All posts by David W. Allan

Energy used when Bicycling

Spirituality

Energy to ride a bike

Work is force times distance.  When pedaling a bike, if you pedal too fast, you use too much energy moving your legs.  If you pedal too slowly, in the limit, you can have all the force in the world, but if you don’t move the pedal, you get no work, which means no energy is expended bicycling.  Studies show that pedaling at about 80 rpm is about optimum.

Interestingly, the distance from the bicycle pedal to the hub axle is seven inches, which is the same as the standard rise on stairs.  I have an oval front gear on the awesome mountain bike my family gave me for my 81st birthday.  It gives me about 20% more torque where I need it when climbing steep hills.  It is an amazing climbing machine.

I had a great ride

Today, 27 April 2019, was a beautiful spring day, and I did a 725 feet vertical climb with my weight and the bikes at about 200 lb. that is 145,000 ft.lb. of work, which is equivalent to 47 food Calories of energy.  Wind resistance and rolling friction will add a few percentage points to that.

Calories used in riding

About 20% of metabolism is used to run your brain and another about 20% gets turned into mechanical energy to pump your bicycle.  The rest of the energy is used for evaporative cooling of your body and to run the rest of the body functions.

So I needed nearly 250 food Calories of energy to climb that hill.  If it took me an hour to climb it then I would be dissipating about 55 watts of power.  No wonder I got up a sweat.

Riding a road bike on the level at a good speed causes you to mainly work against air resistance, so the work done is about the same.  One needs to consume about 250 to 500 Calories per hour to fuel your ride.  A food Calorie is 1000 times a thermetric calorie.  Fat is the best source of energy; one pound fat is about 4,000 Calories.  One of these small calories can heat one gram of water one degree Centigrade.  A gram is one cubic centimeter of water.  Amazingly, one pound of fat will take about ten pounds of water to boiling!  A lot of stored energy there.

May is National Bicyclist Month

According to the League of American Bicyclists , “May is National Bike Month, sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists and celebrated in communities from coast to coast. Established in 1956, National Bike Month is a chance to showcase the many benefits of bicycling — and encourage more folks to giving biking a try.”

I have written a blog article showing the efficiency and great benefits of bicycling.  No pollution J, great benefits.  Thank you family for buying me an awesome bike to enjoy nature, commune with the Lord, and make my body younger.

Planting Seeds and a Fullness of Joy

Spirituality,

You have heard, “You can count the seeds in an apple, but you cannot count the apples in a seed!”  Implicit in this statement is the infinite nature of the universe.  In the spring we plant our seeds in the garden and then after nourishing them and watering them we observe the miracle as they produce perhaps 100-fold after their own kind.

Like the parable of the mustard seed, we plant seeds of faith, and as they are nourished we grow in understanding of God’s marvelous ways, of His infinite love, of His Son’s infinite atonement, which gives full purpose to all of humanity and a hope for a fullness of joy in the eternities.

A husband and wife have the sacred privilege of planting seeds and having precious children in a healthy, happy, family setting.  We come to understand that the family is the most important unit in time and eternity, that family is the order in heaven, and that we can be an eternal family and receive a fullness of joy.  Hence, God has asked us to call Him, Father in Heaven.

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Why Pain and Suffering if God is Perfect?

Spirituality, ,

 

Why does God allow all the evil in the world?  (Isaiah 45:7) 

Why all the pain and suffering?  None of the great thinkers of the ages have come up with the answers to these questions. C.S. Lewis, after going through his own apostasy from Christianity, may have come the closest — becoming one of Christianity’s most avid advocates.

As Lewis considered the Christ, he concluded that

only two views of this man are possible. Either he was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was, and is, precisely what He said. There is no middle way. If the records make the first hypothesis unacceptable, you must submit to the second. And if you do that, all else that is claimed by Christians becomes credible — that this Man, having been killed, was yet alive, and that His death, in some manner incomprehensible to human thought, has effected a real change. . . in our favour.1

After gaining his deep appreciation for Christianity, in regard to evil, pain, and the suffering that come with life, Lewis poignantly states that if you “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, . . .you find that you have excluded life itself.”1

 

Albert Schweitzer — considered by some to be the greatest humanitarian and one of the greatest thinkers of the last century

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The IEEE Highest Scientific Award – David W Allan

Awards, ,

Davids awardThe IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is the biggest scientific publishing house in the world, and the special issue celebrating the 50th year of the Allan variance came out 4 April 2016 is an awesome issue. They had three guest editors for it along with the regular editor.

