The Optimal Funnel

While at IKEA a while ago, we purchased two "CHARM" funnels for very cheap. It seems that you get what you pay for.

As you can see, the slope of the funnel wall approaches zero as you reach the bottom hole. This means that the stuff you are trying to get to drain down the hole is essentially heading sideways, and must change direction very significantly in order to fall directly down the hole.

This fairly idiotic funnel design got me thinking: What is the optimal curve for a funnel's walls? Unfortunately, I've been incredibly busy recently, and have not had a chance to really work on this problem myself. However, this is an opportunity for another Lansey Brothers' Blog Contest! I am interested to find out what you, dear reader, think is the optimal curve. In some way, it should be a function of D (diameter of mouth), d (diameter of spout), and h (height of funnel), which should probably be order D, and where clearly d<D.

So if people can work this, and email me their solutions (MS Word or PDF form, with a copyright to themselves on it), I'll make a post in the future with a summary of the solutions, and my favorite. Please email solutions to .

Smile

It seems to me that I am the only Lansey Brother who hasn’t posted pictures of where he goes to school (of course he has posted pictures from school but we won’t talk about those). Considering that I have been going to Rutgers from almost three semesters now I have managed to never post any pictures. This is about to change. I hope you enjoy my pictures of Busch Campus.

Try to see if you can find the RAC (Rutgers Athletic Center) in this picture. Also in bottom left corner eletrical engineering building roof. In the middle of of picture you can see the roof of the Engineering Building specificly most of the Mechanical and Aerospace Department. Of course dont forget the Academic Services Buidlings below the curch spire type thing.

From the 7th floor window of Hill Center (Math) you can can see the materials science and engineering building (right side of picture). The Chemistry Buildings to the left of the materials building. Then the alcohol reaserch center to the left of that. On the middle of the left side of the picture you will of course see the Science and Engineering Resource Center. If you look real hard you can find the pointless modern art type sculpture showing shear force (its red).

A more artistic look at the materials building and of course the Busch campus Qaud.

On your left is the golf course and in the distance you can see the psychology and, pharmacy buildings, UMDNJ, and a bunch of other buildings. Also, some cars, some people, a bus stop, lots of trees, and a really small beach.

Now I have posted pictures of the non-radioactive, non-city college that a Lansey Brother goes to. Now it is time to post the funny/intresting pictures.

If you click the photo you will see that there is a great light on the bottom left that says "HELP IS ON THE WAY" they should have a light next to it that says "WE HAVE CHOSEN TO IGNORE YOUR ALARM CALL BUTTON BECAUSE WE DON'T FEEL LIKE HELPING YOU"
I couldn't not take this picture, I saw this while I was trying to get onto the Hill Center roof to get better pictures. You are looking down eight flights of very cool steps.

Paternoster, a Cyclic Elevator

While conducting research in exotic overseas urinals, I came across a rare Paternoster at the University of Leicester. This happens to me my first shot at a YouTube style video so please rate it highly (here) if you like it!

Further studies of the American Urinal

Aryeh's field guide to the diversity of American Urinal (americanas urinalas), including related species in the porcelainas americanas family, although very thorough (he included the extremely rare horned urinal [urinalas cornu]) missed a few species. Specifically, urinalas scaphium, which can be found in the Yeshiva University's Pollack Library and Belfer Hall.

This species appears with both automatic (in the library) and manual (in Belfer) flush traits. While it is unclear which of these is the dominant trait, the automatic flush variety are notoriosly moody, and tend to flush with little provocation, so one would hope that it is reccesive. Additionally, unlike its cousins which regularly maintain a small amount of water, this species of Urinal maintains a large volume of water. For these reasons, it is suggested that perhaps this species is the missing link between the larger toilet bowls (americanas standardium) and urinals.

Although Aryeh suspects that sinks (cleanlinus basinium) have a symbiotic relationship with Urinals, it is widely accepted that urinal cakes (crustum urinalas) do in fact maintain this symbiotic relationship.

Finally, there is a species of Urinal that has proliferated in recent years which uses no water at all - the Waterless Urinal (urinalas aqualess) -which lives in more arid climates. However many experts suspect that this species is the result of genetic engineering, not a recently discovered native urinal.

