Goodbye

May is a time of goodbyes. Last night was my final quartet concert with Kellie, Steph, and Mirabel (aka the best quartet ever) :(. We have been together for three years, so I am very sad that they are all graduating. We played a Shostachovich quartet that was, well, different. My mom thought it was weird, and I think my dad thought so too. It was definitely a piece of music that was outside the box for all of us, but we all enjoyed playing it. It was also pretty short because Mr. Stark got in trouble last semester since our piece was so long. This is a brief video of our rehearsal before my camera died. After the concert, Kellie drove us to yogurtland, and we had a nice time eating yogurt and talking :)

Tomorrow is the physics exam! So I shouldn't really have to explain the physics in this video since we should all know it already :) Sound waves, frequency, wavelength, all that good stuff. This year really has flown by. I remember the first day of physics clearly, as we all sat innocently in our seats, not yet enlightened on the wonders of physics or aware of the stress that lay ahead. For me, this was the hardest class I have ever taken, but I do not regret taking it. On the contrary, it has been a great learning experience. So goodbye, physics blogs and good luck to everyone tomorrow!

MRI

One of my friends had to get an MRI this past weekend, and I didn't really understand what an MRI was, so I googled it. As it turns out, MRI scans have a lot to do with physics, particularly magnetism. First of all, I learned that MRI stands for magnetic resonance imaging. MRI machines use magnets and radio waves to create a picture of the inner human body.

The magnets used in MRI machines produce a magnetic field between 0.5 and 2 teslas. There are many different types of atoms in the human body, but MRI machines focus on hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen atoms have a large magnetic moment, so when they are placed in a magnetic field, they line up with the direction of the magnetic field.

All of the hydrogen protons will align with the magnetic field in one direction or the other. The vast majority cancel each other out, but, as shown here, in any sample there is one or two "extra" protons.

These extra protons are what create the images. The MRI machines applies a radio wave frequency that is specific to hydrogen, and these radio waves are directed at the part of the body that is being examined. The atoms in this region of the body then absorb the energy from the radio waves, and this causes them to spin in a different direction. Then when the radio wave frequency is turned off, the hydrogen atoms return to their natural alignment and release their excess stored energy. This release of excess energy is essentially what creates the final image that can help doctors diagnose injuries and other health problems.

(information from http://health.howstuffworks.com/mri7.htm)

nearsightedness

I have red glasses, like the pair to the left, because I cannot see things that are far away. Oh and red is my favorite color :) The scientific name for nearsightedness in myopia. So basically, in a nearsighted eye such as mine, the eye is too long, and the light that enters the eye is diffracted too much. This causes images of far away objects to form in front of the retina. A diverging lens can correct nearsightedness because when light passes through a diverging lens, the light rays move away from each other. Then when they enter the eye, it is okay that they are diffracted too much. The lens causes the light rays to focus on the retina, so objects are no longer blurry.

Every year when I go to see my eye doctor, my vision has always gotten worse. It can't be that my eye keeps gets longer and longer every year, so I assume my vision gets worse because the muscles that control the lenses in my eyes are overworked from studying so much during the school year. When I was a kid, my parents always told me not to read in the dark because it would ruin my eyesight. I didn't listen to them. That is probably one of the reasons why I started wearing glasses in elementary school. Studying so much really isn't good for our health!

Today while I was riding in the car with my dad, I was drinking from a bottle of powerade, such as the one pictured above. (except mine was actually red) We all know how difficult it is to drink from a bottle or a can in the car, and today was no exception. I took a nice long sip, but suddenly my dad accelerated, and the red liquid spilled all down my shirt. Fortunately I was not wearing a white shirt. I glanced at my dad and saw him laughing at me, but this time, my messyness had nothing to do with the accident. This time, I could point the accusatory finger of blame at physics. Newton's laws provide an explanation for why the powerade spilled. In fact, this incident is a lot like the pendulum-in-the-car problem we had on a quiz oh so long ago. The powerade spilled out of the bottle for the same reason I was pushed back into my seat when the car accelerated. Both me and the powerade resisted the change in motion. Prior to the acceleration, there was no net force acting on me or the powerade because we were moving at a constant velocity. However, once my dad accelerated, there was a net force because F=ma.

skiing

This is another video from my spring break vacation in canada. I wish i could go back because that trip was so fun. I guess I'll just have to relive the awesomeness through these videos that my mother took :) Even during spring break, I could not escape physics. Early on in the trip while riding a chairlift, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps I should take several videos whilst on the mountain so that once school started again, I would not have to worry about my physics blogs for a few weeks. But alas, this is the last of my skiing/boarding videos, so next week i will have to find something else to write about.

