2020 New Random Pics

[A930Rocket]

Originally Posted by Jim Horton

Perhaps it's just my clumsiness, but I've always found Sperry topsiders to be some of the most slippery shoes I've ever worn.

I was walking down an aluminum ramp to a dock, and my topsiders slipped out from under me. Granted, they were old.

[GH85Carrera]

[Steve Carlton]

Originally Posted by masraum

I get why the 250 GTO is THE 250, but I would much rather have a 250 GT SWB (probably about the same likelihood).

Daddy likes this one!

[masraum]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

My wife likes the edge pieces, so I usually eat the middle.

I've considered buying one of these.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Steve Carlton

Daddy likes this one!

Yep, that looks like another good one.

[GH85Carrera]

That is a sight I never want to see in person!

[masraum]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

They forgot the dark chocolate M&Ms

I haven't liked Hershey's milk chocolate for a long time, and now I know why. It's the butyric acid which is an acid that's also in vomit and causes a tangy/sour flavor. Milk chocolate in the UK does not (per what I've read) contain butyric acid. I understand that the reason is for it to be a preservative for the milk that has to be "good" longer from milking until it ends up in the chocolate.



My preference is dark chocolate.

[GH85Carrera]

The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, locally known as the "Gorge Bridge" or the "High Bridge", is a steel deck arch bridge across the Rio Grande Gorge 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Taos, New Mexico, United States.


This medieval house is still standing and inhabited, Orne, France, built in 1509.




ONCE IN 80 YEARS
Puya raimondii, queen of the Andes, is the largest species of bromeliad, reaching up to 15 m (50 ft) in height and carry 20,000 flowers. It is native to the high Andes of Bolivia and Peru. It has been considered a Protocarnivorous plant (ensnaring birds).
Its reproductive cycle lasts approximately 80 years.




Fun Coal Fact:
In 1918, coal miners marveled at a petrified tree stump encapsulated in a coal seam, a vivid reminder that coal is more than just fuel - it's a preserved piece of our planet's ancient past.
The process of vegetation being preserved in a coal seam, such as in the case of a petrified tree stump found by coal miners, is an interesting phenomenon rooted in geological and biological processes. Here's an overview of how it happens:
1. Formation of Peat: Initially, plant material, such as trees, ferns, and other vegetation, accumulates in swampy or wetland environments. This plant matter doesn't fully decompose due to the anaerobic (low oxygen) conditions in these wetlands.
2. Burial and Compression: Over time, layers of sediment, including mud and sand, bury the plant material. As more sediment accumulates, the weight compresses the plant material underneath.
3. Chemical Changes and Coalification: Under the pressure and increased temperature from the overlying sediments, the plant material undergoes chemical changes. This process, known as coalification, gradually converts the plant material into coal. During this process, water and volatile substances are driven off, and the carbon content increases.
4. Preservation of Vegetation Structure: In some cases, the conditions are just right to preserve the structure of the original vegetation within the coal seam. This can include leaves, bark, and even whole tree stumps. The process of petrification, where the organic material is replaced with minerals, can also occur, further preserving these structures.
5. Discovery in Mining: When miners excavate coal seams, they occasionally uncover these preserved pieces of ancient vegetation, providing a direct and tangible link to the Earth's geological and biological history.
This preservation offers a window into the past ecosystems and environments, showing us what was present millions of years ago when coal was formed.
Photograph by J. Horgan, Jr.

[john70t]

[masraum]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Fun Coal Fact:
In 1918, coal miners marveled at a petrified tree stump encapsulated in a coal seam.

It's super fascinating for material to undergo coalification AND petrification in the same place.

Charcoal That Can Scratch Steel: the Wild World of Permineralization

We all know charcoal, right? Most of us have taken bits of it from the ashes of wood fires and played with it. It's light, soft, and crumbly. It leaves a black sooty residue on everything it touches. It's marvelous stuff for drawing, even though it's prone to unintentional smudging. You can easily crush it to powder. Take a moment to imagine it. Score it with a fingernail. Remember how soft and delicate it is.

Now imagine taking a chunk of it from the ground, and seeing it blacken your fingers, but it's heavy. You dig your fingernail into it, but instead of making an impression, your nail bends and leaves no mark. You gouge the head of your rock hammer with an edge of it, and instead of a black smear of particles, you're left with a shiny silver scratch in the metal.