THE GREAT URINAL HUNT

On a couple of occasions Eli has pointed out that I get to post on all the holidays that come along. Today will be no exception, this might confuse you slightly as today is Tuesday and Thanksgiving isn’t until Thursday, which as we know is Eli’s day to post. However due to Rutgers creative scheduling today is Thursday and tomorrow is Friday, so I still have managed to post on Thanksgiving. As such, I would like to wish everyone a very happy Turkey Day.

Now that I have finished with the introduction part of this post I can now get to the body. I do not recall precisely how this came up in conversation, but my mother expressed confusion about the nature of the urinals in men’s bathrooms. She had been under the impression that Urinals were simply long trough like apparatuses. I will now attempt to clarify this issue. To do this I walked around the Rutgers campus with a hidden camera and got the insiders view of the men’s restrooms urinals. Now we shall embark on the great urban safari, soon we shall see some urinals in their native habitats.

This is a relativly standard breed of Urinal, however notice the intresting horn. I have only observed this characteristic on Urinals native to the 7th floor of the Hill Center.

Here is a close up of the unusual horn.

This here is an very intresting group three Urinals of diffrent sub-species. I was lucky enough to come across this in the Physics Lecture Hall.

Here are five identical Urinals, now this is a very strange grouping as I have only once seen or heard anyone is this region (the one time occured when I was taking this picture).

These are in fact not a Urinals. They are Sinks they are rather close relitives of the Urinal and you will often see them grouped near each other. My current reasearch would indicate that they have a symbiotic relationship.

Lesson 1 on British Signage

Train Station

The symbol for a train station is circled in blue. This can appear on maps road-signs or on the station itself. It was chosen very soon after the invention of railroads to remind engineers to drive on the left side of the railroad.


So I want to take a picture of this funny symbol thats in a completely random spot of road outside the station and these two drunken weirdos stumble out of a pub. When the man who looks like zorro insisted I take a photo, who am I to say no? In Newark that only happens right before they run off with your camera. (10 points if you know what the red thing the fat one is wearing on his chest).


This is Robert Hall saying hello to all my fellow Americans. "Hello!"

Wet Paint?

Coming home from school yesterday, I noticed something rather puzzling on a paint-free tree. Check out the picture:

However, I suppose the sign might have been referring to the car that's behind the tree...

(Yeah, yeah, or maybe even the "fence." I wonder who a fence of that height is supposed to keep out. Really fat squirrels, maybe?)

We have a winner - sort of

Due a late night on Sunday and a giant pile of dishes on Monday evening (which Eli did but I was activley giving moral support), I have not had a chance to post the contest winners until now. Now, for those waiting with bated breath I will hold you in suspense no longer:

Favourite Normal Name - Henrietta
Favourite Sentimental Name - Mrs. Squinkwopper
Favourite Punny Name - Sorry but it is a tie between Har Sayir and Hairyetta Burkanot
Favourite Geeky Name - Mrs. Eigenkopf

RUTGERS FOOTBALL 2

I really can’t properly express what it was like to be at the Rutgers vs. Louisville game. I had a seat about eight rows from the field. The game was insane; my parents could hear the singing from my house. The Empire State building has all its lights red. I can’t in writing properly express what it was like. However at the end of the game when we all rushed the field I cut myself jumping the fence. I can’t say anything else and really express the game properly. Just watch the end of the game for yourself especially the 5:45 mark, you should really watch about one minute of it at the 5:45 mark. Also, to make the whole night even better I have at least one confirmed siting of me and my friends on ESPN but I think we got on a couple more times as well. If you feel like going over all the videos on the internet of the game, if you see a cardboard battle ax I am near it, have fun.

First the picture that my friend John took at the game.

This is a picture from where we where sitting.

The winning field goal.

The field about 10 minuted after the game.

My cut finger.

Me and Jimmy in the endzone after the game, I have no idea why i llok so wierd.

Now for the pictures from the media.

Red Empire State Building

The media's view of the field storming.

Ashby-De-La-Zouch National Not Really a Forest

The first definition of forest is a dense growth of trees and so I have renamed the Ashby-De-La-Zouch National Forest to the title of this post.

