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Burning Man
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on Saturday night, the party and the fire keep going all night long. This was taken about 15 minutes after the man fell down and was being consumed. The burning reminds me of this wonderful little physics nugget from Richard Feynman. This might be from his book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Anyway, he makes a nice description that trees don't grow out of the ground, but they mostly grow out of the air. They get a few nutrients and some water and stuff from the ground, but 99% of the meat of the tree is made from carbon. The leaves grab the carbon dioxide and then use the sun to slice off the C from the O2. It hangs on to the carbon and it becomes the wood. The tree then gets rid of the O2 because it is waste. Later, we take that wood and make it super-hot with fire, which makes the carbon re-connect with the oxygen, creating carbon dioxide once again. And then the cycle starts all over as it floats over to a nearby tree to go through it all again. All that fire, then, can be seen as stored sunlight. Anyhoo... that's the kind of stuff I read! Haha... you can probably search on YouTube for "Feynman Tree Growing out of Air" and see more. He has so many great little physics thoughts like that. Wow, I really end up boring whoever sits by me on burn night.
I was lucky enough to stay on St. Clair's beach in Dunedin for a few nights. Each morning had a different sort of sunrise. This was one of my favorites. I was out there pretty much all the time, with my camera fully loaded and ready to go! - Trey Ratcliff Click here to read the rest of this post at the Stuck in Customs blog.