How Many Computer Operating Systems are in Your Home?

I often point out to my kids how lucky they are.  I didn't have a computer in my home until I was about 8 years old, an Apple IIc.  My Dad would bring the portable computer from work home on occasion and we were able to play a Centipede like game.  But that thing was as big as a suitcase.  The Apple IIc was sleek, it had a 10" monitor (although some of my friends had a monitor up to 13") and we could play games like Oregon Trail and Loderunner.  Oh yeah, and we could keep track of our allowance and write school reports.  It was awesome!

Fast forward to today.  I have probably gone through a dozen computers in my life.  Currently (considering computers, laptops, and tablets) there are 6 working computers in my home all far more powerful than that Apple IIc was. Can you imagine telling Isaac Asimov in 1960 that 50 years from then, multiple computers in homes would be common?  He would laugh at you as if you were talking poppycock (I had a book about the using the slide rule that he wrote where he specifically states that there would never be computers in people's homes and that was one of the reasons to learn to use the slide rule).

Currently, three of my machines run Windows 7, one runs Windows XP, one runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and one runs Android Honeycomb. Four different operating systems.  But I have had more there was one time for about 6 months that I had 6 different operating systems in my home. That can get confusing as to where everything is.

Would You Believe that Flood Insurance is Bankrupt?

Yes, the National Flood Insurance Program is nearing bankruptcy. And any Tom, Dick, or Harry that has a modicum of knowledge about economics could see it coming from a long way off. The National Flood Insurance Program is for places that are too great of a risk for private insurers. Why is this?

Because they flood all of the time. Ergo, private insurers are smart enough to realize that these are sucker's bets. And private insurers don't take sucker's bets. But the government (in the name of compassion) is more than happy to. Well for 40 years the NFIP has been insuring these homes that shouldn't be insured, and rebuilding them, and rebuilding them again, and sometimes rebuilding them some more. I had a friend in Houston whose parents lived in a flood prone plain. Their home was flooded (as in you are sloshing through water on the first floor) at least three times over a 10-15 year period.

For those who may live in the desert, there is a reason why we don't live in the ocean and have more experience exploring the moon than the seas. Water tends to have the nasty habit of destroying things. Even "waterproof" things. Floods have the nasty habit of bringing water (and whatever else is in the vicinity - mud, oil, gasoline, algae, mold spores, etc.) into places we don't want it. All that stuff tends to destroy things faster than water does. Here's an experiment for you. Take a wet washcloth (not dripping wet, just more than damp) and leave it on your 14 step coated (including waterproof polyurethane top coat) dining room table (or chair, or china hutch, etc.) overnight. Be sure to have your Mom or Wife or Significant Other's permission before you do it. Now imagine that the table is immersed in water, for three days, and there happens to be some nice solvents mixed in as well.

My wife and I bought one rental property that also happened to be in the a flood plain. To be more precise, the very back corner of the lot (which dipped down towards the gulley behind it) was in the flood plain. The building itself was at least 50 feet away from the flood plain. The place had never flooded (and didn't have a basement to flood first either) in the thirty years it had been standing. Two houses on one side of it did not have any part of their property in the flood plain. Yet, because of the layout of the building and the street, both of them were actually closer to the boundaries of the flood plain than my structure was. Yet, I had to insure my property with flood insurance.

Flood insurance cost as much (if not a little more) than property insurance. I am sure that the private insurer loved my property since there was little to no chance of it ever flooding. Yet the premium I paid was the same as a building that sat inside the flood plain. Insurance companies make their money based on risk. They try to figure out how much risk there is to action A, and then charge you X amount of dollars to cover that risk (based on the amount of people they insure that are going to engage in action A). They are a great barometer for things like safety since unlike a government dictate that says action B is safe, the insurance company has to put its money where its mouth is.

So, they will give you discounts for wearing a seatbelt (a safe action), but don't give a rat's rear end about how many guns you have in your home (something that is irrelevant to safety). If however, you do want to insure your guns against theft or damage beyond what your home owners insurance will cover (or your jewlery, or rare baseball card collection), then the insurance company may want to know how it is stored (i.e. in the closet = higher premium, case hardened multi bolt safe = lower premium)

For human induced risks (automobile accidents, home owners insurance), they have a lot of data and aren't worried about losing money on the deal. There is not some huge rash of car accidents that is going to bankrupt some company. For environmental related risks (huricanes, flooding, forest fires, etc.) they are more leary because the risk is less predictable. Hence, premiums are higher, policies are more restrictive and in some cases they just won't insure you (hence the NFIP). For crackpot induced risks (war and terrorism), they don't insure at all. Not because the risk is high (it is actually miniscule), however the localized costs are unpredictable and range from 0 to ginormous. Its a lot easier to predict how much damage a Category 5 hurricane will do to a major metropolitan area than what the next terrorist attack will be.

NFIP on the other hand, really doesn't care about the costs. They probably charge something similar to what a private company would charge for a less risky place. If they charged what the market rate was (i.e. what would be needed so that the NFIP was not underwater), then no one would be able to afford to live someplace like that. This is not rocket science, its risk analysis. Every successful business (insurance or otherwise) has figure this out long ago. Why can't our government (frankly, I don't care why not, I don't want the government in that business anyway).

Profit is an excellent incentive to determine the cost of risk. The insurance industry has been doing it successfully for centuries. Government hasn't done it successfully yet.

But then some people will lose their homes.

Yep, and then we won't have to pay to rebuild them over and over and over again. We sold that property after a year of holding it. There was no positive cashflow, the flood insurance basically ate it all up.

48 Hours Or Else!?

British Petroleum has 48 hours to identify containment strategies. 48 hours or else ... what? The point of a deadline is to have some sort of consequence. Does the Coast Guard think that they are going to take over? After all, they have soooooo much experience stopping oil leaks.

Perhaps it is 48 hours or else we will beat them in soccer? Nah, that couldn't be it, we just tied them (besides, my guess is that most of the workers for BP in the Gulf are actually Americans - you know the whole multinational corporation thing).

What's the point of the unmentioned threat anyway? It is not like BP is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Usually, Obama saves his "or else" for crazy dictators bent on the destruction of the US. BP, well, they just want to sell us oil. It's not like they have been sitting on their butts doing nothing. Its not even like BP wanted to have a 100 million barrel oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico to begin with. Unfortunately, that is what we have.

Empty ultimatums (while at the same time trying to smooth things over with the homeland's head of state) won't stop the spill. It took 9 months to put out the oil fires and cap the wells after the first Iraq war, and that was on land. I don't seem to remember any ultimatums being given to speed up the process.

Engineering Packrats

I changed positions in my company recently and took over for an engineer who had been in his position for a couple of decades and basically was the industry guru for his field. In this respect, I feel rather inadequate as a replacement, but it also is a major challenge then to be successful following in the shoes of a giant.

One thing that I have noticed throughout my career is that engineers are natural packrats. The older generation are paper packrats and it can be evidenced by my current position. There are at least 4 filing cabinets of documents and notes that are for my position, carefully gathered and sorted by my predecessor. Unfortunately, besides being packrats, engineers also are obsessive/compulsive in the way that they organize things. And no two are alike.

This makes taking over an engineering position difficult. Besides being a newbie to this area, I now have to sort through, mentally catalog, and try to assimilate 100,000 pages of information that is in a filing system which a) I don't know, b) has no index to describe it, and c) more than likely is diametrically opposed to my own OC tendencies.

I am a digital packrat though. I like to keep things electronically and throw out as much as I can. In my first job out of college, I was similarly dumped on with boxes of papers. I sorted through what I could, digitized much of it (using my own folder filing system) and then after 4 years boxed up the rest for the next guy to deal with (I still got emails for about 4 years from my successors to ask me to explain something about the documentation).

At my current position, there are two computer folders that I consider mine. The first day on the job, I literally spent 5 hours rearranging the folder and documents in them. I was half expecting some gnashing of teeth the next day as some of the other engineers had lost links to important information. But nothing. My rearrangement went unnoticed.

