As of Wednesday, school is back in session. I had a lovely time with my family and friend’s this holiday season. Indeed, the folks, Amy, Rachel and I spent Tuesday out shopping. We started with lunch at Sakai, the new Japanese place in Troy. Sushi for all (and some chicken cutlet for dad too). We tried many different types of sushi and rolls and enjoyed it. I love California roll, especially with crab salad, but I also love ebi sushi (steamed shrimp) and various tuna rolls and sushis. We discovered that the yellow tail roll that I got didn’t taste as good as the other items on the table, but I think that was the only real loser of the bunch.

Shopping started at Kohl’s and moved onto to the bookstore in Troy. I spent some of my birthday money there (for Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett and American Gods by Neil Gaiman) and also bought everyone coffee or tea at the coffee shop which is in the bookstore. I had a caramel steamer and it was very yummy. We finished up there and then moved onto the Piqua mall. I returned the leather jacket which I’d received for Christmas but which didn’t fit. Despite checking every store in the mall that might carry one, we just couldn’t find a nice replacement for that jacket. Perhaps mom and I will find one another day out. Still, I was able to complete my birthday purchase by getting The Beatles Love.

When we returned home, we had Wine Time which wound up sating us all for supper too. Alas, I had to work the next day and miss out one some quality A&R time, but I gotta be making the money to buy food for my kitties! So Wednesday morning, I got up bright and early for work.

The full week before Christmas break, my seniors were building bridges using only toothpicks and glue. (They also had Monday & Tuesday of our last half week to finish up.) Yesterday, we tested them. The bridges had to span a 30cm opening and at least hold the bucket. And all of them did that. Then the students were to add up to 15kg (~33 lbs) of mass into the bucket. Normally bridges break before the full 15kg is added, but this year we did have one bridge that held the maximum! Indeed, the girls who built this bridge wound up with the highest efficiency (mass held divided by mass of bridge). It held 550+ times its own mass! Pretty impressive!

I had dad drop off my camera because I’d forgotten to bring it that morning, so I managed to get a few photos in. And since my camera can do video, I tried to video some of the bridges breaking. Alas, my timing was off and I usually ran out of video time mere seconds before the bridge actually broke. (My camera does videos in 15 second segments – and doesn’t record sound.) However, I managed to capture the last two bridges that we tested as they broke. And I have uploaded one of them to YouTube for your enjoyment!

This bridge managed to hold quite a bit before it broke. Off hand, I can’t remember how much, but I believe it was around 7 kg. I was quite pleased with all of the bridge performances. And it was interesting to see the different techniques students had to add their masses to the bucket. As one student said “I think I used more physics to place the masses than I did in building the bridge!”