07 September 2008

New bike coming up...

Paid the money for a Redline 925  a week or so ago but don't have it in my hands yet as the shop and manufacturer were out of 2008 models so I'll get a 2009 model in the next 1-2 weeks. Anyway, this is what the 2008 looks like and the 2009 will be the same, but green (according to the store).  Can't wait to get on this thing for my commute!




My life with the web so far

I just realised that for me, the networked life actually didn't start until I was 20 years old:

September 1991: I started at university, and had my first experience with networked printers...
May 1994: I heard about email for the first time.
January 1995: I sent my first email. I had received several before that but had no idea that our computer account names and passwords at uni were also our email usernames which we could use to access Pegasus Mail. My first email went to a high-school buddy who was in New Zealand for a year.
November/December 1995: I surfed the web for the first time.
Summer/early fall 1996: Was on a bulletin board for the first time. Tried chatting for the first time. Didn't like it (still don't).
June 1998: Purchased the first computer that I could use for accessing the net (a Toshiba laptop). Accessed the net for the first time using a mobile phone.  Got dial-up at home.
Fall 1998: Got 'PC Bank' - a banking tool from my bank that could log on to my bank and download my bank accounts onto a program on my PC.
New Year 2000/2001: Internet banked for the first time.
Fall 2002: The Toshiba died; got an eMac and my first broadband connection at home.
January 2007: Uploaded first YouTube video. 
February 2007: Started this blog.

Shameless self-promotion (and a bit of science)!

This is a brief article that I wrote together with our VP and which is to appear in International Cement Review - an industry concerned with all things cement-y. It hasn't much to do with oceanography, but it has everything to do with particles!

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The particle size distribution (PSD) of a cement powder is important for its complete characterization. From the PSD it is possible to compute the surface area of the cement powder, which has a close correlation to the rate of cement hydration. However, no international standard for measuring the PSD of cement powder has been agreed upon, and consequently a range of techniques are being used, with laser diffraction being the most common. A major inter-comparison study was completed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2004 .

Broadly speaking, laser diffraction takes advantage of the fact that forward scattering of light is principally due to diffraction, or in an intuitive way, light that went ’around the particle’. This diffracted light is not affected by the composition of the particles, only its size and shape. A small part of the light is additionally transmitted through the particle and shows up at angles beyond the first two principal diffraction peaks. This ‘transmitted’ fraction of light is affected by composition. Thus the choice of a refractive index affects the ‘large’ angle scattering, whereas the size alone affects the ‘small’ angles region of the scattered light field.

For spherical particles, each particle has its own characteristic scattering pattern, which can be computed using the so-called Mie theory. This is a completely general solution to the scattering problem for spheres, requiring only two inputs: particle diameter and the complex refractive index. Using Mie theory it is possible to compute the scattering pattern for an arbitrary size range of spherical particles.

In a suspension of particles of many sizes, the total scattering pattern is the sum of the scattering patterns that arise from each of the individual particles in the suspension. Mathematically, this can be described as:

E = K * C

Where E is a vector containing the intensity of the diffracted light in a set of solid angle ranges, K is the so-called kernel matrix and C is the volume concentration of the particles creating the diffraction pattern, i.e. the PSD. K contains information on scattering by particles of various sizes into different angles, e.g. from Mie theory. If E is measured and K is known, then C can be obtained via matrix inversion:

C = K-1 * E

A typical laser diffraction instrument consists of a laser beam that illuminates particles, and receive optics that place scattered light on a set of concentric ring detectors. Each ring detector measures scattering into a particular, small angle range. Together, the ring detectors cover a large dynamic range of angles over which the scattered light is sensed; this angle range establishes the range of size of particles that can be analyzed. There are a large number of instruments now on the market. A new version of these is made by the authors’ company, and remains the first and only truly portable laser diffraction particle analyzer (Figure 1). It incorporates 32 detector rings, covering a 200:1 angle range. The size range covered by this device spans 1.25-250 or 2.5-500 microns.


Figure 1: LISST-Portable instrument for laser diffraction of particles in liquid suspension.

The LISST-Portable instrument is provided with the option to invert angular scattering data into equivalent sphere size distribution, or into a ‘random shape’ particle size distribution. How and why this was done is explained below.

