Before anything else, Valenth.
Uraraka, Freddie, Abigail, Talstag, Silent Rose, Phoenix, Izo. Just click on links to feed.

After listening to my fail horn playing a couple of weeks ago, I thought that revealing the mechanics of a horn would be proper. Unlike the trumpet, the spring that supplies the restoring force to the valve is not withing the valve, but resides next to the keys. By depressing the valve, an ingenious mechanism causes the valve in the center to rotate, directing the air flow of the player into adjacent pipes. This increases the length of the horn and lowers the pitch that the audience hears. Furthermore, over time, the valve oxidizes, producing the green patina seen in the picture. If the valve is not occasionally taken out and cleaned, the patina will build up and the friction between the valve and the valve casing would increase, preventing the valve from turning. Sadly, most amateur horn players cannot take apart their valves to clean them, allowing the instrument technicians to reap the rewards of their incompetence.

we'll title it later

Several days ago, I went with my fellow homeless to the mall to go shopping. After going to the bathroom, I realized that there were escalators going up and down (I have never noticed this up until now. NEVER). Because I wanted to go up, I naturally decided to run UP the DOWN escalator. However, this caused me to do more work than I would have done if I ran up the up escalator, because of the moving steps. Since work equals force times displacement, running UP the down escalator would increase the distance I have to run, thereby increasing the work I have to do. When I reached the top, I was comparatively more exhausted than my fellow homeless.

also at some point i turned into a duck and all was well:

Astro Boy Lives On

Before anything else, Valenth.
Uraraka, Freddie, Abigail, Talstag, Silent Rose, Phoenix, Izo. Just click on links to feed.



As we all know, I enjoy music. Especially the under appreciated brass music that everyone else seems to not enjoy. Also, I happen to be somewhat obsessed with Astro Boy. I even gave doc! a CD of the movie soundtrack. So what I did with my mad music skills was I 'eared' the melody for Astro Boy and played it on the french horn. Notice that my fingers do not depress any keys through the phrase. This is because the french horn behaves as an extremely long pipe, and when air is passed through it, the pipe vibrates at fudametal frequency. As I increased the pressure of the air with my mouth, the velocity of the air increased and therefore the frequency also increases, producing sounds of a higher pitch. I don't need to press valves to acomplish this effect. However, to do this, a great deal of lip muscle is required, resulting in my exhaustion after the phrase.

It's a Long Way Down...

During my vacation, I took a trip to the Shanghai TV Tower, otherwise known as the Oriental Pearl Tower. It has a height of 468 meters. In 2009, this outdoor viewing platform was constructed at 267 meters. I also happened to mass myself after coming from a bathhouse and discovered myself to be at 70 kg. As such, at the viewing platform I have a potential energy of 183162 J. Six sig figs!

Onto Lighter Stuff

This winter break, I took a trip to China. Between the wild and wonderful adventures that I partook in, my uncle would take the family out to a fancy restaurant. These places would serve the most mouthwatering Chinese cuisine along with a dash of alcoholic drinks if one preferred (don't get the wrong idea).


The food is set on a lazy susan sort of contraption in the center of the table to facilitate ease of access to all the food without having to pass the heavy and precariously filled dishes of soup across the table by hand.

Spinning the food requires a torque applied by the hand. Notice how I apply the torque towards the edge of the glass and not at the center, for we discovered (some still haven't) that applying a force to an axis of rotation does nothing. Stopping the glass also requires torque, in this case, it is the friction from the contact between my hand and the glass that produces a force that opposes motion, allowing me to enjoy the sumptuous food once it has stopped in front of me.

The World is Flat, yo

Before anything else, Valenth.
Uraraka, Freddie, Abigail, Talstag, Silent Rose, Phoenix, Izo. Just click on links to feed.



