I recently joined the gym at Yale so I could get back into working out during the winter. In order to get to the fitness center, I have to walk a sign designating the area behind the sign as the Brady Squash Center, but I couldn’t see inside. Until I looked it up, I had no idea what Squash was, other than some sort of indoor sport that people at Yale play. Wikipedia defines Squash as “a racquet sport played by two players (or four players for doubles) in a four-walled court with a small, hollow rubber ball.” Sounds like Racquet ball to me, which is a sport I’ve played before, but the more I read I found that there are some key differences between the sports:
- Racquet Size (max of 22 inches in Racquet ball, 27 inches in Squash)
- Ball Size (2.25 inches in Racquet ball, ~1.5 inches in Squash
- Ball Elasticity (Squash ball is less elastic than the Racquet ball)
- Court Dimensions (Squash is a smaller (32×21 ft vs 40×20 ft in Racquet ball)
Read more about the Differences Between Squash and Racquetball on www.differencebetween.net.
Categories: Learn One Thing
Tagged: racquet ball, squash, Yale
I recently bought an iPhone 3GS and if you’re not familiar with it, it basically relies on the whole screen as an input device (typing, touching to select programs, dialing numbers). There are no buttons. This means that it’s easy to leave fingerprints on the touch-screen, especially if you’re fingers are greasy from sweat, etc… Despite this fact, I noticed that as I let the phone sit for a period of time, all of the finger prints/smudges disappeared or evaporated. I had a feeling there was some technology involved here, as it looked like a typical glass screen, but didn’t hold finger prints like one. Today I decided to learn how this is possible, and found that the iPhone screen is coated with a special oleophobic polymer, a plastic that human skin oil doesn’t adhere to very well.
Gizmodo, a gadget blog, enlisted Bill Nye the Science Guy to explain how it works:
The Applers were able to do this by bonding this oleophobic polymer to glass. The polymer is an organic (from organisms) compound, carbon-based. The glass is nominally inorganic, silicon-based… solid rock. The trick is getting the one to stick to the other. Although it is nominally proprietary, this is probably done with a third molecule that sticks to silicon on one side and to carbon-based polymers on the other side. Chemical engineers get it to stay stuck by inducing compounds to diffuse or “inter-penetrate” into the polymer. The intermediate chemical is a “silane,” a molecule that has silicon and alkanes (chains of carbon atoms).
Pretty neat huh? I can’t imagine how dirty and smudged the iPhone 3GS screen would be without this technology. I wonder if the new Droid phone (a new iPhone competitor) or any other touch screen phones have this same technology? If they don’t they’re at a serious disadvantage to the iPhone 3GS!
Categories: Learn One Thing
Tagged: iphone
Today I, along with the rest of the world, learned that Google has created a Dashboard page that you can log into and see all of the Google products that you use and some meta data about the data you have saved with Google.
This is really handy for seeing all the different Google products you use (if you’re a heavy Google user like me) and keep a handle on the data you store in the cloud with Google.
I noticed a few products that I used once or twice to try out and haven’t used since. This tool allows me to see this fact and go into the application and remove any data that I don’t want shared any more.
For example, it shows how many public Picasa web picture albums I have. If I don’t want them to be public any more, or never did in the first place, but they ended up that way because I wasn’t aware the albums were being made public by default, I can click through to Picassa and adjust the settings.
Go to google.com/dashboard now to see all the applications you’re using and the data you trust google with, all in one place.
Categories: Learn One Thing
Tagged: dashboard, google
I was reading an article on the New Haven Register (local newspaper) today about the election results from yesterday’s Election Day and it appeared to me that they had some sort of unique position that you could run for here in New England called the First Selectman. I had never heard of this office before but based on the article it seemed to be a city level position.
I turned to my trusty Wikipedia and found out that in Connecticut, the First Selectman “is the chief executive and administrative officer of most towns with the Selectmen-Town Meeting form of government.” Most towns have a Board of Selectmen of which the First Selectman is the leader, which is the executive arm of government in many New England towns.
Basically what this boils down to is the First Selectman is like the Mayor and the Board of Selectmen is like a city council or other executive organization for a city/town.
Categories: Learn One Thing
Tagged: city government, selectmen