Overloading the Circuit

I found this behind my computer today. It turns out that the radio was not working this morning not because of the 'tsunami', but because I plugged in too many appliances into the circuit, tripping the circuit breaker in the house. The wires would have become too darn hot had the circuit breaker not tripped and shut the current off. The problem is, this had never happened before in my 590 years of residence, so we spend half an hour looking for the circuit breaker in the house. Turns out it was in the shed in the yard. This tsunami thing reminds me of those gale winds during finals last year. Perhaps the government has called wolf one too many times.

Very Secret Rehersal

This Saturday I participated in a clandestine rehearsal for the upcoming secret musical 'Kiss Me Kate.' The room that is used as the headquarters for the very secret group of operatives is generally kept in the dark so as to not divulge our secrets to the public. By blogging about the room, I am violating certain codes of conduct, but Dayao will never know. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Um. That did not just happen.



On each of our stands, we have a light clipped on so that we can read our music when the house lights are off. The bulbs were plugged into this long extender thingie, but since all of the bulbs had the same brightness, they must have been wired in parallel. As we added more bulbs and even a guitar amp onto the circuit, the brightness did not diminish. However, more power and current must be supplied into the circuit. Since Iolani is not responsible for the electric bills at Hawaii Theatre, this has no significance in our lives whatsoever.

Webs of Intrigue

Tuesday night, I sacrificed an hour of quality bedtime to attend the annual Keables Community Night. The Keables chairholder this year is Dr. Cheryl Hayashi. While I learned many interesting facts concerning the lore of spiders and their silk, the most important part of that night was asking her about life at Yale. Dr. Hayashi believes that the most important experience of her college life was not the books and strenuous study, but the fellowship and skills about life she shared with her schoolmates. Also, the most important thing that helped her to become who she is to day is the solid high school education she received at Iolani. Even though she did not know where she would be headed as she entered Yale, the variety of classes she tried generated the doors that she would walk through to her career today.

Stuff I'm planning to take next year:
AP Physics C
AP Chem
AP Euro
AP English
AP Calc BC
Chinese 5H
Band 4

Seems a bit heavy... I don't know.

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!