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Akano

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Blog Entries posted by Akano

  2. Akano
    Yeah, the current weather is about 45°F and overcast with annoying, non-thunderstorm rain.
     
    But, such is the way my hometown treats its people during spring break. This week is for me to relax, take a mental break from college, and continue to put off an 8-10 page paper for philosophy of science. Kill me now. XP
     
    I really wish the sun were out right now. Not only would it help dry up the muddy ground, but it would bring more light into the house and to the outside. I'd probably enjoy a good walk, too.
     
    This is why I hate the first part of spring. Only when spring transitions into summer do I finally become content. >>
     

  5. 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?).
     



     

  6. Akano

    It's All Relative

    By Akano,

    Being a physics grad student has seen me be in quite the scientific mood lately, hasn't it? Well, unfortunately, I still don't have a new comic made (I'm sorry, everyone! ><), but I do have another idea for a blog entry. Last week, Pi day (March 14) marked Einstein's 133rd birthday, and since my Classical Mechanics course is covering the Special Theory of Relativity, I thought I'd try to cover the basic ideas in blog form.
     
    According to the laws of physics laid down by Sir Isaac Newton, all non-accelerating observers witness the same laws of physics. This included an idea of spontaneity, the idea that someone traveling on the highway at 60 mph would witness an event occur at the exact same time as someone who was just sitting on the side of the highway at rest. The transformation from a reference frame in motion to one at rest for Newtonian physics is known as a Galilean transformation, where x is shifted by -vt, or minus the velocity times time. Under such transformations, laws of physics (like Newton's second law, F = ma, remain invariant (don't change).
     
    However, during the 19th century, a man by the name James Clerk Maxwell formulated a handful of equations, known now as Maxwell's equations, that outline a theory known as electromagnetic theory. Of the many new insights this theory gleaned (among these the ability to generate electricity for power which every BZP member uses) one was that light is composed of oscillating electric and magnetic fields; light is an electromagnetic wave. By using his newly invented equations, Maxwell discovered what the speed of light was by formulating a wave equation. When his equations are used to describe electromagnetism, the speed of light is shown to be the same regardless of reference frame; in other words, someone traveling near the speed of light (as long as they weren't accelerating) would see light travel at the same speed as someone who was at rest. According to Newton's laws, this didn't make sense! If you're in your car on the highway and traveling at 60 mph while another car in the lane next to you is traveling at 65 mph, you don't see the other car moving at 65 mph; relative to you, the other car moves at 5 mph. The reason that light is different is because a different theory governs its physics.
     
    This brought about a dilemma: is Maxwell's new electromagnetic theory wrong? Or does Newtonian mechanics need some slight revision? This is where Einstein comes in. He noticed the work of another physicist, Lorentz, who had worked on some new transformations that not only caused space to shift based on reference frames moving relative to each other, but also shifted time. Einstein realized that if light had the same speed in all non-accelerating reference frames, then objects moving faster experienced time differently than those that moved slower. This would come to be known as the Special Theory of Relativity.
     
    How does this make sense? Well, if you have some speed that must remain constant no matter how fast one is traveling, you need time to shift in addition to shifting space to convert between both reference frames, since speed is the change in distance over the amount of time that displacement took place. If you have two reference frames with some relative speed between them, the only way to shift your coordinates from one to another and preserve the speed of light is if both frames experience their positions and times differently. This means that, if something moves fast enough, a journey will take less time in one frame than the other. Special relativity says that moving clocks progress more slowly than clocks at rest, so someone traveling in a rocket at a speed comparable to the speed of light will find that the journey took less time than someone who had been anticipating his arrival at rest. This also means that if someone left Earth in a rocket traveling near the speed of light and came back ten years later would not have aged ten years, but would be younger than someone who was his/her age before his journey took place. Weird, huh?
     
    If you think this is crazy or impossible, there have been experiments done (and are still going) to try to confirm/reject the ideas of special relativity, and they all seem to support it. There's another relativity at play as well known as general relativity, which states that gravitational fields affect spacetime (the combination of space and time into one geometry). General relativity says that the higher up you are in a gravitational field, the faster clocks run (time speeds up). A proof of this theory is GPS; the satellites that help find your position by GPS are all higher up in Earth's gravitational field than we are, and thus their clocks run faster than those on Earth's surface. If general relativity weren't considered in the calculations to figure out where you are on Earth, your GPS would be off by miles.
     

  9. Akano

    Jackson ≪ Griffiths

    By Akano,

    I know most of you aren't physicists, but it's very important to me that physics education be designed to effectively teach physics to any and all audiences. After all, if you want people to have some inkling as to what you do, you want to be able to come up with a way to explain the necessities without getting bogged down in all the details. When you do this, it prevents the person you talk to from feeling like a moron and also allows you to talk about yourself and what you do to someone who has no clue what you do.
     
