Lee's cell phone

I bought a cell phone today! It's free for me for you to call me :) If you use skype, it's pretty cheap to call it. My number is 56 09 7718 6598. Have fun! Or, you can just call me on skype, too. My skype name is leewalsh.

¡Sigue la Corriente!

I found this billboard in a metro station, and I thought it was very cute. There's a lot of electricity savings propoganda here, but not to save us from global warming. Santiago, and I imagine much of the surrounding region, is facing an energy crisis. Most of their electricity comes from hydro electric, but they've been having less rain and snow than normal so their not producing up to par. Meanwhile, the city is growing and electricity use is way up and the system isn't able to handle it all. The water thing refers to the fact that they all have electric kettles to heat water for their tea or instant coffee. I think people tend to fill it much of the way up (two or three liters) and heat all that water, then only pour a cup or two and let the rest cool off. Anyway, here's a translation:

USE LOW CONSUMPTION LIGHT BULBS. DON'T WAIT FOR OTHERS TO DO IT FOR YOU.
USE ENERGY WISELY. KEEP THE CURRENT FLOWING.
Unplug things that you're not using, like your cell phone charger, that continue
to use consume electricity even while their not in use. When you heat water,
store it in a thermos. Do your laundry in full loads. Choose refigerators and
lightbulbs with the Energy Efficient Label. Follow this advice and save money.
www.siguelacorriente.cl

Cerro San Cristobal

The first clear day that most of us were here in Santiago (Sunday 24 June), we climbed Cerro San Cristobal. "Cerro" is Spanish for "hill", and this one rises from the very center of town, about 200 and some meters above the city. It had just rained the day before (while Maritza and I were running around looking at apartments) so the smog was very low and thin, giving us spectacular views. There is a picture of the hill from my apartment in my previous post. We found a footpath (see image on left; from front to back: Mike, Maritza, Alex and Elliott), but it ran into a road about halfway up so we just walked up that. Lots of runners and bikers, and not too many cars. We stopped about halfway up and had some yogurt and juice atop a little lookout tower at a little false summit. Mike and Elliott are squinting into the sun, and that's me and Maritza with the palm trees and snowy mountains behind us. We continued up a little ways and from along the road we could see Wei's apartment building (the only one of us who had a place at that point, since he arrived two weeks before any of us). On the left are Alex, Elliott, Mike and Maritza looking at it. After following several signs towards the "cumbre" and the "Virgen" we made it to the large statue of the Virgin Mary giving a blessing to the citizens of Santiago from atop this central location. Below the figure is an open-air sanctuary, which would be a very pleasant place to have a mid-summer Christmas Mass. We hung around the top and took in all the views. Elliott and Alex decided to walk back down a trail that we found that leads to the top without joining any roads, but Maritza and Mike and I were intrigued by the funicular lift that runs up the very front, and what seems to be the steepest slope of the hill. It cost I think about $500 or so one way (about one US dollar) and was much quicker than our route up. The gap through the trees on the left is the track of the funicular. A funicular works very much like an elevator, except that instead of being vertical, they rest on train tracks up a steep hillside. It consists of two carts tied directly to each other by a cable hanging over a pulley at the top of the lift. There is only one track, but it splits in the middle for the cars to pass. The two carts act as counterbalances, thus it takes very little power to lift a group of people if there is another group at the top to haul them up with their weight (and high potential energy). We later saw these all over the steep hills of Valparaíso, where they call them ascensores. Below are four views of Santiago from the top. Don't mind the smog.

Lee's Apartment

Mike and I finally found ourselves an apartment (Well, Maritza actually found it...). It's on the tenth floor and about a two-minute walk from the metro station. It has big windows facing in three directions, so we can see the smog all over! These pictures were taken from my apartment at sunrise on a very clear day.

The hill in the very center of town, Cerro San Cristobal:


To the South:


To the Northeast:




To the Southeast:

My Machine

I've finished up one week of work now, and so far I've mostly just set up my experiment. It's basically a thin plastic sheet rolled into a cylinder and very carefully glued to itself. It's held in place by the aluminum contraption shown on the left. Almost all the metal pieces were machined here for the previous experiment (in which they twisted the column to see how it would buckle). My experiment involves poking the cylinder with the two micrometer screws shown on the right. You should be able to see that one screw rotates with the cylinder, and the other is fixed to the supporting rod on the right. Somehow I'll measure the force that they exert and how that changes when I rotate the cylinder (and one of the screws) so that the dimples aproach each other. When they get close enough to each other, they'll annihilate and become one. As of now I haven't started taking any data, but hopefully that will begin soon. I've been reading lots of papers on thin surfaces and could tell you all about what happens when you deform them, but it would be difficult and probably uninteresting over a blog. You should be able toclick on the pictures to make them bigger. Post a comment if you have any questions!

Welcome

Hello everybody!

Lee wanted me to write the first post on our blog, so here it is. We've been in Chile almost two weeks, and we're just now starting to have time to breathe. That is, we'd have time to breathe if the air weren't so polluted. Lee has a cough, which we think is due to the air. Here in Chile they have an inversion that lasts the entire winter. Due to the fact that it hasn't rained for several days, the air quality is low, so that we can't see the mountains around the city. I've never experienced this phenomenon (although my parents yawned when I told them – the weather is the same as in Los Angeles).

I want to leave you on a good note, so here's a little story about bread. Yesterday Lee, Mike and I went to the Jumbo (like a Super Wal-Mart without the "Home & Garden" section and with more food in its place) where we bought two loaves of "pan de campo" for just 340 pesos each – about 75 cents! Today I went to a bakery on my way home and bought three Berliners. They're rolls with a sugar icing or manjar inside. They only cost 300 pesos each.

OK, Lee wants to translate the post, so wait for him.

Seeya,
Maritza

Bienvenidos

¡Hola a todos!

Lee quiere que yo escriba la primera entrada en nuestra blog, entonces aquí es. Tenemos casi dos semanas en Chile, y sólo ahora empezamos a tener tiempo para respirar. Digo, tendríamos tiempo para respirar si el aire no fuera tan tóxico. Lee tiene un tos, pensamos que es debido al aire. Acá en Chile hay una inversión que persiste durante todo el invierno. Gracias al hecho que no ha lluvido por varios días, la calidad del aire es bajo, tanto como no podemos ver las montañas alrededor de la ciudad. Nunco he experimentado este fenómeno así (aunque mis padres bostezaron cuando les dije el cuento - el tiempo es igual en Los Angeles).

Quiero dejar ustedes con una buen noticia, entonces escribo un poquito sobre el pan. Ayer Lee, Mike, y yo fuimos al Jumbo (como un Super Wal-Mart sin equipo para "hogar y huerto" que tiene más comida en vez de eso) donde compramos dos barras de "pan de campo" por sólo Ch$340 cada uno - ¡sobre US$0.75! El día de hoy visité una panadería en mi camino hasta la casa, y compré tres "pan berlin". Son como bollos con azúcar glas o manjar adentro. Cuesta sólo Ch$300 cada uno.

Bueno, Lee quiere traducir la entrada, le esperan.

Chau pue'
Maritza