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Akano

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Blog Entries posted by Akano

  1. Akano

    Where Is My Mind Today?

    By Akano,

    Hey, all, it's been nearly a month; I should probably post here again.
     
    I'm currently in New York visiting family before the summer wraps up and I'm back at college. It's been stormy and rainy today, though, which makes it seem kinda miserable outside. Not the good storms that last about a half hour and are filled with beautiful lightning bolts, but the cruddy ones that, eh, a few cracks of lightning and a burst of thunder, but cloudy all day. It is clearing up, though.
     
    Also, I obtained Bitil yesterday! Haha! The first true yellow BIONICLE set in five whole years! WOOT! I'm totally thrilled. 8D
     
    (Yes, Atako, I got him. You should still bring him to the picnic, though; we could have him use his mask power. )
     
    I'll be taking pictures of him soon and possibly reviewing him here in my blog. Yes, my view on him is heavily biased due to his coloration, so sue me.
     
    Also, I hope to make a new comic next week, but I may be preoccupied a bit with packing to go back to school. It should be a continuation of my latest comic, so keep your eyes peeled.
     
    I think that's all for now.
     

  3. Akano

    Halloween approacheth

    By Akano,

    'Sup, BZPeoples?
     
    I've been away a while attending friends' weddings, visiting various peeps, rereading Harry Potter (still as magical as always), and working on research. If all goes well, this Friday will see me submitting a paper to the Journal of Chemical Physics. All in all, it's been a good few months. But now is the season of autumnal haunts, and I have grown very happy with the drop in temperature and the swap of palette.
     
    Over my fall break, I visited KK in the land of cheese, Wisconsin, and he introduced me to the joys of Punch Out!! for Wii and Super Mario Maker. I now own both, and have been having loads of fun playing others' levels and designing levels of my own (mostly goofing off). When I've finalized a level I'll post it for you all to play if you like. In particular I've been working on a Ghost House.
     

      

     
    It's been super fun. Also, RubberRoss' levels are utterly evil.
     
    EDIT: Untimely Haunt v2: CD1D-0000-00C8-8D19
     
    Happy Halloween!
     

  4. Akano

    *Sweeps up the snow*

    By Akano,

    Hello, BZPeople! I just wanted to drop in and let you know that I'm quite alive and well and have had a wonderful holiday season. I thought I'd give you all a quick rundown of my last month or so after I vanished without a trace.
    Went home and celebrated Christmas with my folks. Got AN AWESOME INSECT COLLECTION from Tekulo; a custom lightsaber, a LEGO coffee mug, and a Knights minifigure set from KK; a portable charger thing from my mom; an Elvis mug/cocoa mix from my aunt; and a gift box from my dad which had a Bazinga shirt and socks, TARDIS/Dalek ice tray (!!), and other miscellaneous nerdy things.
    Spent New Year's with some friends from college, one of whom is having a baby in the extremely near future. (I will soon be an uncle, which is kind of awesome.)
    Went to Walt Disney World for a week with my mom and Tekulo. Magic Kingdom is still my favorite park, Haunted Mansion is still my favorite ride, Space Mountain is still my favorite thrill ride, and Tower of Terror is still awesome. I didn't really enjoy Epcot all that much (though I had fun riding Spaceship Earth after virtually zero wait), and Universal Studios was fine except for the head-jostling the Rockin' Roller Coaster gave me. (I remember it being much more avoidable as a kid...)
    Now I'm back at school doing research. Also, thanks to all who supported Tekulo in his recent blog entry where he came out. It makes me very happy to see that here. Keep being awesome.
     

  5. Akano

    Concert And Comics

    By Akano,

    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 choir as a Christmas concert. I must say, it was quite amazing. No, not the choir part, our part. Out of all the groups — Concert Choir, Symphonic Chorale, Show Choir, and Wind Ensemble — the Wind Ensemble was the only group to get a standing ovation. Boo-yah! I even had a solo at the end of Sleigh Ride for my trumpet — I made a horse-whinney sound. ^^;
     
    The crowd seemed to love it, though, and they loved when we played Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24." That earned us our standing ovation.
     