    This is why graduate-level texts frustrate me. The authors always assume that half the stuff they're discussing in their textbook is obvious to the reader/student who has maybe seen the material once before in an undergraduate course. While some of this material should be expected to be known already, you can't just chuck stuff at your reader and say "it is now obvious that" or "the proof is trivial" when neither of these statements is actually true. If you use either of these statements in your textbook, you're not a good teacher. Period.
     
    The title of this entry comes from the fact that I'm comparing two Electromagnetic Theory textbooks, one by D.J. Griffiths and the other by J.D. Jackson. Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics is a witty, conversational, and informative text that helps undergraduates cope with the fact the E&M is really hard and that most of the concepts are foreign to someone who has only ever dealt with classical mechanics. Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics, on the other hand, is a text where the reader can tell that the author really knows his stuff when it comes to E&M, but has no sense of how to convey that knowledge to someone who is not an advanced student of the subject.
     
    For instance, let's say I were teaching the concept of projectile motion to someone who has never delved into the subject. If I were Griffiths, I would say something like, "All objects in free fall on Earth experience a force due to gravity toward the ground. This force causes all objects to accelerate at the same rate, meaning that the rate at which something speeds up/slows down in Earth's gravity is the same for all objects regardless of how heavy they are. Because this acceleration is constant near the ground, objects tend to follow a parabolic trajectory (if we ignore air resistance). The equations that show this follow from Newton's second law, F = m a. If you don't believe this, let's try it, shall we?"
     
    Now wasn't that nice? This explanation is certainly very clear about what projectile motion is and what causes it. Griffiths enjoys taking concepts that may be hard to comprehend and then following through with some equations/proofs to try and clarify the situation, usually speaking to the reader as though he were sitting down with them helping them through a problem.
     
    What about Jackson? He would probably say something along the lines of, "The reason projectiles follow parabolic paths is simple: if you solve the Hamilton-Jacobi equation in a uniform gravitational field, you will find that the path that minimizes the action is that of a parabola. This can be seen by setting the variation of the Lagrangian equal to zero."
     
    Well that was simple, wasn't it? While technically correct, you probably have no idea what the Hamilton-Jacobi equation or Lagrangian are, nor do you probably know what "action" means in physics. Now you may be thinking, "well, these things are part of undergraduate courses, right?" Well, no, actually. I had no idea what the Hamilton-Jacobi equation was until I took graduate level quantum mechanics, and I was expected to have known that from my graduate classical mechanics course (which I didn't take until my second semester of quantum mechanics). Suffice it to say, there was a lot I had to learn on the fly, but you can probably see what I'm getting at. The assumption that students know everything you expect them to know and have it ready to go the minute you throw that curve ball at them is a terrible way to go about teaching and, in my opinion, does not foster good education.
     
    On an unrelated note, I have a problem set out of Jackson due tomorrow which I haven't finished yet. So, how was your day?
     

  10. Akano

    Jackson E&M Final Progress

    By Akano,

    Saturday: Received final. Four questions pulled from Jackson and Griffiths' textbooks. Finished one problem (the Griffiths one).
     
    Sunday: Finished two more problems. I am on fire! Worked on the fourth problem. Way uglier than the other three.
     
    Monday: Woke up at noon. Haven't continued working yet. Hungry.
     
    This has been a look into the life of a grad student during finals week! Tune in next time where we see whether said student has eaten in the last three days!
     

  11. Akano

    January update

    By Akano,

    Haldo, BZPorples,
     
    I hope everyone had some awesome holiday funtimes! Mine were packed with traveling, visiting friends, gift giving and receiving, and all the food. All of it.
     
    I also saw The Force Awakens twice while I was home. It was pretty fantastic. The part where we find out that Chewbacca is Rey's father was quite the twist![/trololololol]
     
    Now I am back at school. Though classes don't start until next week, I'm in my lab typing this and sorta doing work. (I've been at a loss to find a certain physical quantity for the past week and have been trying to cope with this by watching various videos. Right now I'm watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. When Knowledge Conquered Fear = WIN!)
     
    Otherwise, things are going the way they've always been going.
     

  13. Akano
    Science is awesome. I am currently reading a journal article about how people are making the acoustic version of iridescence. For those who don't know, iridescence is what certain insects, jewels, soap bubbles, and CDs exhibit as that rainbow effect that changes color depending on what angle it's viewed. The sonic or acoustic version of this is creating something that varies in pitch depending on the angle at which you stand relative to it.
     
    Awesome.
     

  14. Akano

    Khan!

    By Akano,

    So, I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for the first time last night and Space Seed, Khan's debut episode in the original series. I love Khan's character. I can't tell if it's because he's written well or if Ricardo Montalbán's mannerisms make him so unique. Or both.
     