This amazing substance, neither plant nor rock, is called permineralized charcoal.

What a mouthful, right? But it's related to a familiar process: petrification. We know that when things petrify, minerals replace all of the existing material. When something like wood or charcoal is permineralized, the existing material isn't completely replaced; minerals like silica fill in cells, but leave the cell walls intact. If you look at thin sections of permineralized charcoal, the cellular detail can be extraordinary.

All you need to get permineralized charcoal is some burnt wood; groundwater saturated with iron, silica, calcite, or other such minerals; and a good stretch of undisturbed time. If that water and wood are in the ground, the humic acids that decaying organic matter produces helps the process along. As the minerals precipitate out from solution, they begin forming crystals in pores in the cell walls. From the walls, the minerals begin filling the interior cavity of each cell. When it's done, the cell walls remain intact around the new mineral-filled center of the cell.

If the water or mineral supply dwindles at this point, you're left with permineralized wood or charcoal. If the supply hadn't vanished, the process would have continued until every bit of organic matter was replaced by inorganic minerals, resulting in petrified wood.

Of course, dense minerals replacing the fluids within the cells means the formerly light bit of wood or charcoal is now quite heavy. And if the mineral is harder than steel, like silica, you get a piece of charcoal that has enough carbon left to soot up your fingers, but also scratch your specially-tempered rock hammer.

My friend Lockwood, who studied this stuff in depth and wrote up a paper on it for Oregon State University, sent me the following in an email, explaining how this works:

The key here is the term “permineralization,” and more specifically, “silicification.” I think those wikilinks will be clear, but the idea is that all the void spaces, including pores between the cell walls have been completely filled with silica, probably quartz. The reason that the pores are important is that it’s those interconnections that give the rock its overall coherence, toughness, and strength. Otherwise, each individual cell would easily break off from its neighbors. As you’ve seen, they don’t. As a proportion of mass and volume, the carbon is probably only a few percent of the total. So there’s enough exposed on fresh surfaces to smudge your fingers, but the bulk of the rock is crystalline quartz, and is very hard and tough. Incidentally, the carbon will eventually get rubbed off, and won’t smudge anymore, until you open up a new fresh surface.

The detail preserved is visible to the naked eye in many cases: in my samples from near Sweet Home, OR, you can clearly see growth rings. On a microscopic level, details of the cellular structure are easy to see. But the process obscures some of the details necessary to identify the species of wood: it takes some painstaking work with acid etching and scanning electron microscopes to determine what sort of tree contributed the necessary wood.
Image shows a wedge-shaped piece of permineralized charcoal. Growth rings are clearly visible. Growth rings in permineralized charcoal. Credit: Dana Hunter

Permineralization makes delicate charcoal some seriously tough stuff: my samples are comparatively young, but they're still millions, perhaps tens of millions, of years old. But samples as old as the Carboniferous are abundant. These ancient charcoals preserve evidence of fires that burned the earliest forests, and tell us a lot about what the earth was like long before mankind evolved.

You'd never expect something as delicate and ordinary as charcoal to survive for eons, but nature is wonderfully weird, and geologic processes can do some pretty extraordinary things.

growth rings in permineralized charcoal.


hard enough to scratch a rock hammer


I've always thought petrified wood was super cool.

[GH85Carrera]

This is cool about charcoal.






Not for sale, I am gonna fix it up some day.

[GH85Carrera]

[Steve Carlton]

^ "I am Groot."

[GH85Carrera]

[yellowperil]

lots more arriving this month,

[GH85Carrera]

[masraum]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

That's super impressive. Many years ago when I worked at a FLAPS someone brought a vented disk in that had one side worn away so it was just ribs on one side.

I wish I had photographic evidence, but I also once had someone try to return brake pads for being defective. He told me a store about how he'd installed the pads and nearly had an accident pulling out of his driveway. Then he opened the box and showed me the "defective" brake pads. He'd installed them backwards (friction material facing the piston instead of the rotor). The pad material had a fairly neat circle cut into it where he'd jammed on the brakes with all of his might in a car with power brakes.

[GH85Carrera]

[john70t]

[Steve Carlton]

Originally Posted by john70t

One cut across both apples at the same time cutting each into a 1/3 and a 2/3 piece. Two of them get a bigger piece, one gets the two small pieces.