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ROBwithaB uploaded a new video
(1 week ago)
On 14/15 February 2012, a winter storm front passed over the Eastern pro...
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On 14/15 February 2012, a winter storm front passed over the Eastern provinces of Canada. Ambient temperatures fell to -20 degrees Celsius, with strong winds and heavy snow adding to the exposure risk.
Three days later, utility workers encountered a stranded vehicle on a remote gravel road in rural Frontenac County in eastern Ontario. Inside, they found the body of a middle-aged man.
The ignition of the vehicle was on, but the fuel tank was found to be empty and the battery was completely drained of charge. The man was found sitting upright in the passenger seat, frozen to death.
His hands were resting in his lap, clutching a flipcam video camera. Authorities were able to retrieve the footage to identify the victim.
This is an edited version of what they found....
"Hello, I'm ROBwithaB, and this is 'One Hundred and One Ways to Make Fire'. At least, I hope it is, because we've got a problem. As you can see by the way I'm dressed, I'm not in my home environment. In fact, I'm not anywhere close. Where I am is in rural Canada, and that's where I'm going to be staying, because the car's broken down. The temperature forecast for tonight is to go down to about minus sixteen Celsius. Now, I could stay in the car all night, but the problem with the car is: for the same reason that you can see out the windows, rays of heat, the infrared, can escape through the glass as well. So it will keep me out of the wind, but I'm wanting to make a fire and I'm wanting to make a fire pretty soon. There's no shortage of stuff to burn here. There's a lot of dead standing wood and it shouldn't be difficult to collect, but how are we going to ignite it? That's the problem.
The truth is that I've got a whole lot of options here. There's a little bit of sun. I don't think it's direct enough to do solar concentration; I'm getting a very diffuse shadow, so that's probably not going to be an option. Although, ordinarily, all of the reflectors over here would work. The headlight bulbs, if can fill them up with water - or some other liquid that I may have handy - I should be able to form a small magnifying glass.
I spent a little bit of time trying with a friction fire. The problem is that I'm not in my home territory here... It's cold, and I might die, and I'd like to avoid that, if you don't mind. Inside the car I have all the usual crap that you've got when you traveling nowadays. All of those things have nice lithium-ion batteries which we can use to start a fire if we want to. So, I'm probably not going to die. If you see this video, it means I did not. Unless this video was posted posthumously. That would be.... I've gotta try with the funnies a little bit, but a sense of humour and extreme cold are not compatible, which explains the Canadians and the Swedes.
Anyway, right, so the first thing I'm going to try - and hopefully it's going to be the only thing I need to try- is to get some juice straight out of the battery, twelve volts, let's see what we can do. I think we have some jumper cables. The battery is still working. We're going to live! I think.
And now, we just need something to conduct the electricity. And that is what I was looking for; just a cheap pencil. What people call the lead, is actually graphite. Graphite is a conductor of electricity, but not a very good conductor. That inefficiency means that the electrons are going to sort of get crowded in to that little conductor and bump against each other and heat up. That's the scientific explanation (sarcasm). Let's see if this is going to work.
So I'm going to pop the bonnet - or what the people here in the 'hood call "the hood' - to get to the battery. Of course, now we just need something to burn, preferably not the car.
Cool. I'm standing on ice. #%$@!!! The situation just got interesting in two different ways: One is, I'm now, you know, an idiot, because I have icy water inside my boots. The other is that, the reason I was walking over there is that there are these very large dog tracks. I hope, because I think one gets wolves here. Or very big dogs. Very big, hungry dogs. I want a fire. Now!
Right, so we have a pencil there. I'm just sort of working these things so that they bit through the wood to get to the graphite. I have a little pile of flaming tinder there, and then I'm going to connect it up and see what happens...
Okay....
So far we've got nothing...
$#!T. I'm running out of time here.
Okay. The problem is, we're not getting the copper clips to engage. What I'm going to do is just shave the pencil a little bit, so that we get direct contact with the graphite of the pencil, and I hope that's going to work.
There we go.
Okay, so this is not getting hot at all. We failed. I don't know what the problem is. Maybe it's not graphite in these particular weird Canadian imported-from-China pencils, but it didn't work. We don't have fire. We're going to die. Good night!
Music: Calmant Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) US-UAN-11-00859
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ROBwithaB
YES I KNOW IT"S NOT A FIRE-MAKING VIDEO!!! But it's kinda funny nonetheless. "What Guys do in the Bathroom". And no, it's not what you're thinking.
