Fifteen Years
Fifteen years ago today I [Michael] drove off the ferry and into the city of Juneau.  It was a Monday morning, a week before the spring equinox.  The timing was intentional, as I wanted daylight to find a place to live, and to look for work.  As luck would have it, I found both very quickly: I moved into my new apartment that first day (and a very nice apartment it was), and that Friday I went to interview for the job in the assay lab at Greens Creek mine.  That same Friday night I played my first paying gig in Alaska in one of the local bars, an engagement that continued for the next three weekends until the work schedule at the mine put an end to my playing music in bars (this was immediately before karaoke hit the scene and put most one-man-bands out of business for good, so my timing could hardly have been better).  For a man who came to Juneau with no home, no job, and no prospects, my arrival here was remarkably smooth.

I moved here with one goal: to be closer to Dorothy.  To that end I was successful.  Because I came to Juneau, I was able to watch at least some of Dorothy’s growth, captured in all-too-infrequent visits, school assemblies when she sang in the choir, a couple of camping trips, and two operas we both performed in.  Toward the end of her high school years we got fairly close.  I would have witnessed none of this had I not made the move from Nevada, and I’ve never regretted the choice to come here.

Dorothy’s in college now, living and functioning as an adult in the real world, or perhaps in the surreal world, since she does live in Fairbanks.  She has been together with a young man named Jason Standford for some time now, and a few days ago she called me to say that he had proposed and she had accepted, and that they were planning a wedding in June of 2008 (in the Seattle area), immediately after her anticipated graduation from college.  I understand that they are planning a move from Fairbanks as soon as Dorothy is done with her undergraduate work, but where they wind up at this point depends on which graduate school Dorothy gets into; I have heard Austin [Texas] mentioned a couple of times in this context.

We might move too, but not any time soon.  In fact, it looks as though Juneau will be my home for a long time to come.  Sheryl has a job she likes and a pay schedule that matches the years she spent getting there.  We’ve got our two children, and we’ve got this house.  Some day, when I go back to work, we’ll even be financially comfortable again!

Moving in on a Record

We now are officially in our third snowiest year.  So far this winter, the airport has received just shy of fifteen feet of the white stuff, officially tallied at 179.7 inches.  Second place isn't far away (183.6" in 74-75).  First place (in 63-64 at 194.3") is still a little ways away, but we might just make it.  We have snow in the forcast everyday until Monday.

There is a lot of snow on the ground here.  There is even more snow on the ground at our old house, as I [Michael] discovered when the phone rang and our renter thought I should take a look at the situation on the back deck.  Here are the pictures.

When the snow slid off the neighbors' side, a chunk of it pushed back against the house and broke their bay window.  Our side has a deck, which allowed the snow on the roof to bridge across to the piles on the deck and prevented any harm to the house.  I dug a hole right through the igloo and also dug out a substantial portion of the snow directly below the bay window on the deck.  The hope is that when the rest of the igloo comes apart there won't be enough snow to make the sweep back into the bay window.  Since most of my studies on avalanche science have been learned on that house, this is a fairly good bet.

The weather has actually been fairly nice for getting the kids out.  Okay, so it's right at freezing, but at least it isn't bitter cold and the snow isn't all going to mush.  Nice weather for playing in the snow.

I did not let them play under the igloo at our old house, just in case. 

Still Playing the Piano

I [Michael] am still playing the piano, sometimes over an hour a day, almost every day.  I doubt that practice will ever make perfect, but it does allow for improvement.

Here is my latest attempt at Mozart's Fantasy #3 in A minor (and yes, I did mis-identify it as #4 in earlier posts). It represents the piece from the very beginning to the end of the Andantino movement.  I have not gotten very far with the next and most difficult section, and I haven't even looked at the concluding section except to decide that I can't just skip to the end without losing a couple of key changes that keep the work continuous.  Still, the piece is far enough along that I thought it was worthwhile sharing, so that everybody can hear why I find this such an interesting work of art.

