Miscellaneous

Hi! Here you'll find a fun/useful general science snippet and a physics tip, followed by a brief note about the spelling of my name.

(Click here for past snippets & tips).

Science snippet #6: Caring for a new book

I recently encountered a trick to condition a new book to prevent the spine from cracking. This was sadly too late for one book (note the orange book below), but saved another (see the blue book). A cracked spine can result in pages that fall out, but if instead the spine bends then all is well. In mathematical terms we want the slope of the spine to always remain continuous. 

The process takes about ten minutes (less than the time spent reading a book!), and adopts the following approach:
-- Start with the book at room temperature or warmer, before opening the book wide.
-- The overall strategy is to place the book with its spine on a desk and gently push along the inside of the spine, with the spine kept concave as seen from below (check out the videos here and here).
-- I usually start near the middle of the book, with half the pages lying flat on the desk and the other half held about 45° above the horizonal. I then lift around five pages each time up from the horizontal, pushing along the inside of the spine until all the pages originally lying flat have been lifted.
-- I then repeat this for the other half of the book.
Now, enjoy!

Physics tip #6: Boiling water with or without added salt...

Predicting the outcome of an experiment can sometimes be challenging, and this is often the case when different effects oppose each other. Consider adding salt to a fixed amount of water, and wondering whether this would decrease or increase the time it takes to bring it to a boil.

If we treat the container to be closed (so with negligible evaporation), then three effects occur due to adding the salt: Effect 1 - we are adding some mass to the system, and this alone would increase the time taken to boil. Effect II - we are raising the boiling point of the water, and this would also increase the time taken to boil. Effect III - we are changing the heat capacity of the liquid (with its slightly-increased mass), and in fact this decreases the heat capacity so would decrease the time taken to boil.

To see which of these effects: 1 & 2 together, or 3, wins, we need to know the size of each effect. The parameters of interest can be found in Question 4 of the 2023-2024 Thermal Physics midterm posted here. In this case we explore a solution with the same salinity as sea water, but the overall conclusion applies also to those solutions normally used in cooking.

Finally, a note about 'Rayf'

I usually adopt the spelling Rayf, which is consistent with the pronunciation I prefer (/reɪf/, used by family and friends). The original (and still the formal, legal) spelling of my name is Ralph, yet this is often confusing in a manner similar to the Stroop effect. Some historical background to the name, from Prof. Ralph Wedgewood at the University of Southern California, can be found here.