I cleaned off two shelfs of one of the bookshelfs by getting rid of the empty binders (that should give me enough room to bring the books from home that I may use at some point in my career). Oh yeah, and I have a big schematic on one wall that I spent a couple of hours color coding. Engineers can't get over the childhood urge to color everything.

Solar Storms are Going to Kill US!!! (Again...maybe)

Watch out for the new scare of solar storms. I seem to remember a scare of solar storms a couple of years ago. And a couple of years before that. In fact, I think it has something to do with El Nino or La Nina. Or maybe just the 12 year, 30 year, 524 year, or 12,113 year solar cycles.

Look, there is not a whole lot we can do to fight off the angry sun god. So far, none of the scares have wiped out civilization as we know it. While I understand that this could be the big one, I am not betting on it (because if you did, the solar storm would wipe out all communications, electronics, and set off nuclear warheads - your buddy is going to have bigger concerns than paying you back). Face it, if there is a solar storm that wipes out civilization as we know it, WE ARE SCREWED. Actually, I think that might be one of the definitions of "screwed."

Of course, you can always buy gold to help protect you in the event of a solar storm. It would probably make a nice protective blanket that would keep your electronics safe! After all, they use it on the visors of the space suit helmets.

A Primer on Electricity Generation

Most people in the United States take electricity for granted. Whenever we need something we simply plug it in and electricity magically powers whatever instrument we have. Having been in the energy business for my entire adult life, I thought I would write an introduction for the average person on where electricity comes from. Since the country is currently debating items that could drastically change how energy is produced in the US, it is important that people understand the basics how where electricity comes from. After reading this, you will probably know more about electricity production than 90% of the adults in America.

To begin let me start with what everyone does know about. Our homes. Most homes in America have two services of electricity: 240 Volt AC and 120 Volt AC. There are normally three wires that come into your home, two 120 volt wires and one ground wire. Large appliances like oven ranges, dryers, electric furnaces, and air conditioners use 240 volts, while all of the rest of your home uses 120 volts. The first thing to remember is don't ever try to plug a 120 volt appliance in a 240 volt outlet. For one, the plugs are different so it shouldn't work. Secondly, you are going to fry your appliance. If you do try to plug your 240 volt appliance in your 120 volt outlet most likely, you appliance won't work (it is not getting enough electricity), although it probably won't be permanently damaged.

AC stands for alternating current. This means that the direction of flow changes. In the US, we use 60 Hz or 60 cycles per second. So the direction of flow switches 60 times each second.

As an analogy, voltage can be looked at as pressure. Water pressure (from a water tower) pushes water through the pipes which is why it comes out when you turn the faucet on. Voltage pushes electrons (electricity) through the wires so that when you plug something in, it turns on. No voltage, no electricity. The other key term is amps or amperage. For the analogy, amperage is like the amount of electricity that is flowing. When a water faucet is off, there is pressure (voltage) in your pipes, but no water flow. When you turn the faucet on, you get water flow (amps).

Besides your normal appliances and lights, your doorbell runs on electricity as well. This is usually a lower voltage of around 12 volts. To do this, a transformer is connected to a 120 volt circuit. A transformer is a simple device that has two sets of windings, input and output. Based on the ration of loops per winding, will determine what voltage the output will be.

All of the electricity in your house flows in through a meter and a breaker box. The breaker box allows loads (lights, appliances, etc.) to be disconnected without affecting the rest of the house. The meter is where the electric company measures the amount of electricity you are using so that it can bill you.

Working backwards, the 120 volt lines that run to your house are probably coming from a transformer. As before, the transformer steps down the voltage from a higher voltage. Higher voltage allows for more efficient distribution of electricity over long distances. Depending on your locale, the power lines you see overhead could have any number of different voltages and more than likely there are several transformers in between your home and the major power lines. Major power lines have voltages in the neighborhood of 14,500 volts to 345,000 volts or more.

The major power lines run through substations. Substations are sort of like your breaker box for your home. They may include stepdown transformers, but they also include breakers and disconnects so that electricity can be cut off to different areas of a city or county without affecting the entire network. Neighborhood substations feed into major substations.

Major substations are like the clearinghouse for power. Major substations may be near a power plant or not. In all cases, major substations have incoming lines from several sources. Our modern reliance on electricity makes it impossible for a city to lose power just because one power plant is not producing electricity. It is not a matter of backup sources, all of the sources are the primary sources. To return to the water analogy, a city may have only one water tower, however it might use a dozen wells to fill that water tower. The residents of the city never notice that any of the wells are not working as long as the water tower remains full. The major difference, is that a water tower is storing water, electricity in the electrical distribution system is either used or not created. (More on that later.)

Major substations are fed by power plants. Besides some solar power plants (which account for less than 1% of all electricity production in the US), electricity at a power plant is created by a generator. A generator is a machine that rotates magnets passed wires (or wires past magnets). This creates electricity (you can generate your own electricity with a magnet and a piece of copper wire - but don't plan on running anything from it). Electricity and magnetism are related. Electricity creates magnetic fields and magnetic fields create electricity. A generator uses rotational energy to create electricity from wires and magnets (a motor is the opposite, it uses wires and magnets to create rotational energy).

A quick word about solar plants. There are really two types, direct conversion and generator conversion. Direct conversion uses solar cells (like what is found on a calculator) to generate electricity. The materials on the solar cells produce electricity when light shines on them (conversion of visible light to electricity). Generator conversion types use a generator like any other power plant.

The generators are turned by a turbine. A turbine is another rotating machine that has blades attached to it. As a fluid (usually steam) passes over the blades, it causes the turbine to rotate (like a pinwheel in the wind) which turns the turbine. Hydroelectric dams use liquid water to rotate specially designed turbines. Wind generators use a wind turbine which is open to the environment because air is the fluid that is pushing the blades. But the blades on the windmill are connected to a generator. All other power plants (coal, gas, nuclear, solar) use the same type of turbine, and in some cases if a company (say GE) designed two different types of plants (say nuclear and coal) at the same time (say 1975), it is very possible that they have the exact same model of turbine and generator. So except for those solar and wind plants I already mentioned, from the turbine out to the electric distribution lines they are all the same (and in some cases exactly the same).

And since all of the electrical lines are interconnected, the electricity is all the same. In other words, lets say that you are a rabid environmentalist and want to get all of your electricity from wind power. If you have a wind turbine in your yard and your house is not connected to the grid, then congratulations. However, if your house is connected to the grid, then you are getting electricity that was made from coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, solar, and wind. There is no device you can put on your house that is going to filter out the "bad" electricity. 1 kilowatt of electricity from coal is indistinguishable from 1 kilowatt of electricity from solar.

So, why hasn't wind and solar energy taken off, in spite of promises that it would for the last 40 years? In a nutshell, the answer is energy density and reliability. (Coincidentally, the same issue that has kept the electric car from being the savior of mankind since the late 1800's). Energy density could be described as the amount of energy that can be derived from a certain volume. Wind and solar's energy density sucks rocks. Sure it is all over the world, however it is in such small amounts that huge tracts of land are needed to supply energy. For instance, an average size power plant is around 1000 MW. For a coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear plant all of the equipment can be located on 50 acres or less (with room to spare and build walking paths for the employees at lunchtime). A comparable wind or solar farm would need several thousand acres to produce the same electricity. Wind does have an advantage over solar in this case, because 95% of the land could still be used for farming or other uses.

Energy density has to do with the fuel itself. Nuclear has an extremely high energy density. 95% of the mass of nuclear fuel is made up of non-fuel (uranium 238 that isn't fissile, stainless steel, zirconium, and some other metals). In spite of this, a nuclear plant produces only a few hundred tons of waste each year (which includes the 95% of non-fuels in the fuel). Compared to a coal plant which produces millions of tons in ash alone.

As you can begin to see, every type of fuel has its tradeoffs. So reliability is coupled with energy density to determine what fuels we use to make electricity. We need electricity all day long, although in varying amounts. Simplified, there is a base load and a varying peak load. The base load is the minimum amount of electricity that is needed. Plants that produce baseload need to be the cheapest plants that can be continuously run. Since plants will always be shut down for maintenance on a periodic basis, there is little to no "extra" base load, unless a new plant is started up. Coal, nuclear and hydroelectric plants are the vast majority of this country's baseload. Coal and nuclear plants also cannot just be started and stopped at will. The process takes several hours to days.