The background noise, by the way, is little Michael playing patiently on the floor while I do my thing.

 

Fantasy Number Three 

The Waiting Game
Another heavy snow warning has been issued for Juneau, with 5-10 more inches of snow expected by Sunday morning.  If the snow stopped after the last storm we’d have our fifth-snowiest year on record, but we’ve had a couple more inches this week, there’s the storm expected tomorrow, and more snow is in the forecast for next week.  Last week the top rail of a portion of our back fence (36” high) dipped below the snow line.  This weekend we’re likely to lose sight of more.  A couple of piles near the front of our yard, where the snow blower discards its labor, are around eight feet tall.  Fortunately our house and our driveway are on a knoll, so when the thaw does come we’ll be above the deluge.  I [Michael] am a little concerned about our old house (now our rental), but I believe the drainpipe I put in to carry water from the front rain gutter will also keep water from getting into the garage, or at least I hope it will.

How long will the snow last?  That’s a very good question.  It depends a lot on how much rain we get once the temperatures warm up.  Last summer was unusually wet.  Precipitation this year isn’t actually that far out of line with normal: our above-normal snow pack began with a lot of snow in November.  If we get a lot of rain the snow will go away.  If we don’t get enough rain, we could see snow on the ground in July.  This is the time of year when Juneauites play the waiting game.

And what do Juneauites do while they play the waiting game?  Make blog entries, for one thing.  Haircuts are good too.  We watch the snow level go up and down.  We think about all the things that we’d be doing if the snow went away.  This is also a good time of year to be involved in theatre, symphony, and all those other things that people with talent do (people, that is, who don’t feel like staying home with the family).  As for me, I’ve been researching heat pumps, designing a radiant floor heat system (in my head mostly, though I do have measurements of the crawlspace to go by), designing a hydrogen production device (again, in my head), and a woodshed (ditto).  We did go to the Home and Garden show downtown last weekend, which wasn’t terribly exciting but at least it got us out on a family outing.

From the home show I learned that a five-star energy rating for homes is a joke.  I attended a seminar in which I learned that a five-star energy efficient home is designed to lose no more than 19 BTUs per hour at Juneau’s design temperature, which is minus four degrees Fahrenheit.  According to the oil tank measurements I’ve been taking over the past month, in which I compare oil usage with hourly average temperatures, I have learned that this house would consume just over 20 BTUs per hour at that temperature, and that includes my domestic hot water usage!  I was talking to a local contractor today and he verified the 19 BTU per hour figure.  I told him that if I were to buy a five-star energy rated home and saw energy bills anywhere close to what we’re paying for this place (which has poor insulation and many air leaks), I would be outraged.  I guess we’ll work to get our number down just a tad, and then apply for the rating to see what happens.

These are the kinds of things I ponder while playing the waiting game.

Bad Science and Hydrogen Electrolysis

There is a lot of bad science on the internet.  I [Michael] have always known this, but it’s useful to be reminded of this point from time to time.

Take, for instance, my desire to produce hydrogen to float a balloon for aerial photography.  There are a lot of sites out there that attempt to explain how to use electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, and several amateur experimenters have video posted online to demonstrate their work.  Unfortunately, most of these folks rely on their own limited knowledge of chemistry, or on the limited knowledge of others (such as the majority of posters to internet science sites).  The apparatus devised by most experimenters are remarkably similar, and rightly so, because the basic premise is simple: apply a direct electrical current (as opposed to alternating current like that which comes from the wall socket) to two electrodes in some water.  The positive side is supposed to produce hydrogen, the negative is supposed to produce oxygen.

The problem comes when bubbles don’t start appearing on the immersed electrodes.  The bubbles don’t appear because water is not very conductive, and very little current can pass through.  To remedy this, most experimenters add salt to the water to increase its conductivity.  After adding the salt, current begins to flow, bubbles appear, and the experimenter assumes they’ve succeeded in their experiment.  To verify their results, they’re allowing the two gasses produced by the electrolysis to combine in the same container, and when they apply a match to the confined gas it goes off with an audible “pop”.

