Fudge in an exercise in seeing how small you can get sugar crystals. You do this by interfering with crystallization by mixing multiple sugar types, letting the fudge get as close to solidifying without touching it and inducing crystal formation, and finally by beating the hell out of the fudge after it’s cooled.

The fudge I wanted to make is a maple walnut fudge because
1) it tastes like Vermont
2) sugar is a cheaper input per pound than chocolate

I generally prepare double batches as baked goods scale and I like to feed people. Normally, this saves time, normally. The recipe called for the syrup to be brought to 240 degrees and at 230 degrees the mixture boiled over. I transferred the mix to another pan after cleaning up a lot of burned sugar I began heating it again. At 230 degrees the mixture boiled over and I thought “why did that happen? I heated it slowly” not remembering that heating rate in no way changes boiling point.

Good job, Terry.

I poured the mixture into a very high stock pot and boiled it directly to 240 degrees. Good thing I went to school for chemistry.

I’m reading a book on the history of quantum physics and never put together that Ernest Rutherford, discoverer of the nucleus, was from New Zealand.  I knew James Clark Maxwell was the consumate Scotsman and once used a bagpipe to save a prized sheep in a combination of wonderful stereotypes.  Anyway, so this kiwi discovers the nucleus, I really hope he yelled “Crikey!” when he interpreted the results of his gold foil experiment.  Likewise, I really hope Chadwick shouted “bully!” when he discovered the neutron.

An activity I enjoy doing in Engineering merit badge is the neutral buoyancy contest.  Scouts receive a collection of wires, cork pieces, and washers and attempt to create a device that’s neutrally buoyant, failing that, one that falls the slowest.  Today’s youth are quite clever but sometimes fail to grasp how the challenge works, like when I said the device must be free-floating and can’t touch the container, one kid thought that making a wire hook on the side was “free floating” or another that made a compression pin that held the device fast against the sides of the container.

Groups would drops their devices in the test column and watch in wonder thinking they’d reached neutral buoyancy as the downward force of gravity and upward force of Brownian motion and a density difference cancelled out.  “Terry, come quick while it’s balanced!”  If it’s neutrally buoyant now, it should be neutrally buoyant 10 seconds from now.  The containers slowly grew cloudy from many unwashed hands and the children learned the importance of contaminating ones test environment.  These budding astrologers were also quick to blame the pseudoscientific ,from air bubbles stuck to the side of containers to my mere presence one kid saying “you did that” followed by the angry glare.  I’m not sure if there were commenting on my carriage or my ownership of an anti-physics gun.

The winning group fell 14 inches in 30 seconds and proved that kids could be competative about anything as the gaggle of winning 12-year olds went over to older kids and started chanting “In your face!  In your face!”  I imagine Nobel laureats have a similar ritual.

I’ve been reading up on modern physics since camp ended to try and get back into the swing things.  After finally figuring out math of Hawking Radiation and how holographic information theory works i broached books with fewer pictures and more equations.

I got most of these texts from the library and as the difficulty level increased the page on which the previous reader left their bookmark decreased.  Each one of these passes left me giddy and reinvigorated and probably helped me finish in a few cases.

I imagine I’m not the only person who gets this feeling of triumph from beating someone else at reading.  I think we should sprinkle fake bookmarks through children’s books as a way to encourage reading and through more advanced works to reward adults for finishing legitimate literature.

For the last day of IH 0051, my Asian instructor told us how the western paradigm of science failed to explain a number of things that could be done by people.  One of his examples was how one could draw energy from the Earth Mother to grant people strength.  This demonstration started with me sitting in a chair and three men and the instructor trying to lift me just using two fingers.  They failed as the instructor stated, but after a few minutes of meditation they tried again.  I thought they were going to succeed until I heard the first grunt of pain and felt myself falling onto the floor.  It appears that Eastern meditation and the Earth Mother simply can’t overcome the powerful combination of a fat white man and physics.

For the last day of IH 0051, my Asian instructor told us how the western paradigm of science failed to explain a number of things that could be done by people.  One of his examples was how one could draw energy from the Earth Mother to grant people strength.  This demonstration started with me sitting in a chair and three men and the instructor trying to lift me just using two fingers.  They failed as the instructor stated, but after a few minutes of meditation they tried again.  I thought they were going to succeed until I heard the first grunt of pain and felt myself falling onto the floor.  It appears that Eastern meditation and the Earth Mother simply can’t overcome the powerful combination of a fat white man and physics.