Carlowen A. Smith - interests

"In this footnote,

we are again going to misapply an oversimplified relation to get an estimate that will be dressed up to look as though it said something about the real ocean.

"Freehand improvising of this sort is one of the essential tools of the geophysicist. If you can do it rapidly and at the same time maintain a convincing air, you can persuade any untrained person that you have said something."

-Blair Kinsman, Wind Waves 1965, p.153

"In a basement, an enthusiast

is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way." - L.F. Richardson (1922)

"Big whirls,

have little whirls that feed on their velocity.
Little whirls have lesser whirls, and so on to viscosity."
-O(Ri)

"Smaller whorls

beget bigger whorls, that feed upon their energy; And bigger whorls beget larger whorls, and so on, with much synergy.
-Geoff Vallis, AOFD 2006, p. 372

"During this fine study conference,

we attempted to make a change to the field which would lighten the burden for all future ocean-atmosphere dynamicists; the term potential vorticity is unwieldy and fails to convey the spirit of the quantity.

It was observed that physicists, in whose quarters we were housed, had successfully captured the whimsy of scientific research with terms like 'charm' and 'color'.

"A contest was held, and the participants contributed many suggestions as a replacement for 'potential vorticity', among them:

strophity, spin, spingity, dervishity, and Sonja,

the latter in honor of a fine Norwegian exponent of angular momentum conservation. Prof. Hide's suggestion, piety, was apparently motivated by the Stommel-Arons-Faller experiments. We invite further entries to this competition in hopes that we will one day be freed of onerous terminology."

-Peter Rhines, Large-scale transport processes in oceans and atmosphere 1986, p. 150

To the Most Serene Grand Duchess, Mother:

"For let no one believe that reading the lofty concepts written in that book leads to nothing further than the mere seeing of the splendor of the sun and the stars and their rising and setting, which is as far as the eyes of brutes and of the vulgar can penetrate. Within its pages are couched mysteries so profound and concepts so sublime that the vigils, labors, and studies of hundreds upon hundreds of the most acute minds have still not pierced them, even after continual investigations for thousands of years.

"The eyes of an idiot perceive little by beholding the external appearance of a human body, as compared with the wonderful contrivances which a careful and practiced anatomist or philosopher discovers in that same body when he seeks out the use of all those muscles, tendons, nerves, and bones; or when examining the functions of the heart and the other principal organs, he seeks the seat of the vital faculties, notes and observes the admirable structure of the sense organs, and (without ever ceasing in his amazement and delight) contemplates the receptacles of the imagination, the memory, and the understanding.

"Likewise, that which presents itself to mere sight is as nothing in comparison with the high marvels that the ingenuity of learned men discovers in the heavens by long and accurate observation. And that concludes what I have to say on this matter."

Tensegrities

are structures held together entirely by tension. The method to make these is described here.

Cube Tensegrity and Dodecahedral Tensegrity

same

Cube Tensegrity

Dodecahedral Tensegrity

Tiny Dodecahedral Tensegrity