You like the blue skirt

I had a tiny green composition notebook, four by three inches, that i used to write down my homework and whatever else i needed to remember this school year. On the first page my mom wrote, "Have a lot of fun and new experiences." followed by her love and wishes of good luck. just a small note that cheered me up on lonely days and reminded me not to spend all my days in the library. Adventures came and i met amazing people. the kind of people who leave comments such as this on my facebook,

"I thought this was essential information to your future career: Astronomers have the light-year, but nuclear physicists need an analogous unit for measuring tiny distances. Happily, they have one: The Physics Handbook for Science and Engineering defines the "beard-second" as the length the average physicist's beard grows in one second, or about 5 nanometers.Google will even make the conversion for you — type 1 inch in beard-seconds into your search box."

and this story....

"Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected. I read the examination question:

"SHOW HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE THE HEIGHT OF A TALL BUILDING WITH THE AID OF A BAROMETER."

The student had answered, "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring the rope up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."

The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.

I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.

In the next minute, he dashed off his answer which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^^2, calculate the height of the building."

At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit. While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.

"Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I said, "and others?"

"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units."

"A very direct method."

"Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."

"On this same tact, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".

"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem.

Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."

At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.

The student was Neils Bohr and the arbiter was Ernest Rutherford.

"

Props for both go to Wiley.

for more physics fun check out some of the links on this website:

http://www.cimat.mx/~gil/

Whitney! is going to love this

two words: Klein's bottle.

Not enough?

another two words: Alice Universe

THIS STUFF IS RIDICULOUS!!!!!

here's the breakdown. I wander into Calc 3 with Dr. Kiguradze ready to learn about Surface Integrals which are certainly interesting in and of themselves, but then the real magic happens. When integrating a Surface it's important to know its orientation, therefore a teacher must explain oreientation to the students, and whats the best way to describe something? with a counterexample. in this case the question was posed, does every surface have an orientation? answer from person, who probably sits in the back of the class so when he answers these kinds of questions everyone has to turn and look at him or if they're too lazy to turn can for a moment wonder if it's the voice of God answering questions so Kiguradze doesn't just stare at us for ten minutes, (and i quote) , "no because of this little thing called a Mobius Strip."
first time Kiguradze's actually looked surprised by an answer. but he agrees. A Mobius Strip (which i spelled as Noobius when i first heard it prounounced,i love terrific accidental puns!) is a 2D object that requires a 3D space to be modeled. It's basically a strip of paper with a twist in it, here's a picture...

Now some of you may say, "Wait a minute, that looks like a 3D object! " (If you've ever taken or had the pleasure of sitting in on Dr. Sawyer's Lectures, imagine this in his imitation of student's angry objections) but you'd be wrong because it only has one surface. Prove this by starting anywhere along the strip and tracing your finger along it, eventually you'll end up on what APPEARS to be the other side of the strip at the exact same location that you started. Pretty Crazy. but then it got BETTER...
Anyone familiar with Calculus knows, that once people discover things like this the only reasonable thing to do is add a dimension and see what happens...
You get Klein's Bottle! This is a two dimensional object just like the Mobius Strip except it needs 4 dimensions to be modeled. those of you now angrily pointig at the picture that i've so kindly posted for you will allow me to explain that this is only a conceptual drawing. Its not accurate because Klein's Bottle by Definition (something Dr. Martin knows nothing about, *cough Magnitude cough*) requires 4 dimensions to be portrayed. (also keep in mind, that although time is often considered the 4th dimension, that is not what I'm referring to in this instance, but rather an as of yet unimagined, "spatial" fourth dimension) the idea of this bottle is that if you were walking somewhere along the outside of the surface (similar to how we were earlier tracing our finger along the Mobius Strip) you could end up on the inside . Again keep in mind that inside and outside arent exactly correct terminology because there is only one side hence the lack of orientation!

I love that we can hypothesize and create things in math that are literally unimaginable, and yet we know them to be accurate. CRAZY.

I'd like to give mad props to Wikipedia for the pictures, and because while on their page for the Klein Bottle i accidentally stumbled across the Alice Universe just as Alice fell into the rabbit hole (or did she follow the rabbit? I may have been following an instinctual rabbit, so the metaphor still fits )

"A universe that includes one of these "non-orientable" connections does not allow a global definition of whether a particle is "really" matter or antimatter, and this sort of universe, with no global definition of charge is referred to in research papers as an "Alice universe." "
-wikipedia


this probably makes no sense but basically what happens is : you have whats considered an inverted wormhole(!!!!!!!!), so when anything passes through it everything in it flips. (i.e. Right handed becomes Left handed,) Most importantly Positive charges become Negative charges, matter becomes anti-matter, etc. As a result, nothing can be defined to be Positive or matter because in fact its only that way for the moment and it need only pass through an inverted wormhold to become the opposite. Now imagine an alternate universe in which this wormhole exists and TaDa you have an Alice Universe, (named for Lewis Carrol's character).

