Sayre Shops

Many family members this weekend shared their steam memories. One of my uncles was generous to make copies of some of the old shop photos he has hanging on the wall in his barbershop. Another uncle shared a memory of seeing a long row of steam engines with "scrap" painted on their sides.

Its sad to see so little remaining of the old facilities, considering that they were responsible for so much of the area's development.

Sayre, Pennsylvania

I was born in Florida (parents in the military) and then lived in Sayre, Pennsylvania (where my father grew up) until I was 7, when my parents divorced and moved with my mother to California (where my mother grew up). We then spent summers in Pennsylvania, and the school year in California for many of my childhood years.

This past year, I got interested in family genealogy and spent some time doing research. It appears that for several generations on my father's side, the family actually lived in Towanda, PA. It wasn't until this trip that I understood why.

Apparently, Sayre didn't exist as a town until the mid 1870s. It appears that my great-grandfather moved from Towanda for a job at the railroad shops. These were some of the largest shop facilities on the east coast, and included 76 acres of facilities, including a large roundhouse, car shops, a blacksmith shop, and more. The town grew around the facilities, and many people moved here from the surrounding areas for jobs, including my great-grandfather. Then, my grandfather and grandfather moved to Sayre to join them.


My great-grandfather lived on S. Lehigh Avenue, directly across the street from the switch yards. My parents bought the house next door, and that is where I lived until I was 7. I remember when friends came over to play, they were always excited when the trains went by, but I was used to it. I also remember playing trains with a long line of cardboard boxes, seems to have been a favorite, but maybe that is with all kids.

Heading East

The kids and Mom (that's me), headed back east to Pennsylvania, for my maternal Grandmother's funeral. Started the trip early last Friday morning, flying out of Modesto on a tiny Brasilia EMB120.

Promises of junk food, cable TV, and a brand-new Gameboy game for each, softened them up for several side trips to Pennsylvania train sites, which mom is interested in, but the kids-- not so much.

Sam is very excited about the prospect of meeting new relatives. The boy is just zoned out on his game.

Back to School

Wow, its been over a month since last post. Dad got a job, he starts tomorrow.

The Boy started back at "regular school" on Monday. Here's what he said about it: "I got there, there was no sign of Dylan anywhere, this year so far, the people I have hung out with are Cameron, Peter, Donovan, Jack and Ronnie, and his friend, who I have not really met before, and I do not know his name".

"New classrooms, new books, new teacher, new desks, new building. (But its the same school, they just rebuilt). I sit right next to my friend Cyrus, and right in front of him is my friend CJ. I think I did really well at social studies, because me and Dad had already done a lot of Middle East studies, and our discussion in Social Studies was about the ancient Israelites."

The Girl bought a "American Girl Julie" game for her nintendo DS. Right now her Dad is doing an algebra problem to help her complete an assignment in the game. Hmmm.

The kids and I head to Pennsylvania at the end of the week for a family funeral. Its been a while since we've visited that side of the family, so we are looking forward to it. We plan to post about it.

Mccain Blog II

This is the second part of the John Mccain blog entry.

He is the U.S. senator from Arizona, from1987 to the present. He was a U.S. representative from Arizona, from 1983 to 1987; He was the Senate Navy liaison, from 1977 to 1981. He was a U.S. Navy pilot and captain, from 1958 to 1981.

His seven children are named Doug, Andy, Sydney, Meghan, Jack, Jimmy,and Bridget. He is an Episcopalian. He was born on Aug. 29, 1936.

He supported and served on at least five legislations acts and committees that I know of, there could have been many more. The first one that I know of is that he was on a committee with John Kerry that was going to find out if there were still any POWs left in Vietnam, he worked with senator Feingold on the McCain Feingold act, he supported the cap and trade legislation for emissions control but it didn’t pass, he supported immigration reform and was on the senate Indian affairs committee.

Density of Various Materials

We completed an investigation of mass, volume, and mass density. Dad directed the experiment and explained the concepts, and C did the measurements and calculations. In addition to introducing the physical concepts, we also discussed ratios, error, and accuracy.

We measured the mass and volume of small samples of granite gravel, glass marbles, aluminum, steel, alkaline batteries, and a candle. We measured masses using a triple beam balance. We measured volume with a graduated cylinder filled with water by putting each sample in the water and measuring how high the water rose. We found the density of the materials by dividing the mass by the volume.



We don't know why blogger puts this big space here. Go figure.

Sample	mass(g)	volume(ml)	mass density(g/cc)
rock 1	13.2	5	2.64
rock 2	10.1	4	2.53
rock 3	10.0	4	2.5
marble 1	19.0	8	2.4
marble 2	5.4	2	2.7
X-acto handle 1	13.4	5	2.68
X-acto handle 2	23.7	9	2.63
socket adapter	70.6	9	7.84
bolt	38.4	5	7.68
c battery	69.5	22	3.16
aa battery	24.3	8	3.04
candle	8.5	10	.85

When making our measurements we had to use a small wad of poster goo to keep the marbles from rolling off the balance. The mass of the goo was too small to measure. We used a skewer to knock air bubbles off of the X-acto handles and shook the bolt in the graduated cylinder. We pushed the candle down into the water with the skewer because it floated.

We looked up standard values for the materials on the web. For granite and steel we found average values because those materials are mixtures. Our measured values agreed with the average values. For aluminum (the X-acto knife handles) the standard is 2.7 g/cc. For paraffin wax the density is 0.93 g/cc.

We wanted to compare our measurements with the standards for paraffin and aluminum, so we calculated the percentage of error:

% error = ((measured value - standard value)/standard value) x 100

For aluminum our percentage of error was 0.7% for the first sample and 3% for the second sample. The measurements for aluminum seemed pretty accurate. For paraffin our percentage of error was 9%. A possible source of this error might be our use of the skewer to push the candle into the water. Another possible problem might be that the candle wasn't pure paraffin.

C enjoyed this experiment, but now is very excited to run out of the room and go play with friends.

the source of light

Light comes from charged particles moving all over the place.
Charged particles move in the sun creating light that is beamed to earth.
In fire, light comes from a chemical reaction when electrons from the fuel and oxygen bounce all over the place.