One of the blogs I read is Suburban Joe, written by a guy in Alpharetta, Georgia by the name of Brandon. He occasionally writes about video games, and his wife's name is Linda, so that alone was enough to get me reading his blog.
Aspiring to be Bill Nye, he answers science questions on his blog, and while reading, one came to my mind. When I was but a wee lad, getting ready in the morning before jumping on the school bus, I used to be able to tell when the shower water had heated up by listening to the pitch of the water as it flowed through the pipes. Everything has a pitch. Knock on the desk and that has a pitch. Breath in and out, and the sound of your breathing has a pitch. Even the fan in my computer I'm listening to right now has a pitch. I had a great physics course at CCSU called The Sound of Music. I kid you not. It was a lab physics course about the physics of sound. The guy who taught it looked like Where's Waldo. Or maybe Bill Nye, I'm not sure.
Anyway, all tangents aside, here's the question I asked Brandon:
In the house where I grew up, I used to be able to tell when the shower water got hot by listening - the pitch of the water would change as it heated up. Recently, I noticed the same thing with our sink - as the water heats up, the pitch goes up. What is the connection between water temperature and pitch?
As soon as I saw the title of his post, about expanding pipes, the answer became clear. I feel stupid for not having realized it sooner. You can read Brandon's post here in which the man talks smack about my plumbing, but the man likes Indigo Prophecy, so he can't be all bad.
Indigo Prophecy rocked! Peeing and necrophilia all in one game. Genius!