Flash Highlights in Interactive Mathematics… has some very nice flash based interactive learning objects to show maths in use.

A team of Yale University researchers has discovered a “repulsive” light force that can be used to control components on silicon microchips, meaning future nanodevices could be controlled by light rather than electricity.The team previously discovered an “attractive” force of light and showed how it could be manipulated to move components in semiconducting micro- and nano-electrical systems—tiny mechanical switches on a chip. The scientists have now uncovered a complementary repulsive force. Researchers had theorized the existence of both the attractive and repulsive forces since 2005, but the latter had remained unproven until now. The team, led by Hong Tang, assistant professor at Yale’s School of Engineering & Applied Science, reports its findings in the July 13 edition of Nature Photonics’s advanced online publication.”This completes the picture,” Tang said. “We’ve shown that this is indeed a bipolar light force with both an attractive and repulsive component.”The attractive and repulsive light forces Tang’s team discovered are separate from the force created by light’s radiation pressure, which pushes against an object as light shines on it. Instead, they push out or pull in sideways from the direction the light travels.Previously, the engineers used the attractive force they discovered to move components on the silicon chip in one direction, such as pulling on a nanoscale switch to open it, but were unable to push it in the opposite direction.Using both forces means they can now have complete control and can manipulate components in both directions. “We’ve demonstrated that these are tunable forces we can engineer,” Tang said.

- via Physorg

As some of you may know, some items are just hard to come by in Nablus. We spent weeks looking for small, colorful pipe cleaners for crafts and, just as we were losing hope, our wonderful outreach specialist, Futoon, managed to find them!

For my science class, I was on the lookout for popsicle sticks. So many of my kids are interested in structural engineering and architecture that it made sense to start building bridges, houses, and anything else they wanted with popsicle sticks! You would not believe just how difficult it was to find popsicle sticks in Nablus. It may be my faulty Arabic, constant motioning to ice cream and saying the number “1000 please,” or my dissatisfaction with using tongue depressors as popsicle sticks from the local pharmacy, but I refused to give up on finding popsicle sticks.

Again, trusty and creative Futoon came to me with a bag of 1,000 popsicle sticks donated from the generous Al-Arz Ice Cream Factory. For that, my class and I thank you, Al-Arz Factory! The kids have been using the popsicle sticks with lots of enthusiasm to learn some basic physics theory and develop patience with falling towers.

Thanks for your kind donation! It is the simple gifts here at TYO that make big differences.

So I was washing the pot after using it to cook wonton noodles for lunch ^_^ and started swishing the water faster and faster in a circle so that there was a whirlpool. Apparently, school isn’t over yet, because the next question that came to me was, “How can you explain the physics theory behind this?”

Here’s what I’m imagining: The water going in circles wants to fly horizontally out of the pot in a path tangent to the circle, but the walls of the pot supply a normal force pointing toward the center. So most of the water stays inside the pot unless I swish it too fast. But there’s not just water at the walls of the pot, but also water in the middle. Perhaps the middle water pushes on the edge water that is near the walls, but the edge water is not solid, so it gets pushed by the middle water toward the wall, so the water level is forced upward near the wall, and you get a sunken depression in the middle of the whirlpool.

Any thoughts on this? You can tell that I did not look any of this up on the internet cuz I’m in a BLISSFUL SUMMER DAZE. Nooo…only one more month left at home…

physics theory

• Electrostatics – CBSE Class 12
• Light, Reflection , Refraction – CBSE Class 10
  

Biology

• Life Processes – CBSE Class 10

A brilliantly hilarious sitcom

It makes logical sense that my favourite TV show is devoted to the lives of two theoretical physicists.  And after two great seasons, I still think back to the several science jokes, mythological references, philosophical debates, and social mishaps that provide the show with its unique charm.  I find it amazing and really rewarding to find a problem able to project its humour out to the so-called ‘nerds‘ and ‘geeks‘ of our world while still maintaining a pop culture appeal.  But perhaps the underlying factor that really keeps me posted to the show is the potentially grim realization that this may be exactly how my own future pans out.

