January 26, 2012 – 10:55 pm
I had the pleasure of briefly meeting and listening to Dr. Gregg Zank (CTO- Dow Corning) this evening. Some very interesting work going on at Dow Corning! In particular, his discussion of a waterless powdered shampoo product for third world countries was quite amazing. It’s wonderful to imagine a waterless shampoo, let alone one that is distributed as a dry product in single use packets! Very interesting. It reminded me of another interesting humanitarian project that I’ve talked about before…
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November 20, 2008 – 7:05 pm
Very sad news. Howard Knoebel passed away at the age of 85 in Neoga, IL, Nov. 19th. Here’s a picture of Howard I snagged from his website. I hope to have a bit more about him in a future post. In particular some of the fantastic science he accomplished.
One hilarious anecdote is that Howard actually calculated whether or not it is worth your while to pick up a penny on the sidewalk. His calculations show it is not. He basically calculated how much you would make an hour if at every step of the way there was a penny to pick up. 
It turns out you won’t make minimum wage by doing so. Hence, it does not pay to pick up a penny on the sidewalk. Howard was a bit of a rascal Scientist, I think that’s not too bad a name for his ever present creation and discovery. He always had his hands in something. We were all sure that his tractor with various add-ons would flip over on top of him one day. He also had a hatred towards wood peckers.
You’ll be sorely missed, Howard. I regret not being more in touch than we were. 73 DE N9RZC!
ps- Howard’s website can be found here (for while it is still up): Howard’s RR1 Site
