Comments on: [WCYDWT] Cheese Blocks

By: James Cleveland

James Cleveland — Tue, 22 May 2012 12:31:15 +0000

The geogebra applet doesn’t seem to be in the archive, fyi.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:17:21 +0000

Sorry to necro this thread, but did you notice you can measure the speed of light from the first video? The block of cheese starts melting from two points that I would eyeball at 6cm apart. These correspond to anti-nodes in the microwave, so the wavelength is 12cm. Standard microwaves are 2.45GHz (there’s usually a plate on the back you can check). Plugging into google “12cm * 2.45GHz” should give an answer that’s scary close to the speed of light.

By: Bev

Bev — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 03:36:17 +0000

This would be a good lesson to use in the science classroom when we introduce why cells need to be small to survive.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 06:42:37 +0000

Adobe AfterEffects. If you ever pick it up, let me know and I’ll throw together a tutorial.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:43:43 +0000

Dan,
What program do you use to make your splitscreen effect? Do you have a link to any tutorials on this?
Thanks!
Sam

By: Max

Max — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:23:19 +0000

Could it be an inverse variation model rather than exponential? That melting time is inversely proportional to the ratio of volume to surface area? So that our curve is rational rather than exponential?

I don’t know how to tell…

By: Dvora

Dvora — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:43:26 +0000

Quick tech question… I can’t seem to access the videos from school since they are being blocked marked as R rated. Any ideas?

By: Dan L

Dan L — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 04:22:01 +0000

Great summary. I agree that a deeper understanding of the physics will eliminate the pseudocontext. This could be good fun for a physics class. This could also work as a college laboratory with appropriate models for physical behavior.
(There are a bunch of folks who are interested in microwave processing of engineering materials – so the relevance is already there, you’re just using cheese!)

I should also point out that folks who study viscoelasticity (time dependence of stress and strain in materials) use Velveeta.

What I’m saying is that you are in good company in cheese science – viscoelasticity strikes fear into the hearts of engineering students!

By: Kevin Stuart

Kevin Stuart — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:50:14 +0000

You always have great stuff Dan!

By: Rafael

Rafael — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:35:43 +0000

If you are inviting the science teacher down the hall, you might want to change the label on your y-axis from “sec” to “s”. Maybe it is a pet peeve of mine, but that is the correct symbol for the SI unit of time…
Funny story, completely off-topic: when I told this to my physics class a couple of years back, a girl from the class shouted out “But I always do secs!”… at which point she turned bright red, and the class burst out laughing (teacher tried to suppress his grin).