Skip to main content

Bus Pass!

Yesterday, five year old No. 2 had what has become a right of passage in our family.  He got his first Clipper Card with his San Francisco MUNI pass.  When now seven year-old No. 1 got her Clipper card and could boop onto buses and trains, she instantly became the envy of her two younger sibs.  2 asked for a Clipper card non-stop, and it wasn’t long before 3 also got into the game.  We compromised by getting 2 and 3 their backpack Clipper card holders early.  3 delights in holding her holder up when we get in the bus and saying, “Boop.”

So, it was with great glee that 2 legitimately booped his way onto his first bus Thursday evening.  We had a bit of a hiccup at the BART station heading out.  (2 got stuck in the clamp-like jaws of the BART gate once when 2 year-old No. 3 went in front of him.  Since then, he and 3 have gained access to BART stations through the emergency gates.)  2 booped his card on the BART gate well enough.  It opened, but then he froze, staring at the clamps he was convinced were going to get him.  Eventually, they closed again of their own accord and 2 crawled under instead.  On the way back though, 2 took the plunge, taking a deep breath he raced through the gate.  His grin was huge as he emerged triumphant on the other side!

Public transit and walking are our our only two means of transportation here in San Francisco, and the surrounding area.  If you don’t take public transit in the Bay Area, and especially in San Francisco proper, there are a lot of reasons to consider it.  

First, it can be incredibly convenient once you get used to it.  Admittedly, we live at the nexus of three bus routes that make their ways to three different BART stations, so it’s perhaps especially convenient for us.  But hear me out, there’s no more worrying about having the insurance cards in the glove box, or about having the car properly maintained.  It sounds a bit dire, but basically you can move about without the concern of running into our local constabulary.

You get to spend time hanging out together with your family.  We have the vast majority of our deep family conversations on public transit.  We don’t have to ‘focus on the road’ which frees us up to just relax and enjoy each other.

There are no car seats required on public transit!  That’s right, you can just hop in with the kids and go!  The single remotely connected exception I’ve seen to this is that you have to sit inside the cable car, not stand, but sit, if you’re babywearing.

Speaking of cable car rides, they’re free with all MUNI passes!  We took the cable car three times last week which would have cost $21 almost paying for 1’s $38 dollar/month MUNI pass.

Which brings us to the cost of kid passes and how to get them.  Nominally they’re $38/month.  There is a discount program based on median income though.  The pass gets kids onto everything MUNI for free.  BART rides are discounted at 50%, (there’s not a kids’ equivalent of the adult monthly MUNI/BART pass for some reason).  We’ve also noticed that the kids’ Clipper cards get discounts on the Oakland bus system as well as the Golden Gate ferries.  To get your monthly kid’s pass, you have to take a birth certificate, (but interestingly not the actual kid), to a Clipper card office.  We use the one in Embarcadero BART/MUNI station.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1.  While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero.  This is typically explained in the following way.  While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare.  That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2].  Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector.  Its operation is in concept very sim