Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Fish tank Bomb.

So, I feel better about the fish tank. We will rebuild. I picked up a new 10 gallon tank, and we have set it up in the kitchen on the counter. I have set the live rocks, which may be partially dead by now, in the new tank. We are waiting for the temperature to come up before we transplant the corals. My parents called today to offer to buy a new fish for us. I told them we are not quite ready for that. I hope they don’t feel responsible for it. I still have to do a post mortem on the old tank…I really want to know where it failed.

I worked maintenance today. I helped my father-in-law put a cycle stop valve on the school’s pump. It was heavy and the clearances were minimal. He finally got it. I spent the remainder of the afternoon loading and unloading science kits. Joy.

Yesterday, I taught second graders. It was fun. I got off early since her plan period was last. I then went to town and picked up the tank, more water (H2O for the fish), filled up the truck, and bought dinner. Then found that I was tired and sat down to recover from the previous week.

Today, I came home and began the tank stuff. Cora came in the door and caught me starting a nap. I quickly jumped and looked awake. Both the cat and the dog had taken up residence on my lap; I could not jump too far.



The picture that IS here was taken in late february of 2005. I was at the Travis AFB air museum. That is a Mk III bomb shape, similar to the one used on Nagasaki. 10,000 pounds of fury. 10 feet long and 5 feet in diameter. It was an implosion device, the implosion was caused by explosives specially shaped to produce shock waves that focused on the center, which held a grapefruit sized sphere of plutonium, with a tiny initiator on the inside...it produced extra neutrons that were to begin the chain reaction that caused the horrible explosion...it is all more technical than that, but no less interesting. Still, I like that picture of me...self portrait by the way.

2 comments:

frogglet said...

I'll put the pics on the hard drive tonight, so you can acess them. I need to make print also so we can show people. Thanks for setting up the tank.

Anonymous said...

Why does a bomb have a square tail? I can pretty well guess that it has to do with air flow and getting it to hit its mark but have never looked it up and I could now but I'd rather ask the history teacher--- of course you're not an engineer--- but what's up with the tails?