(3 weeks ago)
Not every morning.
Please subscribe to my channel and my vlog channel! I ...
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Not every morning.
Please subscribe to my channel and my vlog channel! I make new videos here every Wednesday and make vlogs during my majestical daily life.
Actually, no. No I don't. There is no vlog channeI. And I don't make videos nearly often enough, because I am too busy being silly like this. And making fires. And climbing. And occasionally even getting some work done.
Yeah. But subscribe anyway. Otherwise I'll start showing cute dogs in my videos.
In case you've been under the proverbial rock for the past year on YouTube, all the above is a reference to JennaMarbles. She's pretty funny. In a way that is possibly less "family friendly" than my channel.
This was just me being stupid. I needed to shave off the big bushy beard that I had grown for the new caveman character in the "101 Ways to Make Fire" series. And yes, I haven't forgotten about that.
Will probably add a proper video description later. And post some new fire videos soon.
AND I HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE TO PROVE IT. Seriously. Check out the "exclusive to facebook" video to see what I'm up to on the fire-front. About 15,000 km from home...
Half face shave beard vampire werewolf woverine scary hairy two face two-face "half beard shave" head hair chuck norris dude funny crazy odd very very silly fifty percent goatee bushy eyebrows.
I didn't actually go off to the pub (local bar) like this. Although I plan to do this again sometime, and actually shave half my HEAD as well. And one of the eyebrows. And then wear half my caveman suit of animal skin on one side and a three piece suit on the other. (Although, what do you call HALF a 3-piece suit??) That thing is going to go viral... I would probably do it as a charity stunt. Yes, I'm just thinking out loud here.
The big grizzly bear look is not something I usually go for. Although I kinda regret shaving it all of in the meantime, because currently the outside temperature is minus 16. Yup. Celsius. Centigrade. Bloody cold. And yes, I'm not in South Africa at the moment. New fire-making video gets filmed this afternoon. In the snow....
According to the comments, I look like Saddam Hussein. Or Charles Manson. I was hoping for Osama bin Laden, actually.
men man getting bored and curious. Testosterone and curiosity are not a good combination.
Add beer and the consequences are potentially catastrophic. Right, off to the pub, then.
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ROBwithaB uploaded a new video
(3 weeks ago)
Not every morning.
Please subscribe to my channel and my vlog channel! I ...
more
Not every morning.
Please subscribe to my channel and my vlog channel! I make new videos here every Wednesday and make vlogs during my majestical daily life.
Actually, no. No I don't. There is no vlog channeI. And I don't make videos nearly often enough, because I am too busy being silly like this. And making fires. And climbing. And occasionally even getting some work done.
Yeah. But subscribe anyway. Otherwise I'll start showing cute dogs in my videos.
In case you've been under the proverbial rock for the past year on YouTube, all the above is a reference to JennaMarbles. She's pretty funny. In a way that is possibly less "family friendly" than my channel.
This was just me being stupid. I needed to shave off the big bushy beard that I had grown for the new caveman character in the "101 Ways to Make Fire" series. And yes, I haven't forgotten about that.
Will probably add a proper video description later. And post some new fire videos soon.
AND I HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE TO PROVE IT. Seriously. Check out the "exclusive to facebook" video to see what I'm up to on the fire-front. About 15,000 km from home...
Half face shave beard vampire werewolf woverine scary hairy two face two-face "half beard shave" head hair chuck norris dude funny crazy odd very very silly fifty percent goatee bushy eyebrows.
I didn't actually go off to the pub (local bar) like this. Although I plan to do this again sometime, and actually shave half my HEAD as well. And one of the eyebrows. And then wear half my caveman suit of animal skin on one side and a three piece suit on the other. (Although, what do you call HALF a 3-piece suit??) That thing is going to go viral... I would probably do it as a charity stunt. Yes, I'm just thinking out loud here.
The big grizzly bear look is not something I usually go for. Although I kinda regret shaving it all of in the meantime, because currently the outside temperature is minus 16. Yup. Celsius. Centigrade. Bloody cold. And yes, I'm not in South Africa at the moment. New fire-making video gets filmed this afternoon. In the snow....
According to the comments, I look like Saddam Hussein. Or Charles Manson. I was hoping for Osama bin Laden, actually.
men man getting bored and curious. Testosterone and curiosity are not a good combination.
