Every couple of years I am faced with the need to find something useful to do with the leftover liquid nitrogen that sits in its flask after we have used it to freeze-brand new horses. There it is, clear as glass, the lowest-viscosity liquid I have ever seen, fog-shrouded if you blow into the flask, chilly beyond description. When the time comes to return the super-insulated flask to the welding supply shop, I pour the remaining liquid into a picnic cooler in a vain attempt to preserve it a bit longer so I can dip roses into it and whack them on a tabletop, shattering them into tiny bits. Very unsatisfying after you’ve annihilated all the roses and have a flabby mess to clean up.
Then I saw this four-and-a-half-minute video on the Wired News site:
Time to toss out the old Lionel train set! Time to dip your toes into the future and marvel at what appears to be magic beyond explaining! Maglev trains are on the horizon, and you can sample a tiny bit of the thrills right now with this offering from Amazon.com.
Addendum: When I was a kid, I and my neighborhood buddies used to love to put pennies on the rails and watch the passing belching, smoking, smelly steam engines flatten them into great big bright copper disks before they were knocked off the track. Kids in the coming maglev age will completely miss that thrill. (Actually it’s only a thrill for the first hundred times or so.) We got a physics lesson, too; slow trains made bigger disks — fast ones knocked the pennies off the rails too quickly.
2 comments:
That's pretty cool stuff.
Your comment gives me chills. By the way, the Austral spring has arrived down there in your neighborhood. We’re going the other way. Pray for rain. Drought stinks.
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