    The Concert Choir was terrible, though. And the choirs got to do more songs than the band. But, we're still the crowd favorite. ^^
     
    And now, as usual, a physics equation. I know you've all waited for this.
     
    For uniform circular motion, ΣF = mv²/r, where ΣF is the sum of the forces acting on the plane of the circle, m is mass of the object in motion, v is its velocity or speed, and r is the length of the radius.
     
    Of course, you could also say that v²/r = a, where a is centripital acceleration, bringing us back to ΣF = ma. ^^
     

  10. Akano
    I seem to have a habit of not updating this often.
     
    Main update: I added a new chapter to My Transformation Part II. I encourage you to read it; it's fairly lengthy and full of goodies.
     
    Also, tomorrow is my last day of finals and I get to go home! Woot woot! I'm very excited.
     
    I'll get to see my friends again. It's going to be great. ^^
     
    Um, that's all for now. Please read the new chapter!
     

  11. Akano
    This week marks the last week of the first half of the semester, which means that my half-semester Optics course is coming to a close. It's been busy (hence my lack of presence), but I almost have one full course under my belt. So far there have been two lessons I gave that could have been better presented, but the students have been fairly engaged and seem more or less okay with the material. I guess we'll see how it goes once the final happens.
     
    I did try writing a new Equation of the Day, but my schedule has been quite packed. I would like to get that rolling again after the end of the semester, since I greatly enjoy writing those entries.
     

  12. Akano

    Me playing Pokémon Moon

    By Akano,

    Me: "Hau just handed me a person named Max Potion. I think that's human trafficking."
     
    KK: *bursts into laughter*
     
    Me: *joins in laughter because he didn't expect that joke to land*
     
    Another typical Friday evening.
     

  13. Akano

    Physics Conference

    By Akano,

    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 poster session that's more to my level of understanding on the various topics I've been exposed to.
     
    Also the food is quite good.
     



     

  14. Akano
    KK and I had an awesome time. I'll have pics posted later, so for now I'll just use a few words to describe my experience:
     
    There were so many AMAZING creations, from a 7 foot long Serenity to some awesome Egyptian temple structures to Erebor from The Hobbit, and that doesn't even scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg. The BIONICLE creations were really neat, and I enjoyed stopping by those tables. Speaking of, I have now officially met the following BZPeople (yes, that's what I call us/you/whatever) IN PERSON:
    Sumiki a.k.a. Cap'n Subnuki a.k.a. Hat Man
    Black Six a.k.a. Andrew a.k.a. you all know who he is
    The Architect a.k.a. Blog Lurker
    Xaeraz a.k.a. Xaeraz
    Aanchir a.k.a. He who draws Andrew Francis characters
    BZPeople whom I saw but did not actually meet (sorry, I'll try harder next time not to be overwhelmed with ALL THE AWESOME and stop to talk to people more).
    Makaru
    Avohkah Tamer
    Bionicle Raptor (related: I also forgot to buy a BZPower shirt. )
    Possibly others whose appearances I don't know and thus would not recognize them.
    All in all, it was an awesome afternoon well spent. I'll have some pictures up some time later this week, including my haul (not too substantial, but pretty cool).
     

  15. Akano

    Life Updates

    By Akano,

    HI, BZPOWER!
     
    So, in the last few weeks, my family came to visit (including Tekulo and KK) and we spent the latter half of the week seeing sights and enjoying each other's company. My mom won a game of Trivial Pursuit on a category that was supposed to stump her. Story of my Trivial Pursuit life.
     
    When they left, they abandoned KK with me, which has led to me stepping into the nerd realm of playing Dungeons & Dragons. We're doing a campaign in the land of Hyrule with the races of Hyrule being used as analogs of D&D races. We're currently in the Forest Temple seeking an herb to cure the Great Deku Tree's muteness.
     
