First, however, some background. I’m a chemist (or used to be one), so I’m a super nerd when it comes to relativistic chemistry. It turns out that as elements get heavier, relativity becomes more and more important. As a theoretical chemist, one thing you learn quickly is that if you don’t take relativity into account, your calculation will be way off.

Without relativity, for example, my thesis work on IBr- had to take into account relativity. Iodine is a heavy element so relativity is important, so, I had to consider it. I did this the easy way: I let others take care of it! I used what’s called an ECP that sort of built in the relativity without my needing to worry.

I can hear you saying: so what, IBr isn’t that important and I’ve never heard of it. But, let’s say you want to calculate the what color gold metal should be or what mercury should be like at room temperature. Without relativity, gold looks like silver and mercury is a solid. With relativity, gold is gold and mercury is a liquid.

So now to the main event: why your car battery only works because of relativity. Couple  weeks ago, a paper came out in Physical Review Letters (PRL, 106, 018301 (2011) if you have access to it) by Pekka Pyykkö and collaborators called “Relativity and the Lead-Acid Battery”.  This paper uses relativistic quantum chemistry to model the reactions in a lead-acid battery (like the 12V battery in your car) and it found something rather amazing. Of the voltage generated by a lead-acid cell, which is ~2.1 V (there are 6 cells in a 12 V car battery), fully 1.7-1.8 V is due to relativistic effects. 80-85% of the voltage in a car battery is there because of relativity!

As the authors note in the paper, while the lead-acid cell has been known for 150 years, this paper is the first doing ab initio, or first principles, calculations, compared to the more modern lithium-ion cells of which ab initio calculations abound. The major reason for this is that lead is heavy and a heavy atom is a hard atom to calculate.

(They also show that without relativity, it’d make for a crap battery. They do calculations with lead’s lighter brother tin and find that a tin-acid battery wouldn’t be worth it’s weight in, well, tin.)

I just love it when something I studied, I’ve used, I know about has such a cool result like this.

Yours in NERD!,

Matt

First, when you sign up, you get to go to a training course a month or two before the election. There you get a crash course in being an official. It’s a lot of information coming at you. In the end, I took away two things. First, a packet of information I read a few times before the big day, and second, “When in doubt, ask the Chief.” The latter dictum ended up being the credo for Election Day.

Speaking of, soon enough comes Election Day.  In Fairfax County, the polls are open from 6 am to 7 pm.  Since we have to set up the machines and get ready, you report to the polling place at 5 am. Which means waking up around 3:30, 4…early even for this early bird. Also, once you are at the polling place and sworn in, you cannot leave. Period. So that means you bring food and have a long day ahead of you.

So, on Tuesday, I got to the middle school I’d be working at at 4:45 am and met our Chief. The Chief, in what I’m sure will amaze the no one reading this, is the head official and the “boss” for all intents and purposes. After a few minutes, the custodian lets us into the building and we get to work. Like in many polling places at schools, we are in the library and when we get there, I find that the room has already been rearranged by the Chief and Assistant Chief. Nice, no table hauling.

But once in the room, the day begins. First, the oath, before we can touch any election machines or ballots or anything, we are sworn in as election officers. We also get a sweet button! (Sadly, it’s returned at the end of the day…dang it.) After being sworn in, I learn I’m helping the Asst Chief with setting up and opening the WinVote touchscreen machines.  This involved a long procedure/checklist. Everything was sealed up and all seals were accounted for and recorded. Then after doing the origami-like manipulations to set them up, we then had to make sure all the machines started at zero.  This involved each machine (there were three) printing out a long tape that assures that every ballot issue and race has zero votes before the day begins.

Soon poll opening time approached.  In the elections there are essentially three jobs to do. The first I’d be doing is working with the WinVote machine. I was one of the people directing voters to either the machines or to the booths where they could fill out a paper ballot (both are options in Fairfax). If they choose electronic–something about 90% of voters did–then I was one of two people who would take a smartcard and activate the machine.

Once activated, most people have used the touchscreen machines before and power through the ballot (though not always quickly…some read the issues carefully for the first time there). A good portion though aren’t quite comfortable with the tech yet, and it was also my job to help where I could. Usually the Asst Chief who was helping did that and did it well. I helped a few times and was…less good at it.  The main problem is that, technically, I have to help the people without actually looking at their ballot; it is a secret ballot after all.

It was also at this point in the day that I was most frustrated. I worked the WinVote machines for about the first five hours.  There was a bit of a rush of voters when the polls opened, but since there were two of us working the machines then, it was manageable. Soon, though, the Asst Chief had to be called away. Usually this was when someone who couldn’t come in needed to vote which meant one of the machines had to go out to them in the car. (By the way, never knew this was possible…and it happened 4 or 5 times!) When this happened, or the AC was needed by others because the Chief was busy, well, it is not easy for one person to manage the voting of 90% of everyone coming in.

