Just for fun

My friend and I just submitted a video to the Ars Technica science video contest! Anyone can submit a video with a science topic related to biology, physics, or math.

This friend from work is into photography and we have fooled around with the video on her camera for some "internal marketing videos" at the office. So...we decided, why not, let's make a science video.

Here it is: How Making Music Works

It's nothing fancy so don't expect anything. But I like the drums, piano, and glasses of water that we demo.


And now I really respect anyone that makes videos! It's hard to plan out every shot and takes teamwork. But it's also fun and this contest makes me want to try some more!

More pirate puzzles

Finally I posted the next puzzle in the pirate's adventures on an exotic island. What will the pirate do when he meets the island natives? Find out and see if you can help the pirate avoid certain death with some logic skills!
Pirate Adventures with Math (Look for puzzle no.2)

Some simple math/logic puzzles

I've been doing a couple math puzzles here and there and thought I'd add a story to these puzzles because...why not? Everything is more fun with a story!

These are some simple logic puzzles encountered by a pirate when he visits a strange and exotic island...

So far I've posted puzzle number 1! You can read it on the 'Pirate Adventures with Math' page that links to this blog.

Is coffee good for your health?

“I’m going to cut down on the coffee,” resolves a coffee drinker who may have an addiction problem. Caffeine sometimes lends coffee a negative spin. The withdrawal effects of a caffeine addiction can be pretty bad: headaches, anxiety, mood swings, and nausea. On the other hand, too much coffee at once can make you jittery and on-edge and increase your heart rate. People talk about the “post-caffeine crash". For the first couple hours you’re speeding through your work, and then the energy is gone and you want to keel over. From personal experience, drinking coffee before you sail out on a small boat will make you spew it back out again (apparently it’s from the acids in the coffee).

But many recent studies report the health benefits of coffee. According to these studies coffee may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, liver cirrhosis and liver cancer, Parkinson’s, and coronary heart disease to some extent or another. Other studies show that coffee can boost athletic performance and may possibly increase your lifespan. There always seems to be a new study popping up to report some health factoid like:

• Coffee drinkers with a modest intake, two to four cups per day, had a 20 percent lower risk of heart disease compared to those drinking less than two cups or more than four cups.

Okay?! So tomorrow I can wake up, drink three cups of joe, and tell myself, “This daily ritual is making me less susceptible to heart disease!”

Or can I?

Read more »

Horse racing made easy, brought to you by your local physicist...

What is it about physicists? The other day I came across an xkcd comic that sums it all up.

Have you heard that one horse racing joke? It pretty much goes the same way. There's a breeder with a stable of race horses and he's looking for a plan to make them winners. So he asks a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist if they can come up with a solution.

The biologist says, "Yes, I can develop a breeding technique to give you the fastest and most powerful horses! In a couple of horse generations you'll have a stable full of winners."

The chemist cuts in and says, "My solution is much faster than that. I can concoct a drug for you to give to your horses. It will increase the speed of your horses by 10%, with the side effect that the lifespan of your horses will decrease by 10%."

The physicist looks up from her notebook and says, "I've got the solution! Okay, guys, let's first assume that each horse is a perfectly round sphere..."

I love those scientist/engineer/mathematician stereotype jokes. If you have a good one, send it along! :)

Ocean Waves

Waves are everywhere! They come in many different mediums and on different scales: electromagnetic waves (radio waves, visible light, Xrays), sound waves, vibrations on a guitar string and – ocean waves!

I’ve been thinking about ocean waves after I started taking a surfing class. So far, thinking about the physics of surfing has been much more pleasant than thinking about its dangers, like stepping on a sting-ray, getting hit by a surfboard, or getting pulled out to see by a rip current and drowning. These things scare me. I like to think that being scared of everything is just the tradeoff for having a vivid imagination, but anyways, I digress.

How do ocean waves work? To start a wave you need an initial energy source, and for the ocean that is the wind. A wind that blows in the same direction over a long distance at high speed can generate massive waves. The wind pulls against the surface of the water and transfers energy that builds up into waves.

They travel across the ocean and break where the ocean floor rises towards the shore. The rising ocean floor will slow down the water moving beneath the wave due to friction. The top of the wave will not slow down as much because it doesn’t come into direct contact with the ocean floor. The result is that the top of the wave travels faster than the water moving beneath it, causing the wave to rise up and curl forward. Eventually the wave becomes unstable and breaks on the shore.

*one step above a napkin doodle

This is the area where the wave smashes into you in sprays of salty sea water unless you jump the wave or ride over it on your surfboard. If you are like me this is also the area where you get stuck when you see a big wave rolling towards you and think, "I don't need to go out any further."

Actually catching a wave is much more fun than trying to get over them unscathed. They tell me that in order to do that, you have to paddle a lot! You can catch a wave when you are paddling at the same speed as the wave (you need momentum to ride a wave).

That’s a very basic overview (no Laplacians here). There is more physics involved including tides, but for now, it’s about time I posted something already!  

Report from the Festival

This past Saturday I went to Expo Day for the San Diego Science Festival. There was a big turn out for the event at Petco Park. Science organizations set up booths to share information through activities and demos, mostly geared towards kids.

I like the idea of the festival: represent science in San Diego and involve the public for free.

Most of the booths had very simple activities for the kids. That didn't stop me and my friend from participating, though (c'mon, the flier says the festival is for kids ages 3 – 93). We poked sticks through balloons without popping them, made DNA necklaces, looked at amphibians and reptiles, and solved a math problem for good measure.

The booths made a complete loop around the stadium. Because there were so many booths and people, you could only spend a short time at each one. While the festival promises to “excite your mind”, the crowds and the short activities didn't provide enough oomph to "excite my mind". Even if you gear it towards kids, you can still make something intellectually engaging for adults, too. But there was some exciting eye candy, like robots, can launchers, and plasma tubes.

Some people were great at explaining their demo to you, and others were...not so great. At science museums I always see the bicycle wheel gyroscope demo. A person stands on a turning platform and holds an upright, spinning bicycle wheel. When she tilts the wheel to the right, she and the platform turn to the right (and vice versa to the left). I had never actually done it, so I hopped on the platform and took the wheel. A couple middle school students were in charge of the demo, so I asked one of the girls why I can use the wheel to turn myself. She knew that it had something to do with spinning the wheel, but she admitted she didn't know what happens when you tilt the wheel. (What happens: conservation of angular momentum. When you tilt the wheel, you change the direction of its angular momentum. The wheel correspondingly exerts a force on you and you begin to turn in the direction that conserves angular momentum.)

If there's anything to be improved: maybe they could offer free workshops to provide something more in depth. Also, the booths were poorly organized. If they were organized by category (i.e. physics and astronomy, the environment, health, biotech...), it would be much easier to pinpoint what interests you and go there. The booths were scattered all over the place, but if they were also physically organized by category, you could find what interests you and hit up the booths that way.

That said, there was great representation and turn out. Just having all of these organizations readily available is a good start. I had a good time. This year my friend and I just volunteered at the information booth, but next year it would be fun to be at one of the actual booths interacting with everyone.