### Choochoo track of the week

Clover8: The Double Figure-Eight Cloverleaf

Supplies (Thanks to Auntie Amy and Uncle David):
2x IKEA LILLABO 20-piece basic train set
1x LILLABO Rail expansion set
1x LILLABO 12-piece train set w/ bridge, tunnel

This design is a variation of the popular cloverleaf layout, however it utilizes a double figure-eight. Similar designs had been attempted previously, but ran into compatibility issues near mid-track where female-female and male-male track ends meet. This problem is overcome in this design by using a secondary overpass, seen just to the right of the primary overpass.

Due to the proximity of the two overpasses, Van Hook shims were utilized on the primary to allow tank cars to pass under on the way to the secondary, yielding a tight 2 mm clearance. The innovative curved bridge lends an organic feel to the track, with order arising from the apparent chaos near the triple pass. As Owen put it, "Two tunnels!"

Take that, Thomas the Tank Engine!

Anonymous said…
"Whooo, whooo!" says Auntie Amy and Uncle David. Nice work, Johnsons. Good to see that the shims work well.
Balance said…
hi, what are shims? I want to try the same configuration for my three year olds ikea set. thanks!
JohnJohn said…
Shims are just pieces of paper that raise a part of the track up by a small, adjustable amount. The amount can be adjusted by using multiple pieces of paper, or by folding the piece of paper. Have fun!

### On the Height of J.J. Barea

Dallas Mavericks point guard J.J. Barea standing between two very tall people (from: Picassa user photoasisphoto).

Congrats to the Dallas Mavericks, who beat the Miami Heat tonight in game six to win the NBA championship.

Okay, with that out of the way, just how tall is the busy-footed Maverick point guard J.J. Barea? He's listed as 6-foot on NBA.com, but no one, not even the sports casters, believes that he can possibly be that tall. He looks like a super-fast Hobbit out there. But could that just be relative scaling, with him standing next to a bunch of extremely tall people? People on Yahoo! Answers think so---I know because I've been Google searching "J.J. Barea Height" for the past 15 minutes.

So I decided to find a photo and settle the issue once and for all.

I then used the basketball as my metric. Wikipedia states that an NBA basketball is 29.5 inches in circumfe…

### Finding Blissful Clarity by Tuning Out

It's been a minute since I've posted here. My last post was back in April, so it has actually been something like 193,000 minutes, but I like how the kids say "it's been a minute," so I'll stick with that.
As I've said before, I use this space to work out the truths in my life. Writing is a valuable way of taking the non-linear jumble of thoughts in my head and linearizing them by putting them down on the page. In short, writing helps me figure things out. However, logical thinking is not the only way of knowing the world. Another way is to recognize, listen to, and trust one's emotions. Yes, emotions are important for figuring things out.
Back in April, when I last posted here, my emotions were largely characterized by fear, sadness, anger, frustration, confusion and despair. I say largely, because this is what I was feeling on large scales; the world outside of my immediate influence. On smaller scales, where my wife, children and friends reside, I…

### The Force is strong with this one...

Last night we were reviewing multiplication tables with Owen. The family fired off doublets of numbers and Owen confidently multiplied away. In the middle of the review Owen stopped and said, "I noticed something. 2 times 2 is 4. If you subtract 1 it's 3. That's equal to taking 2 and adding 1, and then taking 2 and subtracting 1, and multiplying. So 1 times 3 is 2 times 2 minus 1."

I have to admit, that I didn't quite get it at first. I asked him to repeat with another number and he did with six: "6 times 6 is 36. 36 minus 1 is 35. That's the same as 6-1 times 6+1, which is 35."

Ummmmm....wait. Huh? Lemme see...oh. OH! WOW! Owen figured out

x^2 - 1 = (x - 1) (x +1)

So $6 \times 8 = 7 \times 7 - 1 = (7-1) (7+1) = 48$. That's actually pretty handy!

You can see it in the image above. Look at the elements perpendicular to the diagonal. There's 48 bracketing 49, 35 bracketing 36, etc... After a bit more thought we…