A Productive Break...

Hello everybody! 

I am very happy to say that my winter break has begun! I definitely need it. However, I plan on completing some tasks I've been putting off for quite a while. They include:

• Insulating the window in my bedroom. We live in a very old house; as such, our house has poor insulation--especially the windows. I want to insulate them with garbage bags!
• Researching how to organize a TEDx. I love listening to stories, and TEDTalks are pretty much nerdgasmic stories of being human, Maybe I can organize one at Cy Creek...
• Acquiring parts for a new and improved Arc Reactor (I want to wear this on the outside of my shirt).

I plan on blogging about my adventures starting tomorrow, so see you then!

Happy Birthday Frank Sinatra!

Yes, we all know today is 12/12/12--we can read calendars, but apparently some people cannot. Excuse me while I rant, but I am just tired of the whole "oh today's a big astrological planetary alignment day that leads up to the Mayan end of days where we all eat cream pie."

No. Just no.

There's nothing to stop me from proclaiming tomorrow as 1/1/1 of the Faridian Calendar, or yesterday as 25/25/25 of the Faridian the Elder Calendar--it's just a matter of finagling the starting day of my calendar. If I started my calendar yesterday, then today would have been 1/1/1. If I started it my calendar on Friday October 18, 1985, then today would have been 25/25/25. Nothing magical about it!

Second, WHO CARES IF THE NUMBERS ALL LINE UP!?!?!?!?
Today was also the anniversary of Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal, but nooooo. Nobody celebrates that achievement (or the fact that Marconi achieved that test with 17 of Nikola Tesla's patents). Instead, everybody is all excited about a bunch of twelves. 

Whoop-di-fudging-do.

And as the title states, today is Frank Sinatra's birthday, so may I suggest winding down your day with this?

/endrant.

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!

NASA's 155 Million Mile Hole in One

America!

On 6 August 2012, at 5:14 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration landed the mightiest rover yet on Mars. Many people watched the landing "live", or as close to live as possible since light (and radio information) 14 minutes to get to earth from Mars. However, I doubt few of you know just how significant this is. Allow me to explain.

We humans have built an exploration vehicle powered by a mini nuclear reactor only to lob it into space via a controlled explosion and then follow the vehicle as it escapes earth's gravitational field, traverses deep space, and lands on Mars using a jetpack--all while taking into account the relativistic time dilation as well as the Doppler Effect. Oh, and did I mention that humans managed to take a picture of the robot as it landed from one of the three satellites orbiting Mars?

Yeah, be proud humans. You rock!

Fun Fact: Curiosity is the mightiest rover to land on the Red Planet. Did you know that the robot's arm is strong enough to pick up and flail around one of the smaller Mars Exploration Rovers?

Your pillow is covered in poo, and resistance is futile.

Did you know that the most "microbial-ly" similar thing to your pillow is your toilet seat?

Well that's what microbiologists at the BioBE Center in Oregon have discovered! How you may ask? Well think about it; human bodies commonly touch both items, and the microbes that live on those human bodies land on both toilet seats and pillows! Furthermore, toilet microbes can also take a more direct route to your pillow--what do you think happens once you pull down your pajamas during a quick visit to the potty right before bed?

Well I'm glad you you brought it up! Depending on how low you lower your trousers, these little lifeforms will latch onto to your pants and enjoy the ride to your bed, where they will feast on the millions of dead skin cells and wash it down with your sweat.Oh, and trying to keep your PJs above ground won't do you any good. Millions of microbes float in the air, so either way, stuff's gonna get transferred!

Why am I bringing this up? Because you don't need to use antibacterial solutions every other second! Nature invented symbiotic relations, skin, and immune systems for a reason. Those bacteria that live on your skin must compete for resources to stay alive, so a lot of the dangerous bacteria are killed off by their benign (mutated) clones! When you use Germ-X, you not only kill bad germs, but also the good ones that normally kill bad germs. Additionally, your skin is a pretty good barrier against harmful agents, so treat it well (that mean's no choking your skin cells with band-aids when they need as much oxygen to seal a wound). Finally, your immune system, which should have plenty of experience dealing with bacteria if you played with/in mud as a kid, can kick most infections' ass. Ergo, don't turn it into a soft, hippy, useless waste of your body's energy by wiping everything with lysol--a wet towel and non-antibacterial soap will do!

TL;DR: Read the whole thing you lazy meat bag! I spent a lot of time and energy writing this, so read the entire thing.

Source: This is the Discover Magazine where I got a lot of my information from, but it's behind a paywall, so you might not be able to access it.

PS: This, the LYSOL® Healthy Touch® No-Touch Hand Soap System,  is the most useless invention ever. The reason you use soap is to wash your hands! So what if the handle is germy? Your washing your hands. If you wash your hands properly, then the soap and water will remove most of whatever stuff is left on your hands--the rest your body can handle.

