User:Sifaka

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If you are wondering why I changed or deleted something, please ask on my talk page!

  • I mercilessly remove names from day pages if they don't have Wikipedia articles about them. Click "edit this page" to see the hidden comment under the births section or notability requirements.
Milne-Edwards's Sifaka (Propithicus edwarsi)
Milne-Edwards's Sifaka (Propithicus edwarsi)

Contents

[edit] 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.

Duke This user attends or attended Duke University.





[edit] 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.

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



[edit] 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)

[edit] My Interests

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

[edit] Articles

[edit] Articles that need some major revisions

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.

[edit] Major Revisions

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

(17 April 2007) General mass cleanup to the article by moving and removing paragraphs, editing for style and clarity, and formatting.

[edit] 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
(22-23 January 2008) Rebalance of article by removal of weasel words and undue weight given to fringe views, sourcing of many citation needed statements
  • Evolution as theory and fact (5 January 2008) Overhaul of the part which explains how gravity is a theory and fact. (Edited under the guise of IP 64.134.81.59 and 152.3.44.183)

[edit] Humor

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

[edit] Sub-pages

People who who commonly work on ADHD articles Miamomimi, Scuro, Abd, Clockback, Barrylb, Vannin, Versageek, Yukichigai

[edit] Userboxes

..... This user is a professional procrastinator.
You mess with this user, and he'll/she'll
denature your protein.
vn-3 This user page has been vandalized 3 times.