The scattering kernel, K , can only be computed if it is assumed that the particles are spherical, although lately progress has been made that enables the computation of matrices for non-spherical but regular geometrical shapes, and even irregular shapes but with limitations from computational complexity. Very few particles resulting from natural or industrial process are spheres or regular. Grinding and milling typically produces particles of a general random shape, with numerous pits and edges on their surfaces. Consequently the diffraction pattern arising from these natural, random-shaped particles can be expected to be different from spheres. Since it is not theoretically possible today to properly model the scattering from random-shaped particles we have taken an empirical approach and determined the corresponding kernel matrix, K . We have used this empirical matrix to study how the retrieval of the PSD of random shaped natural sediment particles is affected by the implicit assumption that the scattering particles are spherical, which is the current industry standard.

To construct our empirical kernel matrix K , we used our LISST (Laser In Situ Scattering and Transmissometry) laser technology to measure the scattering pattern from a range of random-shaped particles, pre-sorted into sieve size bins that were equivalent to the 32 size bins covered by the LISST–Portable instrument (2.5-500 µm for the instrument used here). We then compared these scattering patterns to those from spherical particles with the same sieve size. Sieving is only possible for particles larger than approximately 16 µm, so in order to separate smaller particles into size bins all the way down to 2.5 µm we used a density stratified settling column of known viscosity. Stratification kills all turbulence in the column and ensures that the particles settle without being affected by convection currents in the column. Thus, combining sieving and settling techniques, an empirical kernel matrix K was constructed that when used to invert observed scattering, yields size distribution of random shaped particles.

To illustrate the differences between scattering by spheres and random shaped particles, Figure 2 shows comparisons of scattering patterns from spherical and random shaped particles in two narrow size ranges: 25-32 µm and 75-90 µm. It can be seen that the peak of the scattering intensity of the random-shaped particles is displaced one to two detector bins to the left, relative to the spherical particles. Because shifting of diffraction pattern to the left implies larger size, this means that the random shaped particles, with a sieve size equal to that of spherical particles appear as if they are one size bin (18%) coarser than they actually are.


Figure 2. Measured scattering from spheres and random shaped particles, both with a sieve size of 25-32 µm (left) or 75-90 µm (right).

The implications for this are that when a laser diffraction measurement is processed, and it is assumed during processing that the particles are spherical, the resulting size distribution becomes too coarse, by approximately one or two size bin, which is 18-36% for the LISST instruments. In other words, shape effect alone implies that non-spherical particles, such as cement powders are actually 18-36% finer than reported using a Mie theory based standard laser diffraction system .

The second effect to note is that of refractive index. Cements have been analyzed with assumptions of absurdly high imaginary parts of the index, ranging from 0.1 to 1. High imaginary index implies blackness. Carbon black has an imaginary index near 0.1 so this is clearly not an appropriate value for cements. High imaginary index kills the part of light transmitted through the particle. In effect, it forces Mie theory to pure diffraction. In reality, the light that is transmitted through particles and is then actually measured, is thus interpreted to originate due to fine particles that did not exist in the suspension; in other words, assumption of high imaginary index invents fine particles.

In figure 3, we have analyzed Portland cement powder standard 114q obtained from NIST on our LISST instruments using both a spherical and a random shape particle matrix. Table 1 summarizes the D10, D50 and D90 for the two size distributions. Our spheres model employs Mie theory with assumed real index of 1.5 and 0 for the imaginary part.


Figure 3: A comparison of the size distribution obtained with an inversion with kernel matrix for spheres and for random shaped particles.

From Figure 3 and Table 1, it is clear that using a kernel matrix for random shape particles for the cement powder causes the size distribution to narrow slightly and move to the left, i.e. most of the size distribution becomes finer. We have noted that our research has shown that in general D50 (the median particle size) becomes finer by approximately 25%, which corresponds to one to two size classes for the LISST instruments. This is demonstrated here. Sequoia is the first and only company in the world to have established a laser diffraction processing protocol based on the scattering pattern of naturally random-shaped particles.






















D (µm )Spherical matrixRandom shape matrix
D105.66.9
D5016.715.0
D9036.928.3

Table 1. Comparison of the 10, 50 and 90 percentiles for Portland cement using the two different matrices for inversion.

To conclude, we have revisited the NIST standard 114q with an instrument that uses two advancements: an inversion for random shaped particles, and an implicit refractive index that is not as extreme as past industry practice. The new results suggest, first, that the median sizes of cements are actually a little finer than the equivalent spheres result reported in the past. And, second, that the fines reported in the past may be exaggerated by effects of both, particle shape and refractive index. Further details of this work will shortly be published elsewhere.