PPS: This does not mean I'm giving declaring open season on not being hygienic! Chefs, please continue washing your hands with normal soap before touching my food; Doctors and Surgeons, please continue washing your hands with antibacterial soap--I don't want an infection! Everyone else, please stop creating virulent strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria!

PPPS: Those floating microbes I was talking about earlier? Yeah they include everything from pollen, bacteria, viruses, particulates (like the burnt gasoline molecules spewed from cars), and food. In fact, that's how you smell things. Little detectors on your nose utilize quantum mechanics to distinguish between different things. Think about that the next time you use the bathroom--or don't!

PPPPS: I! really! like! the! exclamation! mark!

A Prodigious and Rapidly Expelled Purge

This morning, I was listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson's Stark Talk Radio Show as I was driving to the YMCA. One of the topics Tyson and his panel (active astronaut Mike Massimino and comedian Chuck Nice) discussed was farting in space. Now this is something I knew was possible once I heard it, but I'd never thought about it--it turns out you can propel yourself across the International Space Station by farting!

How you may ask? Well via Newton's Third Law of course! Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; ergo, by ejecting gas (an action) with an X amount of force, you can accelerate your body (a mass) with the ejection's reaction. That's exactly how rockets and balloons work! Think about it. Rockets expel gas at high velocity out one direction so that they can go up at a high velocity in the other direction! However, because a rocket is so huge and a gas molecule so small, rockets use up a lot of gas to move. Note that non-chemical rockets, such as VASIMR, do not face this problem since they do not use chemical reactions for power. I'll explain why tomorrow!

Return from Johnson Space Center

Last week I went to Johnson Space Center as a part of the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars Program, and it was wicked to say the least. However, probably the best part of the entire experience was listening to Norman Chaffee, who helped engineer on the Apollo Service Module, as he gave us a guided tour of the Saturn V rocket at JSC. Put simply, learning about the world's most powerful rocket by a man who helped design it was nerdgasmic. 

At any rate, one of the interesting tidbits of info Mr. Chaffee shared with us concerned the microgravity problems faced by the engineers of the Saturn V's upper stages. Once the first and second stages had lodged the rocket into earth orbit (and thus freefall), the liquid hydrogen fuel of the third stage would begin to slosh around and form into spheres (due to surface tension)--this posed a big problem as the engines of the third stage could not use empty space. Ergo, engineers attached small rockets (which probably used solid fuel) to nudge the entire stage forward, which would then force the "floating" hydrogen into the engine (by moving the fuel tank forward instead of the hydrogen back). Kinda cool, huh?

By the way, you know how in the Apollo launch videos the discarded rocket stages suddenly catch fire a couple seconds after jettison? Thanks to Norman Chaffee, I now know why! First off, each stage of the Saturn V rocket (including the Launch Escape System) was separated pyrotechnically (hence the sparks at 0:23 of the staging video). Second, hydrogen burns clear. As a result, you don't see a flame during Apollo staging, but you do see the previous stage burning up for a second before it escapes the heat of the invisible hydrogen flame.

(Bonus: the workers on the barges that transported the hydrogen fuel to Kennedy had to walk around waving brooms in front of themselves just so they didn't walk into an invisible flame.)

To sum it up, the Saturn V rocks, Norman Chaffee is a badass, and NASA kicks ass!

A Bond Too Far

This is a story I wrote for extra-credit in Chemistry, but I thought it would do well in a science blog as well.

A Bond Too Far

Lithium and Oxygen, two elements who thought they’d be together forever, were being transported to an HP battery manufacturing plant. The two lovers were transferring their last electrons through ionic bonding when a scooper picked up the lithium oxide (Li₂O) couple and threw them into a furnace. At first, the furnace was cool and isolated; but soon, the temperature started to rise and the air began to glow dry. The hot climate was too much for oxygen; and so, the couple was forever split.

Oxygen, now broken hearted, floated in the air as she desperately watched the conveyor belt take her lithium husband away. Suddenly, she realized that she was not alone. Millions of other oxygen particles like her were watching their husbands go away. Oxygen, in a desperate attempt to find a partner for consolation, covalently double bonded with another oxygen molecule. Although the last-minute partner ship quelled electronegative love, it could never replace the ionic relationship Oxygen shared with Lithium. Finally, the convection current pushed the oxygen couples into the air—Oxygen thought she’d never see Lithium again.

Lithium, now desperate for any companionship, looked around in vain only to see other lithium widowers. He did not want to be with them; fortunately for Lithium, he had been selected not for a lithium ion battery, but for a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. Thus, Lithium was separated once more and led to an isolated, dim, and cozy chamber. Suddenly, a flirtatious fluorine atom seductively made her way towards Lithium…

“Hey there, handsome. Are you alone?”