Add beer and the consequences are potentially catastrophic. Right, off to the pub, then.
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ROBwithaB
updated the video description for the new "Crazy Bouncy Bridge" video, Hopefully this will help to explain some of the science behind the weird motions you can see in the video.
(1 month ago)
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ROBwithaB uploaded a new video
(1 month ago)
Do NOT try this at home! Unless you have a suspension bridge in your bac...
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Do NOT try this at home! Unless you have a suspension bridge in your back yard. Been meaning to upload footage of this crazy bridge for ages. Got the chance when I took the camera down to the waterfalls in the Crocodile River to film some of the effects of the tropical cyclone Dando that passed through the area and led to extensive flooding in the Kruger National Park downstream of here.
Probably not a good idea, but hey, stupid can be fun sometimes. The river was in full spate, with the waterfall just downstream, so if this thing had indulged in a spectacular failure a la the Tacoma Narrows bridge, I would have been up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
Suspension bridges are particularly prone to this kind of sympathetic resonance effect. It just seems like bad design to have the resonant frequency very close to that of a normal human stride. I think Mythbusters did an episode on this, featuring the myth of a platoon (or whatever the latin name is, will need to check my Asterix books to make sure) of Roman soldiers walking across a bridge and the bridge collapsing as a result of the bridge being "tuned" to the frequency of the marching feet.
I don't think this one was likely to collapse, but just in case I hung onto the suspension cables while I was doing the insane jumpy thing. Figuring that the deck would collapse rather than the main cable snapping.
Of course the REAL danger here might not have been a bridge failure or a trip down a flooded waterfall. It's not called the Crocodile River for nothing....
The tend to congregate in the pools below the rapids after heavy rains, at the confluence of the Croc River and Nels River. Sometimes see them there on the walk in to the climbing crags in the Nels River gorge. Was supposed to go climbing but the base of the entire cliff was under water, which would have meant an uncomfortable hanging belay, amongst other inconveniences. So that plan was aborted. This provided an alternative adrenaline rush.
I am always reluctant to capitalise on tragedy for views. A little unethical in my view. I know all the major news channels thrive on it, and many famous youtubers have jumped on the bandwagon. So I waited a few days before posting this. The tropical storm Dando caused a few dozen deaths in Southern Africa, mostly in Mocambique. But this is just me running on a badly-designed bridge, so i figure it's far enough removed not to count. Sad part is, there's another storm that might hit the already waterlogged region. Depending on steering winds, which are always unpredictable. As of today, Funso is already a category 4 Cyclone (also known as a hurricane or typhoon) and is gathering strength over the warm waters of the Mocambique channel. If it veers westwards a bit we're in for interesting times, because the ground is already waterlogged and the rivers and dams are all full.
Because I start running from the ends, the initial mechanical forces are near the midpoint of half the span, so that leads to the second harmonic oscillation you can see here. This is simple mechanical excitation in one plane, with a simple vibration pattern.The much-studied failure of the "Galloping Gertie" bridge on November 7, 1940 in Washington State was rather more complex, with a torsional component adding to the complexity. And that one had more to do with strong wind and aeroelastic flutter (like pinching a blade of grass in each hand and stretching it in front of your mouth, then blowing) than with a guy acting like a demented monkey and hanging from the suspension cables.
The deck of the bridge is essentially acting like a guitar string here, although the physics is a bit more complicated because the deck and the main cable and the staying cables all need to be considered as a dynamic system. The complexity of the problem is illustrated by the presence of a travelling wave (lengthwise) in the handrails, seen at 0:34.
In my opinion this bridge represents a bit of an engineering fail. It is a bad design,because the natural resonant frequency corresponds too closely to that of a person walking. Also, the deck structure is probably too light and too shallow. I doubt that it would make it if the river rose those extra couple of feet. Or if there were an extra couple of (Roman soldier) feet, marching in time to mine.
The cables supporting the deck of the bridge are elastic, as are the beams of the deck. The cables act basically like a series of springs or bungee cords, subject to Hooke's law. F=-kx For steel, the law would apply throughout its range of elascticity. (For rubber, it gets a bit more complicated.) The potential problem would occur if one could get the steel cables to extend beyond their elastic limit, which would generally lead to catastrophic failure.
Sometimes the problem can be solved by "tying the bridge down" with cables, like an inverse suspension system.
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R.I.P robwithaB
FINALLY!
Sleep it off.