Klarinet Archive - Posting 000947.txt from 2001/01

From: alevin@-----. Levin)
Subj: Re: [kl] Life's little mysteries.....
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 15:54:20 -0500

<><> Anne=A0Bell wrote:
Try putting a piece of tape over the bottom & the turning mechanism,
take 2 asprin and let us know in the morning if it happened again. :)
Anne=20

I didn't think of aspirin, but I did do the tape last night --- as
a marker, to see if the mechansim actually turns over a period of hours.
It doesn't. I also did something else:

I uncapped the tube after only two hours, and the lanolin had
already sunk the usual 1/8" down into the tube. So without turning the
mechanism, I filled it up level again and I re-capped it.
Two hours later, I loked inside again, and....

It had sunk again! So I filled it a third time, and then I went
to bed.

This morning it had sunk once again. I had also wiped the
exterior of the tube clean last night. This way, if lanolin oozed out
of the tube somehow from accumulated pressure (past the cap or past the
piston in the bottom of the tube, then I would have found a blob of
lanolin at the leakage site. But the tube was clean outside.

I did notice two things this morning, however.
First, the surface of the lanolin has a smooth and uniform
depression in it this morning (a miniscus-shaped depression) without the
surface being disturbed by an escaping air bubble. When I refilled the
tube last night, I used a knife to create a perfectly flat surface.
This shows (I think) that the mass of lanolin moved or shrank uniformly
while it also clung to the inside surfaces of the tube. So I'm
beginning to think about surface tension and other such forces as the
energy source for the movement.
Second, the normal 1/8" movement was more like 1/16" this morning.
So the process is slowing down. There may be empty space inside the
lanolin mass or underneath the piston that are slowly being filled up,
and hence the amount of movement is decreasing with each cycle --- but
without disturbing the upper surface.

ISN'T THIS EXCITING !?.... I just love watching lanolin flow.
It's better than a lava lamp.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org