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Akano

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Blog Entries posted by Akano

  1. Akano

    It's A Trap!

    By Akano,

    A magneto-optical trap. We just got it back up and running again after many days of realigning things (which is quite a pain, but it builds character ). The image is taken from a TV screen since the collection of atoms shown (the bright, white dot in the center) scatters light very dimly in the near-infrared, so our eyes can't see them, but security cameras can. The collection of atoms in the center is just above absolute zero (-273.15°C) by millionths of a degree. I don't remember off hand what the number of atoms is in the trap, but I'm assuming it's fairly large (~106?).
     



     

  2. Akano
    Longest Talkin' Toons podcast yet, and every second is worth listening too.
     
    I love voice actors. 8D
     
    For those who don't know Rob Paulsen, his roles include:

    Yakko Warner
    Dr. Otto Scratchansniff
    Pinky
    Raphael
    Mark Chang

    and many more.
     

  3. Akano

    Voting and such

    By Akano,

    You people are all slow; I voted weeks ago (absentee FTW!). Thanks to all who voted, whether it was Democrat, Republican, or Bull Moose. Statisticians really appreciate having a good sample size for such things.
     
    (But seriously, voting is important. Exercise those rights!)
     

  4. Akano

    My past three weeks

    By Akano,

    I had a whirlwind of a time these last few weeks. I'll try to break it down simply.
     
    Week of May 23: Attended the DAMOP conference in Providence, RI to present my research in poster form. It was all right, but probably my least favorite DAMOP thus far. (Last year it was in Columbus, OH, which meant I got to see friends during the week, and the year before it was in Madison, WI, which was an absolute joy because Madison is a rarity in that it's a city I actually kinda like.) My roommate and I left the conference on Thursday to attend a wedding, which happened Thursday evening. The ceremony was one of my favorites I've attended thus far.
     
    The following day I left on a plane to go to Columbus to attend the bachelor party, rehearsal, and subsequent wedding of a friend I've known and kept in touch with since 6th grade. It was wonderful.
     
    Week of May 30: Went back to my childhood home and had a Memorial Day dinner with family and friends, played the role of babysitter with Tekulo (we earned major brownie points, both with the kids and their mothers). The next day I chilled at home and spent time with my family, with the evening punctuated by an awesome bonfire that was probably against local fire codes. Saw my next door neighbor unexpectedly and got a chance to catch up. Wednesday featured more catching up with some college friends who live about 40 minutes away from my parents' place. We played some Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit and watched YouTube videos.
     
    Thursday was the beginning of a roadtrip from Ohio to Wisconsin, with the ultimate goal to meet up with KK and hang out for a few days. Among the people we saw along the way were two of my fellow grad students who were working in Chicago, my roommate's (Friend: Toa of Friendship) cousin, KK, and friends of Friend: Toa of Friendship's girlfriend (did you keep track of that? ). It was awesome, but rather short, and we'll definitely have to do something again.
     
    I got back to my apartment Wednesday night and am now enjoying time off relaxing before I go back to the lab on Monday to start up summer research mode! Huzzah!
     

  6. Akano
    I got back from a concert a couple hours ago, this time our "winter" concert. Yes, we just had a Christmas concert, but we played completely new songs. Our Jazz band, Symphonic band, and Wind Ensemble played at the concert, and it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be. I had a numerous amount of solos, and people told me I played them pretty well. ^^;
     
    Also, new comic up, based on the premier of 24, the most amazing TV show ever! ^^
     
    I'm also trying to come up with a new comic idea, waiting for that inspiration to smack me in the face. Enjoy it, everyone!
     

  9. Akano
    And it was glorious. I was going to work on my E&M homework, but my body decided to rob me of all focus and initiative. I then ended up in my bed and slept for about three and half hours with no homework progress. Hooray?
     
    Also, I've realized that I haven't finished my Time Cruisers/Twisters reviews, and I kind of want to retake the pictures for them (I have the pictures on my computer of when I first built them and planned to review them, but they're sub par...). Then I'd like to do some more retro (90s) set reviews. I'm thinking of tackling the good ol' Adventurers sets, as I have quite a few of those...
     

  10. Akano

    My cats are funny

    By Akano,

    ...because they're cats. Also, because one of them is currently curled up on a pile of freshly laundered towels on the sofa whilst the other is on the floor posing like the fancy prince that he is.
     