Peak load is during those times (daytime, early evening) when more electricity is demanded because of industrial needs. In hot climates, the use of air conditioning can greatly affect the peak demand. Because this electricity is not needed at all times, certain peaking plants are used. Natural gas is the primary fuel for these plants. Gas turbines plants are basically glorified jet engines (really, really BIG jet engines). They can be started up rapidly, and are designed to go through lots of start stop cycles. Solar is a great option for peaking plants since it is available at the prime peaking times. Unfortunately, it is not predictably available at the peaking times. Cloud cover can decrease the effectiveness of solar power to near nothing, so any solar plant is going to have to be backed up by a gas turbine plant.

Wind is even less predictable than solar. While some areas have great wind resources, Mother Nature doesn't always cause the wind to blow like the average of the last 30 years. Sometimes it is significantly below that. And when the wind isn't blowing, there is still the electricity demand. So while wind and solar may someday provide up to 20% of the electricity we use, there will be another 20% of unused fossil fuel capacity just in case. Running two power plants (even though one is inactive) is more expensive than running one.

Red Light, Green Light!

Someone will always come up with something to cover a niche market. In this case, they are sort of inventing their own niche market. An electronic firearm that is automatically disabled if it is not near the corresponding wrist watch, a "safe" gun. I have a few problems with it.

1. A "safe" gun, is a term more commonly called a "safe queen." It is a firearm that because of its beauty or monetary value is never fired, but resides in your safe. It is brought out for show and tell, but nothing more. I don't own any "safe queens." I certainly don't begrudge someone who does. Everyone probably has a small fortune tied up in something that will never be sold. My is in coins.

2. $10,000 price tag. Alright, I am sure this is just the starting price and as the technology catches on it will come down in price. Right? Seriously, though, this is being marketed to law enforcement and personal security people. What law enforcement agency is going to spend $10,000 per firearm? Most common firearms used by law enforcement cost less than $1000. Besides, if I had $10,000 to spend on a firearm, I wouldn't buy a .22, even if it was gold plated. I would buy one of these.

3. .22 caliber. There is nothing wrong with .22 caliber. I own several and shoot more rounds of .22 than all others combined. That being said, I would only use .22 in a defensive situation if I had no other choice. Again, this is marketed to law enforcement and personal security. I would be that there are a total of ZERO law enforcement agencies that use .22 as their standard (or even backup) caliber. The vast majority (and by that I mean all) use .38 special, 9mm, .357, .40 S&W, or .45ACP (or one of their derivatives).

4. LED lights. This is designed so that if the firearm is near the watch, it is activated and a green light is lit. Otherwise a red light is lit. OK, for stoplights and electronics, green means on and red means off. For firearms, not so much. If you haven't looked at your manual safeties lately take a look. You will find that the safe position is white and the fire position is red. Every firearm manufacture that I know follows this method. Green is for camoflage. This tells me that people who actually use firearms probably had very little to do with its development. Not sure I want to trust someone like that with a weapon.

5. Electronic whiz bang stuff in a mechanical instrument. Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. Firearms are mechanical devices. The revolver was invented more than 150 years ago and is still in (very reliable) use today. Semi-automatic handguns were developed more than 100 years ago and we are still making some of the exact same models that were produced at the turn of the 20th century.

But, but, but, Reputo...you sound like you are anti-technological advancement. Uh, no. I happen to love a lot of technology. That doesn't mean to say that every technological advancement is good or worth spending our money on. No one complains that pencils are outdated and we continue to sell billions of them each year. Yet this technology (using carbon based substance to make marks on a plant based substance) has been in continuous use for more than 10,000 years. Before they used charcoal and wood, today we use graphite and paper. It is essentially the same. Mechanical pencils are nice, but in all honesty, they aren't as reliable as a regular wood pencil, can you imagine what would happen if someone came up with an electronic pencil?

The reason why firearms are so popular with law enforcement, military, hunters, sport shooters, and yes, even criminals, is because they go BANG each time you pull the trigger. If they don't do that reliably, then they are sold at a discount. Quality firearms go BANG whenever someone pulls the trigger, and they don't go BANG unless someone pulls the trigger. This company has produced a gun that goes BANG when someone pulls the trigger IF (and depending on your situation, that could be a big IF), there is a wristwatch nearby, AND IF the batteries are still working, AND IF none of the electronics have gone bad. And they want to charge a premium for it as well.

So, if you feel like wasting $10,000 on this paper weight, do you mind sending me a check as well?

Cannon Fodder - Applied Science

After reading A Brief History and Building a Cannon you should know that there is only one thing left to do. Actually use it. Well, I needed a fuse, and it turns out that the hobby shop doesn't sell the regular fuses anymore. They only have the electronic kind. I did find some online through a fireworks warehouse. You got to love the internet. You can buy anything online.

To begin the tests, I had to make certain that I wasn't going to blow myself up (a rather important step if you want to continue to have fun with cannons). I had built two combustion chambers (since I had two tubes of PVC), although I only assembled one in a cannon. The other was for cannon testing.

Over the course of a couple of evenings, I made some small fireworks displays in the backyard. I started with relatively little black powder (about a half a teaspoon) to see how much of a flame/ smoke it would create. I slowly built it up until I was igniting a full tablespoon of black powder. Then I tried it by covering the combustion chamber with a #10 can. Everything worked. And suprisingly, the neighbor kids either didn't notice that I was making big clouds of fire and smoke, or just didn't care.

My first thought was to test this out on Thanksgiving weekend. I was going to be down at my brother's place where there was plenty of open land. However, a combination of deer season (cannons tend to scare away deer, or so I've heard, I'm not a hunter and couldn't care less) and a broken fridge (he lives an hour from town and having a fridge die during a weekend when all of the family is in town is not fun) nixed the testing of the cannon. So it would have to wait until I had another opportunity.

That opportunity came on New Year's Day. What better way to ring in the new year than by firing off a home made cannon. I asked my wife if I could go test it in the afternoon and she consented. I figured that the cold weather (-5 degrees) and holiday would keep people away from the range. I didn't want anyone around in case something bad (like an explosion) happened. While I had tested out the combustion chamber in the backyard, this would be the first live test of the cannon.

For some crazy reason, there were actually half a dozen people at the shooting range. (Don't they know that it is freezing outside!) So I continued on driving down the road to the Shotgun range. I was sure no one would be dumb enough to be out shooting clays in this weather. I was right!

After setting up, I loaded the cannon with a half a tablespoon of black powder. For my shell (cannon ball), I used an empty can of peaches wound with duck tape to the same diameter as the barrel. So, for the first shot, it would be a very small charge, shooting out a very light (and non aerodynamic) shell. It took forever to light the fuse since the wind kept blowing the matches out. Finally, I saw the sizzle of the fuse, and ran back about 50 feet. While I wasn't expecting any negative consequences, I wasn't going to tempt the firearm gods.

Pfft! It sounded just like a 4th of July mortar firework. (Which makes perfect sense since it is basically the exact same thing minus the dazzling display of colors in the sky). The can flew out about 20 feet in the air and 10 yards down range. A big smile broke across my face. I had just built a working cannon with stuff you can get from a hardware store. Now, the fun was about to begin.

Just before Christmas, my kids cleaned out the basement and ended up with two trashbags full of stuffed animals that were not needed. Goodwill won't take them and I was thinking of sending them to fellow blogger JayG who loves to bayonet stuffed animals. But then I got a better idea. If bayoneting stuffed animals is an acceptable practice in the communist state of Massachusetts, then shooting them out of a cannon must be an acceptable practice in the slightly more free (we are still a May Issue state) land of Iowa!

