numbers

Day 273 – Absolute Zero

Posted on December 24, 2020December 23, 2020

Every now and again, thanks to the way that I have numbered my lockdown posts this year (remember Day 1?), a number comes up which clearly has a bigger meaning than just how many days we’ve been “stuck inside”.

273 is one of those.

And that’s because -273.15ºC is Absolute zero. Not the terrible alcohol free vodka, but:

the lowest limit of the thermodynamic temperature scale, a state at which the enthalpy and entropy of a cooled ideal gas reach their minimum value, taken as zero kelvins. The fundamental particles of nature have minimum vibrational motion, retaining only quantum mechanical, zero-point energy-induced particle motion.

Yeah. That.

There’s also a theoretical temperature called Absolute Hot, but since that is equal to

141,678,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kelvins
(or approximately 141,678,499,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,726.85ºC)

I’m rather hopeful that we won’t need to address that in Days of Lockdown.

At least not any time soon.

Day 217 – Number Project

Posted on October 29, 2020

Some time ago (and I mean literally several years of time ago), I – mentally, at least – launched a photographic project with the aim of photographing as many numbers as possible. Not all the numbers, just the ones from 1 to 100.

No rules other than there being one of each number and no context to the numbers in question. Just snap the numbers wherever I saw them. In fact, the more diverse the situations, the better. Different colours and fonts, different angles, different light.
I would then arrange all the numbers onto a single image, with 1-10, 11-20 and so on, on each row, print it and put it on a wall.

Sadly, being in my head is as far as the project ever got, but I think it’s something that needs resurrecting and actually doing. I’m not sure what the time frame is on this, because if I try to rush it, it’ll be contrived and rubbish, and if I leave it too long, well, it will retreat back into my head like a lovable cartoon character into a convenient hedgerow.

You know the one:

I don’t want that to happen. Apart from anything else, the leaves would obscure my vision.

So, I’m going to give it a go. I’m going to put the results into an album on Flickr, and I’m going to keep the blog updated with some of my favourite number-related images under some super cool title and tag (once I think of something appropriate).

Keep me honest by asking how much I’ve done when you see me on a flying visit to social media. Question me about whether I’ve got number 38 yet. Test my willingness to discover new photographic subjects by suggesting a number 61 that you saw in Noordhoek.

I have high hopes that this might actually happen. Let’s give it a go.

Big Numbers

Posted on April 29, 2018April 26, 2018

We constantly hear numbers being used on the news and elsewhere in our daily lives, but do we actually think about what they mean and how they relate to one another?

This site: http://www.isthatabignumber.com/quiz/ not only gets your grey matter working, it also helps you to put some some context to some of the big numbers you hear every day.

And some you probably don’t.