Gah.

But, I made it. Sure, I cursed my fellow officials at times for not leaping to help as fast as they could, but, eh. Besides, working the machines meant I got to experience the best part of voting from the other side: I gave out The Stickers!  Woo!

After 5 or so hours of this, the Chief decided it was a good time to switch up jobs. My next post was working the pollbooks. I was then one of the people that greets you and looks you up in the book to make sure you can vote. It turns out that the pollbooks are probably the most important part of the election. Why? Well, they are the record that shows how many voters came in to vote. When someone comes in, I’d say this person is voter 210 (in A-K) and then cross an X through the number.

At the end of the day, this must match the number of ballots cast. About once an hour (or more if more voters came) the Chief would come to the books to make sure that the count we had matched the ballot count on the machines and the ballot scanner. If they didn’t, his hair got a little whiter. Unfortunately, every so often it wouldn’t match. It took a while each time, but usually we’d track it down to either assigning a duplicate number or skipping one in the book that was X’d out. (Note: I must admit that during my 4 hours on the books, I didn’t mess up. Woo! I mainly thank the Official who showed me the technique she was using.)

It was also while working the polls that I put to use the credo “When in doubt, ask the Chief.” When someone’s name wasn’t in the book, I asked the Chief. When their address didn’t match their ID, I asked the Chief. When someone said they needed to help their relative translate the ballot, I asked the Chief. When a voter didn’t want to present ID, I asked the Chief.

As the day wore on, I moved to the final job, working the paper ballots and the optical scan machine. This was the least stressful job, mainly because there were fewer people choosing paper ballots. It was cool watching that scanner take the ballots. Shooop! And I got to give out The Stickers again!

Finally, 6:45 came around and the Chief announced “The polls will close in 15 minutes” and then at 7:00, boom!, polls closed. Everyone still in line at that point could vote, and so they did. When all the voters were done, the doors were locked and we then entered the counting phase. As I helped open the WinVote machines, I also helped close them. This involved printing out the results (multiple times) and extracting the wee USB drive with a backup record of the votes. These results were then combined with the paper ballots and the pollbooks consulted to make sure the number of voters equaled the number of ballots. And they did! When all was done, I had the fun job of calling in our precinct’s results to the County Election Board. So, if you saw the results for Fairfax County, my voice reported some of those.

After a bit more time rearranging the tables so the library was returned to library spec, we were able to leave…at 8:50 pm. That is indeed a 16-hour day. A long exhausting 16-hour day. But it was worth it because it was for voting!

I woke up this morning at 5 am, got down to the Basin around 6:30 am…and it was crowded!  Looks like I wasn’t the only one thinking of this.  I finally left around 9:30 so I got in a good 3-hour, 5-mile walk.  Wow, 0.6 mph. BLISTERING SPEED!

Hmm…ya know, getting up voluntarily at 5 am on a Saturday…gee…why *am* I single?

I know, I know, not that exciting, but, man, is it fascinating! The object of my focus this afternoon is the LA Public Library’s online Menu Collection. Just give it a whirl and I dare you not to be sucked in.  Marvel at what ten bucks would buy you 30 years ago compared to today.

I’m not the first to find this site, but I’m damn sure not going to be the last!

My confusion is…why? Why couldn’t I just pour it into a half-filled tank and then fill the tank? It’s still one bottle of additive in one full tank.

My first thought is that maybe the additive isn’t very miscible, so it needs the physical action of the fueling to help mix? But, really, a fuel additive that isn’t miscible in fuel?

I suppose the real answer is that some yahoo had some overfilled gas tank and then added a bunch of flammable hydrocarbons to it and boom or something.

I dunno. Just irked me. Feel like they could just put “add to one full tank of gas”. But, well, we are the culture that came up with “Careful: Contents Are Hot” on a cup of coffee and all.

Decided to take the Metro which, surprisingly, got me there early. That is pretty rare in my experience when you take a long Metro journey on the weekend. So, I sat around waiting for the expo to open reading Report from Iron Mountain. (It’s an interesting read if you’ve never picked it up. I’ve always wondered if someone could translate it into today’s political landscape.)

Then, huzzah!, the doors opened to us attendees and the scrum commenced.  I did my usual pre-buying journey up and down the aisles seeing what was there. After the first go-around, started buying and talking.

I’ll try to get pics or links to the things I bought up soon, if I don’t have them now.  First item was a “She Blinded Me With Library Silence” totebag from the estimable Jeph Jacques. Or well, bought from the inestimable Cristi as Mr Jacques seemed to be a bit busy/overwhelmed with sketch requests.

