Jacob’s Blog

So there was a really small earthquake in downtown Portland tonight. It had a magnitude 2.6. These sort of earthquakes happen often, and they can hardly be felt and do not cause damage.

But that doesn’t stop the news stations from jumping all over the story. They had reporters reporting live from the epicenter, a place I happen to walk by frequently on my way to or from school. I suspect that the only reason they are even reporting on it is that the quake originated from downtown Portland where so many people (including the TV stations) are located and so the combined fuss from so many people made the story worth mentioning.

I live about 20 miles away from Portland, and I didn’t feel a thing. In fact, I would guess that if this quake happened in Southern California, that it wouldn’t even be mentioned, at least not like the news headline.

Now the real story is that we’ve been getting so much rain that some of the streets can’t drain the water fast enough that there is minor flooding. The rain is causing real damage, that is a real story, while the earthquake was just slightly unusual and thats it.

Oh, well. Let the Oregonians get all excited about their little earthquake.

I like stars, which is why living in Provo isn’t the best situation for me. You see, in Provo and Salt Lake City, so much light is reflected upward into the skies that it makes it really hard to see and admire the stars. Light shining up in the skies is called light pollution, and makes backyard astronomy more difficult. Deseret News has an article about the light pollution problem and what some are doing to help fight the problem.

Last Thursday we conducted a science experiment. We had three different concentrations of IPA, 70%, 91%, and one unknown, because it wasn’t marked on the bottle, possibly meaning that it was close to 100%. I won’t say here exactly what IPA is, but a carefully crafted Google acronym search might provide clues.

We put two tablespoons of each concentration in identical bowls, and lit them all similarly with matches. We found the 91% and the 100% lit very easily, with the 70% concentration of IPA being a little more hesitant in igniting.

The flame from the bowl containing the 100% IPA was the highest, followed narrowly by the 91% IPA. The bowl containing the 70% IPA had a considerably smaller flame.

The bowl containing 70% IPA burnt out first, even though there was still liquid left in the bowl. The 100% and 91% bowls lasted considerably longer, although the 91% lasted just barely longer than the 100% bowl. Both the 100% and 91% bowls were dry after the flame extinguished.