FAQs
What's up with this background anyway?
Could I get hurt?
Why should I believe you?
What color is the sky in your world?
What kind of music do you like?
Hey, that's neat! Will you give me one of those?
Not so FAQs
What are III-V's?
What's up with this background anyway?
Jack loves patterns because they are so orderly and predictable, unlike people, who, although sometimes tidy, are rarely predictable. Nature invented patterns before any of us were born, and they range in size from the incredibly small to the enormously large. This background is the natural arrangement of silicon atoms on the surface of a silicon crystal. Yes, it's real. Yes, it's small. The picture was taken with a scanning tunneling microscope by Joe Carpinelli. The repeat distance of this pattern is about 5 nm. A human hair is about 50,000 nm thick. Whew!Could I get hurt?
Well, of course you could! Jack says, "It can't be fun, if it's not just a little bit dangerous." But then again, Jack is an idiot. Ask anyone. If you don't feel completely comfortable with something, don't do it! Better safe than sorry. Look before you leap. Or better yet, ask a responsible person to help you make the decision (like your mom, not your dad), because if you're reading this, you probably aren't responsible.Why should I believe you?
You shouldn't.What color is the sky in your world?
The atmosphere on my world is the same as yours, and the star that illuminates it is the same as your sun. The rest was all worked out in the late 1800s by Lord Rayleigh (who, although a lord, is not mentioned even once in the Bible.) When light passes through the atmosphere, it interacts with the electrons in the atoms and there is a slight chance that it will get scattered (sent off in a different direction from which it came.) The scattering probability is a strong function of wavelength. The purple and blue light is a lot more likely to get scattered than the red light. The red light survives moving in its original direction longer than the blue. When you look in the direction of the illuminating star, and the path through the atmosphere is long enough, a heck of a lot more of the original red light will survive to get into your eyeballs than the blue light. When you look away from the star, you mainly see the light that was scattered. If this explanation doesn't get past my editors, you will only be left with the short answer: mostly blue, and reddish at sunsets and sunrises.What kind of music do you like?
That is a very good question. To my mind, there is nothing better than to listen to a nice little Scarlatti while I sit down with my afternoon coffee. It gets the creative juices flowing. The best recording that I've heard is produced by a company in the U.K. called Solo Records. You can order the disc from them. I highly recommend it.Hey, that's neat! Will you give me one of those?
I doubt that we can really afford to do that. You can probably make a better one yourself, or you can put it on your Christmas/Holiday list. Check out our price list - philosophy.
What are III-V's?
a) Fifteen [gs]b) Jon B., Richard H., and Brian S. [bz]
c) -II's [mh]