I love to ski :) i especially love to ski FAST! When I ski really fast, the freezing cold wind numbs my face and all I hear is the sound of air whooshing past my frozen ears. It is the most exhilarating sensation in the world, and there's no space in your mind or time to think about anything else.

snowboarding

Over spring break, my family and I went skiing in Canada. I snowboarded for 4 days and skied for the other 2. This is a video of me snowboarding. It was REALLY fun :) There is A LOT of physics involved in snowboarding. Learning how to board is so hard because if your turns are not timed correctly, you will fall down. Your speed also affects how you turn. It's actually easier to turn if you are going faster, but when you are first learning, you don't want to go very fast. I like going down nice green runs (they're the least steep) when I snowboard :) When I ski, my favorite runs are through trees, but I'm not brave enough on a board to attempt tree runs. While I miss Canada quite a bit, I am happy to be home.

egg beaters

This is a video of gingerbread dough that some of my friends and I made during winter break. As you can see, these egg beaters have uniform circular motion! They are following a circular path at a constant velocity. As we all know, uniform circular motion means that there is a net force directed radially inward of magnitude (mv^2)/r. This net force is strong enough to mix all the molasses, flour, and butter together. You can increase the velocity of the egg beaters by changing the setting on them. When you first start mixing the ingredients, the flour is very heavy and thick, so it takes more force to mix it together. Electric current from an outlet supplies the force necessary to turn the egg beaters. When you are finished mixing the ingredients, you can get some of the sticky dough off of the egg beaters by increasing the velocity. You have to be careful not to lift the beaters too far out of the bowl, otherwise the dough will fly all over the place!

ti leaf lei

At hula tonight, we made ti leaf lei! This is an example of one, although this one above is a little bare. Anyway, we put some of our leaves in the microwave to soften them. This reminded me of physics because we read about the electromagnetic spectrum last week! In addition to softening the leaves, the microwaves also heated them up a bit. As the waves hit the leaves, their energy excited the ti leaf particles which caused the change in temperature. Also, because the ti leaf particles were excited, the leaves became more pliable. We were then able to twist them to create our lei :)

sirens.

This is a video I stole from youtube of the tsunami warning sirens that went off yesterday. I wouldn't recommend listening to it, however, because it gets REALLY irritating. The view is quite nice though. I went to the play on Friday night, so I got home very late and therefore went to sleep late. As I was enjoying my nice dreams, the sound of a siren woke me up at 6am, much to my irritation. I then found out that our Punahou tennis match was postponed because of the tsunami. My house is like 5 minutes away from the ocean, but my parents did not seemed worried, so I went back to sleep. Then at 9am, sirens woke me up again. ugh. I just stayed up after that and watched the news.

So physics. The sirens produced sound waves that travelled through the air and reached everyone's ears to alert us that there was a potential disaster coming. The frequency of the sound waves was fairly low because the pitch of the sirens was fairly low. The amplitude of the sound waves had to be fairly big for everyone to hear it.

2-27-10 Hawaii Tsunami Warning

Pillboxes

Last weekend, I hiked Pillboxes in Lanikai to celebrate my friend Daiva's 17th birthday. This is a picture of us defying gravity. It took several tries to finally get a picture with all of us in the air because gravity very quickly draws everything towards the center of the earth at an acceleration of 9.8m/s^2. Our incredibly skilled photographer had to snap the photo at exactly the right time.

As we were sitting on the top of one of the pillboxes, the conversation took a morbid turn when my friend Sara said that if she had to commit suicide for some horrible reason, she would want to do it there, at Pillboxes because its so beautiful and free. This other guy then said that he would jump off a skyscraper instead because as he put it, "What if you jump off a cliff here and don't die? Then your life would just suck." A skyscraper, he said, would ensure immediate death upon impact with the ground. The reason jumping off a tall skyscraper is more deadly is because since it is higher, you will accelerate even more than if you jumped off a shorter cliff. Okay I'm done with the morbidness. Just thinking about that conversation gives me chills because I'm scared of heights. Don't worry, Doc, none of us are anywhere near suicidal.

The beginning of this hike is very tiring because it is fairly steep. Coming back down is the worst though. I nearly ate it at least ten times because my shoes kept slipping on the loose dirt and rocks. When you go hiking, its a good idea to wear shoes that have a good grip on the bottom to prevent such slipping and sliding. Shoes with ridges on the bottom keep you from falling because they dig into the dirt which creates friction. Shoes where the ridges on the bottom have been worn down, (like mine, apparently) have no ridges to dig into the dirt and therefore slide around on the rocks.