So little teddy bear got to be the pioneering cannonaut! I used a full tablespoon of black powder and just stuffed the bear in the can. Pfft! A little louder this time and the teddy bear went sailing. About 20 yards. Not bad. One of the most satisfying things about a black powder cannon compared to an air cannon or even a flammable fluid cannon is the big puff of smoke. The wind was blowing perpendicular to the range of fire so after each shot there would be a nice 5-10 foot smoke cloud floating away.

A third time with a tablespoon and a half and a fourth time with two tablespoons. The teddy bear did not disappoint, each time going a little farther, until he peaked out at around 30 yards. I did notice that the can was going farther, about 40 yards. So, by my eighth shot I was practically frozen, the wind was blowing and the wind chill was about -30 (no, I am not exaggerating) and since I had to take off my gloves to light the fuse, my hands were numb.

I decided that my eight shot would be the final one for the day. I wanted to get some weight to the shell so that it would have more momentum (also less air resistance as I would fill up the can. At first I thought of packing the can with snow, but decided that it wouldn't really add that much weight, snow just doesn't weigh very much. While I was retrieving the can from the range, it hit me. I'm on a shotgun range and there are bound to be clays I could crush up into the can.

Sure enough, the people who use the shotgun range are about as good of a shot at flying clays as I am (which means not good at all!). In no time I had found a half dozen unbroken clays. I smashed them up into the can. Now it had some weight to it.

Three tablespoons of black powder in the chamber, then the can and the teddybear on top for good measure. I set the camera to continuous picture to be able to get multiple shots.

Pfft! Somehow my camera was timed perfectly to not only capture the teddybear in the early stages of flight but also the growing smoke cloud AND the two foot column of flame.

The teddy bear did a perfect spread eagle at the apex of his flight and traveled about 35 yards. The can continued on to about 65 yards.

I was giddy all the way home. In my mind I started planning what types of shells I am going to make and different combinations of powders to use. This was only a two foot cannon with a combustion chamber that is large enough for about a half cup of black powder (six or so table spoons). I think for the three foot cannon I'll make a combustion chamber that is twice that size. If anyone would like be to give a demonstration and a physics lesson to elementary, middle, or high school age kids, I'm ready. You can bet that the 4th of July will be a whole lot of fun at the Reputo Casa!

Cannon Fodder - Building a Cannon

Well, if you read Cannon Fodder - A Brief History you know where I got the inspiration to build a cannon. Why build a cannon? Because I can (and so can you). First off, there is nothing illegal about building a cannon. For the most part, federal law doesn't even classify them as firearms or destructive devices (even though they use black powder, a lead or other metal projectile, and shoot hundreds of yards).

Second, they are great teaching tools. Lessons in Materials science, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, etc. can all be taught in a hands on way. The two lessons that I remember most from high school physics were when we made dry ice bombs (try getting that into schools these days) and ignited methane bubbles. Sure many of the formulas and principles have been ingrained in my mind through later courses in college and hands on experience, but if you ask me what I remember about high school physics those are the stories I would tell you. Since my wife and I homeschool our children, we have a lot of latitude in how they are taught. And since my wife says that I am in charge of science, it is my duty as a father and a teacher to provide the best education possible. Why play the cannon game where you lob shells at an opponent on the computer, when you can do it in real life. So in essence, its for the children!

Third, cannons are FUN!. Fireworks are glorified cannons, and we all like them. The last thing we need is to teach our children to be afraid of smoke and flames coming from a barrel. They need to be taught to respect the power of them (just like they should respect the power in a 100hp engine attached to a one and a half ton metal box). But they should also learn that the proper application can bring joy and happiness. (Not to mention it can be a great stress relief - I have never been stressed after blowing something up).

So I was going to build a cannon. Not an air powered or even hairspray/lighter fluid cannon. I wanted a black powder cannon. Something that would have smoke and flames! I wanted to build it out of everyday materials that could be found in any decent sized town in America. I did not want to use any specialized tools or specialized skills. In other words, I wanted to do it so that any adult capable of getting a driver's license could do the same thing. As a final result, I wanted a cannon capable of launching a 5 lb shell, 100 yards.

Now, let me allay any fears that some may have. In showing in excruciating detail how to build a cannon of one's own, am I aiding terrorists or criminals? Uh, no. As I mentioned in Cannon Fodder - A Brief History, the technology I am explaining is 1000 years old and the principles have been known for almost all of recorded history. If terrorists or criminals are coming to my blog to learn how to make destructive weapons, then we don't have too much to worry about.

So, let's start with a list of tools that you will need:
Hacksaw
Drill w/ 1/4" bit

Materials and where to get them:
PVC pipe (home improvement store)
Duck tape (home improvement store or Walmart)
PVC joining glue (home improvement store)
Small copper tubing (home improvement store)
Concrete filler (home improvement store or Walmart)
High temperature grill paint (home improvement store or Walmart)
Various sized cans (from your wife or mom after she makes dinner)
Large band clamp (auto parts store or Walmart)
Shelf tracks (home improvement store)
small nuts and bolts (somewhere in your garage or basement)

So on to the assembly!

First, the barrel is made from PVC pipe. I used 4" sch 40 because it snuggly fit a can of peaches (which became my outermost layer of the combustion chamber). A cap is solvent welded onto one end.

Now, PVC has the nice quality of being rigid (hence less risk of compression holding the shell too tightly and making a bomb). However, it is also a brittle material that will be subjected to many stresses that are going to crack/shatter it in a cannon. Hence, I wrapped it with duck tape. The cloth tape will provide a protective barrier to prevent the PVC from breaking apart, and by wrapping it very tightly, I am introducing some compressive forces on the PVC which will partially counteract the hoop stress from expanding gases.

Second, the combustion chamber is made by nesting various size cans inside of one another. I started with a big 25 oz peach can for the outer base and ended with a 4 oz tomato paste can on the inside. I used concrete filler (the rubbery stuff) to fill in the space between the cans. This does two things. It increases the mass of the combustion chamber (providing strength) and being a compressible material, it will mitigate the amount of hoop stress transfered to the barrel (the highest pressures are going to be in the combustion chamber).

I then sprayed the inside of the cannon with the high temperature grill paint. Not so much to make it heat resistant, as to give it a uniform color. The heat resistance is a bonus. To assemble the cannon, I simply dropped the combustion chamber into the barrel. Then I drilled a hole through the wall and into the combustion chamber. A short piece of copper tubing was inserted to act as the touch hole.

Finally, after scrounging around my garage, I found a 4" hose clamp and a couple of old shelving tracks. I used these with some nuts and bolts to create some legs for the cannon, and viola! The cannon was completed!
Next up, what good is a cannon if you don't use it. See Cannon Fodder - Applied Science.

Cannon Fodder - A Brief History

It all started around September. There I was relaxing one evening watching Mythbusters, when an idea popped into my head. The episode was about duck tape. And they were doing all sorts of things with duck tape. Lifting cars, making sailboats, and naturally, building a cannon.

The building of the cannon intrigued me. Their goal was to make a cannon out of duck tape that performed as well as their steel cannon they had used in other episodes. Their steel cannon shot a 18 pound ball, 500+ yards on three shotgun shells worth of gunpowder.

They took the right approach by figuring out how thick the duck tape needed to be. What was amazing was that a 1 inch thick slab of duck tape was able to withstand the pressure. They then proceeded to wrap a post with ducktape into a cannon shape and removed the post, giving them a cannon. One of the major downfalls to using 100% duck tape is that even with 1+ inch thickness, the duck tape is still not rigid. Not only that but it is highly susceptible to self compression - in other words, as the duck tape is wrapped tightly around the 3" post, the post provides a force back on the duck tape such that the post is not compressed. However, once the post is removed, that counteracting force is no longer there, forcing the barrel to collapse some (so now it is only 2.88").

How could this be bad? Well, in a steel or metal cannon, the cannon ball will just fit into the barrel, it should slide down though with minimal forcing. For the duck tape cannon, the ball literally had to be shoved and pounded in. This created an interesting dilemma, which they did discuss. Do they have a cannon, or a bomb?

So let me give a quick intro in how cannon's work. It is not exactly advanced technology. It has been around for at least 1000 years, and the general principles have been known for many millenia before that.

