micro

during the pandemic, R and I spent so much time together. we noticed that the question “how are you?” didn’t often produce interesting responses - we just default quickly to “good” without considering a response because emotion words feel so limited. we started asking each other “if you were a weather system, what weather system would you be?”, “if you were a plant, what plant would you be?” and it eventually evolved into the simplified form “if you were, what would you be?”. it’s an invitation to describe a vibe with a visual metaphor, and it doesn’t have to make any sense. you can elaborate and go deeper, or you can leave it unexplained.

here are some from the past few years, whenever i had the presence of mind to actually write them down:

• the cat or the old man with the beard
• a pack of crows in a middle school auditorium
• a set of yellow Ticonderoga pencils, with two removed, one sharpened well, one sharpened roughly
• five marbles in a pillow case
• clean chicken bones in a shoebox
• the hydraulic press or the objects being crushed
• a paper airplane - can fly surprisingly far, but often goes in unexpected directions
• an accordion - expands, contracts, produces joyful music

went to an absolutely fascinating talk by Lindsey Boles of Zeno Power about radioisotope power systems for deep sea and deep space power and heat. it was so interesting. the isotopes they use (Americium 241 and Strontium 90) are waste products of fission reactors. she laid out a compelling vision for their mission to advance science in space and the deep sea by solving the heat and power challenge, especially in very cold environments like the dark side of the moon.

more than half of cement emissions come from the calcining process in the production of cement - limestone (CaCO3) is broken down into CaO and CO2. i learned from this technoeconomic paper on direct air capture that one type of DAC (high temperature aqueous solvent) uses the same chemical reaction. a sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solvent is sprayed into the air in the absorption and reacts with CO2 to form sodium carbonate (Na2CO3). to regenerate the solvent, the sodium carbonate is reacted with calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) to form calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and regenerate the solvent (NaOH). the calcium carbonate is then broken to CaO and CO2, the CO2 is collected and the CaO is turned back into Ca(OH)2 to regenerate the solvent again.