    Silly kitties.
     
    Also, HOLY CROWSNEST I'VE BEEN GONE A WHILE! This is what happens when I visit home...
     

  12. Akano
    So, this past week was my Fall Break, which allowed me to enjoy the comforts of home and gave me the opportunity to say hello to people who are still at my undergrad.
     
    I also received and played intensely Pokémon White 2, hence my lack of blog posts. I just beat the 8th Gym today (Marlon is weird...) and now have to prepare lecture for Wednesday. :\
     

  13. Akano
    "The proportionality factor σ (not to be confused with surface charge) is an empirical constant that varies from one material to another; it's called the conductivity of the medium. Actually, the handbooks usually list the reciprocal of σ, called the resistivity: ρ = 1/σ (not to be confused with charge density—I'm sorry, but we're running out of Greek letters, and this is the standard notation)."
     
    This is the man who allegedly can teach physics to gerbils. I wish I could take a class with him simply for his wit and skillz at teaching.
     

  15. Akano

    The Hobbit Soundtrack

    By Akano,

    Oh, Howard Shore, your music is wonderful. My favorite tracks, in no particular order, are
    Blunt the Knives
    Misty Mountains
    The Adventure Begins
    An Ancient Enemy
    Radagast the Brown
    Erebor
    The Edge of the Wild
    I'm looking forward to the next couple movies and the delightful music they will bring.
     
    Also, The Wizard Battle set is totally getting added to my collection when it comes out.
     

  16. Akano

    Anniversary!

    By Akano,

    For those of you who haven't read my latest comic, four days ago marked Akano's Comics' fourth year anniversary. For any topic on BZPower, that is an amazing feat, and I hope the topic will have a few more years in the running.
     
    Also, thanks to those who read my new chapter. You can still post in the review topic since topic revival is allowed in the Epics forum so long as your posts are on topic.
     

  17. Akano

    Tekulo's birthday entry

    By Akano,

    I was going to make this a topic when it happened, but unfortunately the forums were offline, so I'll make an entry for it instead. My younger brother, Tekulo, turned 21 this past Thursday, Valentine's Day, so go ahead and wish him a belated happy birthday!
     

  18. Akano
    It's been a while since I posted something, eh?
     
    Last week I went home to visit my family for a couple of weeks. It's been pretty low key so far; visited some friends over the weekend, mowed the lawn (so lovely), and tried to get things a bit cleaner around the house. I also ate way too much food at various gatherings.
     
    This weekend my dad and I pick up KK from grad school (he successfully defended his Master's!) and will enjoy two long, arduous, 10 hour-long trips. Then, I fly to Wisconsin for a conference, so that should be fun.
     
    I also got the Back to the Future DeLorean LEGO set, and I must say it's a very nice representation. Also, Doc Brown's "Great Scott!" face is perfect.
     
    I really want to make the purple skateboard in that set an actual hoverboard using magnets and a superconductor. One of these days...
     

  19. Akano
    Today I went to my local LEGO Store to plunder some Series 8 Minifigures. I reviewed the 8 Series 8 minifigs (clever, ain't I?) over here, so check it out for pics and entertaining descriptions. I posted a teaser below:
     
     
    Also, while at the LEGO Store, I noticed some new sets. Remember the recent beach set that contained the Hula Girl, Surfer, and Surfer Girl from the Series Minifigures? Well, two new similar sets are now in the LEGO store, and I snapped a quick pic of them.
     

    Click for larger image.


     
    I sent this into news, so maybe you'll see an article about it.
     
    UPDATE: Apparently, LEGO has these on its Shop@Home site. They are the Halloween Accessory Set and the Rock Band Minifigure Accessory Set.
     
    ALSO ZOMBIE MINIFIG AAAHHH!!!
     

  20. Akano
    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 the gas' rms molecular speed:
     



     
    Where T is the absolute temperature (e.g. Kelvin scale), m is the mass of the particles making up the gas, and k is Boltzmann's constant. But this is a specific case. In general, we need a more encompassing definition. In thermodynamics, there is a quantity known as entropy, which basically quantifies the disorder of a system. It is related to the number of ways to arrange the elements of a system without changing the energy.
     