All by itself, I felt greatly honored by the nomination letter submitted by the who’s who in international time and frequency to the IEEE, let alone be chosen to receive their highest award in recognition of my work.

On May 10th, 2016, my wife, Edna,  and I  had an amazing experience in Nor’lens (New Orleans). This annual symposium was the 70th providing for the international community the best in atomic-clock and precision timing research results.
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Standing an Egg on Its End – Exciting Science With an Egg

Science, ,

standing-egg-on-endStanding an egg on it’s end is an good example of the UFT (United Field Theory) you can experiment with. You can be a scientist in your own kitchen and improve on Einstein.

About a hundred years ago, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves. Einstein was working on the UFT before he died, but did not finish the work. Many have been working on it since, and there has been major progress with no actual proof….that is until now!

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Everyone Can Understand GPS

Science, ,

Learn How GPS Works in Five Minutes!

Get Ready to Paint a Picture in Your Mind

GPS Satellites Around The Earth
GPS Satellites Around The Earth

Think in your minds eye that you can look up into the sky and see three GPS satellites in very different parts of the heavens.  Think further that you have three looooooooooooooong measuring sticks that are able to reach out from you to each of the three satellites, so that you have a way of measuring the distance to each of them.

The picture you have is an upside down tripod with you at the focal point, and with each of the three GPS satellites at the end of each stick.  This, of course, is totally absurd in practice, but there is a fascinating way to do the equivalent that is practical using the speed of light as your measuring stick.  If you are traveling in your car at 60 miles per hour (~90 kph), and you travel for an hour, you know the distance you have traveled is 60 miles.

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Come to Christ and Conquer Satan

Spirituality, , , ,

How Does The Great Deceiver Work?

Living in the most exciting time in the history of the Earth and the great deceiver knowing it is his last hour, it behooves us to know his tactics that we are not deceived.  Some of the subtlest lies being perpetrated are, “There is no devil.”   And, “In our sophisticated society people are not possessed by devils; that is a New Testament thing.”

We live in the day of the great division: Those who are humble followers of Christ and those otherwise.  Satan, unfortunately, is having massive success with “those otherwise,” who are not so wise as to the subtleness of Satan!  Satan will do anything to turn us away from Christ or to keep us from coming to Him.

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Why Did I Write the Book?

Spirituality, ,

Get The Book

A book about science and religion is a rare combination in today’s world, especially coming from a scientist.  However, I felt inspired to do so and thus took on the task.

Beginnings

Upon returning home from Mesa, AZ., after helping  my  friend with his science book,  I had the strong impression that I should write a book. My friend was some years away from finishing his and I felt as he did, that science without God is not true science.

For me, God is the master physicist, as well as master of any other discipline you care to mention.  Having published a lot of papers and having been involved with writing chapters in several books, I had a good feel for what I was up against in such a task. However, being in my late seventies, I wasn’t sure I wanted to write a book.  Self-aggrandizement was not a motivator, but for me the question was, “Did that impression come from the Lord?”

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Scientific Evidence for Noah’s Flood

Science, , ,

enhydro-quartz crystalsScience and religion are coming together through new evidence that Noah’s flood actually happened just as it is written about in the Bible.

There are two basic assumptions made by scientists regarding the geology of the Earth that have led most of them to disbelieve in the Bible.  I show both assumptions are flawed in Chapter 6 of my book.  The first assumption is that things change gradually over time (many millions of years) – the evolutionary assumption.  The second assumption is a spin-off of the first: if you include God, then it is not science.

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Manifestation of God’s Love

Spirituality, ,

Aren’t you glad when you see that God is in the details of your life – manifesting His infinite love for you?

Some years ago, Rod Meldrum, a dear friend, introduced us to a man whom Rod had helped in writing a science book. They invited me, a scientist and a devout believer in Christ, to help.  It was a massive project and he had been working on it for a couple of decades.  I didn’t have time at that moment – being involved with other research projects.

During the winter of 2012-13, we felt to go down to Mesa, AZ., with our Fifth-wheel camping trailer and give him the help he needed.  I had also promised another dear friend, Jacqueline Olson, that if I ever went to Mesa I would give a fireside for a group of her friends.
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