Friday Adventure

On Friday, after I had tennis practice and some of my friends had spring musical rehearsal, we went to the Punahou Carnival. None of us can drive (unfortunately) so we decided to take the bus. It's not like there's a lot of parking at the carnival anyway. We waited for about an hour for the number four bus to come and when we finally got on, it was packed. After nearly losing my balance several times, I turned to Mark and said, "Hey! Doc should take us to ride the bus as a field trip!" If you aren't sitting or holding on to something when the bus accelerates from a stop, you will probably lose your balance and fall backward. The same occurs when the bus stops, except you would fall forward. NEWTON'S FIRST LAW.

When we finally arrived at the carnival, we ate and then decided to go on the zipper. The line was SUPER long, so we cut behind some fellow Iolani-ers. Then it was finally our turn. We actually did not flip that much because one of my friends was freaking out and would not let us rock the cage (sadly) but it was still really fun :) I think the most we flipped in a row was three or four times. Flipping forward was the worst because the forces acting on your body made you lunge forward, and your head hit the top of the cage. (which is padded)

I remember in 8th grade, we learned a bit about roller coasters, and in a video, the engineers of a certain coaster were describing how they had to calculate what angle the seats were so that the passengers would not pass out. Remembering this made me wonder if the shape of the zipper cages was calculated so that the riders legs are at a particular angle. I guess if the knees are too bent, a person could pass out? I wonder.

Water On A Stove

This is a video of a pan of water that was boiling potatoes, but is now cooling. THERMODYNAMICS. When the water was warming up and boiling, heat from the stove was transferred to the water, causing its kinetic energy of the water molecules to increase. Therefore, its temperature increased as well since temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy. When my dad was done cooking the potatoes, he turned off the stove, and the water started cooling because heat flows spontaneously from hot things to cold things. Since the stove was turned off, there was no more heat source, so as heat moved from the hot water to the cooler air, it was not replaced. Over time, the temperature of the water will cool until it is the same temperature as the surrounding air.

Take Two

So this is my dog again. A few months ago, I tried to make a video of my dog and me playing catch, but she refused to run after the rope. This time however, I met with success. I am so incredibly proud of this video because my dog not only runs after her toy, but she also brings it back! This is unbelievable improvement, because she usually either does not run after it, or she does but then runs away with it. This is a rare moment indeed, and I am so glad that I caught it on video :) Anyway, the rope's path from leaving my hand to landing on the ground displays projectile motion, and then when I am attempting to tug the rope out of Kiki's mouth, she pulls with a certain amount of force, and I have to pull with an equal or greater, but opposite, force. Over time, the rope begins to break because the amount of force that her teeth and my pulling exerts on the fibers starts to tear them apart.

An Effusion of Fuzz

This is a video of my dog completing the destruction of her squeaky toy that she got for christmas. After leaving her stocking, the toy lasted all of about ten minutes. As you can see, she applied a force to the toy with her teeth, thus breaking it apart. While she was pulling it in one direction with her teeth, she held it down at the same time with her paws to create tension in the toy, allowing her to rip it apart. She finished off by proceeding to extricate all of the fuzz from the innards of the bone. Quite a bit of fuzz was stuffed into that toy. It simply amazed me. Afterwards, I had to immediately throw the fuzz away otherwise she would eat it. This would have been a problem because the friction between the fuzz and the walls of her throat probably would have made her choke. Oh and of course fuzz should not be ingested. Now i feel like writing, "warning, do not try this at home."

Thermodynamics: Ice Pack!

This is a video of my freezer and an ice pack inside. Last week, my back was feeling sore for some reason, so I alleviated the pain by icing it. Ice is cold, so when you apply it to a sore spot, it makes it feel better. However, unlike what I used to think in my less enlightened days, your skin does not become cold because the coolness of the ice pack seeps into your skin. No, on the contrary, it is quite the opposite. Energy flows from the object with the higher temperature to the object with the lower temperature, and this energy is called heat. Our book defines heat as thermal energy transferred between objects because of a difference in their temperatures. This means that the heat from my body flowed from my body to the ice pack. This loss of heat is the reason why my back became cold. At the same time, the ice pack gained heat, which is why it became warm after a while. My back would have a negative Q value and the ice pack would have a positive Q value. When the ice pack became warm, I stuck it back in the freezer where it could lose its heat to the surrounding cold and become cold again too.