    For instance, there are a lot of ways of having a messy room. You can have clothes on the floor, you can track mud into it, you can leave dishes and food everywhere. But there are very few ways to have an immaculately clean room, where everything is tidy and put in its proper place. Thus, the messy room has a larger entropy, while the clean room has very low entropy. It is this quantity that helps to define temperature generally. Denoting entropy as S, we have that
     



     
    Or, in words, temperature is defined as the change in energy divided by the change in entropy of something when its volume remains fixed, which is equivalent to the change in enthalpy (heat) divided by the change in entropy at constant pressure. Thus, if you increase the energy of an object and find that it becomes more disordered, the temperature is positive. This is what we are used to. When you heat up air, it becomes more disorderly because the particles making it up are moving faster and more randomly, so it makes sense that the temperature must be positive. If you cool air, the particles making it up slow down and it tends to become more orderly, so the temperature is still positive, but decreasing. What happens when you can't pull any more energy out of the air? Well, that means that the temperature has gone to zero, and movement has stopped. Since the movement has stopped, the gas must be in a very ordered state, and the entropy isn't changing. When the speed of the gas particles is zero, we call its temperature absolute zero, when all motion has stopped.
     
    It is impossible to reach absolute zero temperature, but it isn't intuitive as to why at first. The main reason is due to quantum mechanics. If all atomic motion of an object stopped, its momentum would be known exactly, and this violates the Uncertainty Principle. But there is also another reason. In thermodynamics, there is a quantity related to temperature that is defined as
     



     
    Since k is just a constant, β can be thought of as inverse temperature. This sends absolute zero to β being infinity! Now, this makes much more sense as to why achieving absolute zero is impossible – it means we have to make a quantity go to infinity! It turns out that β is the more fundamental quantity to deal with in thermodynamics because of this role (and others).
     
    Now, you're probably thinking, "Akano, that's all well and good, but, are you saying that this means that you can get to infinite temperature?" In actuality, you can, but you need a special system to be able to do it. To get temperature to infinity, you need β to go to zero. How do we do that? Well, once you cross zero, you end up with a negative quantity, so if we could somehow get a negative temperature, then we would have to cross β equals zero. But how do we get a negative temperature, and what would that be like? Well, we would need entropy to decrease when energy is added to our system.
     



     
    It turns out that an ensemble of magnets in an external magnetic field would do the trick. See, when a compass is placed in a magnetic field, it wants to align with the field (call that direction north). But if I put some energy into the system (i.e. I push the needle), I can get the needle of the compass to point in the opposite direction (south). When less than half of the compasses are pointing opposite the external field, each time I flip a compass needle I'm increasing entropy (since the perfect order of all the compasses pointing north has been tampered with). But once more than half of those compasses are pointing south, I am decreasing the disorder of the system when I flip another magnet south! This means that the temperature must be negative! In practice, the compasses are actually molecules with an electric dipole moment or electrons with a certain spin (which act like magnets), but the same principles apply. So, β equals zero is when exactly half of the compasses are pointing north and the other half are pointing south, and β equals zero is when T is infinite, and it is at this infinity that the sign on T swaps.
     
    It's interesting to note that negative temperatures are actually hotter than any positive temperature, since you have to add energy to get to negative temperature. One could define a quantity as –β, so that plotting it on a line would be a more intuitive way to see that the smaller the quantity, the colder the object is, while preserving the infinities of absolute zero and "absolute hot."
     

  21. Akano
    So, I'm working on a computer project for my Electrodynamics course. I'm using a computer method called the Relaxation or Finite Difference Method. It basically takes a physical scenario, divides the space of interest into a grid, and assigns voltages for each grid intersection. Then, using a computer language of choice (I'm using FORTRAN, like a boss), I make a program that essentially takes a weighted average of all the points whose voltages aren't fixed until the program doesn't change those voltages anymore. This gives a surprisingly good approximation for a physical system.
     
    I'm basically modeling a system with two conducting cylindrical shells of equal radius separated by some height and which are at voltages +V0 and -V0. The problem is that my output graphs do not look physical; the voltage just drops to near zero rapidly for points outside and between the cylinders, whereas I expect that the graph should gradually drop.
     
    Curse you, technology!
     

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