FEM, Pi Day, and Weekends

Lesson of the Netherlands #12:
The Dutch have the best name for American football. In pretty much everywhere but the US, "football" is soccer, and that game we play is something weird with a nonsense name. So the Dutch call it "hand egg." Afterall, you use your hands and the ball looks kind of like an egg.

Hand egg.

Bloody amazing.

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Last week was a haze of long days and late nights doing school so I didn't have to do any on the weekend. And, for the first time since middle school, I turned in an assignment late. Granted, I got permission from the prof, but still... well, at least it gave me the chance to get distracted by an unequal vertical deflection in the column I was modeling using the finite element method (FEM). It bothered me, so Ev helped me compare it to another FEM program to see if my program was screwed up or if it was a real thing. I must say, it's really nice having a boyfriend who's good with SAP.

My Fortran95 model.
Note the deflection on the top element

The SAP2000 model.
Hey, the deflection is still there!

Apparently this uneven vertical deflection is known as St. Venant's Principle and is a result of the quadratic shape functions used to define the elements in the mesh. (Under pure vertical loading the top element should vertically deflect uniformly, since equal load is being applied at all the nodes). This results in a concentration of horizontal stresses at the node directly below the top center one, and the uneven deflection dampens itself out moving away from the top. It's a numerical inconsistency and not representative of reality, but can be mitigated by using a smaller mesh size.

And that's your FEM lesson for the week. Cuz it's cool and I learned stuff.

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This weekend was magical on two fronts. First, it was Pi Day. The best Pi Day of our lives (but not in Europe because they use the day/month/year syntax, rather than the much superior month/day/year that all the cool kids use. Europe is really missing out on this)!

3/14/15 9:26:53

That's pi to 10 digits, ya'll. 

Naturally, we had a Pi Day brunch to celebrate this momentous occasion. And it was delicious.

Note the date stamp that refused to be awesome with us.

Awesome thing #2 was that it was Ev and my "official" 5 year anniversary. I say "official" because about 3 years ago we decided to just pick an anniversary date we could remember around the time we started dating. We're both nerds, and 3/14 was the obvious choice. 

It turns out that neither of us really wanted anything (or could afford anything) for our anniversary this year. I put in a butt-load of hours on school/work during the week and Ev's "present" (I seem to be using quotes a lot this blog post) was a whole weekend of Amy with no school or work. 

I got delicious chocolates and champagne. And Ev, of course.

I love this guy.

All in all, it was an excellent weekend. The box of chocolates was massive (close to the size of Ev's head, as you can probably see), and it took us three nights to get through them. 

They were delicious.

Chocolate is good.

We also went for a run. And it was magical.

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Sunday we went climbing. Our gym is clearing out 25 years of stuff from their back rooms and storage area and is selling a ton of really nifty, albeit dangerously outdated, stuff for really, really cheap.

Like the ancient semi-technical ice axe for $10.

Or the bowls of carabiners. That included this one.

I want it known that there is no scale trickery with this picture. That beaner is touching my cheek. 

For $2.50, hell yes I bought it. It's the size of my face! 

I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do with this massive, heavy piece of equipment (that I'm pretty sure isn't even rated for climbing), but I'm going to push Nick to take it on his next major mountain attempt to leave at the summit. I get a kick out of imagining the faces of other climbers who see it. "What the... dude, this thing is insane! I wonder how long it's been up here?" "Dude, I can't believe someone carried that thing up here!" ....... 

I'm easily entertained.