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A time-honored tradition  The hardworking and underpaid Monthly staff was caught off guard by the swift and vehement reaction to the cover of the November issue (see "Letters"). Several observant alums pointed out a discrepancy of an hour and seven minutes on the two visible Campanile faces. But please don't get ticked at us. The cartoon at right appeared in the Pelican magazine in 1951--evidence that this problem has been plaguing students for at least half a century. So what's the story? Eric Ellisen '85, senior engineer of the campus's Deferred Maintenance Program, informs us that although the four clocks are "centrally synchronized" to a master clock, each individual clock is mechanically independent. In theory, this system keeps the clocks running in tandem; in reality, things break. "It's our guess that the clocks and mechanisms have never been looked at in a comprehensive fashion," he admits. The issue nearly got out of hand this fall when the west face--the side most visible from the chancellor's office--was out of commission for a full week. That west clock is now slated for restoration and will serve as a test case to see what needs to be done to get all the clocks in top working order. Now that's something we can all agree on. --L.S. Esprit de core  A year after the Play, in 1983 a Big Game economics rivalry began when graduate students from Stanford (coached by Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow) and Cal (coached by Nobel laureate Gerard Debreu) played each other in touch football. A bronzed "apple core" trophy (below)--named for the original coaches' work on the "core" of the economy--goes to the annual winner. This year, the hundredth anniversary of Berkeley's economics department, Cal generously allowed Stanford to win, 32 to 27. A cure for laundry It's not every day that a professor of chemical engineering hears his work described as "cool," so David Soane, M.S. '77, Ph.D. '78, was thrilled last month when Time magazine named his stain-resistant, water-repellent pants one of the Coolest Inventions of the Year. His breakthrough was to create a fabric with "nanowhiskers"--tiny fibers just a few billionths of a meter long which create a "peach-fuzz effect." So the red wine, coffee--or whatever else you happen to be drinking when you hear that Cal won the Big Game--just beads up and rolls right off. (Another version of the technology works in reverse to wick sweat away from the body--also useful for closer games.) Soane had originally been trying to develop a cure for cancer. So when a friend suggested his discovery might, in fact, be a cure for laundry, his first thought was: "Who cares about jeans?" But now he is really getting into the idea and is excited about all the new fabrics he can make with nanowhiskers. "Water repellency was just a teaser," says Soane. "I think we're going to have a few years of fun ahead of us." Ship-shape  Once upon a time, anyone who didn't take the ferry to San Francisco was all wet. Seventy years ago, the stylish commuter could have ridden the Berkeley, pictured here with her captain, August Rodrigues. This is one of 12 historic ferry photographs included in a calendar compiled by Cal's Water Resources Center Archives and the Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library to remind us of those days before the bridges. For information, call 510/642-3604 or click here. |
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