Arc Reactor: Part II

I've said this before, and, unfortunately, I must say it again: I'm really bad at keeping up with this blog.

I'm not going to promise anything my two dear readers, but I shall do my best to  will regularly update this blog now that I've written the majority of my college applications. Now, onward to Part II!

Project STARK: EYES ONLY

Fortunately, I never got a chance to talk to my Physics teacher about the circuitry, so I had to sit down and think about it for myself. Initially, I could not even figure out whether we designed the reactor in series or parallel (more on that later), but then I remembered lighting up the reactor while some lights didn't work. That immediately eliminated a series connection.

I then wanted to make a schematic of the reactor, aka an circuit diagram, but the parallel-ness of the circuit confused me, so I just drew a version of the reactor in paint--and everything hit me!

*The remaining electrons get recharged 

I then felt comfortably enough to move onto a professional circuit diagram, so I did!

Now isn't that neater? Now for a quick explanation.

Electricity is the flow of electrons. We use electricity to power things by utilizing the charge, or electromagnetic energy, each of those electrons carry. In a circuit, electrons flow from the positive terminal of a voltage source (usually a battery) to the negative terminal. Along the way, resistors, which are things that use electricity, take the electrons energy and do work--like an LED using the electron's energy to light up. Inside the voltage source, the depleted electrons literally get recharged with energy for another trip around the circuit until the battery itself runs out of energy.

Series Circuit: note the decreasing voltage and constant current

Now there are two ways of designing a circuit, series or parallel. In a series circuit, all the resistors, batteries, and switches are lined up one after another in series. This design allows for a constant flow of electrons, or current, throughout the circuit. In exchange, the resistors on the circuit have to work with less and less electromagnetic energy since the previous resistor used up some voltage. Unfortunately, a series configuration's simplicity is also its weakness, for a failure in one device results in an incomplete circuit--bringing the entire circuit down.

Parallel Circuit

A parallel circuit is the opposite. In a parallel configuration, like my Arc Reactor, electricity flows with an equal voltage to all resistors since they're parallel. However, splitting up the current to each of those resistors naturally weakens the current, so each resistor has to work with less electrons flowing through it at any given time. Furthermore, because each parallel path completes the circuit, a failure in one device won't bring down the entire circuit (hence, our use of the parallel design). However, this design also consumes more power, since the resistors on the circuit are drawing voltage from the source all at the same time.

So there you have it. I don't know the electrical specifications of the LEDs I used, else I would have added some math to this, but I hope y'all like it!

It's Thermodynamics and it's annoying me!

15 minutes ago, I was sitting behind my desk trying to write a research paper on Hamlet when I realized my feet felt really cold, so I went to my room and got a pair of socks.

Ahhh, relief.

5 minutes later, I sense my feet are sweating. Okay, I can deal with that, so I take off my socks.

Ahhh, relief.

5 minutes later, I feel my feet are once again icy cold. Well, shoot. C'mon feet, make up your mind! I put my socks on once more, but this time, I use science!

I realized that my feet sweated with my socks on because they were simply too hot, but sweating wasn't cooling them very well because my socks are so thick. However once I too off my socks, the sweating really kicked in and transferred thermal energy from my feet into the air--thereby cooling my feet to an uncomfortable temperature. Ergo, I dried allowed my feet to air dry in the living room (one of the few places our home's heater works) before putting my socks on once more.

Alas, now everything is just right.

PS: My Arc reactor part II is coming up, I promise! My physics and I teacher were busy for the last two weeks, so we couldn't coordinate a time for circuitry analysis. I should get the post published by Friday.

Arc Reactor: Part 1

I have come to deliver this unto mine people, that the Arc Reactor is complete!

Required supplies:
2 LED flashlights (these are really cheap at the dollar store)
A circuit board ($4 at RadioShack, though you can definitely get them cheaper at a dedicated electronics store)
Soldering iron, solder, and flux (I got a mixed solder/flux)
Wires
Time
Expert solderer (my physics teacher)

Instructions:
1. Remove LEDs from flashlights by unscrewing the circle circuit board out of lamps, and using a soldering iron to melt away the solder on the LEDs. If you hold the board upside down, then the LEDs just fall off.

2. Solder the LEDs onto the new circuit board. If I remember correctly, we wired them parallel. I will write about the wiring and circuit in part 2.