    I'm also working in a new physics lab where I'm studying the energy states of the hydrogen molecule (H2). I'm thoroughly enjoying it, since I'm learning computational stuffs and learning my way around Linux. (Emacs rules the school.) The program I'm working with is in Fortran, which is my native programming language but was written by someone else with a lot more skill than I possess.
     
    And now I'm shoveling through a LOT of data.
     

  16. Akano
    You may have learned once that classical mechanics all stems from Newton's laws of motion, and while that is true, it is not necessarily the best way to solve a given physical problem. Often when we look at a physical system, we take note of certain physical parameters: energy, momentum, and position. However, these can be more generalized to fit the physical situation in question better. This is where Lagrange comes in; he thought of a new way to formulate mechanics. Instead of looking at the total energy of a system, which is the potential energy plus the kinetic energy, he instead investigated the difference in those two quantities,
     




     
    where T is the kinetic energy and V is the potential energy. Since the kinetic and potential energy, in general, depend on the coordinate position and velocity of the particle in question, as well as time, so too does the Lagrangian. You're probably thinking, "okay, what makes that so great?" Well, if we were to plot the Lagrangian and calculate the area under the curve with respect to time, we get a quantity known as the action of the particle.
     




     
    where t1 and t2 are the starting and ending times of interest. Usually if the motion is periodic, the difference between these times is one period. Now, it turns out that for classical motion, the action is minimized with respect to a change in the path along which the particle moves for the physical path along which the particle actually moves. This sounds bizarre, but what it means is that there is only one path along which the particle can move while keeping the action minimized. Physicists call this the Principle of Least Action; I like to call it "the universe is inherently lazy" rule. When you do the math out, you can calculate an equation related to the Lagrangian for which the action is minimized. We call these the Euler-Lagrange Equations.
     




     
    These are the equations of motion a particle with Lagrangian L in generalized coordinates qi with velocity components denoted by qi with a dot above the q (the dot denotes taking a time derivative, and the time derivative of a coordinate is the velocity in that coordinate's direction). This is one of the advantages of the Lagrangian formulation of mechanics; you can pick any coordinate system that is best-suited for the physical situation. If you have a spherically symmetric problem, you can use spherical coordinates (altitude, longitude, colatitude). If your problem works best on a rectangular grid, use Cartesian coordinates. You don't have to worry about sticking only with Cartesian (rectilinear) coordinates and then converting to something that makes more sense; you can just start out in the right coordinate system from the get go! Now, there are a couple of special attributes to point out here. First, the quantity within the time derivative is a familiar physical quantity, known as the conjugate momenta.
     




     
    Note that these do not have to have units of linear momentum of [Force × time]. For instance, in spherical coordinates, the conjugate momentum of longitude is the angular momentum in the vertical direction, which has units of action, [Energy × time]. The Euler-Lagrange equations tell us to take the total time derivative of these momenta, i.e. figure out how they change in time. This gives us a sort of conjugate force, since Newton's second law reads that the change in momentum over time is force. The other quantity gives special significance when it equals zero,
     




     
    This is just fancy math language for saying that if one of our generalized coordinates, qi, doesn't appear at all in our Lagrangian, then that quantity's conjugate momentum is conserved, and the coordinate is called "cyclic." In calculating the Kepler problem – the physical situation of two particles orbiting each other (like the Earth around the Sun) – the Lagrangian is
     




     
    Note that the only coordinate that doesn't appear in the Lagrangian is ϕ, the longitude in spherical coordinates. Thus, the conjugate momentum of ϕ, which is the angular momentum pointing from the North pole vertically upwards, is a conserved quantity. This reveals a symmetry in the problem that would not be seen if we used the Lagrangian for the same problem in Cartesian coordinates:
     




     
    That just looks ugly. Note that all three coordinates are present, so there are no cyclic coordinates in this system. In spherical coordinates, however, we see that there is a symmetry to the problem; the symmetry is that the situation is rotationally invariant under rotations about an axis perpendicular to the plane of orbit. No matter what angle you rotate the physical situation by about that axis, the physical situation remains unchanged.
     

