. . . it's on again . . .

In my recent foray into horticulture I took interest in growing broccoli and cauliflower but discovered early on that these crops don’t fare too well in summer because of the heat. I mused on the practicability of quenching the temperature around the crops in an open space such as a garden. I thought, if we could enhance convection in the environment ambient to the crops that could have a quenching effect on them. Googling a bit I came across a phenomenon known as “thermomagnetic convection” that occurs in ferrofluids. With this, the temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibility of ferrofluids can be used to complement conventional convection by subjecting the fluid to an external magnetic field. Cooler parts of such fluids have a greater magnetic susceptibility and so are attracted to regions of higher magnetic field strength by a so called "Kelvin body force" to displace warm parts of the fluid. I wondered if this occurrence could be found in matter other than ferro...

One night as I did my laundry, with confidence that the process needed no supervision I went to a different room to do something else expecting the usual audio notification I’d get when the process is complete. Sadly I’m about as sharp as a marble so I totally forgot about the task I had initiated in the other room. After a while, to my horror when I put my foot on the floor I felt a soggy carpet. A water supply pipe had unfastened from the machine and the water pump supplying the machine was gushing out water at a furious flow rate. Looking back at the incident I thank God the power extension bars that were on the floor miraculously did not have the water touch their live components. It could have meant electrocution or some other catastrophic outcome for me and other people in the house. I got to thinking about how this hazard could occur in other settings especially in factories where they might work with high electrical power and processes that involve liquids that could leak and g...