3. Use the (cannibalized) flashlight's battery pack to test connections

4. Wrap on a circular piece of plastic with some of the leftover wire. I painted a pin holder black to use as the center piece of the reactor.

5. Wear the Reactor proudly!

Note: I cannot give assistance on how to wear the reactor. My recommendation is to acquire some strips of velcro and use those. I, through trial and error, wound up using my teacher's alligator pin wires as overalls to hang the reactor on my neck. We pinned one wire to each side of the reactor then we taped the other end of the wires together--voila! Velco is probably much easier...

21st Century Polymathy? 21 Polymathy...Now, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...A long time.

My two readers,

I'm sorry. I haven't touched this blog in almost a month--a month! Google Analytics tells me y'all have been periodically checking this blog over the last 3 weeks, but I've let you down each time. School has really taken its toll on my free time, and some personal issues have really hampered my efforts to keep up with my blog. However, I am happy to announce that I am commencing operations on Project Stark. 

Project Stark: EYES ONLY

Every year, during the week before my high school's Homecoming Dance, my school tries to rally everyone with school spirit by encouraging students to wear different spirit clothes on different days*. For example, this Thursday, the school says students should dress up as "nerds." This is what the student body usually dresses up as:

Since when did all nerds follow Steve Urkel's fashion wisdom?!?!?

No. Just no. I'm tired of this!

A real nerd doesn't look like some 1950s anachronism; nay, a real nerd looks like this:

Tell me that mustache isn't sexy

A real nerd is often a sexy beast who has rather fine taste--like NDT.

Ergo, I'm tired of seeing my classmates bring down an otherwise stellarly-fashionable group of people. That is why I plan on building a light-up Arc Reactor, attaching it to my chest, and dressing up as Tony Stark for nerd day. Most importantly, I'll blog my progress right here! Wish me luck.

Optics 101

Regretfully, I haven't touched this blog in about a month. I acted the Emperor in my friends' Star Wars Musical, so I had rather limited access to the various activities since the beginning of rehearsals the day school started. However, now that we completed the show...I'M BACK!!!

Today, I'd like to share something I noticed a while back. A couple of days before school started, I underwent an oral operation to fix the growth of my wisdom teeth. The operation took its toll on my mouth, so my dentist prescribed two painkillers. One of them were/was these blue pills (grammatical error, I know).

 
Interestingly, the pills inside the bottle look green when viewed from the outside.

However, that should not be possible! If anything, the pills should look a bit white.

In nature, an object is a certain color because the thing reflects that color (or part of the electromagnetic spectrum--ie, light) when shined upon (which is , as my physics teacher pointed out, why the Rebels in Star Wars should have painted their ships green to reflect the TIE Fighter's green lasers). Thus, physically, I should see my pills as white, but that was not the case. In a quest for the truth, I asked my physics teacher.

He pointed out that the orange dye of the bottle is imperfect--it doesn't allow all blue light to pass through. Furthermore, he pointed out that the bottle-maker most likely designed the bottle to behave that way on purpose. Reminding me of the altering effects* of Ultraviolet light on chemical substances, which lies just beyond blue/violet in the EM spectrum, my teacher explained that the blue-reflecting property of the bottle protected the pills from degradation. Ergo, the bottle reflected a lot of red and green light, while letting through some blue light. Most of the blue light then got reflected by the light blue pills, only to get absorbed once more in small amounts by the bottle on its way back to my eyes. At the same time, the reflected green and red light combined with the blue light the create the blue/green light I see as the pills.

And that's optics for you.

*If I remember correctly,  UV light's high frequency (energy) and penetrability helped it break through Earth's atmosphere and supply the energy for the formation of the planet's first organic molecules. The same properties cause skin cancer in humans.

Your pillow is covered in poo, and resistance is futile! (V 2.0)

In the spirit of science, I submitted a link to my previous pillow-poop post to Reddit's askScience subreddit and asked the biologists of /r/askScience to critique my writing...boy was I in for some learning.

The biggest beef the readers had was the lack of organization and coherence in my post--and rightfully so. I had succumbed to laziness and chose not to revise my post before both publishing it in my blog and submitting it to Reddit. I had only skimmed the post for grammatical errors.

