3 milli parsecs at warp 7

I was watching Star Trek tonight and a distress signal was received from 3 milli parsecs away, they set out for the ship at warp 7 and I think they said they would be there in a few minutes.  

I wondered what the actual time to travel 3 milli parsecs was if you could travel at 7 times the speed of light.  Here are the calculations I came up with.

3 mill parsecs is .003 parsec and since 1 parsec is 3 * 10^16 meters that comes out to be 9.26 * 10^13 meters.

So since the speed of light is 3 * 10^8 meters/sec then the number of hours to travel that far at warp seven is (9.26*10^13)/(7*3*10^8)/3600 = 12 hours 14 minutes 41 seconds.

So either they did the math wrong, or I heard the time required incorrectly.

Updated DRM Post

I've updated my original DRM post with a comment about how it works here is the link to that updated post "http://zachcox.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2CE04B99BC43F998!124.entry"

Second Bike Ride Of 2009

Today started out cloudy with a light misty rain, however, when I checked the WRAL radar it looked like the weather forecast would validate and the day would turn out just beautiful. And it has.

Today was the annual Spring Rally of the North Carolina Bicycle Club and I decided to double my mileage (well actually triple my mileage but double my maximum ride length) so I signed up for the 20 mile loop. Here is a picture my bike in the parking lot of the starting point.

Here is an image of the group of cyclist that came out for this ride. I know if the entire weekend was beautiful then the group would have been much larger, I think the size was around 100 riders.

Here are the stats:

32.35 ..... km (20.1 miles)

01:46:35 .. hh:mm:ss

50 ........ kph vmax (31 mph)

18.2 ...... kph average (11.3 mph) 

A New Biscuit Recipe

One of my favorite things to do is to fix breakfast; biscuits are on the menu, when there is time to make them.  I enjoy finding new biscuit recipes --- this morning I decided to bake biscuits and saw Evelyn's bag of whole wheat flower on the counter and wondered if it could be used to make biscuits.  Well not only does whole wheat flower work I found a grand recipe at http://www.cooks.com.  I took a picture of the result and put together this web page on the tweeked recipe.

Enjoy!

E8 Explained By The Source

Excellent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Gk_Ddhr0M

Analytic Geometry Puzzle

Here is a link to a geometry puzzle "http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/05/tough-geometric-brai.html" Here is a link to my explanation "http://zach.d.cox.googlepages.com/How_Can_This_Be_True_New.pdf". I've seen this puzzle before and even figured it out, but I think writing down a solution in, what I hope is, a simple manner is a good thing to do.


Enjoy!

First Bike Ride Of 2009

Evelyn and I together went on our first bike ride of the year. Evelyn's new bike is fantastic. She was clipping right along apparently effortlessly.

58:31...... mm:ss (rolling)
33.0 ...... kph max (speed)
16.74 ..... km (distance, 10.4m)
Here is the route (click on picture for larger view).