I had a wonderful time today; I got to see old friends from my undergrad today and went exploring a corn maze; it was a lot of fun. Also, equation of the day: Newton's Second Law where F is the net force, a is acceleration, and m is the mass of the object in question. It's such a simple-looking equation, but it contains so much physics. Want to know the path of a free-falling object subject only to the force of gravity? You use this equation. Want to know the attractive force and c
Ah, the pentagram, a shape associated with a variety of different ideas, some holy, some less savory. But to me, it's a golden figure, and not just because of how I chose to render it here. The pentagram has a connection with the golden ratio, which is defined as This number is tied to the Fibonacci sequence and the Lucas numbers and seems to crop up a lot in nature (although how much it crops up is disputed). It turns out that the various line segments present in the pentagram are in gol
Yesterday I stumbled across this image (which I recreated and cleaned up a bit). It's a beautiful image. Arranged around the edge is the circle of fifths, which in music is a geometric representation of the twelve tones of the Western scale arranged so the next note is seven semitones up (going clockwise in this figure). The notes are all connected in six different ways to the other notes in the "circle," known as intervals, which are color-coded at the bottom. I thought, "Wow, this is a really
Hydrogen is the simplest and most common neutral atom in the universe. It consists of two particles – a positively charged proton and a negatively charged electron. The equation that describes the hydrogen atom (or any one-electron atom) in the nonrelativistic regime is the Schrödinger equation, specifically where ħ is the reduced Planck constant, μ is the reduced mass of the electron-nucleus system, Z is the number of positive charges in the nucleus that the electron is orbiting, e is th
The above image is known as the Pentagram of Venus; it is the shape of Venus' orbit as viewed from a geocentric perspective. This animation shows the orbit unfold, while this one shows the same process from a heliocentric perspective. There are five places in Venus' orbit where it comes closest to the Earth (known as perigee), and this is due to the coincidence that When two orbital periods can be expressed as a ratio of integers it is known as an orbital resonance (similar to how a strin
The definition of a planet has been under scrutiny several times, and with New Horizon's recent visit to Pluto, the discussion of Pluto's demotion was on everyone's minds (at least, back in July). But I'm not going to talk about Pluto's demotion (though I think it was totally appropriate from a scientific perspective). Instead, I'm going to talk about the Moon. Should the Earth-Moon system be considered a binary planet? This sounds outlandish at first, since the Moon is a moon, obviously. It o
I'm taking a second pass at this one. Instead, I'm going to talk about chaos. Chaos is complexity that arises from simplicity. Put in a clearer way, it's when a deterministic process leads to complex results that seem unpredictable. The difference between chaos and randomness is that chaos is determined by a set of rules/equations, while randomness is not deterministic. Everyday applications of chaos include weather, the stock market, and cryptography. Chaos is why everyone (including identica
The room you are currently sitting in is probably around 20°C, or 68°F (within reasonable error, since different people like their rooms warmer or colder or have no control over the temperature of the room they're reading this entry in). But what does it mean to be at a certain temperature? Well, we often define temperature as an average of the movement of an ensemble of constituent particles – usually atoms or molecules. For instance, the temperature of a gas in a room is given as a relation to
Today I want to talk about mass. Sometimes you'll hear it defined loosely as "the amount of stuff in an object." There are, however, two separate definitions of mass in classical physics. The first definition comes from Newton's second law. This mass is known as the inertial mass. The larger an object's inertial mass, the more it resists being accelerated by a given force. The second definition of mass also comes from Newton, but it is instead determined by his law of gravitation. T
You've probably heard of the Uncertainty Principle before. In words, it says "you cannot simultaneously measure the position and the momentum of a particle to arbitrary precision." In equation form, it looks like this: What this says is that the product of the uncertainty of a measurement of a particle's position multiplied by the uncertainty of a measurement of a particle's momentum has to be greater than a constant (given by the reduced Planck constant, h over τ = 2π). This has nothing
I like triangles. I like numbers. So what could possibly be better than having BOTH AT THE SAME TIME?! The answer is nothing! 8D The triangular numbers are the numbers of objects one can use to form an equilateral triangle. Anyone up for billiards? Or bowling? (Image: Wikimedia Commons) Pretty straightforward, right? To get the number, we just add up the total number of things, which is equal to adding up the number of objects in each row. For a triangle with n rows, this is equivalent
So, I've decided to do one of those daily-like blog entries, though I can't guarantee that I'll be able to do this every day (being a busy grad student and all). I figured that, being a physics grad student, math might be one of my stronger suits (next to reviewing LEGO sets), so I'm going to try and share an equation with you and see if I can explain it well enough for people to understand. 8D Tonight's equation: The wave equation. This says that the sum of the change in the change
This is one that I didn't really know much about until recently, so I thought I'd share it. Today's equation is known as the Virial theorem, or, in component form, The word "virial" comes from the Latin vis, which means "force" or "energy," and looking at the equation, it makes sense why it's called that. Here the big Σ means sum, the "k" index denotes the kth particle of a system of N particles, V is the potential energy function affecting the kth particle, T is the potential ene
Since it is now the end of the semester at my school, professors are winding down the semester by ramping up the students' workloads. Isn't that just dandy?!