A cannon has three main components: the barrel, the combustion chamber, and the touch hole. The touch hole or fuse hole or vent hole is a small hole where the ignition source is introduced to ignite the main charge. This hole should be relatively small (<1/8") which I'll explain in a moment.

Next is the combustion chamber. It sounds somewhat high tech, but in actuality it is just a cavity where the charge is burned. Once the charge is ignited through the touch hole, it creates a whole bunch (that is a technical term for you non-engineers) of gases. Since the combustion chamber is completely enclosed at one end and covered by the cannon ball at the other end, at the beginning of the reaction it is a constant volume closed space. So as the charge rapidly burns, the amount of gases increase. Simple physics tells us that for a constant volume, as the amount of gases increase, the pressure will increase. Additionally, since the burning of the charge releases heat, the temperature of these gases goes up also forcing pressure higher. Therefore, the combustion chamber needs to be the strongest part of the cannon. More on that in a second.

Finally, the barrel is a long tube. It holds the the cannon ball. As the gases expand in the combustion chamber, they push on the cannon ball. The barrel helps to direct the trajectory of the cannonball and also allows the further expansion of gases transferring the force of the burning charge, into kinetic energy of the cannon ball.

So those are the basic parts, now to tie up the loose ends. The touch hole needs to be small so that there is not a large pathway for combustion gases to escape. Otherwise, much of the energy would be lost as gases leaked out of the touch hole rather than acting on the cannon ball.

The combustion chamber is made stronger usually by having thicker material around the combustion chamber. This is done in two ways. First, the combustion chamber can be made smaller diameter than the barrel. For a constant outer diameter (say 4"), a 3" bore (1/2" thickness), the combustion chamber may only be 2" in diameter (1" thick). Another way of making the material around the combustion chamber thicker is to taper the metal. This gives cannons their their classic bulbous shape at the end. One or both of these methods could be used.

The cannon ball needs to be matched to the size of the barrel. There needs to be a tight fit. A loose fit will allow gases to leak by, thereby wasting the charge and in extreme cases, not shooting the cannon ball out of the cannon (which would defeat the purpose). A tight fitting ball is going to have increased friction as it travels along the barrel, this could be mitigated by lubricating the barrel. Too tight of a fit and bad things can happen. First, the charge might not be able to overcome the force of friction, thereby sticking the ball in the cannon. A stuck ball can be extracted with much difficulty. Second, the possibility is there that the ball could be friction welded to the cannon, in other words, depending on the metals of the barrel and the ball, the friction might cause enough heat to weld the ball to the cannon. At this point, you cannon is pretty much scrap metal. Third, the worst thing that could happen is your barrel or combustion chamber could fail (i.e. break apart) from the force of the expanding gases, thereby creating a bomb rather than a cannon.

Basically, a good cannon is a fine balance between friction and expansion. A "perfectly" balanced cannon would have a complete burn of the charge (i.e. expansion) at the very instance that the cannon ball left the cannon (i.e. no more friction to overcome). However, that would also eliminate the puff of flame and smoke that makes cannons so fun (mostly the flame).

So back to Mythbusters. With the extremely tight fit of the cannon ball, they surmised that they might have a bomb on their hands. Of course, in the pursuit of science, there is only one thing to do. Light it off and find out (applied science is a lot more fun than the theoretical stuff). They took appropriate safety precautions and lit the fuse. I sat on the edge of my seat as the fuse burned down. Then BOOM! I could see a definite trajectory of smoke and what looked like an intact cannon. Sure enough it worked. The cannon was in one piece, and the cannon ball flew 175 yards. Not quite the 500 of the steel cannon, but my guess is the majority of that can be attributed to the increased friction of the tight fit in the barrel. However, it is not repeatable, then you can't really call it science. So they shot it again. I was in heaven. When my kids watched it, they were in heaven.

And that is when I had my idea: I am going to make a duck tape cannon!
(More coming in Cannon Fodder - Building a Cannon)

Reactive Targets

Several months ago, I wrote a post on the different types of gun owners. One of the things I have never understood is how someone can go to the range, shoot 2-5 shots from one gun and then pack up and leave. What is even more baffling to me is the people who take 2-4 hours to do this. I usually judge how well a trip to the range went based on how much ammo I return home with. One or two boxes, that was a good trip. Four to ten boxes, it must have been busy and I wasn't able to do all of the shooting I wanted. Zero boxes means that I had a blast (pun very much intended). No one was there and I had no obligations at home that would make me need to leave before the ammo ran out.

Some may ask how much ammo I take to the range. Well, usually on the order of 500 to 2000 rounds. This is spread between as many as six different calibers depending on how many firearms I took. A few days ago when I went, I was trying out some various ideas for reactive targets. For those who get a thrill out of putting a little hole on two intersecting lines, I ain't one of you. Sure, when I have the patience to sit down and take my time, I can put holes in an 8 inch circle at 200 yards with iron sights. However, to me that isn't gratifying for more than about 5 minutes.

Now there is a myriad of reactive targets that one can buy. Tannerite being the foremost among them, however at $5-10 per shot, it can get a little pricey if you are trying to do it 500 times. Steel targets that are designed for target shooting (basically a thick steel plate) are fun as well and quite economical at around $20 per target. Being the frugal guy that I am, I like to find a variety of things that are enjoyable to shoot and cost effective. Looking at the list below, you might notice that anything with the possibility of an explosion (however small) is a good option for me. If you do want to delve into the world of explosive targets, please don't be stupid about it. Explosives can and will hurt you without taking a second thought. Start out with someone who knows what they are doing, as you gain experience then you can venture on your own. So, without further ado, here is the list of inexpensive reactive targets I have used along with my review of them. I included a video of several of them for your viewing pleasure.

Pots and Pans: Price - Free to $3-4. Good for about 100 shots. These are an excellent taget for any distance type of shooting. Try to find ones with a handle (to stick in the ground) and a shiny back side (which make them easier to see). At 100 yards the report is audible with hearing protection on - a nice THUNK! At 200 yards you have to be paying attention to hear it. At 300 yards, you probably won't be able to hear it. Since pans come in a variety of sizes, it is also nice to be able to know that you are shooting at a 6 in, 8 in, 10 in, or 12 in target. .22LR will easily go through most common pans (aluminum and stainless steel) even at 300 yards (so any centerfire will as well). Be sure to ask your wife or mother if it is OK to use the old pans, because if you are a halfway decent shot, they won't be good for cooking when you're done. Cast iron cookware can be used as well. Just don't use it up close (less than 10 yards) to avoid richochets.

Fruits and Vegetables: Price- Free to $5. Good for 1-100 shots depending on caliber and type. This tried and true standby is especially good with high powered hollow points (read rifle/hunting ammunition). The high water content should cause good expansion which tends to show the exploding effects. If kids are watching, be sure to match the caliber with the size of fruit or vegetable to give them the maximum show. Thin skinned apples are obliterated by anything over 9mm (use thick skinned oranges or grapefruits instead). Tomotoes are great for .22LR. Melons of most types are good sized for 7.62x39 through .30-06. Lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, and brocoli just eat up bird shot. Some stores might be willing to sell (or give) you their old produce at a steep discount. I usually just use what we forgot to eat from the fridge.

Milk Jugs: Price - Free. Good for 1-100 shots. These are great when filled with colored water. Better still, if the range day is going to be, fill partway (2/3) with water and then put it opened in the freezer. Take it out when the temperature of the water is just above freezing and cap it immediately. As the air and water inside warm up, they will both expand, creating a low pressure target. The great thing about this is you can still recycle the jugs after blowing them apart. Who new being green could be so fun!

Cans: Price - Free. Good for 1-100 shots. This standby is invaluable. With BB guns, you can make a dent and not continuously punch holes through them. With a .22 you can see how good aim you are by slicing one in half. Then there is the setting cans up on a ledge/table and shooting them off cowboy style. Its plain to see why this cheap alternative has been a mainstay for plinking for more than a hundred years.

