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?

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.

Use Takedown!

In the world of MMA or Mixed Martial Arts, the cage is unique. The regular octagon surrounded by rubber coated steel chain link fence is a formidable arena to stand in. However, several things make it unique, as I discovered watching the show "Fight Science." It's surface area makes it wide and open, but with no real corners, fighters cannot get, well, cornered. But what's really interesting is the fence. Because its chain linked, this allows it to bend and absorb energy. A fighter can ram his opponent into the fence and it will bend, sometimes up to 12 inches! But the thing that makes the cage so tactical is its ability to be used in offense or defense. When a fighter backs up against the fence, he's actually taking advantage of the rebound from the fence. If his opponent hits him, the force his transferred into the gate, but gets rebounded back out. A skilled fighter can use this energy and throw it back at his opponent, magnifying the force of his strike. However, going back to the ram, a fighter can also use this rebound to pull off an impressive take down. When both fighters lock get pushed into the fence, the force of the pair gets shot back out. The fighter nearer to the center can then crouch down and force the other fighter up. Then he twists and falls ontop of his opponent, slamming the opponent's back into the ground. Altogether, the combined weight of the pair, the rebound energy, and the surface area can create an impact of almost 2,400 lbs.! More than a ton!

The Bowling Ball is not Round!

Or at least the core of a bowling ball. Once again I gain amazingly useless but fascinating insight from that big box across from my couch that magically produces sound and images. This time the strange program was called "Some Assembly Required" and it was about different products and the science behind them. One segment talked about the bowling ball. I found out that the core of a bowling ball, especially custom made bowling balls are perfectly round. The reason has almost everything to do with mass and movement. I always wondered why professional bowlers could do that little curvy thing at the end of their bowls and get a strike, while my ball always seemed to just go straight...into the gutter. Objects that are round will always eventually roll along the axis that has the most mass. For example, when you roll an elliptical object, like an egg, except more perfectly elliptical, no matter where you start, as long the egg keeps rolling and no forces other than gravity and friction act on it, it will eventually roll perfectly centered. This also explains why perfect spheres can roll in any direction, because its uniform mass allows any axis to be the major axis. So bowling balls' cores are not spherical so that the little curve eventually takes over and the ball rolls in the desired angle to get a strike. In fact, some bowling ball cores look more like jacks than balls. The heaviest axis of rotation will eventually cause the ball to spin in a different direction. Balls with spherical cores always go in a straight line. So next time I go bowling, I know how to bowl a strike, or at least what I can blame for my pummeling the gutter.

Angels and Demons, Yin and Yang

I never really thought much of Dan Brown. after that whole Davinci Code controversy and book of lies, I didn't think that he was much of an author. But when I read his book Angels and Demons, I found that Dan Brown can do two things right: do research and make very interesting, convincing, and captivating lies. So in fact, he's a pretty cool writer! In fact, the one part in the book that interested me the most was his inclusion of an cannister that contained a quarter gram of antimatter. If I remember correctly, antimatter is the opposite of matter and as Dan Brown wrote in his book, when matter and antimatter collide, they cancel each other out in an annihilation. This creates large amounts of energy which makes it possibly the most productive energy source on the planet. Pretty cool. I'm pretty sure the most scientist have ever achieved in creating antimatter were tiny little blips of positrons. The highly unstable nature of the antimatter in the book meant that it had to be stored in a vacuum and was hovered in that vacuum by two powerful magnets opposite of each other. I'm not sure how well the magnets would work though. Heck, I'm not even sure how antimatter would react to an magnetic field. Anyway, the way the antimatter was created was by firing large amounts of energy in opposite directions through the world's largest particle accelerator. The energy crashed into each other and effectively reversed the equation E=mc^2, proving that matter could be created into energy as energy is created from matter in a nuclear reaction. so that means that a quarter gram of antimatter could effectively create... ((3.00e8)^2)0.0025 = 2.25e14 J?! or at least something along those lines. In the book it was somewhere along the lines of 5 kilotons. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. What this means is that a little BB sized pellet of antimatter is 1/3 the strength of the bomb dropped on hiroshima. WOw. Dan Brown did do his research. Even if the whole satanic cult thing isn't real.

Fire Pistons?

Well i'm back. After a long and restful christmas break, I'm still not ready to go back to school. But whatever. Over the break i watched a bunch of TV. I mean seriously...A LOT! I probably averaged about 25 hours a day. Anyway, I saw this cool survival show and in it the guy used a tool that was called a fire piston. It was this hollow rod with a little notch in the bottom where you could put a little bit of wood in it. By taking the piston and jamming it down into the rod, the wood would ignite into a smoldering pile! i wondered, how is that possible? So i thought about it using gas laws. Obviously the wood was ignited by a large amount of energy, more than likely heat energy. The hollow rod was airtight, so that meant that by smashing the piston down into the rod, he was compressing the air. Therefore he was reducing the volume of the air. According to the gas laws, when volume goes down, pressure rises and when pressure rises, temperature also does too. So in the fire piston, if the air inside the piston is compressed to less than one fifteenth of its original size, as seen in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVCXZW4XFJ0), then the pressure would rise dramatically also resulting in a huge increase of temperature. I think that although the ignition temperature of woods vary, it takes a temperature of about 300 degress Farenheit to ignite your average piece of wood (Of course i could be completely wrong). So this cool little devious can probably produce temperature upwards of 300 degrees Farenheit, maybe even higher! Nice.