“No!” Lithium cried as he remembered his oxygenated past.

“Are you sure you don’t want to bond with me?” Fluorine question as she pulled Lithium ever closer to her electronegative bosom.

“Yeeees—er I mean NO!” Lithium  exclaimed as his valence shell rose to a higher energy level, unable to resist the bond that could be.

“You know you want me Lithium—you can’t resist,” Fluorine whispered as she moved ever closer before forming the ultimate electronegative bond with Lithium.

Their bond consummate, Lithium and Fluorine, now pronounced Lithium Fluoride, were transported to a LFTR reactor. However, the plane shuttling the couple flew consumed a certain oxygen molecule. As Oxygen was sucked into the giant turbojet engines, she saw Lithium Fluoride. Heartbroken, she combusted into a charred vapor with the fuel—forever alone. 

AP Dread

Friday I found out that this year's AP scores are officially in the mail; in fact, a couple of my friends had already received their scores! Now this year was a pretty big year for me AP-wise. Last year I, the kid who read Wikipedia articles on ancient and medieval history while waiting for programs to download, had gotten a 4 on the World History exam. Suffice to say, that 4 hurt, and I did not want to feel that pain ever again. Thus, I set a goal to get a 5 on each of my five AP exams (I kept repeating to myself "Five AP exams, 5 fives!" every time I prayed/meditated). Well tomorrow's the day of truth, and I'm nervous...

Alas, come what may, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed my AP courses. English III was an eye-opening class in terms of rhetoric, and my teacher really helped me out throughout the year in a lot of ways (thanks Ms. Stelly!). Computer science also opened my eyes, for I will never complain about software developers ever again! However, AP Chemistry was by far the coolest class I took this year. Furthermore, since this is a science blog, I thought I’d share the rather odd Iranian cultural oddity I discovered in my chemistry class.

One of the fundamental concepts in chemistry is that of solubility, or how many moles of something, a solute, get dissolved into Xliters of something else, a solvent (usually water). Additionally, if you want a solvent to dissolve more solute than“normal”, then you’d have to raise the temperature of the solvent. A higher temperature, or average kinetic (moving) energy, means faster moving molecules that can disassociate (dissolve) easier. The opposite is true for gases. Raising the temperature of a solvent when trying to “dissolve” a gas would not increase solubility since the gas would actually evaporate away thanks to the higher temperature (think of the CO₂ in cold coca-cola vs. that of hot coke).

            Today, I was making sour cherry juice when I remembered the counterintuitive way Iranians serve sour cherry juice. Sour cherry juice is a refreshing drink popularly served during the summer in Iran. Hosts/Hostesses pour sour cherry concentrate into ice-cold water and serve the undisturbed liquid to the guests—leaving the stirring to the guests. Now from a human perspective, everything makes sense: it’s hot, and you need something cold to drink, but from a chemical perspective, the whole thing is rather stupid. Why would create a solution with cold water when your solute is a liquid? THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! The chemically-correct way would be to mix the concentrate into hot water, mix, and let the solution cool to room temperature before throwing in a couple of ice cubes when the host/hostess wants to serve the drink. The guests then don’t have to stir as much.

TL;DR: Iranians are counterintuitive when it comes to serving drinks. They force a cold solvent into dissolving a solute by raising the average kinetic energy of the molecules via stirring.

tan(philosophy)

Although this blog is mainly about science & math, today I want to go off on a philosophical tangent--I mean I don't call myself a polymath for nothing...

Last night, with the snaps, crackles, and pops of fireworks as whitenoise, I was busy reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (he's the wise old Roman emperor from Gladiator). At any rate, I came upon this rather confusing sentence,

"But if you won't keep track of what your own soul's doing, how can you not be unhappy?"

-wait whaaat?

I tried reading it in parts, "if you don't listen to your own soul" then  "how can you not be un-happy," but I still didn't get it, so I tried again, albeit with computer science!

if( !(listen to yourself) )
     you=unhappy;

-But that godforsaken"how" was still confusing me! Thus, I decided to combine computer science with math (computer science is not my forte).

f(x)=un
f(happy)=un-happy
"But if you won't keep track of what your own soul's doing"=if you ignore yourself
"how can you not be"=you're gonna be

With this in mind, I went at it again...

"If you ignore yourself
then
your gonna be f(happy)"

which is equivalent to

"If you ignore yourself
then
your gonna be un-happy"

Alas, I still didn't get it (it had been a slow day), so I substituted a synonym for "un-happy" via the transitive property and presto!

"If you ignore yourself..."
then
your gonna feel like crap."

Wise words Mr. Aurelius.

System.out.println("Hello World!");

Wassup!?! I still working out the kinks for this blog, but I'm trying to turn it into a kind of science/math/cool things blog. Wish me luck!