Posts Tagged ‘Wordless Wednesday’

I’ve decided to cut back on the number of Thursday Thirteen and Wordless Wednesday posts. Partly because I’m spending too much time on them each week, partly because I want to look around for some different memes to try and partly because I’m finding it harder to come up with good ideas for them each week. I hope that when I do take part I’ll bring something to the table that is worth other people bothering to read.

On the side of St. George’s Hall, Liverpool

‘The Ruins of Holyrood Chapel’ c1824 – Louis Jacques Mand Daguerre

See the Walker Gallery Web Site for More Information

Made with Poser 7, Vue 6 and post processing in Photoshop Elements

The Annual Girandola at the Castel Sant’ Angelo, Rome (1775-76)

Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 – 1797)

1. Finish short story for ASTONISHING ADVENTURES MAGAZINE – Success
2. Work on my novel – Failed misserably
3. Tidy my flat: Mostly except one room which is a tip
4. Reading – lots of it: Not quite lots but some
5. Catching up on some DVD watching: Caught up
6. Go to the cinema – Saw "Run Fat Boy Run"
7. Work on my impworks web site: Failed but did some last night
8. Finish writing my first facebook application – Failed Misserably to touch this
9. Make some pictures with Vue: Success
10. Taking some photographs for Wordless Wednesday: Took four pictures and I used the only one already
11. Write at least one new python script for Vue: Failed
12. Go to the Liverpool 800 exhibition: Failed
13. Fail to do 50% of the above because of either sleeping in, getting a cold or bad weather: I’m blaming a cold that took out 8 days of my break

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. Yesterday my Wordless Wednesday picture was of this vase full of nuts and I promised I’d post an explanation.
   
2. I was walking in Newsham Park in Liverpool a year ago. As I went under a Horse Chestnut tree a gust of wind brought a liberal shower of Horse Chestnuts down on me. Fortunately it was a chilly day so I had a thick hat on. The one at the front is new and shows what they looked like when they fell on me.
3. I don’t know why but I collected them up – it seemed like the thing to do. I probably wasn’t thinking straight – I’d just been nutted by a load of nuts on my nut.
4. I dried them out, got rid of a few bad nuts and put the 122 that remained in a glass vase from Woolworths.
5. If I were a modern artist I’d sell them to a gallery and call it "What the sky looks like when it falls on your head"
6. The Common Horse Chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum) was introduced to Britain from the Balkans in southern Europe in the 17^th century. They have distinctive oval leaves. A typical mature Horse Chestnut tree is around 25m tall although some reach 35m.
7. The nuts are inedible but much sought after by children. In Britain we call them Conkers and children play a game with them.
8. Now the science bit: They weigh 0.6kg (1.3lbs) so the average conker is 0.05kg (0.01lbs).
9. They have a volume of 0.55l or 0.0005m³ (0.12 imperial gallons 0.15 us gallons) giving an average volume of 0.0045lm³ or 4.5cm³ (0.001 imperial gallons 0.0012 us gallons) each. That gives a density of 1090kg/m³ (68.1lbs/ft³).
10. Assuming the tree is 25m tall a conker falling from the top of the tree will take 2.3s to hit the ground. Assuming the conkers on average fell from half that height 1.6s to hit the ground.
11. The velocity of that theoretical falling conker will be 16m/s (51ft/s) or 56km/h (35mph).
12. The impact energy for our theoretical conker is 0.6J (0.8 foot-pound force). As a comparison the impact energy of a brick falling the same distance would be 370J (500 foot-pound force). Or if I was a journalist being hit by a conker is equivalent to being hit by two three millionths of an elephant falling out of a tree.
13. I’ll take getting conked on my cranium by conkers over elephants any day.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

What the sky falling on your head looks
like; and you can forget collecting any ruddy larks.