Better start saving your cockroaches...

Chitin is the technical term for the outer shell on shell fish and insects. It is biological polymer, which makes it attractive as an additive in foods, pharmaceutical compounds, adhesives, etc.
I came across it in a paper, where it was used as a spray drying additive. Not knowing what it was off the top of my head, I went to Google.
It presented the above article, but farther down the line I came across an article that had the title "Self Healing Plastic" or some such. My curiosity was piqued. It led me to an review of a paper called Self-Repairing Oxetane-Substituted Chitosan Polyurethane Networks. Briefly, the paper deals with chitin-plastic mixtures. When the mixtures were scratched, they would close over because the chitin reacted to form cross links at the edges of the scratch. All that was required was UV light. Imagine, a car is scratched,the blemish could be closed over by by taking it for a drive in the sun!

The future is now :)

-"Let there be light" -"But what type?" -"Shut up or I shall smithe thee"

"For the apparel oft proclaims the man..." - Hamlet

I potter about in college in tracksuit bottoms. So, like a teenager excited about a non-uniform day in school, I'm chippered by the prospect of a bit of dress-up. for salsa.

In the morning I decided to go with dress pants and a black shirt. My room is lit by an incandescent light bulb.
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["Quick! Into the Segway Mobile!"]

To my right are emission spectra for incandescent light sources- the sun and a bulb. Lovely and curvy. The shaded area is the visible region.*

The light is generated by heating a material, which is obvious from the definition of incandescent [just putting on my condescension hat for a moment.]

The intensity of a wavelength depends on the temperature and as well as wavelength- as illustrated by the difference between the spectra of the sun and a bulb. This is known as Planck's Radiation Law:

The law is precursor to quantum mechanics, although that was never Planck's intention, he was merely modelling radiation phenomena the best he could. In terms of intensity we do not get much bang for our buck out of these light bulbs.

*It is strange that our visible light waves is matches up so well with the region of peak intensity of the suns spectra, thank God for coincidences I guess...

["Segway Mobile Away!"]
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The dress pants I picked out matched the black of my chosen shirt, I gave a lot of scrutiny to this because I did not remember having black dress pants. In the end I trusted my eyes and left the house.

In the evening, I pulled out my clothes for salsa only to discover that I did not have a pair of black dress pants, but I did have a pair of navy ones. I balked at the idea of wearing navy and black out to salsa ["what would they think of me?!"**]. As I rushed home to change, I pondered on why I had trouble discerning the colours. I decided that the deciding was the light source I was inspecting the deceptive pants under. In the evening they were fluorescent lights.

**Probably not at all: click here ... although navy on black is probably more embarrassing than Manolo's likeness
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["Quick! To the Segway Mobile!"]


Above is a sample spectrum for a typical fluorescent light. A jagged thing. The spectrum is a combination of a the electrically excited emission from the excited gas/vapour in the tube and the re-emittance from the chemical coating on the interior of the tube.
The mechanism for this kind of light generation is more complicated that incandescent radiation- requiring an understanding of the underlying atomic and molecular structure of the chemicals as opposed to a one size fits all equation.

[The Segway mobile screeches to a halt at my destination]
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The different spectra of the light sources means there are different ratios of intensities of colours for the brain and eyes to interpret.***

Once again, an instance of fashion faux pas and possible pariah status once again became a chance to learn more about the world around me :)

["OMGYG! Drama City, population me"]

Moral of the story:
Always check your clothing under multiple lightsources... even UV if you are feeling brave.

***An example of Colour Constancy

For Paddy's Day...

For Paddy's Day I baked a cake. It had been a while since I had baked anything and I figure it would be the best use of my free day.

The play-by-play

I went with my stock ["so last season!"] cake recipe. I used raisins and peach slices for filling. The baking dish was only a few centimetres deep in cake batter so It baked really quickly- all done in 30-40 minutes.

The appraisal
Unfortunately, the the cake was a bit dry in spots. The areas near the peach slices had a preferably moist quality to them. Going to try it again this weekend, except I will puree/dice the peaches so I can get a more homogenous cake mix, and lip smacking goodness!

End Log