Now the connection:
Because of this changing property of everything within it, its impossible to determine which is the normal and which is the reversed except locally, just as in a Mobius strip its impossible to determine which side is which except when you're at a point and are convinced that there is another side to the strip. On a Mobius strip you can end up on that other "side" and in an Alice universe you can end up with that charge just by following the path!!!!!
Furthermore, The Alice Universe is kinda the 3D version closed volume version of a Klein bottle...in wiki's words "What a Klein Bottle is to a closed two-dimensional surface, an Alice universe is to a closed three-dimensional volume[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] "

to better get a grasp of all this check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_universe#Alice_universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip

to clear your mind if all this confused you, check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyqUj3PGHv4

If I explained anything incorrectly, I apologize, please correct me and I'll edit this post.
Feel free to comment with your own theories, discoveries, or weblinks that relate either directly to these three topics or anything else that just blows your mind and relates to science and or math.

p.s. INVERTED WORMHOLE!!!! my life will never be the same

Birthday Hijinks

I'm 19!!!!!! normally I don't blog about the mundane aspects of my life but seeing as April 19, 2009 was ridiculously amazing i'm going to make an exception.

Lets begin the story with a girl in a purple dress, hair pinned up, wearing heels and some accenuating make-up and doing...laundry. (thanks Caroline for the hair and earrings! ) haha flash forward an hour or two and same girl is now on a dance floor dancing salsa, merengue, and bachata. Then at midnight a ring of men is formed around this now 19 year old lady and she merengues to Ricky Martin while switching partners almost as fast as she's spinning. The song ends and there are SPONGEBOB and PATRICK rainbow Cupcakes waiting for her with candles to blow out. Birthday wish number one is made. two more hours of dancing and then a party next to a pool! which the birthday girl ended up swimming in...whilst wearing that same purple dress. Mucho Gracias (Merci Beaucoup) a Yassim et Adam. This gives her an excuse to take her hair down and clamber into some outrageously comfortable flannel pants that are a couple sizes too big for her. The night continues with star-gazing, toasts made with sparkling grape juice, cookies, the happy birthday song sung in several different languages, until around 4 when Birthday girl and her salsa-dancing, amazing birthday making, chef-extrodinaire, future roomie leave with two friends to catch a few hours of sleep. three hours later, this girl no longer in purple but still carrying the birthday glow wakes up to go to Disney World!!! like magic they know its her birthday and with a free ticket and a birthday wish the day in the park begins. They get free backstage tickets to an aerosmith concert (twice), are terrorified (terrorized ) in the twilight zone, see Darth Vader pwned by some eight year olds, eat some amazing big pretzels, and all in all have a magical day. Upon return they debate whether to eat first or go upstairs and shower and change for a bit. Deciding on the latter, they take the elevator and when the door opens.....SURPRISE!!!! David is wrapped up in streamers and attached to a chair, there is a vanilla and chocolate cake, Espresso Chip ice cream, a toothbrush( props to Karan and Jonathan ) , amazing music thanks to the fireman/DJ, pretzels and bread because Whitney knows me too well, and another dozen of friends each there being their own amazing self. eventually the decision is made to go to dance practice where we learn some new moves and have an enjoyable time before catching some dinner at the rat (Thank You Noami! ) The birthday seems to be winding to a close as this hyper, young lady makes her way back to the dorm but there're a few more surprises left in store for her. no sooner has she made her way into her room when Jared arrives with a final present..a joke book (so next halloween if i decide to get on stage, i'll have some better material, haha ) Then finally falling asleep, around 11 she thanks God for all the amazing people she has in her life, and the incredible 19 years she's experienced. Waking up the next morning with a smile on her face. Her first day past 19 , she eats breakfast with Whitney who toasts her a croissant, and shares the remaining birthday cake. There's stil writing on her arm, wishing her a happy birthday so making her way into class, her calculus teacher gives her a little nod of good wishes. honestly it could not have been a better day.

Thank you one more time to everyone who made this day so incredible!
Jordyn: for driving us to Disney World, and being so amazing every day of the week, you're an incredibly positive and uplifting person to be around!
Erica: for joining in the Disney World adventure, going on the star wars ride with me, and agreeing that if we could make ourselves look eight we would not have fought against darth vader but rather joined him in defeating all the lil kids with their predictable moves ;)
Jonathan: for the giant chocolate bunny that i'm still not sure isn't filled with crack. youre awesome! ;)
Luis: for the perfume and the many birthday wishes, for dancing with me most of the night and for being your wonderful self!
Sexrex: for the music, the dancing, inviting us all over to your pool, and lending me the greatest pants in the world after i "chose" to go "swimming".
Kaitie: for being the amazing roommate that she innately is, for throwing me a surprise party tha knocked my socks off, for convincing me to go to Disney World, for making every day the more amazing because she's a part of it. I love you and can't wait to see all the adventures we have next year!!!
Whitney: for the cupcakes, the personality, the purple dress, the happy birthday hug i got every time i stepped off the dance floor, for helping me clean up after i went in the pool, for the post breakfast brunch and everything else you do. I'm so glad you're in my life and that we're going to be roommates next year! I don't think the party will ever stop :)
Everyone else: sorry not to mention you by name but if you were there for any part of the celebrations, or at any point sent me a happy birthday message (this includes everyone at Disney World who told me happy Birthday, especially you Prince Caspian) thank you for making my 19th so incredible. special props to everyone who helped decorate for my surprise party I'm not completely sure who was involved but it looked fantastic! and there are few things more innately enjoyable than balloons.

