So this weekend two of my friends and I journeyed to the New England city known as Boston. We didn't actually do anything downtown, but we did get to see some history in Concord, such as the Old North Bridge (site of the fabled "shot heard 'round the world") and walked past Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (we didn't have time to walk through it, unfortunately), and went to a birthday party for a friend of a friend. We also saw one of my grad school professors who left my school due to his wife and him ge
Today I want to talk about something awesome: Special Relativity. It's a theory that was developed by this guy you may have heard of, Albert Einstein, and it's from this theory that arguably the most famous equation in physics, E = mc2, comes from. I'm not going to talk about E = mc2 today (in fact, I've already talked about it, but it's not the whole story!), but I wanted to talk about two other cool consequences of Special Relativity (SR), time dilation and length contraction. First and fore
Not sure what started this fad, but I'm okay with this. I Am A: True Neutral Human Wizard (3rd Level) Ability Scores: Strength- 9 Dexterity- 12 Constitution- 12 Intelligence- 16 Wisdom- 14 Charisma- 12 Alignment: True Neutral- A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. S
As the fates would have it, the day after my birthday I hopped on a plane and went to a physics conference. I'm now sitting here in my lovely hotel room waiting for today's poster session at which I am presenting a poster on my research thus far. It involves stuff from my first published paper and some current "in the works" calculations that I'm doing to help our analysis along. The talks up to this point have completely left me in the dust, so I'm hoping there will be discussion during the p
http://youtu.be/bxjWNJU8rNE When I was in college I had the privilege of performing many beautiful pieces in both choir and band. While I got to sing Eric Whitacre's "Hope, Faith, Life, Love" and play trumpet in his instrumental piece "October," I never did get to sing this beautiful piece. I absolutely love his suspensions and cluster chords. They give it a real ethereal quality, and it's beautiful.
My very first Equation of the Day was about the wave equation, a differential equation that governs wave behavior. It doesn't matter whether you have linear waves (sine and cosine functions), cylindrical waves, or spherical waves, the wave equation governs them. Today I will focus on the second, the so-called cylindrical harmonics, or Bessel functions. A harmonic function is defined as one that satisfies Laplace's equation, For cylindrical symmetry, the Laplacian (the operator represent
So, today is Tekulo's birthday. Since his birthday also happens to be Valentine's Day, and his job is baking, he's quite busy making pastries and other flour and sugar-based products for happy couples and families. And for himself, by the looks of it. Happy birthday, Tekky. I hope you have some part of the weekend off to make up for your busy day today. P.S. Go over here to wish Tekulo a happy birthday yourself! 8D
So, today was the second day this week where classes have been cancelled for snow/winter weather. Today the cancellation occurred due to power outages and falling frozen tree branches. So, I'm now at home doing work since there's actually power here. So that's been fun. Outside looks especially pretty, though.
I made these two images in Mathematica and tidied them up in Photoshop. They're graphs in the complex plane. The color indicates the phase, or argument, of the complex number, and for this function, curves of equal phase are hyperbolas. To animate it, all I did was let the phase vary linearly in time. 8D
I have posted before about the genius of physicist David J. Griffiths. I thought I'd post a few quotes by him to share why I think he's awesome. "…You can always tell the particles apart, in principle—just paint one of them red and the other one blue, or stamp identification numbers on them, or hire private detectives to follow them around." "...And, of course, if you’re in a really bad mood you can create a state for which neither position nor momentum is well defined..." "It is tradition
In no particular order, some fun physics jokes. Ready? GO! My friend was trying to talk to me about atoms, but I got Bohr'd. Did you hear that Albert Einstein developed a theory about space? It was about time, too. Never trust an atom; they make up everything. The oddly pleasant feeling of looking down on a physicist as they finish the last of their drink. The strange charm of a top-down bottoms-up. Why does hamburger have less energy than steak? It's in the ground state. Why are physics bo
So, I may have just finished watching all six series of Doctor Who available on Netflix. And I'm quite glad I did. Awesome show. David Tennant is best pony Doctor. I want a sonic screwdriver.
When I visit home I tend to not do anything online. So, here's a basic rundown of my winter holidays: KK, Tekulo, and I are in the same house again. This changes tomorrow, as KK and I are going to a friend's house, then KK returns to school. Had a New Year's Eve celebration with friends from college. Had a blast. My Christmas gifts include Super Mario Bros. 3D World, the Winter Market LEGO set (which I may trade with KK for his Winter Village Cottage, which I like a lot), a Fluttershy (my thir
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
Over the past week I caught a shiny Remoraid (evolved it and gave it to Tekulo), shiny Octillery, and shiny Clauncher (traded from Tekulo's X version). I have become a consecutive fishing master! I want to get a shiny Corsola next. Also, I had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving with my family and our friends. Tomorrow I head back to my apartment, and then Monday is school as usual.
So, I've been doing various things in the world of Pokémon recently. I obtained a Squirtle on Wonder Trade (that was awesome), a Froakie from Spain, various forms of Vivillon, a Riolu from Japan (リオル), and a Rotom (8D) from Japan (ロトム). I'm hoping to try the Masuda method to get a shiny Riolu, because shiny Lucario is awesome (and yellow). Also, I caught a shiny Ditto in Pokémon Village. Luckiest chain ever (I definitely did not get a chain of 40...).
Due to the combination of the servers being taken offline and me being in school, it's been a while since my last entry. I managed to find most of my entries from Google's cache (Aug 26 - now), so they've been posted as though I had posted them on their original entry days, but the comments have disappeared into the aether. On a more jubilant note, I've been playing Pokémon Y and Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies recently (this is in no way like Tekulo's recent entry). I'm on the first part of case
So, it's currently my fall break, and I decided the best way to spend that time would be to visit my brother, KopakaKurahk. I arrived Saturday evening and enjoyed a fun day yesterday of meeting people at his grad school, checking out his lab, and enjoying some relaxation (also watching JonTron and MentalFloss and discussing physics and geology). Good times. EDIT: Also, apparently this is my 200th entry! This is a milestone for some reason!
Hi, all! As you may have noticed, I've been kinda away from BZP recently due to the wonder that is me being in grad school. Last month began my third year into the foray of graduate studentdom, and since then I've been up to the following: Taking Thermodynamics/Statistical Mechanics (four lectures a week spread across Thursday and Friday) T.A.'ing three sections of introductory physics lab Doing research (My group recently submitted a paper which we have gotten back with editing suggestions.