Phone Books: Price - Free. Good for 100-1000 shots (depending on if you mulch). Whenever you think there is not enough paper in the world, the phonebook company prints another one. Thousands of companies print catalogs that they will send you for free too! Paper is actually a pretty decent stopper of bullets compared to the price of the materials. The reason they don't make paper bullet resistant vests is because you still would need 7 inches of it. That being said, tape some of these big books together and you can trap all sorts of bullets. Frankly, it would make a great science experiment for a young shooter (if his or her school doesn't go ballistic about the proper handling and use of firearms). Close range with birdshot is also a great way to turn a phone book into confetti!

Shoes: Price - Free. Good for 100+ shots. Shoes wear out eventually. The nice thing about shooting them with larger caliber weapons is they will jump. Kids love to see shoes jump (especially with no one in them). Steel toed or shanked boots have the advantage of a muffled but still audible report.

Old office equipment: Price - Free. Good for 100+ shots. Had a bad day at the office? Is your company getting rid of an old fax machine? Go Office Space on it! Be sure to get permission from your company before taking the old office equipment. One thing you will quickly learn as you shoot up office equipment, Hollywood has no concept of ballistic penetration.

Balloons: Price - 2-3 cents. Good for 1 shot (unless you miss). Balloons are very versatile. You can shoot them plain. Shoot them with powdered substance inside. Shoot them with a liquid inside. Or shoot them with a flamable liquid inside and an ignition source nearby for great fireball creation. Balloons are very good for long distance shooting (300+ yards) - the colors will usually contrast with the surroundings, you can make them almost any size, and you definitely know when you have hit one.

Pressurized Bottles: Price - 1-25 cents. Good for 1 shot. No I do not mean propane cylinders. I am talking about plastic coke bottles which you pressurize with dry ice or baking soda and vinegar. The goal here is to get the bottle near the rupture point (50 psi - 250 psi depending on the thickness) and then hitting it with the bullet to make a nice report. I am still in the experimentation process of figuring the correct amounts of vinegar and baking soda (remember the goal is maximum pressure without it exploding prematurely) for various types of bottles. The fact that materials science keeps getting better (and bottles are made with less plastic) compounds the problem and makes me believe I'll be experimenting my whole life, which I am OK with.

Paintballs: Price 1-3 cents. Good for 1 shot. These are great for .22LR through a pistol or a rifle. They provide a small target (about 3/4") that leaves a satisfying mark when hit. The only problem I have is a quick way of attaching them to the target. Currently, I pull a line of tape and then put one on every 2 -3 inches as I apply the tape to the cardboard. I am open to any other quick methods of putting these up.

Shotgun Shells: Price - 20 cents. Good for 1 shot. I'm not sure why I hadn't thought of this sooner, but a friend told me about it a month ago and I had to try it. I used .22LR shooting at 12 gauge bird shot (no sense wasting the money for buck or slugs). I put the shotgun shells in three different setups: 1) through drywall, 2) through 2x4, and 3) implanted in 2x4 (i.e. no through hole). The drywall was nice, I was hoping for a bigger hole though. The 2x4 also was OK, I was still wanting more. The encased 2x4 was great! It splintered out the end of the wood. If you are going to try this, use a 3/4" spade bit to make your holes (at least 4 inches apart). Push (don't pound with a hammer) the shells into the hole. Keep the targets at least 25 yards away.

Muzzleloading caps: Price - 5-10 cents. Good for 1 shot. Think of these as a smaller, cheaper version of shotgun shells. The targets are now only 1/4" diameter at most. Which leads to my favorite idea so far...

Muzzleloading caps w/ black powder: Price - 5-10cents. Good for 1 shot. There is unlimited potential with these. How big of a blast is dependent on how deep and wide your hole is and how high you fill it with black powder. The large puff of smoke from ignition is unmistakable and seeing a sturdy 2x4 obliterated has a satisfaction all its own. I'll definitely try different shapes of combustion chambers and maybe add some fireworks chemicals in the future to create a pleasing display.

The Latest Wacky Idea from American Protectionists

American Protectionists have come up with another of their wacky ideas. Putting "Buy American" provisions in the stimulus bill wasn't enough. They forgot to add those provisions to the "Cash for Clunkers" and we find that foreign automakers made off like bandits! (Naturally, I don't care about the foreign automakers making off like bandits, I encourage all companies, foreign and domestic, to make off like bandits if by that we mean selling products to people that they want). Now Gen. Wesley Clark and his cadre are trying to get country of origin labeling on oil.

I first heard of this coming into work today. And I laughed out loud, I thought it was a joke. So searching the news, I find that it isn't a joke, these people are serious. And they don't know what they are talking about either. Having worked in the oil industry I know a thing or two about it.

So let's start with the whole country of origin labeling thing anyway. What does "Made in the USA" mean? Well, it can mean any number of things. It could mean that the final product was assembled in the US (with 100% foreign parts), it could mean that some amount of parts were manufactured in the US, it could mean that the raw materials were from the US, it could mean that the whole shebang was begun and developed in the US (with 100% foreign labor), it could mean that it was actually built in Japan in the city of Usa. Basically, whatever you want it to mean.

Let me say that I am not worried that terrorists are profiting from the gasoline I use, nor do I care that some 10 year old in Vietnam works 12 hours a day at a factory to make my clothes, and I am not worried about the illegal immigrants that pick the vegetables I eat for $10 a day. I only have so much time in my life, I can't save the whole world. So I focus on my family and improving those around me within my means. Maybe when I am independently wealthy I can start to worry about the personal problems of people halfway around the world, but at that time I will try to actually do something about it, not just talk about it and protest in the comfort of my hometown. I wouldn't mind retiring, living in Africa and helping develop village water systems so that people can have clean drinking water. (If I do, you can bet there will be a lot of gasoline or diesel generators spewing out gobs of CO2).

If you are not like me and want to try to save the world, be prepared to have to deal with being a hypocrite. Extreme positions rarely have any wiggle room. Just accept the fact that the coffee you drink is harvested with slave labor, tyrannical dictators skim the money from oil companies for their personal use, and money spent on foreign (and domestic products) is going to go buy drugs, booze, women, and guns for some less than savory people.

So now that you know I have no problem with foreign products, let me talk about labeling the country of origin of oil. What exactly are we labeling? Are we labeling the gasoline itself? Well, gasoline isn't exactly a single product. Besides being a liquid, it is a blend of several liquids. And once those liquids are dumped in a tank or piped through a pipeline, it all gets mixed together.

A Primer on Gasoline

Let's look at the service station where you get your gas. A typical small service station may have three or four 2,000 - 5,000 gallon underground tanks (one for each grade). These probably get filled up once a week when the tank is 1/3 - 1/2 full. They buy their gasoline from a wholesaler. The wholesaler has the gasoline at a transfer station. There are several 250,000 gallon tanks. Several gas companies (BP, Shell, Conoco, etc) may use the same transfer station (it is more cost effective than having everyone build their own - so yes, the transfer station may be run by Shell, but you will see BP tankers pulling up to get their gas). Pipelines run to the transfer stations carrying gasoline from whatever refinery it was made in, or port where it was imported. The gasoline is stored in the big containers. It is all mixed together, because it is all the same thing. The basic content of gasoline is regulated by the government (how much ethanol, how many octane, etc).

So why all the commercials about one companies gas being better than the other? Well, that all has to do with additives. Besides the big tanks with straight gasoline, there are also a bunch of little tanks with each gas companies proprietary additives. So when a truck pulls up to load up 2,000 gallons of Super X gasoline, 1999 gallons of gasoline are pumped in and 1 gallon of Super X additives are mixed with it. This is actually a very efficient process, and allows companies who don't refine gasoline, to still market their own special blend!

So, let's take a step backwards to the refinery. Oil refining is a process where a relatively useless raw material (crude oil) is turned into useful end products. Here is a graphic of what comes from a barrel of oil:

More than 3/4 of each barrel of oil gets turned into fuel of some sort. In the US, we have built our transportation fleet around gasoline (primarily because our initial supply of oil in the US from Texas and Oklahoma was well suited to the chemical process that produces lots of gasoline). Our refining capacity is not enough to supply our demand for gasoline so we import a lot from Europe. Import gasoline. Europe has built their transportation fleet around diesel fuel (primarily because their initial supply of oil from the North Sea was well suited to a chemical process that made equal amounts of diesel and gasoline - they sell the gasoline to the US).