When I picked up this book, I figured that it would be just another boring book about world economics and how to benefit in this world. I found exactly what I expected and much more. Thomas Friedman’s book enlightened me about the world as it is today: not as it was as I expected in Globalization 2.0, but in the grips of Globalization 3.0. Even though many of the business and economic concepts in the book are foreign to me, I realized that I am vastly undereducated in acquiring a job in a flat world. Science and technology will be the new platforms on which the future rests on, as well as individuality. I witnessed this effect for myself while reading this book.
This winter break, I took a trip to Suzhou, China to visit my family. My cousin had worked for a government firm that required financial management skills. Once he became adept at his profession, he quit the company and started his own business. He is now the financial advisor of my uncle’s steel factory and outsources grunt work to people on the other side of the globe. Ten years ago, my cousin’s destiny was probably set as just another agrarian farmer, but with the enhancements in technology and communications in Globalization 3.0, the world has been flattened and my cousin can now command a business from the laptop he carries around with him. All he needs are the imagination and the skills to put that imagination to use. As his business expands, he tells me that he plans to expand his services not only to local firms, but to companies across the globe.
This fact makes me ponder just what the right type of education these days is. The self started businessman and technology worker described in the book cannot be for everyone as there will simply be not enough demand for these services. While most of the population must and will go into the grunt jobs of data processing and number crunching, it makes me wonder if we are being educated in the most efficient way. Should my occupation be set in stone before college so that I can receive the best possible education for my future job? This would allow greater specialization of the individual so that the lower and upper level jobs can be more quickly and efficiently. Yet if this is done, people like Mimi Shirazu-Hiza would have never come to the front picture and her research would have never happened. Such is the gambit the government must take if it would vertically upgrade the labor in the nation.
I also realized that there is a wealth of information out there and that it’s mostly in books or educated online resources. It really surprised me that my friends would rather watch Glee or Korean dramas on an internet site than sit down and read a juicy book. As the internet grows, it will attract more and more of the younger generation into mindless activities that eat up time. I think that without internet, I may lose the connectivity with the world that everyone else is enjoying, but in its place I gain a working environment like no other: one free of distractions and full of information from paper. While current, updated news is beyond my fingertips, reliable information is still available to me. Friedman also notes that reading more will help one to write better. While in our English curriculums we read notable works of literature, often it is not enough to encompass the wide variety of knowledge in the world. As I wander the Iolani library, many books lay waiting on the shelves. Yet many of them will never be touched by students, who spend their time browsing a different shelf, the internet. I am afraid what will happen to us Iolani students as we graduate into a world that is increasingly favoring those with the right kind of knowledge.

My Poor Lunch

Before anything else, Valenth.
Uraraka, Freddie, Abigail, Talstag, Silent Rose, Phoenix, Izo. Just click on links to feed.

TURN THE SOUND UP.

As we all know, my luncheon diet consists of two musubis and a bottle of V8. But these are no normal musubis. Within are contained rice, cheese, spam, kim chi, and an occasional dash of mustard. While the contents may seem convoluted (especially the cheese), the musubi on the whole is actually quite succulent.

Ocean Science Bowl is an event that I partake in every Thursday with Secret Operative 1, Secrete Operative 2, and Secret Operative 3. Meetings are at the secret OSB headquarters that nonmembers are not allowed to breach without permission.



Isn't Secret Operative 2's laugh cute? Or is it evil?

While at headquarters, I discovered a sizable hole in one of the transport carts that was just large enough to accommodate one of my musubis. Yet to my surprise, the musubi fell through. The weight of the musubi pulls it down, and since there is no cart part under it, there is no normal force. Therefore the net force is down and the musubi accelerates downward. The musubi does not fall immediately as the kinetic friction between the plastic armor and the side of the hole absorbs energy, making the fall slower. When the musubi is struggling though the hole, it has gravitational potential energy that is converted to kinetic energy as it falls. After the musubi falls to the second level, I have to do work by lifting the musubi up to the hole again, thereby repeating this gruesome phenomenon.