Jan 09, 2009

By-products of grad school

You come to grad school thinking that you’re going to study quantum-organic-bio computation and apply it to homeland security.  You’ll become the world’s expert!  So you show up in Boston and start learning quantum-organic-bio computation.

But you also gain other skills along the way. Some that are geographically specific. Since coming to Boston, I’ve perfected the art of walking on icy sidewalks and parallel parking my car on the left-hand side of the street. (The first time I tried to do this, I was so awful. Some very nice man came out of his shop to direct me. I’m forever indebted to him because if he hadn’t come outside to help, I’d STILL be trying to park my car.) I’ve also honed the art of giving good directions around here. This is particularly difficult because none of the streets are labeled, they change names every block, and don’t intersect at right angles. Sometimes you have to specify which left turn to make at an intersection. It’s fun.

I woke up the other day to a weather forecast of sleet and rain. I realized that, despite living almost my entire life in the northeast, I still didn’t know what sleet was. Sure, I knew it was frozen water falling from the sky. But how is it different from ice? Or snow? Or freezing rain? Or hail? There’s such a cornucopia of frozen stuff that falls from the sky around here, I figured I should know.

So I took my independent researchin’ skillz (garnered while studying things as abstruse as quantum-organic-bio computation) and did what any good grad student would do. I went to Wikipedia. And I compiled a list of frozen water that might fall from the sky. Here we go.

 

• Sleet is actually just frozen ice pellets. In countries that speak British English, they just call them “ice pellets” and “sleet” is some sort of mix of rain and snow.
• Freezing rain is precipitation that was snow at a higher altitude. It thawed on its way down and became liquid again. However, the temperature on the ground is below freezing, so the water will freeze upon impact.
• Snow is crystallized water. It’s soft and fluffy and good for throwing at friends.
• Hail are large clumps of ice. They’re usually formed during thunderstorms (in the summer). A small ice pellet will start to fall, but get blown back up again by the storm. A new layer of ice can form on top of the original. The hailstone can keep getting blown upwards, adding more layers of ice. This can lead to hailstones that are as big as golf balls.
• And just for good measure (because this was also mentioned the other day), black ice is ice that’s formed without air bubbles in it. The lack of air bubbles makes the ice look transparent. It’s “black” because it often forms on streets (and causes car accidents).

I’m now adding “knowledge of frozen precipitation” to things like parallel parking on the opposite side of the street and giving directions. They won’t help me get a PhD, but they’re useful by-products.

A Response To This Entry:

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Thanks for the info. I didnt know wat black ice was.

Posted by: tenken19 on January 11th, 2009 at 7:10 am

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