More pretty things

Besides physics review on Sunday, I went to an event on Saturday. For no apparent reason at all, I decided to wear my class ring to the event. Everyone kept commenting on how pretty the cut was, and I got to thinking.."Why is it like that? What makes them so pretty?" Well after a bit of "optical" thinking I came to the conclusion that it was due to light! The top surface of the stone was cut flat, so that you could actually see into the stone, but the sides were cut at very interesting angles. They were triangles that were angled up and down. This was the key as to why the stone sparkled in the light. Light coming from sources, when they hit the sides, were bent into the center point. When these points are all aligned, you get a brilliant display of lights. The alternating shape also helped to create variety, so that when the stone is turned in the light, you can see different beams, depending on the position of the light. Different displays or different cuts are all based on this concept. Of course, other gems and stones like onyx and pearl which are not transparent have a different method of creation. Of course this would probably take a long time to craft and a master craftsman would have to know how to compensate for indexes of refraction and angles. Pretty... Oh wait physics test coming up. I gtg study!

Oooohhh Pretty Lights!!!

So I'm sitting in another one of my parents' chinese association dinner thingies and i noticed the chandelier sitting above my head. I thought, hm I wonder what makes them so shiny? So I began thinking about the individual parts of the chandelier. First would be the lights. These are probably just ordinary lights. Nothing really special. However, what make them so brilliant are the large number of crystals surrounding the lights. Because the bulbs give off light in all directions, light hits most of the inner side of the crystals. This in turn, refracts the light inward and bends it in different angles. Because of the large number of crystals, this results in many beams of light going out and meeting at your eye. As you walk around the chandelier, the lights seem to glimmer in and out. This is because as you move about, different light beams reflecting off of different crystals hit your eyes. In this way, the lights look as if they are changing. Another ceiling mount that also creates an interesting effect is the disco ball. This is really just a sphere covered in mirrors and placed in a radial pattern so that any light that hits it is reflected off the mirrors in a even design. Fascinating how things with such simple designs can be so pretty, no?

Like thAt Sort of thing would Even woRk

Today's post comes after a watching a series of Star Wars movies. In the movies, they used several different types of lasers as weaponry. This includes laser blasters and light sabers. However, these things are not yet possible in our world. For example, the laser blaster. According to the movie, a rifle sized machine is able to produce a short blast of light that burns and injures on contact. However, today, in order to create a laser that has any potential for a weapon, a huge room worth of machines and energy is required to concentrate the light to a point where it can cut through things. Not very efficient for shooting your enemies. Of course there is the alternative, the almighty light saber. Consisting of light passing through two crystals, the light saber has the ability to cut through nearly anything, including several feet of reinforced steel doors. It looks like these blades melt and burn things when they come in contact with things like metal and flesh. However, there is several flaws with the light sabers. If they are truly made of light or lasers, then the saber would go on infinitely; they would not stop at any particular distance to make a wield-able weapon, but rather continue on like a flashlight. That would be a very terrifying weapon. Secondly, if they have enough concentrated energy to burn things on contact and melt through steel, then the radiant heat given off by the saber would probably give major burns to the jedi. This would probably be a very bad thing if you were going up against a horde of storm troopers.

Catching and Arrow

I am obligated to warn any viewers to never attempt this trick at home or any other place. It is real and legitimate and done by trained professionals. Please do not attempt to replicate in any way, shape, or form.


Recently I watched the movie "Blade: Trinity" and in one part of the movie, a character spins around and catches an arrow...bare-handed. Okay so maybe it didn't count because the character was actually a supervillain vampire and was in his demon-like form, but it was still really cool. Upon seeing this feat, I remembered a clip I once saw of a man really catching an arrow with his bare hand. According to the information I could glean off the clip, the archer was standing 75 feet away and said that the arrow was traveling at a velocity of a little over 100 mph. That means that it took approximately half a second for the arrow to reach the target. More incredible is that fact that Terry (the man catching the arrow) actually did...catch the arrow! Now he says that he uses the sound of the arrow leaving the bow string in order to catch it because he cannot see it. Using the speed of sound in air as being 1130 ft/s that means that he had only .44 seconds to react to the release of the bow string during the part when he catches it blindfolded. By any standards, this is an amazing feat.

I feel that I am obligated to once again warn that this was done by a professional and should not be attempted at home or anywhere else.

Chinese Yo-Yo's

So today, I went to a celebration of sorts for chinese culture and language at the student center. One of the booths that they had was to try your hand at playing with the chinese yoyo. I noticed that it was a rather peculiar object to be working with. The goal was to take a string connected to two sticks and place it in between the two large parts of the yoyo. The center was made of smooth metal so that the string could slide easily between it. With a quick roll on the ground to get it spinning, you had to lift it up and begin whipping your hands back and forth in order to keep it spinning. Much easier said than done. Not only did you have to whip it, but you had to keep it balanced on that one point where the string came in contact with the yoyo. I immediately noticed that this was very odd. In order for the yoyo to spin smoothly, the center had to have low friction. But in order for it to spin at all it needed to have relatively high friction. This interesting conundrum made the yoyo hard to handle. However, the trained performers could even build enough friction so that the yoyo could climb up the string nearly vertically. I on the other hand, couldn't even manage to get it spinning. Oh well.

Mirage thingy...

The way this interesting device works it by using the two nearly identical mirrors placed on top one another. The position of the focal points of the mirrors are very important. For the top mirror, the focal point is near the bottom and the middle of the bottom mirror. For the bottom mirror, the focal point is hovering right in the hole of the top mirror. That way the light emanating from the object goes out in all directions and reflects off of the top mirror. These rays then reflect directly downward and hit the bottom mirror. From there, these rays are reflected up towards the hole in the top mirror and converge. One interesting thing to note is that the mirrors end up inverting the image as pointed out by the reversed direction of the arrow in my diagram.

To infinity and BEYOND!!!!

Ok well, apparently the blog I did on the weekend did not get posted, so here I go again.
Today's topic is about space travel and another documentary I saw on TV. It talked about the huge expanse of space and different ways in order to more efficiently get people into space and beyond. Currently, we use billions of dollars in order to turn stored energy into heat energy and do work through chemical reactions. But there could be other methods of getting people into space using some physics, some imagination, and some imaginary particles. The first idea would be to create a giant space elevator connected to the ground. This way all we would need to do is use electricity to pull up a giant room of people into space. We are getting closer to developing cords that are strong enough to withstand the velocities of a rotating planet and the space elevator would be perpendicular to the planet to reduce tension. Another idea is to create a space ship with huge sails, like thousands of miles in area, and using laser batteries on the moon to push the ship through space. Photons from the light actually can exert a force onto an object in space and a huge sail could collect this force and translate it into forward movement. Another idea is to use the idea that because super dense materials bend space-time, we can create a super dense material to pull one part of space closer to the ship and therefore reduce the time it would take to travel such a distance. This is somewhat analogous to instead of walking to a chair, using a lasso and pulling the chair closer to you. Instead of traveling faster to the chair, you are reducing the space between you and the chair. The fourth way to increase space travel dramatically would be through the use of an imaginary particle called tachyons. Tachyons are particles that work sort of opposite to normal particles. According to Einstein's equations and theorems, in order for an object to reach the speed of light, it would need infinite mass. However, tachyons have what's called "invisible mass", so instead of the speed of light being a maximum speed limit, it's actually a minimum. If we could turn a space ship into a tachyon like object, it would effectively become invisible to space time in terms of mass and travel at speeds faster than the speed of light. It's just too bad that tachyons violate the laws of conservation of energy, causality, and almost every other physics law known. Hahahaha, a man can dream can't he?