Now, with the current path I’m taking in life, it is highly probable that I will become a crazy physics theory researcher like the two main characters of the show, Sheldon and Leonard.  For those who have seen the show, it is the arrogant, controlling, and oddly oblivious Sheldon who often steals many of the show’s scenes.  However, it is Leonard who I can really relate to, likely because he aims to develop a more balanced lifestyle.  And when it comes down to it, the premise that I can really relate to is his quest to develop a relationship with Penny (the sexy Kaley Cuoco, formerly of “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter“).  Like Leonard, I forsee identical obstacles in trying to form a closer relationship with someone for whom I feel deep affection.  And it’s interesting that despite making great scientific achievements, having a fun core group of friends, and partaking in so many hobbies from video games to paintball to comic books, Leonard still has this void in his life.

But obviously, I’m sure 95% of you believe that you eventually need a romantic companion, and thus you should always devote some time for this goal.  And I do agree, but the search for this ‘love‘ or ‘soulmate‘ often becomes a primary motivation in our lives.  However, I feel that embarking upon this conquest at this time is not the best idea.  And I think the high school relationship serves as a prime example.  During this time people ‘hook up‘ for the sake of, well, hooking up.  Oftentimes it is not based on compatibility, but rather a raw physical attraction, or the fact that one party has a vulnerable neediness.  This is evident in the overdramatic nature of several break-ups.  I know many girls who must always have a guy by their side to feel comfortable and accepted, and likewise I know many guys who feel inferior unless they have that girlfriend like everyone else.  Herein lies the classic example of peer pressure tied in with adolescent confusion.

Okay, but of course it is fine to experiment! We’re teens, we should have that liberty to learn about others and learn about ourselves through the context of dating, and even more.  Nevertheless, at this point of time, a divergence suddenly emerges in the style of sociological relations of men.  I cannot speak for girls, heck I can seldom understand girls.  So for guys, it’s the clear distinction of ‘jerks‘ and ‘nice guys.’  Don’t get me wrong, I know some really amazing and inspiring guys, who in a social context with girls will act like ‘jerks.’  They will do this because in high school, the ‘jerk‘ mentality is the superior method in achieving the goal that every guy desires, which is the girl.  The problem is because this methodology works, they are enabled to continue this type of lifestyle in the future.  Whereas, the ‘nice guy‘ bringing in all their morals and integrity into their social game are then shunned by the girl because they simply don’t have that appeal.

I know what you’re thinking though.  If you’re a nice guy, “well I’m a nice guy, and I do perfectly well” or if you’re a girl, “I never fall for jerks!”  But here, we really have to think about the premise of attraction.  Whereas we all claim to act or behave in a specific manner, our mind will work differently.  I feel it always comes down, “we want what we can’t have,” which is the basis of why so many of us have crushes on celebrities.  People are appealed to what is different, what is mysterious, what is exciting.  Nobody likes boredom, especially not teenagers who would rather be excited than comfortable.  It is for this reason, that people have to project exuberant social images to gain that attraction.  For example a guy will work out excessively, wear designer clothing, or act especially aloof, and a girl will lather on excessive make-up, become especially flirty, or wear revealing clothing.  These are all mechanisms to appear more appealing.  But we ALL do it, because this is how we will survive socially, Social Darwinism again.  And because the initial attraction has this fake pretense, this is the sole reason why ‘high school’ relationships flounder so quickly.  But maybe all of this is wrong, perhaps I’m just creating all these theories to cover up my own short-comings.  Heck, I’ll never be as suave as UFC fighter Rampage Jackson, like in this hilarious video.

