User:Sifaka

Milne-Edwards's Sifaka (Propithicus edwarsi)

About me

I am a college sophomore at Duke planning on majoring in biophysics. I am an editor as of Feb 10, 2006. I love lemurs. I have been to Madagascar (where I studied the Milne-Edwards's Sifaka) and Costa Rica. I like to code in Java, but I can't do Web pages.

Activity on Wikipedia

On Wikipedia, I want to focus on making articles more readable and clear. I would also like to add information to some of the lemur stubs. I like to answer science related questions on the science reference desk. I RC patrol on occasion during my non-existent free time. I watch all the days in the month of August for vandalism and non-notable additions. I like to be polite and relatively non-confrontational.

Random info

• Editing Wikipedia is a huge school distraction!

If anyone is bored and wants a stab at this physics question I have had for a while...

Suppose you have a massive, fixed, inclined plane and a thin (may be regarded as infinitely so) rigid rod of finite length. The thin rod is launched at the inclined plane along the rod's axis. The rod makes contact with the plane at an angle and without sliding bounces off. Assuming an elastic collision, how does it bounce? Does it bounce straight back up or does it acquire angular momentum and begin to spin? The issue I am having with this problem is that a particle would simply bounce off at the angle it entered in. A thin rod though, coming in with no angular momentum, would gain angular momentum if it behaved in the same manner. I am not suitably well versed in physics yet to know if the conditions I set void the conservation of angular momentum law. I spent a couple hours approximating this by dropping a pencil eraser side down under the force of gravity onto by a book propped up on one side covered in newspaper. When I managed to drop it so that I did not impart any spin, many times it bounced straight back up, but on quite a few drops I thought were good it also ricocheted off with angular momentum. That could be attributable to irregularities in the eraser and my judging of drops. It seems like if it was not supposed to bounce straight back up that it would never do so. Perhaps my biggest problem is understanding how to visualize the rod and how the forces are acting on it. Do you visualize the rod as a rigid body or a connected line of particles that influence their neighbor or what? Sifaka 01:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Ascii diagram of the pencil and the inclined plane
  
                      /| Inclined plane
rod moving -->       / |   
 __________         /  |
                   /   |
                  /    | 
                 /_____|
  
 **Note the contact will be at an angle**

If the rod is infinitely thin, the rod will contact an individual molecule (say) of the inclined plane head on. What sort of reflection (scattering) would you then expect?--Light current 02:40, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

My Interests

• Chemistry
• Lemurs
• Science in general
• Arizona
• Biology

Articles

This is the list of all the articles to which I added content or seriously revised. This does not include updates on related pages that relates back to the information I have included.

Major Revisions

The following is a list of articles which I have either created, significantly revised, or significantly improved by adding information.

• Hammond's Postulate (February 19, 2006) I added the actual postulate, discussed what the postulate is saying, how it related to rate and ratios of products, how to explain unusual results in light of the postulate, and started at the history.
• 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal (6 May 2006) I typed up a minute by minute time line of the events, added a few notes and a quote and made a references section to which I redirected all the references
• Retrograde amnesia (12 May, 2006) I added some info about how the victims feel, a little info about the condition, and tried to deal with some plagiarism.
• Milne-Edwards's Sifaka (May 12, 2006) I finally started it. I did the paragraph on locomotion on (May 12th, 2006) I may get aroung to the other parts.
• Farnesyltransferase (August 9, 2006) Added a lot of info about structure, specificity, function, and mechanism of the enzyme's activity. Not much by way of numbers though I have papers for that.
• Geranylgeranyltransferase type 1 (August 9, 2006) Created article and got the basic info started by copyediting out of FTase. Needs some solid data.
• Rab geranylgeranyltransferase (August 9, 2006) Created article and got the info by copyediting out of prenylation. Needs a lot of solid data.

Minor Revisions

The following is a list of the articles where I have added supplementary content without drastically changing the overall article

• Tetrahydrofuran (11 February, 2006) added solvent properties
• Indri (20 February, 2006) Added legend of Babakoto and a correction about the tail of the indri
• Duke University (4 May, 2006) I redid the opening paragraph and added information about merit scholarships
• Lemur (18 December 2006) I added an in pop culture section add a couple instances

(8 April 2007) Added information to the biology section

• Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (8 April 2007) I rearranged the opening and restored a large amount of text that went missing.

Humor

April Fools 2006 modification to Question Mark: might I have changed every sentence into a question? Beware of the wiki lemur!

This user is a recent changes patroller.

This user is a member of the
Counter-Vandalism Unit.

.....This user is a professional procrastinator.

DukeThis user attends or attended Duke University.