Book Reviews

The Litigators by John Grisham This book was enjoyable but predictable. Grisham has written some pretty original books (by his standards) over the past few years, but this book was a bit of a regression to the mean. I don't know if this book is accurate or not, but it doesn't make life at a big law firm seem very appealing. Grade: C
Maphead by Ken Jennings While I am only a mild "maphead", I really enjoyed this book. Well, I enjoyed it as much as possible considering that it was a book about maps and people that are passionate about maps. Grade: B
13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks A wonderful book about 13 unsolved mysteries in science. The book focuses mainly on problems in cosmology and human biology, but I loved the book even though I don't work in those areas. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in science. Grade: A-
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathon Haidt Another very interesting book about psychology, morality, and human nature. It highlighted a number of issues that I've observed but failed to full appreciate when it comes to division in the areas of politics and religion. I recommend this book because it will help you to appreciate where other people that you may not agree with are coming from. I'd give it a higher grade, but I feel like the author could have cut at least 30% of the words without cutting information. Grade: B

Five Word Book Reviews

The End of Money by David Wolman: Interesting, provactive, give up cash! Grade: B+

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer: Heart wrenching, extremely well written. Grade: A-

Big Lake by Nick Russell: entertaining, surprising, I miss Arizona. Grade: C+

Proofiness by Charles Seife: educational, usually insightful, appealingly short. Grade: B

The List by Konrath and Kilborn Enjoyable but lacking realism, forgettable. Grade: C+

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: Extremely interesting, similar to Blink. Grade: A-

The Information by James Gleick Hard subject, good writing. Long. Grade: B+

Radioactivity: A History by a Mysterious Science by Marjorie Malley Surprising, early focus, nuclear decay. Grade: B-

Those Guys Have All the Fun by Shales and Miller Comprehensive, interesting style, insufficient Simmons! Grade: B

Homework #5 Solutions

4.25) H2: 70.8 kmol/hr in vapor, 1.7 kmol/h in liquid
4.33) For the final flash calculation, psi = 0.49
4.48a) Raffinate: 12.75kg with 75% chloroform, 22% acetic acid
4.53) Overflow: 810 kg/h of Na2CO3 and 2400 kg/h of H2O

Exam #1 Review Problem #2:
(a) K's = 2.4, 1.1, 0.54
(b) supervisor is wrong (helpful to try psi = 0.7 instead of psi = 0.3)
(c) pressure should be increased

HW #10 solutions

6.65b) x_B = 0.24, y_B = 0.46
6.78) 0.3 lb crystals/lb feed
6.86) x = 0.00523 mol solute/mol solution
6.94) Phase 1: 31% A, 63% M, 6% W

A (partial?) list of every computer I've ever owned or controlled:

IBM PCjr
Apple IIc plus (1989?)
386sx (1991?)
Pentium (summer of 1995)*
Compaq laptop (fall of 1996)
Gateway (late 2001, early 2002)*
Apple iBook (white, early 2003)
Dell laptop (14inch, 2004)*
ASUS Eee (2006)
Dell laptop with AMD (2007)
Dell Latitude 5400 (2008)
Dell Mini (2009)
Dell Vostro (2010)
HP laptop (2010)
Dell Latitude 6420 (2011)
Dell Latitude 6510 (2010)
Dell Latitude 6220 (2011)*

*favorites

I think I am probably missing 3 or 4 computers from the early 2000's

Homework #4 Solutions

4.15b) 0.25 kg E in bottom/kg E in feed
4.26) y_in = 0.071, y_out = 0.001
4.32) Bypass fraction = 0.095

Book Review: Sync by Steven Strogatz

This is another excellent math book by the MIT math professor. Strogatz previously wrote the best book available on nonlinear differential equations, but this book has a different style. Sync is aimed at the non-mathematician audience, and should be readable by just about anyone. I really enjoyed the book and thought it was very interesting. However, I also found myself wishing for a few equations so that I could better understand the quantitative details of systems he was describing. Overall, great book. Grade: B+

This book also reminded me of a list I've been working on for a few years -- Great books about math that ANY engineer or scientist should read at some point. So far, the list is 3 books:
(1) The Equation that Couldn't be Solved (Mario Livio)
(2) Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (David Foster Wallace)
(3) Sync (Steven Strogatz)

Yes, I'm fully aware that there are 50 other books that I should add to this list, but I haven't had time to read them yet.