Ergo, I' shall now rewrite my previous post in a more concise and orderly manner while incorporating new information I learned from the biologists of /r/askScience. En garde!

Part I: Your pillow is Covered in Poo

Did you know that the most "microbial-ly" similar thing to your pillow is your toilet seat? That's what microbiologists at the Biology and the Build Environment (BioBE) Center in Oregon have discovered. Despite the gross connotations, the connection between your toilet seat and your pillow isn't long and complex. Human bodies commonly touch both items, and the microbes that live on those human bodies merely land on both toilet seats and pillows. More importantly, bacteria aren't stationary--they expand and live where food exists. Ergo, whenever you sit down to take a potty, bacteria on plastic seat move onto your more nutritious (sweaty) skin. Once on your body, bacteria can then just mosey on down to wherever they want. Oh, and trying to hover while taking care of business won't do you any good either. Millions, if not billions, of microbes float around in the air you breath, so every breath you take helps spread local bacteria (that's why a really dangerous disease is one that's airborne).

Fun Fact: Along with bacteria, billions of other particles, including pollen, viruses, particulates (like the burnt gasoline molecules spewed from cars) and food. Additionally, researchers have proposed that the human body utilizes quantum mechanics to distinguish between these particles. Little detectors inside the nose identify the particles in the air based on their atomic vibration frequency, and give them a "smell." Think about that the next time you go to the bathroom--or don't!

Part II: Resistance is Futile
Now, you probably hate me for bringing the bacteria-filled world to light, but don't be scared! Your body has evolved over millions of years to handle all these microbes (except the artificial ones, more on that later). Every single bacterium on your body needs food and water to survive; however, only a certain amount of food and water exists on your body. Ergo, all those bacteria, malignant and benign, have to compete for those resources. Fortunately, most of the microbes on your skin are benign and actually help you by drinking your nutritional sweat before the harmful bacteria--thus depriving the latter of life. Unfortunately, whenever you use antibacterial soap or a hand sanitizer, you kill both the "good" and "bad" bacteria--which in some cases might give the malignant bacteria a chance to recolonize your hands before the good ones (remember, bacteria don't just stay on your hands; they spread all over your body).
Still worried about bacteria? Well calm down. Nature invented skin and immune systems for a reason. Your skin is a really good barrier against harmful agents, so treat it well--that means no tanning, no playing in the sun without sunscreen, and no choking your skin with a thick layer of makeup! If bacteria gets through your skin, chances are your immune system, which should have plenty of experience dealing with foreign hostiles if you played outside as a kid, can kick its ass. You don't need to sanitize your hands after touching something "icky" when vigorously washing your hands with normal (not anti-bacterial) soap will do. Ultimately, you'll help slow the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Part III: Don't sue me!
I'm not giving you free reign to not wash your hands after using the restroom. Please continue to maintain the clean habit of properly washing your hands (vigorous scrubbing of hands for at least 20 seconds), for society thanks you! Furthermore, if you have weakened immune system, do what you must to protect yourself by using whatever you require such as hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol, or bleach. Just keep clean!

Thermodynamics 101

A great advantage of living in Houston is that you never has to deal with snow, icing, or other annoyances associated with cold weather. Instead, you have to deal with a lot of heat and humidity (why do you think we call this place H-Town?!?!)

Unfortunately, our main Air Conditioning unit decided that mid-August is the best time to start leaking, so we had to turn it off. Now, you may think we suffocated and died a most muggy and terrible death, but we had science to keep us cool while we waited two days(!) for the AC repairman (turns out he's a pastor). Let me enlighten you.

Our living room is located at the bottom of a straight stairway. My room, which contains a window AC unit, is located directly at the end of the staircase upstairs. The Window AC unit is directly opposite the entry to my room.

Thanks to thermodynamics (hot air rises, cold air sinks), any cold air the main AC unit routes to my room goes out my room and down into the living room, so I always close my door (consequently, the draft underneath the door is insane). Usually this effect is a nuisance, since I always have to go upstairs closing doors after my parents, but these last couple of days the effect has been quite a blessing!

While our main AC unit was out cold (get it?), we used my room's window AC unit to cool down the living room by leaving open my door's room and letting nature take care of bringing the cool air down to us. 

BAM! AC problem solved!