Water, water everywhere

We're floating in water down here in Kentucky, after getting more than 8 inches of rain over the weekend. This picture is the road down to the Valley View Ferry, which J. usually takes everyday to work. He'll be taking the long way round for a while.

Thankfully, our house is on high ground.  When we went to the grocery store, we drove along Tates Creek Road (the same road in the picture above, though a ways from that section).  The creek was transformed into a muddy monster snarling at the banks.  J. estimated that the creek was not 6 inches from flooding the road and we wondered if we would have to take another route to get home. 

While being bombarded by yet another downpour, J. said, "The weather is confused. It thinks we've gone hiking." 

Water

I'm going to challenge myself to write a post a day on things I am thankful for.  Seeing as this is the month containing Thanksgiving, I thought this would be an interesting exercise.

First up: water.

I don't think I fully appreciated water until I started hiking.  When you have to carry your water because you can't drink directly from the streams you come across (however nobly beastly a notion that is); when grit starts to accumulate on your skin and you catch unexpected whiffs of your own rich aroma; when you have to trudge through a daylong downpour--you start to appreciate water.

It's not always neatly confined to a faucet that you can turn on when you need it.  It's not always safely contained in plastic containers on the shelves of your grocery store. You can't always duck indoors when the clouds unleash their fury.  Water is a force to be reckoned with.

And yet it's so beautiful...even when I'm low on treated water while hiking and feeling like the ancient mariner from Coleridge's poem whenever I pass a burbling stream: "Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.."

The relationship between math and free beer

Last night, J. and I came home via the meandering Rte 25, rather than the interstate. As we approached Old Clay's Ferry Bridge, a narrow bridge eclipsed by the newer bridge towering far overhead, we saw a group of foolhardy young men wearing lifejackets and swimming trunks. Apparently, Riptide Bar and Restaurant had offered free beer to anyone stupid enough to jump off the bridge, and these guys were stupid enough (and tipsy enough) to volunteer.

We pulled over to watch. One by one, they stepped off the bridge and plunged inelegantly into the brown water below. I think one guy was unfortunate enough to smack full-body onto the surface of the river (I'm sure this has happened to all of us at least once when we were kids and learned through painful experience that water actually has surface tension).

Never one to pass up an educational moment, Jon calculated the approximate distance between the bridge and the river, using the formula:

p = p₀ + v₀t + ½ at²

He knew several of the variables. Every second a body accelerates with gravity, it increases its speed by 32 feet per second, ignoring air resistance and our trivial distance above sea level. This number is a. We also assumed that each guy's initial velocity relative to our reference point (the bridge, p₀) was 0--in other words, they were just stepping off the bridge, not jumping up or down. This number is v_0. We knew that it took each guy approximately 1.5 seconds to embrace the water, so we used that for t.*

p = 0ft + 0fts^-1*1.5s + ½ 32fts^-2*1.5s²

Which gives us the answer 36, so we can make an educated guess that the bridge is between 30 and 40 feet above the water.

Now you've learned something for the day.

*J. helped me write this paragraph