Icy Death
Today I awoke to what sounded like rain. Turns out that it is nature’s most absurd weather pattern, freezing rain and sleet. High in the atmosphere clouds of water vapor condense into droplets of rain. As the rain falls, it enters a front of cold air that is being pushed over the city. The temperature drops, and each droplet of water gets cooled to beneath its freezing point. As the drops come crashing to Earth, some droplets are already frozen solid, but most are merely supercooled. As the supercooled droplets connect with objects on the ground, they instantly crystallize, coating the object with a tiny disk of ice. With time, this ice begins to build up as hundreds upon thousands of supercooled raindrops connect with surfaces like the sidewalk, and the windshield of your car. Soon, the entire area glistens with a sheet of pure, smooth ice.
But then, as the temperature continues to drop, nearly all of the water droplets freeze solid before reaching the Earth. A frozen raindrop is a beautiful thing, nearly a perfect sphere, clear and pure, surface as smooth as glass. As these little balls of ice build up on the road, they coat the initial sheen of ice with a layer of tiny ball bearings.
As your foot, or the tire of your car, presses down on these ball bearings, the pressure causes the surfaces of the balls to melt ever so slightly. As they melt, the water begins to lubricate the balls of ice, and the smooth ice beneath. In no time at all, the coefficient of static friction between the foot and the road has dropped to nearly zero. What this means, of course, is that the foot cannot maintain traction, and you will fall on your butt, or send your car into an uncontrolled slide.
As your car glides sideways down the interstate, gently rotating, you might ponder for a moment on the sublime beauty of the physical world. Marvel at how each of the universe’s multitude of properties have joined together to the singular effect of releasing your car from the constraints of friction, allowing it to dance freely across the road as though perfectly weightless. Isn’t the universe a wonderful and mysterious thing?
Of course, then your car drifts off the road into the gravel in the median, and the rapidly changing kinetic friction causes your car to roll three times, releasing the airbag and eventually laying your car to rest upside down on top of a crashed snow plow.
That is how many a St. Louisan began their morning, but thankfully not me. I managed to navigate Madalene’s All-Wheel-Drive, ABS equipped Subaru station wagon safely to work. However, nearly all of the employees of the museum called in to alert me that they would not be braving the weather this morning. I couldn’t really blame them, as many of them live much farther from work than I. So, we ran operations in complete skeleton crew mode. Almost none of the programs ran, and only a couple of the movies. I was unable to do a single demonstration today, due to my complete lack of staff, and my laryngitis, which successfully prevented me from doing any demos myself.
The entire building had probably 1/4 of its regular staffing, and lots of special allowances were made. The cafeteria gave the staff free pizza, and the few visitors who braved the weather were treated to empty galleries, and no lines. For one session of the Discovery Room, our special area for families with kids under 8, we had only four visitors, a nice Russian family. Of course, being from Siberia, they didn’t understand what the big deal was. This weather probably counts as a nice spring morning to them. A few other people came later in the day, correctly anticipating a deserted museum. Today’s total attendance for the entire museum is probably less than 50 people. The day began stressfully, with my illness and the lack of staff, but the pizza lifted everyone’s spirits, and in the end, a good day was had by all. In a few minutes, we’ll close up the museum, and everyone will try to get home before the sun goes down.
Sunday 25 Jan 2004 | Sam | Personal