We Fly High, No Lie

IF YOU ARE READING THIS PLEASE GO SEE THE WIZ THIS THURSDAY THROUGH SATURDAY! Well, now that I got that out of my system, onto the blog. This week, I got to experience working what's called the fly rail in theater. It's not exactly the cat walk, that's the top level, but its about halfway in between. In Hawaii Theater, this is where we pull on ropes in order to fly (hence the name fly rail) things in and out of the stage above the actors' heads. The way it works is by a system of pulleys that run up and down the whole height of the building. Normally, this whole job wouldn't be much of a problem, however, some of the pieces are extremely heavy. For example, the cyclorama, the large piece of cloth in the back, weighs a couple hundred pounds. Now granted, I can heft my fair share of weight, but I'm nothing compared to a couple hundred pounds of cloth. There is no way my, comparatively speaking, tiny little body is going to be able to apply enough downward force in order to counter the weight of the cyclorama. So systems were put in place to help people like me. For one, the rope-pulley system has several locks in place so if I happen to let go, the piece won't go falling down and costing Iolani school ten thousands dollars. Thank God. The second thing is a bunch of weights attached to the rope and connected in order to balance out the weight of the cyclorama. That way, the weights help me both lift and lower the cyclorama, making my job and the show run much smoother. GO SEE THE WIZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Making Magnets

Yay for more TV info! Once again, I was watching the science channel and the show "How It's Made". On today's segment they covered magnets! I always wondered how they created magnets, because I've always wondered why more things aren't magnetic. As it turns out, the reason why is because in order to make a magnet, a very strong electric ...ummm....machine...electric difference...thing is needed...yeah. I'll explain it more later. But anyway, a compressed sand mold is made and a soup of different elements and metals including iron, sulphur, cadmium, etc. are poured into the mold. Once the metals have cooled, they form the nice shapes shown in the picture. However, they are still unmagnetized. These metal shapes are taken to a large machine that produces a very high difference of charges, one side positive, the other negative. By placing the positive and negative ends of the magnet on the opposite sides (In other words, the eventually positive side goes on the negative part of the machine and vice versa) and turning the machine on, the charge aligns the opposite charge to the different poles of the magnet. The side connected to the negative part of the machine becomes highly positive and vice versa. The same thing basically occurs when you put a magnet into a re-magnetizer. Though its odd that something would need to be re-magnetized considering that magnets last for about 300 years...according to the movie "Wild Wild West" with Will Smith.

Carnival Madness

So "celebrating" my birthday at the carnival was loads of fun. OF course I ate too much, lost a slipper or two in the mud, went on some intense rides, but was overall, plenty of fun. The one ride that I really enjoyed though, was this one, the spinner if I recall. It basically was a large hydraulic arm the lifted and rotated a ring of riders on nearly every axis and direction: up, down, horizontal, vertical. While on the ride, I could barely discern the huge motor in the background through all the screaming. I got to thinking afterwards how much force it would require to perform all those actions. If on average, every person weighs about 100-150 pounds, and there were 20 riders, we were looking at around...2000 to 3000 pounds of people. Also the hydraulics would have to be strong enough to support not only the weight of the people, but also the steel structure itself. In order to toss that much weight around in circles on multiple axes and to run the lights and secure the safety systems, etc. I could tell that that one rig would require a bunch of energy to consume. However, the rig did manage to help itself out by continuing in the same motion. Because the rig only rotated in one direction, it could use its own momentum and force to continue throwing riders in rotations. Saves energy, work, and strain, though not necessarily people's stomachs.