With all the disruptions in my recent life, including the good disruption of the new PyraCar, I haven't had time to do much art or math. But a meeting with someone from Falls Church's downtown gallery (while he was shopping at the gourmet store) reminded me that I have a prospective show to prepare for, and that I need to make an appointment to show my architectural and landscape work to the gallery-owner.

As for math, I haven't read much text or solved any problems recently. "Doing math" is mostly made up of those formal activities, I guess. But I have been thinking aabout calculus all along. Even the little amount of calculus that I have learned has been an influence on me. Learning calculus changes the way you think. For instance, at work there are two ladies named "Carol" who work in the same department. One has been working there for years, but the other just joined in the last couple of months. How could I distinguish them? Well, the "senior" one is Carol, and the "junior" one is Carol Prime. And how do I stop my new Honda Element? By reaching the limit at the red light or the parking lot. The road is full of limits which are not just speed limits. And my car, like any other vehicle with front and rear wheels, sits at a tangent to the slope of the road. If it didn't, I'd be off balance and skid off the track.

I have not forgotten physics, either. My new car is heavier (has more mass) than the older one, so it has more momentum while I drive at the same velocity that I used to. That means that it takes more braking power to stop it. Fortunately, the new brakes are much smoother and easier to use than the previous car's. I am still getting used to the new geometric configurations of the Element, as well as its turning radius, which is surprisingly small, (at low speed of course) due to its somewhat shorter length than the old Electron.

Some time ago in one of these Electron essays from May 2004 I speculated that the orange Element might be the anti-particle of the Electron Blue CRV. Am I now driving a Positron? If so, how can I navigate on roads made of matter, without causing a matter-anti-matter explosion? Experiment and Honda specifications have proven that the Orange Element is not a positron, because it has more mass than the older Electron Blue CRV, and electrons and positrons have the same mass. This then opens the question as to what Element-ary particle my Element is. Perhaps some car-loving physicist might know the answer. Anyway, it's time for me to get back to learning more math. And I'm glad that I won't have to be called "Auntie Matter."

Posted at 2:14 am | link