  17. Akano

    The Harmonic Oscillator

    By Akano,

    My Classical Mechanics professor quoted someone in class the other day: "The maturation of a physics student involves solving the harmonic oscillator over and over again throughout his/her career." (or something to that effect)
     
    So, what is the harmonic oscillator? Otherwise known as the simple harmonic oscillator, it is the physical situation in which a particle is subject to a force whose strength is proportional to the displacement from equilibrium of said particle, known as Hooke's Law, or, in math terms,
     

    F = -kx


     
    where F is our force, x is our displacement, and k is some proportionality constant (often called the "spring constant"). That sounds swell and all, but to what situations does this apply? Well, for a simple example, consider a mass suspended on a spring. If you just let it sit in equilibrium, it doesn't really move since the spring is cancelling out the force of gravity. However, if you pull the mass slightly off of its equilibrium point and release it, the spring pulls the mass up, compresses, pushes the mass down, and repeats the process over and over. So long as there is no outside force or friction (a physicist's dream) this will continue oscillating into eternity, and the position of the mass can be mapped as a sine or cosine function.
     
    What is the period of the oscillation? Well, it turns out that the square of the period is related to the mass and the spring constant, k in this fashion:
     

    T2 = 4π2m/k


     
    This is usually written in terms of angular frequency, which is 2π/T. This gives us the equation
     

    (2π/T)2 = ω2 = k/m


     
    This problem is also a great example of a system where total energy, call it E, is conserved. At the peak of the oscillation (when the mass is instantaneously at rest), all energy is potential energy, since the particle is at rest and there is no energy of motion. At the middle of the oscillation (when the mass is at equilibrium and moving at its fastest) the potential energy is at a minimum (zero) and the all energy in the system is kinetic energy. Kinetic energy, denoted by T (and not to be confused with period) is equal to mv2/2, and the kinetic energy of the simple harmonic oscillator is kx2/2. Thus, the total energy can be written as
     

    E = mv2/2 + kx2/2 = p2/2m + kx2/2


     
    Where I've made the substitution p = mv. Advanced physics students will note that this is the Hamiltonian for the simple harmonic oscillator.
     
    Well, this is great for masses on springs, but what about more natural phenomena? What does this apply to? Well, if you like music, simple harmonic oscillation is what air undergoes when you play a wind instrument. Or a string instrument. Or anything that makes some sort of vibration. What you're doing when you play an instrument (or sing) is forcing air, string(s), or electric charge (for electronic instruments) out of equilibrium. This causes the air, string(s), and current to oscillate, which creates a tone. Patch a bunch of these tones together in the form of chords, melodies, and harmonies, and you've created music. A simpler situation is blowing over a soda/pop bottle. When you blow air over the mouth of the bottle, you create an equilibrium pressure for the air above the mouth of the bottle. Air that is slightly off of this equilibrium will oscillate in and out of the bottle, producing a pure tone. Also, if you have two atoms that can bond, the bonds that are made can act as Hooke's Law potentials. This means that, if you vibrate these atoms at a specific frequency, they will start to oscillate. This can tell physicists and chemists about the bond-lengths of molecules and what those bonds are made up of. In fact, the quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator is a major topic of interest because the potential energy between particles can often be approximated as a Hooke's Law potential near minima, even if it's much more complex elsewhere.
     
    Also, for small angles of oscillation, pendula act as simple harmonic oscillators, and these can be used to keep track of time since the period of a pendulum can be determined by the length of its support. Nowadays, currents sent through quartz crystals provide the oscillations for timekeeping more often than pendula, but when you see an old grandfather clock from the olden days, you'll know that the pendulum inside the body is what keeps its time.
     