I'm sure someone has said to all of us at least once in our lives, "Don't leave the freezer (or refrigerator) door open for too long because you'll let all the cold air out!" Thanks to our study of thermodynamics, now we all know that this remark is not true. The cold air does not leave the freezer or refrigerator. Instead, all the warm air flows into the freezer or refrigerator since energy flows from the object with the higher temperature to the object with the lower temperature. When you think about this, it makes sense because air with a higher temperature has faster moving molecules, which means that these air molecules would be the ones to travel into a new place, therefore increasing the energy in the new place. The slower moving molecules in the freezer or refrigerator would not have enough energy to travel out into the kitchen.

The World Is Flat

Talk about information overload! Every single page of this book is packed with information, concepts, and ideas. I feel like I would have appreciated this book more if I had had the time to read it more slowly. Then again, I am not going to lie, Doc; I did skip over some pages because it was just so much. I would have preferred reading this over a long period of time, say ten to twenty pages a day, and then mulling over Friedman’s words. I am definitely a mull-er. I need time to think about everything. While I do love reading, my preferred genre is fiction, so I usually do not read non-fiction books such as this one. Nevertheless, this book was quite interesting and slightly alarming. Not to mention, I also learned about many new words, concepts, and ideas and had a brief history review session as well.

A few days ago, I found myself sitting in the social security office in the federal building downtown. I noticed a sign on the wall that said SSA’s Tele- Service Center. It invited people with any questions about social security to phone a certain number and speak to an expert. Suddenly, I found myself wondering if the experts on the other end of the line were even in this country. Maybe they were actually sitting at desks in Bangalore, India. Then again, because the questions would be concerning social security, that might be kind of sketchy to have people from other countries answering them. That is beside the point though, because before reading The World Is Flat, this thought never would have even crossed my mind. As I sat staring at the sign, I made a mental note to include that moment in my response because it is a testament to how much this book has already influenced my thoughts.

Reading The World Is Flat has taught me so much from what www and http stand for to why our world is now “flat.” Now I can sound really smart if anyone ever says to me, “What does www and http stand for?” Moving on to another topic, at one point in the book Friedman describes how the mayor of some Chinese city said that currently, the Americans are the architects and designers, and the developing countries, such as China, are the bricklayers. This made me wonder; What happens when the roles are reversed and countries such as China are the architects? What will the United States be? Obsolete? And when will this happen, because in my opinion, unless things really change within the next few years, this is inevitable. The United States has been on the top for so long, so I wonder what will happen when that changes.

A few months ago as I was listening to NPR on the way to school with my mom, I heard an interesting story about China and the United States, and reading this book reminded me of it. The Chinese man being interviewed said that he believed that the United States has three big advantages over all the other countries in the world: A stable democratic government, a high level of education available to all, and I think the last was connectivity between all areas of the nation. However, if the media did not make it obvious enough, this book provides ample evidence that China is quickly catching up and might soon pass the United States. It is quite frightening, the rate at which China is modernizing and adapting to today’s world. I think China’s greatest strength is its ambition. The people of China are so motivated to succeed, and this is frightening because it seems like Americans have become used to being on top and therefore no longer feel that same drive that the Chinese do.

I could continue discussing this book and my thoughts about it for a long time, but this response is only suppose to be a page, so I will end with these last thoughts. Today, life moves so fast. There is so much competition, and it is truly survival of the fittest. However, today, survival of the fittest does not mean brute strength. Instead, to survive, one must be intelligent, creative, and resilient. I think it is very interesting how Friedman also discusses how right brained people are taking over, and more and more, education is stressing the liberal arts. This reminded me of something I heard; In medical school, students are now required to take art classes because it makes them see things in a new and different way. It makes them more aware of their surroundings, and as a result, they make clearer observations. I find this incredibly fascinating.

Not only is this information era frightening and exhilarating, but it also makes me feel sad. As the pace of life continues to increase, I am worried that people will stop appreciating the small things in life because they are too busy trying to get ahead or stay ahead of the game. I read a saying on a picture frame once that I really like, and it was, “Perhaps the meaning of life is to appreciate every moment.” Every revolution in history has had a profound impact on the world, and I am positive that the information revolution will be no different. The question is, will the impact ultimately be positive or negative? I am worried that because life is like a race now, people will lose sight of their values. I believe that happiness should not be given up for anything, even success, and nothing is worth it if you do not enjoy your life. However, will my grandchildren believe this too? Or will their minds have been stolen by the power of technology?