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Author Archives: ayanguasgil
the letter Q
Funny how when you think of it, each type has its own personality. Here is the letter Q according to 12 different types:
Posted in typography
Tagged arial, baskerville, caslon, didot, futura, garamond, gill sans, helvetica, optima, palatino, times new roman, typography, verdana
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stacking tetrahedra, the geek side
Previously, in random walk: I recently discovered the advantages of play-doh as a medium for visualizing crystal structures. I started playing with stacking of tetrahedra, which leads to zincblende and wurzite crystalline structures, as well as more complex structures such … Continue reading
Posted in materials science
Tagged crystal structure, SiC, stacking, tetrahedra, wurzite, zincblende
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visualizing crystal structures using play-doh
Right now there are tons of programs out there that allows the 3D visualization of molecules and crystals. Some of them are really awesome, but their main problem is that, while you can manipulate your point of view and rotate … Continue reading
Posted in materials science
Tagged crystal structure, octahedra, play-doh, tetrahedra, wurzite, zincblende
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a peek at type evolution
Sampling the evolution of typefaces: For some reason Comic Sans did not make the cut: http://bancomicsans.com/main/.
Posted in typography
Tagged comic sans, garamond, helvetica, history, palatino, timeline, typography
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on rare earths
Hard to extract, hard to discover and critical both in terms of supply risk and relevance for energy applications. This is a simplified chronology of the discovery of lanthanides. Starting from Cerite, Gadolinite and Samarskite it took more than a … Continue reading
Posted in chemistry, science
Tagged elements, history, lanthanides, rare earths, timeline
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the world is a-changing
If someone came from another world and saw the trend of primary energy consumption share, he/she would get a pretty good picture of what is going on:
on quads, toes and other energy units
Tons of oil equivalent, quadrillion BTUs, gigawatts per year… This is a conversion table for common energy units: quad toe EJ kWh GWyear quad 1 2.52E7 1.06 2.93E11 33.4 toe 3.93E-8 1 4.18E-8 1.16E4 1.33E-6 EJ 0.948 2.39E7 1 2.78E11 … Continue reading
where are my planets?
pyephem is a python module for astronomical calculations that lets you determine the positions of different celestial objects with scientific-grade precisions (so much for my old copy of Practical astronomy with your calculator). So if you want to keep track … Continue reading
critical materials
Last december DOE released its critical materials strategy. Five rare earth metals (dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium) and indium are ranked critical for clean technologies in terms of importance and supply risk. Rare earths are not really that scarce, … Continue reading
Posted in energy, geochemistry
Tagged critical materials, DOE, elements abundance, energy, matplotlib
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Energy outlook for 2035
How are we going to generate our energy by 2035? Unless things radically change, mainly using fossil fuels, according to the Annual Energy Outlook 2011 published by the US Energy Information Administration. The reference case is based on the assumption … Continue reading
Posted in energy, photovoltaics
Tagged 2035, EIA, energy, energy outlook, photovoltaics
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