SSN problems

One of the very first things I took care of when I arrived here in the US of A in November 2007 was to go to the nearest Social Security Office and apply for a Social Security Number. That was hassle-free, a week later I had the number and two weeks later my SSN card arrived in the mail. I immediately gave my employer my SSN number for use on the pay roll records and I then used it immediately to open a bank account. I then used it twice in April for filing my taxes and to apply for an REI Visa card and again in August to get a Firestone card. There was a hiccup there when I gave them my SSN at Firestone and my application was initially declined. I then wondered if I had transposed the number - I was certain of the last 6 numbers and of the first 3 as well, but unsure if I had transposed the second and third number. Consequently I then gave them the first 3 numbers again, but with the second and third number transposed. Bingo! It went through and all was joy. I got my 10% discount on my car service and Firestone got me in their web.

Then I went home and checked my SSN card and discovered that the number that had worked at Firestone was, in fact, the wrong one... I had been correct inititally, but the correct number had caused my application to be declined, whereas the wrong number caused my application to go through. I thought this was weird, as I know that the IRS caught me in using a wrong SSN when I filed my taxes in April - I got a letter from them saying the the supplied SSN didn't match with the one on record with Social Security for my name.

Anyway, I didn't think much about it until I tried to purchase an iPhone and problems started. I'm not up for standing in a queue, so I decided to wait until the first excitement had died down. Consequently I walked into an Apple store a couple of weeks ago, armed with SSN, credit card, ID and everything else required to get an iPhone.

Everything went slick until they ran a credit check on me and the little handheld terminal the Apple employees use started to flash bright red. The Apple guy excused himself and said he had to make a call to AT&T credit or something like that. It then turned out that the the SSN I had used in the Apple Store didn't match the one on file with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion (the 3 large credit monitors in the US) - the first 3 numbers were apparently transposed (although it was very difficult to get exact information out of the person on the other end of the line). I was told I had to go home and call Equifax and have them update my file with the correct SSN.

The next day I called Equifax and after spending 10 minutes on the phone asking loads of security questions, half of which I couldn't remember the answer to, it turned out that, indeed, they had on record a SSN where numbers 2 and 3 were transposed compared to the numbers on my card. I was then told to mail in copies of my driver license, utility bills, SSN, and other stuff, and they would fix it in 30-45 working days! I objected vigorously to the processing time, arguing that I couldn't sign up for *anything* when my SSN was wrong, but the lady on the other end of the line was unwaivering. I then asked if I could fax my info to them and reluctantly I got a fax number from her. The same day I then faxed and mailed all the info to Equifax and about a week later I received a letter from them that they had now corrected my file. Hoorah!

Off to the Apple Store I went again, but alas, the same thing happened, and I was now told that there was a mismatch between the 3 credit bureaus - they now had different SSN's on file for me! I had to personally get in touch with TransUnion and Experian and have them update my records too (why don't these dinosaurs talk to each other and update their records accordingly?)

The next day I was on the phone with TransUnion who were relatively fast to comprehend what was going on. And since I already knew from my chat to Equifax exactly what SSN they had on file I told them that, together with my current and previous address and then they updated my SSN right there on the phone; no need to fax or mail anything! Then I only had to try to get a hold of Experian, but it was impossible to get anything else than the answer machine menu, with no options for disputing errors in my file. I could dispute a credit report, but since I do not have a report, there was nothing to dispute. Consequently I then mailed the same stuff to Experian that I mailed to Equifax. It has been about a week now so I hope that they'll get back to me soon with a standard form letter that they have corrected my file.

The question is, where did the wrong SSN come from initially? I know that I used the wrong one at Firestone, but only because the correct one didn't go through in the first place. So the wrong number was already on file with the credit bureaus by then. My employer had the correct SSN from the start, as my SSN card arrived at my work so they took it directly from the card. The IRS initially got the wrong number from me, but they sent me a letter asking for clarification when they discovered that the SSN I had given them didn't match with my full name on record with Social Security. So if the credit bureaus got the wrong number from the IRS then why didn't they get the correct one when I gave it to the IRS? Perhaps I gave the wrong number to U.S. Bank when I applied for the REI VISA card. But why on earth don't they check that against the number on file with Social Security and my name? Are they not allowed to access Social Security's files? I essentially had 2 social security numbers on file in my name; one (the correct one) with government related businesses and another (with 2 numbers transposed) with private businesses. What a ridiculous system.