But this is exactly where it comes back to me and Leonard.  He is one of the most intelligent people in the world, capable of creating even greater theories than I am, yet he falls under the same category as me.  But like I stated, perhaps instead of existing within several relationships, our personalities are suited such that we can discover ourselves much better through our introspection and immersing ourselves within our work. All you really need is one, that one love, that one person that you can really live with and be happy with.  When I’m 50 years old, it won’t matter if I’ve had intimate relationships with 100 women or 1 women, as long as I am entirely in love with the woman I am sitting next to until my own age.

Thus as young adults, we should start adopting a new mentality.  We shouldn’t let the effort to find that significant other cloud our own visions and jugments.  Instead, we should focus upon our individual, independent aspirations.  We’re all reaching for that happy and successful life, so we should owe that ‘experimentation’ phase to what we are truly about.  If this does mean meeting lots of random men or women, then that’s your lifestyle, and I respect that.  However, if that isn’t who you are, don’t make yourself into that other person.  I believe these people are called ‘tools‘ or ‘posers‘ or another negative connotation for good reason.  Just be yourself, whoever that may be, and revel in your self-created world!  If the world around you is your own world, then nothing but good can come from it.

Peace and love!!

PS. In the meanwhile, have a taste in my world, and see if you really do enjoy The Big Bang Theory:

It is not uncommon among scientists to consider philosophy of science to be an uninteresting distraction from more important matters. When it comes to the foundations of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, however, some philosophers have made genuinely useful contributions, doing an excellent job of summarizing the current situation and bringing clarity to the strengths and weaknesses of different foundations. Jos Uffink’s article on what, strictly speaking, is asserted by the second law of thermodynamics comes to mind—it has been well received by both philosophers and physicists. To specialists in the field, there may not be much new, but philosophers have at the very least managed to provide clear presentations of successes and problems to a potential wider audience of philosophers, physicists, and lay-men.

I’d like to highlight two preprints by Callender and Wallace, respectively, on the subject of thermodynamics of self-gravitating systems. Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Giancaspro from GeekDad recently wrote about the popular trend of scrapbooking about a child’s first year, of writing down baby’s first step, first tooth, first haircut, etc. He noted, however, that some important geeky (i.e. “science”) firsts were often overlooked:

“As a geekdad I began wondering who was going to record the weekend science projects, the toy hacks and the names of the butterflies we raised the summer of 2007. 

That’s when I bought a quadrille ruled composition book and began recording some of these wonderful moments in the geeklets lives. I have been journaling random acts of science and engineering since June of 2007. While I may have missed a few Ad Hoc experiments or a neat hack I have captured some good moments. Moments that I will always have to look back on and smile.”

“So,” Giancaspro concludes, ”if you have a notebook laying around, grab it and start recording those special moments you’ll treasure, like their first Comic Book, first RPG Character and of course baby’s first Klingon word.”

I frankly think Giancaspro is absolutely right; I would add to this the idea that once the little geeklets are old enough, have them keep a journal of their science experiments and discoveries for them to keep track of and read back on. Not only is it a fun-combined-with-education activity to journal, and makes an automatic keepsake, it ALSO is a good habit to get into to write down discoveries and new ideas to inspire their later “Eureka!” moments. 

And just for the record, “the Butterflies were named Coco, Dori,Coral,Small Fry and Ketchup.”

It’s surprising to me that the concept of colors is quite confusing. We learn about colors in Kindergarten, we play with paint, mix yellow and blue to make green, study primary colors, etc. But I think very few people actually understand how colors work. The confusion arises because the concept of “color” is one that mixes physics theory and psychology (or physiology).

If humans were perfectly built robots, we would create and interpret colors very differently. Physically, a particular color describes a frequency of light. Light (photons) only have one property which can possibly distinguish them from other photons: their frequency (which determines their wave mechanicslength and energy). Two photons with the same frequency are identical. A photon’s frequency can be any continuous value between zero and infinity. The light that we can actually see with our eyes is made of of photons of frequencies between 400 Terahertz and 790 Terahertz (about 380 nanometers to 750 nanometers in wave mechanicslength).