The problem is that salt changes the nature of the reaction.  Apparently, most of these experimenters have never done a sniff test on the gasses coming off of the electrodes.  I have, and I smelled something: I smelled chlorine.

For anybody who’s done an internet search for this experiment and has stumbled upon this site, I’ve intentionally used the words “hydrogen”, “electrolysis”, and “chlorine” a lot more than needed to drive this post towards the top of the internet search engines, and that’s probably why you’re here.  For our regular readers, I’ll apologize for this technical rambling and in my defense I’ll point to my undergrad degree in Industrial Mechanics, saying something to the effect that I just can’t help but write about these sorts of details (witness many previous posts in this blog on various technical topics).  I also have to note my MAT degree, Master of Arts in Teaching, which means that I just can't keep my mouth shut when it comes to lecturing the general public  (and especially amateur experimenters) about things they should take into consideration when attempting or witnessing potentially dangerous experiments.

But I digress…

I did a little further research through google, and by adding the word “chlorine” to a search for “hydrogen electrolysis” I soon found the truth behind the science.

When salt (sodium chloride) is added to water, it becomes an aqueous solution with free ions of sodium and chlorine floating within it.  When electricity is added, the positive electrode does indeed produce hydrogen, but it is only producing half as much hydrogen as might be expected, changing two H2O molecules into two OH- (hydroxyl or hydroxide, I can't remember the correct term) ions and two free hydrogen ions (which then combine to form hydrogen gas).  The negative electrode, on the other hand (or other polarity, as the case may be), is taking the freed-up hydroxyl ions and combining them with the free sodium ions (Na+) to produce sodium hydroxide in solution with the remaining water.  The leftover chlorine ions then combine into chlorine gas (Cl2), and this is what’s being liberated.  The “ignition” test, rather than producing water by combining hydrogen and oxygen, is instead reacting [explosively] to form hydrochloric acid.  The “pop” is still there, but the product is not what might be expected.

For my purposes salt will still work just fine, because I am only interested in collecting the hydrogen, and the amounts of chlorine will be small enough to vent away if I do this project outside.  For those folks who really want to produce hydrogen and oxygen, I understand that sulfuric acid is supposed to increase conductivity in water without interfering in the electrolysis of water.  Personally, I think production of an explosive gas is enough risk in itself without resorting to producing explosive gas in the presence of a strong acid.

There is another reason why using salt is better than sulfuric acid.  If the experimenter were to condense and collect the hydrochloric acid produced by the combustion of hydrogen and chlorine, they might find that it makes an excellent toilet bowl cleaner*.  Or perhaps that’s a little farther than most people want to carry their experiments.  Hydrochloric acid is also one of the best chemicals around to remove rust from metal.

And here's another technical note for experimenters:
I'm using a plug-in 12 volt power supply for my hydrogen generator because I don't want to waste batteries.  By the same token I don't want to fry my power supply either, so I am using an ammeter (the one on my multimeter will read up to ten amps) to monitor current in the system.  The current can be regulated by adding more salt for more current, or more water for less current.  I am using 12 volts for two reasons: 1) I have a 12 volt power supply that can produce over ten amps and 2) I want to keep the voltages low to avoid electrocution.  Also, please bear in mind that sodium hydroxide is caustic and very corrosive, so be very careful while disposing of the water-salt-sodium hydroxide solution after performing this particular experiment.

Bad science is dangerous.  Even good science can be dangerous, but at least good science prepares the experimenter to deal with the products of their experimentation. 

I'll have more to say about all of this when the weather gets warmer and I can begin serious work on my proposed hydrogen generator. 

*There are industrial toilet bowl cleaners out there that are, quite literally, dilute hydrochloric acid.  I once worked in a place that sold the stuff.