USA at any time since 1880, type it in.  How do you do, _______ (<= name here)?