Thus, real life takes over and Akano's free time goes from some to nearly none. On the bright side though, my brother KK and I recently had a recent acquisition of a Legend of Zelda DS Lite! (Do do do doo!) Thus, super fun happy fourth-gen Pokémon games are going to be played by us (KK has already gotten Platinum. I personally am wai
So, I just saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie Friday night. (I know, I'm behind the times) I have to say, IT WAS EPIC! I love Sherlock Holmes mysteries, and this movie was no exception.
Also, for those of you comic lovers out there, NEW COMIC! I know, can you believe it?
Naruto: Believe it!
Now I'm off to research fractals. 8D
Today, my brother KopakaKurahk and I were walking up and down a nearby cul-de-sac and, while he was observing some lovely Virginia creeper and poison ivy decorating a peaceful evergreen, I noticed, with the help of my insect nerdiness, a spider that I originally thought was sitting within its web waiting for prey. Turns out, the spider had already obtained its evening meal: a small, black wasp that was no longer than a centimeter. Oh, the little stinging terror tried and tried to escape its i
Why did it take so long for me to find this? I can't stop listening to it. It captures our favorite draconequus so beautifully. And it's so darned catchy The lyrics are pretty awesome, too.
I love watching series over and over again to see if there are any subtleties the writers threw in that I never noticed during my first viewing. However, I rarely find a series that, when I watch it, I get the same feeling of suspense, the same feeling of revelation, as I do when I watch Red vs. Blue Season 6: Reconstruction. If you haven't seen Reconstruction yet, be warned that there will be spoilers in this entry. What is it that's so great about this particular season of a very comedic
Okay, I just came out with a new comic and no one has seemed to notice, so I'm going to redirect people to my comics topic to check it out. It incorporates that new idea I said I had earlier. The new idea was HAND DRAWN COMICNESS!
My CGing skills haven't developed to the point that I could CG in two days and have it out, so for now the comic is just a sketch. I'll try to improve that aspect, though. Hope you all enjoy it!
Also, I had a band concert on Monday that was with both band and
Math is a truly wonderful topic, and since I'm procrastinating a little on my physics homework, I'm going to spend some time talking about the complex numbers. Most of us are used to the real numbers. Real numbers consist of the whole numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ...), the negative numbers (-1, -2, -3, ...), the rational numbers (1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 22/7, ...), and the irrational numbers (numbers that cannot be represented by fractions of integers, such as the golden ratio, the square root of 2, or π).
New comic is up! It covers the subject of learning new things. Now, I have a question to pose to you. My friends were talking about being productive with their evenings (both are fellow physics grad students), and I had mentioned that I had felt really productive lately due to the fact that I made two reviews (one of which no one has commented in yet. show it some love!) and finished my latest comic. Then they replied, "I wouldn't really call that productive; you just do that for fun." To be
Christmas time is probably the most wonderful time of the year. I love it so much. ^^
What I don't like about right now is that my final exams for the semester are all up ons next week. Luckily they're only spread out over three days, and I have two days off to study for my first finals.
Also, I really need to brush off the cobwebs and dust from this poor abandoned blog. I never update it.