The major factor in the flow of oil is proximity (it costs money to move oil long distances). So at times, we export oil (yes, I said export - the US produces about 5 million barrels a day and export about 1.5 million barrels of it, almost 1/3 of the oil the US produces is EXPORTED - and I am perfectly fine with that) from Alaska to Japan or Korea, because it is more cost efficient to do that and import oil from Mexico or Venezuela (corrupt dictators notwithstanding). when it gets to the refinery, it goes into a big tank (sort of like a transfer station). And it all gets mixed together (Louisiana crude, California crude, Texas crude, North Sea, Saudi, etc.) if it is roughly the same type of oil (light, heavy, sweet, sour, etc. - crude oil is just like cream in some respects). The refinery draws from these feedstocks as they work their magic and presto out comes gasoline and other products.

So we all know that oil comes from evil countries that have no rights, right? Yeah, the top 15 countries that we import oil from include Mexico (backwards I'll give you, but not evil), Columbia (see Mexico), Brazil, United Kingdom, Norway, and Ecuador. If we include all Petroleum imports the Virgin Islands makes the top 15 list as well. Oh, wait, I forgot the number one country that we import from, the evil terrorist hording giant of ... Canada. Wait a minute, Canada? The ones that end their sentences with "eh" and play hockey year round. That Canada? Well, we must barely import more oil from them than the 2nd place evil country Venezuela right? Wrong. We import about 2 million barrels a day from Canada. Venezuela only sells us 1 million barrels a day. In fact of the non-evil countries I mentioned above they account for 40% of our oil imports.

So what about the evil countries? Well, I didn't make a judgement on Nigeria, Algeria, Kuwait, and Angola. They account for another 16% of our imports. Then there is Iraq (which I think is our friend), 4% and Saudi Arabia (just because terrorists come from the country does not mean the country is bad), 9%. Of the top 15 importers, only Venezuela (whose leader actually has spoken about the evil Americans) at 10% and Russia (who keeps on flipping as to whether they want to be our friend) at 3%. So this whole labeling thing boils down to 13% of the oil we import (which is only about 8-9% of the actual oil we use). Got that, 8-9%.

Now that we have a general idea of how everything gets mixed together in one great big soup, how are we to accomplish labeling. I can think of a few ways:

1) We have separate supply streams for foreign and domestic oil. This would necessitate a large expenditure of capital for new tanks, refineries, pipelines, etc. After all we don't want to soil our oil with any of that foreign stuff.

2) We have signs at the pump that change on a regular basis based on the most recent shipment of fuel. The sign would list where the gasoline came from, what feedstocks were used, etc. etc. etc. When you realize that there is no gas in your town that you can buy in good conscience, maybe you will come to your senses and continue to support terrorists and tin pot dictators.

3) Just have a general sign on each pump of where the gasoline came from on average, updated on a yearly basis. This is a scaled down version of #2, hopefully it would assauge the guilt of most of the people that are worried about buying foreign oil. They would be able to buy gas at one gas station in their state.

Now, lets look at some of the logistical problems that might pop up. I mentioned before about the "Made in the USA" label. If the gas is refined in the US, is it "Made in the USA"? If it is refined in Europe with US oil and re-imported is it "Made in the USA"? If foreign gasoline is blended with US gasoline is it "Made in the USA"? What percentage is needed? 50%? 30%? 10%? Does the ethanol or other fuel additives count towards this percentage? What about oil from Saudi Arabia that is pumped with American Made machinery, onloaded to an American flagged ship and transported to the USA?

How about this dilemma, what if for some reason we decided to buy oil only from friendly countries. This would mean that our supply of oil was limited. Best case moneywise for us is that friendly countries stopped selling oil to others and only sold to the USA. In which case those other countries would be faced with the decision to a) buy oil from the "evil" countries or b) have their economy do a nose dive which has always worked out for people's well being. Right.

Or on the other hand, since we have artificially limited our supply (by not buying from whoever has oil to sell), the price of oil to us will go up (since now the people supplying our oil know there is no where else for us to turn). That $140 oil did a good job in 2008 of keeping the economy and jobs roaring, didn't it. So in a way, we are captives to the "evil" countries. But then again, they are captives to us. Who else is going to buy the 10 million barrels we import? There isn't the demand for it. Which means, while they hold our gas spigot, we hold their purse strings. So it is in both of our best interests to just play nice.

I will tell you a solution that I can get behind. Have the US government copyright/patent/trademark the "Made in the USA" label. Then rather than worry about where a product was made, just charge a royalty for each product that contains the label. Those who are socially conscious to the point of wanting to engage in isolationism, can buy their Coca Cola with the "Made in the USA" label for $2.50. I'll pick up the case right next to it that doesn't have the label for $2.25. The fact that they were bottled in the same place less than 20 minutes apart is irrelevant. The "Made in the USA" label already is just a salve to help some not feel guilty about supporting "evil". The US government isn't making any money on it though, and I could get behind that proposal that would change that.

And to top it all off, if you believe we are so righteous because we don't import oil from super "evil" Iran or Libya, try this out. Europe does, a lot of it. And remember what I mentioned about them exporting the gasoline that they don't need because they rely on diesel? That's right it comes in to the good ol' USA and you pump it into your Toyota hybrid every time you go to the pump. Even when we embargo countries we still end up using their products.

Not to beat a dead horse, but look at that graphic again. A little more than 7% of the oil we use goes to "Other Uses." What are those? Things like plastics, petroleum jelly, and tar. So while you may be buying your organically raised milk that is certified from Vermont, it is coming to you in packaging that was made from "evil" oil. Every time you put some lotion on, you are donating a few tenths of a cent to the terrorists. Simply driving your car (even if it is all electric or runs on 100% ethanol) helps support Hugo Chavez because the heavy oil they have in Venezuela results in a higher amount of tar than light oil from Texas or Saudi Arabia. All asphalt is is tar and gravel. I can see the signs now, "This road was paved courtesy of the communist Hugo Chavez, by driving on it you are directly supporting his regime."

Revisiting Cash for Clunkers: The Law of Unintended Consequences

A short while ago, I wrote about the Cash for Clunkers program and why I wouldn't be participating. Now that the program has blown through $3 billion, it is time to start looking at the unintended consequences. Actually, the unintended consequences should have been looked at before, but I don't really expect Congress to do that.

The program's goal is to get gas guzzling vehicles off of the road and replace them with high MPG vehicles. Sadly, the car market (like any other market) is a complex system. Complex systems are highly dependent on their initial conditions, and slight variations in those conditions can cause vastly divergent results. So let's look at some of the initial conditions that affect the car market:

Bailout, layoffs, and bankruptcy of two of the largest automobile manufacturers

New government mandates of MPG that manufacturers need to meet over the next 20 years

Increasing unemployment in the country

Government spending that has increased the deficit 400%

Forecasts of peak oil imminent with no widespread replacement technology

People spending less and saving more

Dealerships closed down by pseudo-government

Control of hiring/firing and pay by czars

Recent gas prices at all time highs

Recovering stock market

Population that is growing at a slower rate than in the 60-90s

Population that is living longer than ever before

This list is not meant to be exhaustive. There are thousands of initial conditions that affect the car market. Only one or two of these were considered when this program was conceived without regard to how they would affect the rest of the market. Let me go through some numbers.

The program (with the extra $2 billion) is going to help put 750,000 new cars on the road. The major negative with this program is that all 750,000 of those vehicles are going to be destroyed. That means the used car market (about 41 million vehicles a year) will have 750,000 less used cars, or about 2%. Unfortunately, this is going to be magnified because the 2% of $2000 cars are not going to be traded in for $4000 cars, and 2% of $1000 cars are not going to be traded in for $2000 cars, and 2% of people that were going to buy the $1000 cars are not going to be able to because of availability.