    Hopefully you can now see why we physicists solve this problem so many times on our journey to physics maturity.
     

  18. Akano

    O HAI GUISE!

    By Akano,

    So, as you all may have noticed, I have disappeared off the face of the Internet for a time.
     
    But now I'm back at my college (classes don't start until next week, so I'm mainly doing research), which means I'm back on the Interwebs!
     
    Christmas was very nice; I got Tabasco sauce from my mom, Virtue's Last Reward (beat it in a week...and didn't realize that there was nothing more to the game after the end was over. XD) and the LEGOLAND exclusive set Forbidden Island from KopakaKurahk (both awesome), and Ramses' Return from Tekulo. I also got a smiley-face mug from my aunt.
     
    I also got to go to the LEGO store the other day and got Series 9 minifigures! I also got a few more Series 8 figs, so I may have to take pictures of those and review them at some point.
     
    Now you can expect a bit more activity from me since I'm back in the swing of things and somewhat out of "break mode."
     

  19. Akano

    Reflection

    By Akano,

    The other day I decided to look at my comics from start to finish to remind myself of where I started and how far I've come to get to the comics I have today, and I have determined the following.
     
    I sucked in the beginning. I mean, I was awful! Did I really actually think some of those comics were post-worthy? Holy Mukau!
     
    Seriously, go over to my topic and read the first couple comics. Then, cry in a corner. For several hours. That's what I did.
     
    In unrelated news, I've been toying with the idea of voicing some of my comics in a sort of strange animated-comic sort of way. Would anyone anywhere think this would be entertaining? KK may even have a role.
     

  21. Akano

    Portal 2

    By Akano,

    Just started playing this with my roommate (Friend: Toa of Friendship). I love it so much. The single-player campaign was awesome, and now we're doing the extra "future" co-op levels.
     
    I love ATLAS' design. I wish he and P-body had opposite eye color.
     
    Also, the free DLC is called Peer Review. This speaks to me as a scientist.
     
    Cave Johnson is the best. I could listen to him talk forever about ignoring human rights in the name of advancing science.
     

  23. Akano

    Together, We Ride

    By Akano,

    So, my roommate finally coaxed me into playing the first Fire Emblem (actually the seventh, but the first one released in the US) for GBA, and I'm loving it. After finishing it, I'm definitely looking forward to playing Fire Emblem: Awakening, because I've heard nothing but good things about it.
     
    The music is great in that awesome nostalgic way, the characters are fun and memorable, the magic wielders are freakin' awesome, and the gameplay is fantastic – in order to keep all your troops alive, obtain everything worth getting in each level, recruiting all new troops, and beating the levels is a fun challenge.
     
    Other things I've done in the past week or so include:
    Finishing MetalBeard's Sea Cow (Awesome!)
    Learning how to derive the formula for the volume of an n-dimensional sphere (really clever trick!)
    Drinking lots of tea.


  25. Akano
    ...and I'm not enjoying it as much as I hoped to...
     
    *avoids all the random objects being thrown at him in disagreement*
     
    Let me explain.
     
    I'm currently rescuing the maidens in the Dark World. I'm making the assumption that you're supposed to rescue them in numerical order, but I think they can be saved in (almost) any order. I've rescued two of them, with the third lying in the Dark World equivalent of the Lost Woods (the Skeleton Forest, I think?). Anyway, it took me forever to figure out how to get over there, since no obvious path showed itself on my map.
     
    This game needs a guide. A Navi, Tatl, Ezlo, Midna, or King of Red Lions. Someone who knows the world and can help you get to where you need to go. I've been to the fortune teller in the game to figure out where to go, but he only gives you names, not directions, which makes it frustrating when I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off all over Hyrule trying to figure out where to go next.
     
    Perhaps it will grow on me, but right now I'm longing for Minish Cap and its wonderful gameplay...
     

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