I also grabbed “DAR! Volume One” from Erika Moen who was gracious, beautiful, and who looked pretty much exactly like she does in her comic!

I got to meet R Stevens and picked up a copy of “CRUSH ALL HU-MANS!“. He seemed happy to be paid in ones (which were gathered as change as I made my way over to his table). I can only imagine the sheer number of twenties that are gathered each day at SPX…

Let’s see, I picked up a cool graphic biography of Niels Bohr. I’m assuming cool as I haven’t read it, but, come on, Niels Bohr! And a variety of cool minicomics. The type that are one or two bucks and sometimes more amusing/distressing/amazing than the more mainstream comics on offer at SPX.

Fun day! If you’ve never been to SPX, I highly recommend it. I just wish I had more money to buy more books. But, luckily, most of what I saw is available on internets of various types, so I’m sure they’ll be finding their way to me soon enough.

That’s right, tomorrow night I am going to a lecture on Frank Lloyd Wright at the Pope-Leighey House, one of his Usonian houses on display here in Virginia (moved to the site of Woodlawn).

The lecture is being given by Thomas Schmidt, Director-Emeritus of Fallingwater, usually considered Wright’s masterpiece–and rightly so. (One of these days I’m finally going to tour Fallingwater, though its distance from me is just enough that I’d probably have to make a weekend of it. It’s about a 4-hour drive from DC to southwest PA, which isn’t bad, but if I tried to do it in one day…hoo boy, that’s a lot of driving.)

When I saw this come up, I thought it’d be fun to attend.  As an architecture fan, and a fan of Wright, it was a no-brainer.  Wright is not my favorite architect (that’d be Niemeyer followed by Salmona–discovered at an exhibit I attended here in DC), but he is way up there.  I’ve always had a dream of living in a Wright house, even if I’d be whacking my head on every doorframe and ceiling. The “if I had all the money in the world” Wright house for me? The Ennis House, Wright’s textile block apotheosis, which would be a money pit to restore, but it’d be worth it.

And, yep, give me textile block over the Prairie or Usonian Wright works. (I also like his commercial works like Johnson Wax more than most of his homes.) In fact, that’s probably why I’m so enamored with Salmona, who was a master of using bricks. Something about that sort of modernism-meets-solid-stone that lights my imagination and wonder.

Still, classes!  As a resident of Fairfax County, I’m looking over the Fairfax County ACE courses.  I’ve looked at them all, and most of  them sound cool, but FC is a big county and I’m not really looking to have to drive 1 hour in rush-hour traffic after work to get to a class.  So, I’m focusing on ones near me (Annandale-ish area, the Plum Center is ideal).

To that end, I’ve identified two courses that I might do.  First is Lebanese Cuisine: Vegetarian and the other is Indian Cuisine: Vegetarian. Very veggie of me, eh?

I’m also looking at Thai Cuisine as well, but it conflicts with the Lebanese course. I suppose right now I’m trying to decide, do I do Lebanese or Thai?

So, my two or so readers and my 5603242237 Russian spammers, which one should I choose?  (I thought about doing a poll, but polls on WordPress aren’t as easy as I thought so I said screw that. It’s relaxing weekend time!)

Yours in student,

Matt

However, I am going to assume the best! And what might my weekend entail? Museum! Yay! In fact, two museums! Double yay!

The first one I want to hit up is the National Geographic Society Museum. They currently have two exhibitions I want to look at. One is “Lions and Leopards” by the famous Jouberts. Maybe you don’t recognize the name, but you’d recognize their photos, I bet! The other exhibition is “Kodachrome Culture” which celebrates “the American tourist in Europe” and their photos using Kodachrome film. It also is a bit of a tribute to Kodachrome which Kodak recently stopped production on.

The other museum I plan to visit is the OAS’ Art Museum of the Americas. They have an exhibit on Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona, master of the red brick. I’m a bit of an architecture nut, so I’m excited about this one.

In fact, it isn’t my first architecture exhibit at the OAS. They had a Niemeyer exhibit there last year which was great as well. But then, I love love love Niemeyer.  One of my current goals in life is to go to Brasília and view all of Niemeyer’s works there. Ahh…perchance to dream.

Other than the museum, the weekend is probably normality. Library, grocery store, Trader Joe’s…

Yours in weekend,

Matt

If you like, the whole of Lilavati’s Daughters can be found at the IAS’ website here. Some of the autobiographical essays that I’ve read–and I haven’t read them all–are just great.  So good, in fact, that I’m thinking I might buy the book (available from Scholar Without Borders). Sure there is a slight (okay, whopping) premium over the base price of Rs300 to get it here, but $25 is worth a great book. Plus, I suppose I see buying a book like this as a show of support for women in science.

Even if they are all usually smarter than me. Damn you, nerds of the fairer sex!

Yours in women in science,

Matt