Not quite what I expected it to be but nice nonetheless. In my classic style I looked it up after and apparently a forest is also a defined area of land formerly set aside in England as a royal hunting ground. If I had only known I might have assassinated a Royal family member or two (are they in season yet?)

Below is a picture of me hoping not to get arrested

For boating on the wrong side of the canal of course.

Read this first!

We just purchased a new Linksys router. When I opened the packaging, this is what I saw:
So I figured opening the little envelope would be a good way to start. Inside:
I was beginning to get the sense that they wanted me to run the CD before connecting any cables. But I wasn't 100% sure yet.
OK, bright orange - very eye catching. Good, so by now I was almost pretty 100% sure that I should run the CD before messing around with cables (for best results). But, first I figured that first I'd take a look at the back of the router:
Wow. They must be REALLY serious about not connecting the cables before running the CD. At this point I was feeling overwhelmed with the large, bolded orange and white instructional signs, so I pulled off the sticker on the back of the router...and connected a cable before (gasp!) running the CD:

And nothing exploded or anything! What a let down. And the router even functioned properly. Really, I don't know what the big deal was.

Rutgers Football

I know that the name of this post is slightly misleading, as in sports? Well yes sports, Rutgers football team is 8-0 which means that they have won 8 games and lost none. This Thursday they are playing another 8-0 team. Rutgers only has 10000 tickets for students so they decided to give them out early. So starting at 8:00 this morning they where giving tickets. Some people camped out to get tickets others got on line at 1:00 am me I showed up at 9:00. I ended up waiting on line for 2 hours, which is an unusual thing for a Lansey to do to get into a sporting event. However I did and I got a ticket. It took forever to get the tickets at the beginning because the University was stupid and there was just a mob at the front, they finally organized it all. I discovered a really short line when I got my ticket and realized that if I had left to get tickets when I got home I probably would only have waited at most 15 minutes, but life is all in the experience. I once again apologize for the unusual topic of this post but I just got a ticket worth between $400-$1000 so tough on you.

Of course the listed seat number doesn't matter the seat I get is based upon what time I get to the stadium.

The first Lansey Brothers' Blog contest!

Before I got married I knew I was going to be wearing fake hair (no wait the sheital macher who sold it to me might take offense to that. It is REAL hair, just not MY real hair, well it is now that I paid for it but, or rather someone else paid for it for me, but not the hair grows out of my head.) I had decided I wanted to wear fake hair a while ago. However, the fact that I knew it would happen didn’t really make it less weird when the time came. One of the areas of intense weirdness is the hair storage technique. It is apparently a required that fake hair needs to be stored on a disembodied Styrofoam head. I found it disconcerting to live in the same room as a Styrofoam head, so I but some blue fabric on it. Yoni found it funny that I had a disembodied Styrofoam head with lots of blue fabric on it so he gave it eyes.So now my idea is that it will be less weird to live with it if it has a name. You can name it with fabric, without fabric and I will announce the winner right here on this blog, so post your entries in the comments and stay tuned...

Ram the Master Microwave Maven

As webmaster of the Microwave Cookbook I sometimes get pretty strange feedback. For example, within one hour, Ram sent three separate messages from a .yahoo.co.in Address. I thought they were quite funny.

Message: How to set different temperatures in microwave and upto how much time we must put the food into it for cooking? If you can give me some examples, please tell regarding how to cook chicken items, upto what time and what temperature the woven must be set according to Indian standards of cooking.
Name: Ram

Message: I baked a cake in microwave oven according to the instructions given in manual. But I found it flat sticken to the plate like a pizza size. Why it happened like that? What is the solution for that?
Name: Ram

Message: We have bought a microwave oven. But we don't know how to cook and set different heating temperatures because we were given a manual for what varieties to cook, but not given any information of how to cook?
Name: Ram

The remote control

Last night on the subway, there was a remote control sitting on an otherwise unoccupied bench. I can just see someone tearing their house apart - poking in their sofa's nooks and crannies - to find their remote, when really they left it on the subway.

In other news, it is currently fall. And there are lots of trees in the Palisades, which are (is?) conveniently across the river from our apartment.I'll post some panoramas when I get a chance to stitch some together.