<3 to all

What'd you say? I'll eat it.

Matt Damon: "What EXACTLY happened in Africa"
Xenia: BWAHahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Everyone else: .....um
*4 hours later*
Xenia(sleeping): He took my brain !
Xerxes: Let's put a paper plate on her head and draw a face on it.
Matt Damon: um.....


add some salsa,the number game, lasagna, and crabbiness ...no pinchers, or sideways scuttling (everyone who ran track with me knows i lack the necessary lateral coordination ), just the attitude... and you'll have my friday night summed up in six sentences. what a coincidence, that also happens to be the number flashing on kaitie's clock when i rendez-voused with my bed on Saturday morning.

and when I say salsa i mean the dance not the dip. Salsa dip plus Lasagna is many ingrediants past delicious. Weird how some things work together but others are only great apart. Like Me and Math. Great apart, great together. vs. Me and edible car races. Great apart, straight-up dangerous together. Nic-Cage's revenge did make it to the bottom of the ramp before dissembling p.s.

This all reminds me of Jared's famous line, "If i were a butterfly could i still salsa?"

looking for something almost as random?
http://www.hulu.com/watch/28343/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog
I'll beg anyone with any control over it for a sequel. PLEASE!

Is your dad a thief?

Cause he stole the stars and put them in your eyes!

this pickup line decreases in effectiveness at an exponential rate of decay related to the number of times used on the same person. BUT it works! ...at least on Kaitie...who knows I'm just trying to make her laugh...and who has a terrific sense of humor...and a laugh almost as loud as mine..though she can't do it in her sleep...(that's what she said!)

"Is the limit to math finite? "
-Rafi
consider...from our earliest years we attend school and learn addition, then multiplication, throw in letters and you've got algebra, throw in Mr. Laferriere ( Woot!) and you have the most amazing year of calculus anyones ever experienced, then there's calc 3 with a professor that may or may not have had too much vodka that morning...i sympathize, i choose coffee but an addiction's an addiction... life continues and most of your friends are done with math but you've still got diff EQ, complex variables, boundry values, and then...?
theoretically it keeps going but for how long? how much more can we really derive. people make a career out of math but how far is it really advancing? will there be another Newton to create another calculus? and is that really new math or just another version of the same? 2x =3 is just another variation of 2y=3 . we don't need to change the variables but sometimes its more comfortable. like shifting around axes

Speaking of Which, how is it that a 3 dimensional coordinate plane isn't labeled the same in math as in physics or vice versa? honestly...that should be as uniform as the metric system.

back to the problem at hand (Right Hand if you're following the rules) the irony would be that math is finite even though all its components are infinite.


p.s. funny story...*dramatic pause for emphasis* ... this blog is dedicated to you Kaitie

I accidentally outsourced my dreams to Kaitie

Last night Kaitie dreamed she was throwing me the best surprise birthday ever. She was part of a rock band and after every song she introduced a new surprise for me. First: Kelsey, Katherine, and Michael were all there. Second: My Mom and Brothers were there! Third: JOHNNY DEPP was there and sang me happy birthday!!! basically my ideal party with everyone i cared about since all my friends from FIT were there as well. and Johnny....singing...to me....*deep breath*
WOW

Physics is all about survival

Dr. Martin taught us something about magnetism which should help us should we ever be cast onto a deserted island. It made sense at the time, except that there's no way you would have the materials necessary. You'd be better off having The Swiss Family Robinsons in your pocket. Fact: The Robinsons are the ULTIMATE survivors. Yes even you Bear Grylls can't compete with this particular Swiss family. Fact 2: Despite my immediate family members all being Swiss, not one of them has read this novel that epitomizes surviving. Fact 3: If I ever meet a guy who has read this novel, I will propose on site. If he enjoyed reading it, I won't even wait for an answer before forging his signature on the marriage contract.

Really the Terminator never even had a chance

In the eternal battle between human minds and computers, chalk one up for our brains.
Proof: if asked to name the first n prime numbers, we can just sit there and list them without too much trouble until n gets to be too large. In contrast if you wanted a computer to do the same thing you'd first have to devote some serious time into writing out the steps you use instinctively and then translate those into commands and loops the computer will understand.

In unrelated news I'd like to thank C++ for giving me blogging material.