Light of a higher frequency (smaller wave mechanicslength) is called ultraviolet, and light of a lower frequency (higher wave mechanicslength) is infrared. These can’t be seen by the human eye, and this is the only reason that they aren’t considered colors. A priori, there is no difference between red and infrared other than the physiology of the human eye. So, if we were robots who had perfect photon frequency detectors as eyes, we would see all wave mechanicslengths of light, and most likely the world would be a very different place. Astronomers, for example, use infrared detectors to “see” far away stars and galaxies that can’t be seen using viable light alone (this is because infrared isn’t disturbed as much by space dust that floats around between us and the star). And of course, if you’ve ever played a Metal Gear Solid game, you know that infrared goggles can be very effective a finding warm bodies.

Incidentally, many people equate infrared light with the concept of heat. I learned this in school and it confused me for quite some time. If infrared is just the continuation of visible light, why is it associated with something as seemingly unrelated as heat? The answer has to do with dark body radiation. Anything that has a finite temperature (ie things that aren’t absolute 0) gives off light (by light, I don’t merely mean visible light, but photons of any frequency). The relative abundance of photons given off (or “spectrum”) depends on the temperature of the object. It turns out that things which are about room temperature tend to emit light radiation of infrared frequencies. So, this reason that you can see “heat” as infrared. Things that are of temperatures we usually deal with emit most of their light radiation as infrared.

So, physically, light is just photons of different frequencies, and we can label different frequencies as “colors.” Pretty simple. But, with this simple definition in mind, how are we to interpret the idea of primary colors and the fact that you can mix two colors together to form another color? If I have a lot of photons of wave mechanicslength 500 nm and the same amount of wave mechanicslength 700 nm and put them together, they don’t become photons of 600 nm. So, why does red and yellow make orange?

Well, the answer comes from the way that the human eye “sees” colors. We aren’t ideal robots and our eyes aren’t perfect photodetectors. Aside from only being able to see a small band of frequencies that we call visible light, we see that light in a very limited way. The detectors in our eyes come in three varieties that are specialized at seeing small bands of frequencies. Roughly, we have detectors that can see red, green, and blue. So, if red light hits a cone that is designed to see red, it is going to react a lot, where as the green and blue cones won’t react very much. But there is a lot of overlap, as illustrated by the following diagram.

The frequency that we call yellow is about 580. Find that point in the above diagram. When yellow light its the eye, it falls between the peaks of the green and the red cones. So, if our red and green cones become stimulated by about the same amount, our eyes think we’re seeing yellow. We can therefore trick our eye into thinking it is seeing yellow by shining red and green light together at the same intensity. This will have the same physiological effect on our eyes and we will interpret the light as “yellow.” This is how computer monitors can make up every color using different combinations of red, green, and blue. A format called Standard Red-Green-Blue is a way to describe how a particular color is made as a combination of red, green and blue. The intensity of each of the three primary colors in a screen pixel ranges from 0 to 255. If you look at the sRGB vector that makes up yellow, it is (R, G, B) = (255, 255, 0), meaning that it is made up of equal parts red and green with no blue. This is exactly what we predicted by looking at the graph of how different cones see light. But it’s really an illusion.

White is not a color. No frequency of photon is considered “white.” Rather, it is a combination of red, green, and blue at a more or less equal and high intensity. It is only defined psychologically. Robots wouldn’t be able to see white. White, according to sRGB is (255, 255, 255). Robots also wouldn’t know what brown was. Brown is only defined as a combination of frequencies. dark, like white, involves an almost equal ratio of red, green, and blue, but with a very small intensity (dark is really the absence of light). dark is (0, 0, 0). Grey is in between the two, and is (128, 128, 128). A robot seeing sRGB yellow wouldn’t see yellow, he’d see equal parts green and blue. He wouldn’t see white, he’d see equal parts red, green, and blue. He’d be very confused as to why we humans think it’s something else called “white,” and he’d probably think that we were in some way broken.