Except that the scenario above would only happen if cars of all values are traded in. So let's do a little mental exercise. First, we know that the used car market is roughly 41 million. Second, we can probably safely assume that 95% of the cars turned in were worth less than $4500. Any car that was worth more, we can just chalk up to the Stupid Tax. So that is 712,500 cars worth less than $4500 are now off of the market.

Next, I needed to figure out how much of the 41 million cars are part of the under $4500 market. So I went to my friendly neighborhood car dealer and checked out his used car inventory. It would only allow a lower limit of $7000 so I used this. Two. A total of 2 used cars under $7000. How many in his inventory overall? 63. 3% of his inventory is under $7000.

Now in all fairness, this was a dealer attached to several big name companies. There are plenty of mom and pop shops and lots of people sell their cars themselves whenever a dealer isn't going to buy it. I looked in my local newspaper. The ratio here was much better, 6 out of 10 were under $4500. And there were 118 listed. So if I assume that there 75% of the used cars are sold by dealers (there are at least 5 big dealers in my area with 60+ used cars a piece, at 3% under $4500 rate) and 25% are sold through newpaper, mom & pops, etc (with a 60% under $4500 rate), then roughly 17% of used cars sold are under $4500. Or 7 million.

The dilemma then becomes that we are taking 712,500 of the 7 million away in one year. A 10% drop. So what was on the surface 2% of the entire market (all used cars), is actually 10% of the focused market (sub $4500). To take away 10% of the supply (in basically a month's time) is definitely going to put price pressure on the market. Used cars that sell for less than $4500 will now be more expensive. Unfortunately, the laws of supply and demand are not linear. Some economists have proposed that the ratio is as high as 10:1 (for each 1% decrease in supply, there is a 10% increase in price).

While this may be a bit of a stretch, I feel confident that we will see used car prices increase for the near future. All car prices. Because if sub $4500 increase say 50%, then cars above $4500 will also increase due to relational value (if the $4500 car is now worth $6000, then the $6000 car must be worth $7500, et al). This is going to squeeze the people at the bottom (the poor) the most, by pricing them out of a better car (or any car for some).

The program is a huge waste of resources. All of the new cars will will lose value to depreciation in the first month which will more than offset the $4500. All of the cars turned in will be scrapped making them worth only a fraction of their value. Since 10% of the sub $4500 fleet is removed, there will be a decrease in the used/rebuilt parts for these cars since they aren't being recovered.

The lost energy cost is most troubling. In all 750,000 cases the cars were already manufactured, and while their mpg might not live up to some government ideal, the energy cost of replacing them with a new more fuel efficient vehicle (i.e. the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by the manufacturing process) far outweighs what little CO2 is pumped out from burning the extra gasoline. In other words, we just pumped more CO2 into the atmosphere than we saved. And destroyed $1-2 billion dollars of wealth to boot.

Whenever the government tries to mess with the free market they always screw it up. Doesn't matter if it is Republicans or Democrats, both think they are good at playing God. They aren't. And they hurt the poor more than anyone. Cash for Clunkers is a perfect example (or imperfect example to be precise).

Spreadsheets, an Engineer's Best Friend

I made a confession to my wife last night. "Honey, I don't think I have ever deleted a spreadsheet." I know, that sounds like an odd confession to be making, so let me explain. I was planning out our anniversary trip that we are taking this year and I had to keep everything sorted and organized. When you are trying to find the cheapest option of hotels, flights, and rental cars between four different destinations it can be overwhelming. I'm glad I only gave us one option for an airport to fly from. To keep this ordered, I made a spreadsheet. Then I added a little schedule to it so that we would have our week planned out in advance. This is probably due to the fact that growing up, whenever we went on vacation my parents would have all sorts of activities planned out for us. (Imagine their horror when they took us to Disneyland and the biggest thrill for us kids was swimming in the hotel pool at 10 PM or going up to visit my cousin in Seattle that we saw maybe once every 3 years and we just wanted to play Nintendo with him.) My wife has experienced this whirlwind vacation method, but since it is our anniversary and there will be no kids around I have trying not to have us worn out, if you know what I mean.

Back to the story, my wife asked why I was doing this and I explained to her the reasons above (including the not being worn out part - ouch, that got me slug in the shoulder). She then said, "So after your done are you just going to delete it?" You see my wife is a business major and she believes that spreadsheets are for long drawn out projects that may carry over from year to year (like budgeting). Once your done, you can hold on to it for a year and then delete it. I being an engineer realize that spreadsheets can help you make many of the not life altering but more important than mundane decisions. Not only that, but the decision may come up again, and you don't want to have to re-create it.

Case in point. I made several spreadsheets for our home remodel project. One was used to develop the budget (notice I said, develop). I went to Lowe's and got prices on everything, wood, drywall, insulation, screws, flooring, wire, paint, etc. Then I used this to go through and figure out how much an interior wall, an exterior wall, a floor, and a roof would cost. Then with my plans I only needed to know the length of the interior walls, the exterior walls, and the square footage of the floor (since the roof has to cover the floor you can double this). To this I would add costs for doors, windows, fireplaces, etc. and we had our basic cost of the remodel. Then as we did the remodel, I kept careful track of all of our expenses so that I knew how much I actually used plus I can see what tools I had to buy/rent. This is very useful if we decide to move and renovate again. It is also useful as we look at buying a flood house (I'll write about this later).

I checked my personal folders at home and I have 66 spreadsheets (many of these have multiple interconnected sheets some of which I have since turned into databases). I would guess that the number of spreadsheets I have at work number more than 100. So what kinds of things do I make spreadsheets for.

NCAA College Football - for about 4 years, I had my own rating system for the Division I-A football. I stopped it when I started a job working rotating shift work and a lot of my weekends were occupied. Plus, it involved a lot of data entry. The good news about it was, by the final week of the season, my formula came up with a top 25 that closely matched the final AP and Coaches polls.

Tax Software - one year I put the 1040 Form in a spreadsheet, with all of the subforms I needed. Call it a poor man's tax software. This was before the times of free tax software and before I was willing to fork over money for tax software.

Rental Property Analyzer - This is a nice one which I have used several times in deciding what rental property to buy. Basically, it takes into account all of the expenses associated with buying and managing properties, and compares it to other investment options that I would be considering.

And the list goes on and on. Which brings me to my favorite spreadsheet story. I had started a new job working in design engineering and going to be there 4 months. After about two weeks of training and getting me familiarized with the company, they gave me my assignment. When they gave it to me, they told me it might be a little tedious and boring, but they figured it would take most of my 4 month time frame and being the low man on the totem pole, I was it.

What they had were the raw data files (.txt) of 10,000 plus trials for an experiment. Each trial had a half dozen different variables that they needed to analyze. Further more, each variable had time points for 10 - 24 hours in one second increments. They wanted graphs made of them so they could have a visual representation.

First thing I do is open a spreadsheet, import the data and make a graph. For about 1 day, I worked with my boss to get the way they wanted the spreadsheet to look down. Then the fun began. I wrote a script to do all of the rest of the work. It sounds easy, and it was, relatively. I spent about a week and half writing the script and perfecting it. The biggest issue I dealt with was figuring out that I should only save after processing every 50 files and it would go so much quicker (I started out with every 1 and it was too slow). Then I set the script to run right before lunch and went out to eat. When I came back I was all done, and I went and told me boss. He thought I was done for the day. I corrected him and told him I was done with the project and did he want the graphs printed in color or black and white.

He was shocked to say the least and had to come and see the spreadsheets. I showed him and walked him through the process that I used. When he found out that the processing time for the whole shebang was only about 45 minutes he decided to talk to the engineer that needed this data. Lo and behold, we had plenty of time to make improvements to the graph and add all sorts of bells and whistles: trendlines, regressions, data overlays, you name it. The best thing was, since the script was doing all of the work, all I needed to do was add a few lines of code to it and 45 minutes later, it was done. In the end, the 10,000+ graphs ended up being the best looking graphs the department had ever produced. Word got around and I became the defacto go to guy when large amounts of data needed to be analyzed.