    This also makes his role as Gutierrez in Freakazoid much more enjoyable (even though he was quite enjoyable to begin with).
     

  16. Akano

    Legend Of Korra

    By Akano,

    What I'm really awaiting on this show is the episode where Korra and Aang finally communicate about the state of the Avatar world. They've been dropping tantalizing hints these past few episodes, and I'm getting rather antsy. >>
     
    In other news, week 2 of my summer internship is done. I'm going to be repairing a laser-locking box that will be used with a Fabry-Perot cavity. Fun times.
     

  18. Akano

    Lemuria

    By Akano,

    When I first played Golden Sun, I had no idea that this was actually a mythical place that some supposed existed in the real world. I also had no idea that lemurs were named with a common etymology.
     

  19. Akano

    Life Update: Winter 2014

    By Akano,

    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 third so far), the mini-VW camper LEGO set, and a ceramic Snoopy sitting on his doghouse. All in all, a good haul.
    I hope everyone has had a good winter holiday season. May 2014 bring you more joy and happiness.
     

  20. 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.
     

  21. Akano
    ...I've hit a comic writer's block. *slam*
     
    I really need an idea for a comic. And what stinks is that inspiration is all around, but for some reason my inspiration-o-vision is on the fritz.
     
    Anywho, I have been trying to get back into the groove of writing for My Transformation Part II and Inventor of Metru Nui Rewritten, so be on the lookout for new chapters for each of those. A new MT II chapter is currently in the works and should be up within the next couple days. IoMN Rewritten will probably follow. I've finally gotten over that writer's block. >>;
     
    Also, anyone who has the Pahrak Kal mini CD, I'd like to have all the files from it. Why? I can't find mine and I'd like to still be able to watch the videos, possibly take screen shots and such. So, if you have it, it would be most appreciated.
     

  22. Akano
    I don't know if anyone here has heard of Retr0bright (yes, the "0" is intentional), but it is one of the best tools that someone like me with older LEGO sets could have possibly found whilst perusing the interwebs. It's a mixture of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and Oxi-Clean (or similar product) which takes old white, gray, even blue pieces that have faded and gained an ugly orange-y tint. If you don't know of this phenomenon, you either have not been collecting LEGO long enough, or you keep your LEGO sets completely shielded from UV light.
     
    What happens is that the sun, whilst supplying our lovely planet with energy for us to live (yay, sun!)
    also gives off these lovely rays in the energy domain of ultraviolet light, which most of you probably know as the reason we get sunburns when we are outside too long in the summer (boo, sun. ). Another detrimental effect of this UV radiation is the fading of LEGO pieces. Why/how does it fade them? Well, Earth is extra special in that its atmosphere has wonderfully healthy amounts of oxygen (O2) gas which we need to breathe and live (yay, oxygen!). Not only do we like oxygen, but so does ABS plastic, from which LEGO is made. The plastic has a compound in it that possesses bromine which, for those of you who do not know your periodic tables, is a halogen in the second to last column of the periodic table and is, thus, highly reactive when on its own. Fortunately, it is nestled in the ABS compound, but this doesn't quite satiate its need for buddies to bond with it (because it's greedy that way), so it decides to find more buddies to bond with in our own air – the very oxygen we breathe!
     
    What does UV radiation have to do with this? Well, it turns out that bonding takes energy, and the bromine within the ABS does not have the energy by its lonesome to absorb a buddy oxygen from the air (since oxygen gas is fairly stable and thus requires more energy to separate). So, the UV radiation of the sun is just the kick it needs to bond with oxygen, thus producing this:
     
     




     
     
     
    Ugly, huh? But, someone discovered that our friend hydrogen peroxide (with a catalyst found in oxi-clean detergents) is able to reverse this process with the help of – guess what – UV radiation. That's right, the same thing that triggers the fading is also what allows it to reverse! Weird, huh? I decided to try this process on some of my faded white and gray pieces from some of my older sets (circa 1998-2000, mostly Adventurers theme) and this was the lovely result:
     




     
    The difference is like night and day. For those of you wondering if it affected the printing on the skulls of the skeletons or the minifig bodies, the answer is no, it did not. Truly remarkable and a relief that my old pieces can shine as the pearly whites they were meant to be.
     

  23. Akano

    Loss Of Wisdom…?

    By Akano,

    Yesterday, my brother KK and I got our wisdom teeth removed. I had three taken out (which was all I had) and KK got four removed.
     
    Amazingly, my mouth doesn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would.
     
    It was also the first time I had ever been on anesthesia. The experience was instantaneous, and it was very odd to me how fast that half hour flew to me.
     
    Just my random blurb of today. Also, welcome back online, BZPower!
     

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