A Cow

It was brown.
As usual, I leave my house for school at 4:00 a.m. sharp on most school days. I have seen this strange contraption many times, but have hesitated to take a picture for fear of scaring the residents of this dwelling with my flash. Note that the dish in the image is a parabolic reflector. Electromagnetic waves from a satellite source will be beamed at a relatively infinite distance, making the waves parallel. The waves are then reflected to the focus of the parabola, where that receptor thingy is. This will ensure a clear image or sound on what ever appliance the family is using. I don't want to talk about the geosynchronous satellite that is providing this dish with electromagnetic waves, for fear of disturbing the mv^2/r.

Why Can't It be Battery Acid?

Water is one of those interesting substances that can behave both as a mirror and as a lens. Looking at the picture, a reflection of me with the camera can clearly be seen towards the bottom. Urgh. I thought I would be bigger. Anywayz, while it is not apparent in the picture, the stones at the bottom of the Weinberg Fountain appear to be closer than they actually are, a phenomenon known as refraction. Since water has a greater index of refraction than air, the light will be deflected more. So the rocks appear closer. Refer to the problem set if you're confused. Hope everyone could do it. I'm typing this sitting on God's Throne. WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! yeargh...

I Found Your Lab Book

This weekend, there was a math meet. I scored a twenty seven out of thirty as I forgot how to reflect conic sections across a line in a plane. However, we did win the meet overall, with a 252 out of 310 as the first place team. The JV won this meet, so now there is less pressure on them, but still, two thirds of all JV meets lost by Iolani took place during this year. It was a good meet. Even William McQuiston.

In Admiral Park's room, there is a television. When it is not on, the television behaves as a convex mirror. The image is virtual and is smaller in height, as shown by the ray diagram. The screen is actually a lens for the image projected from inside the television, but we have not learned enough to discuss that yet.

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.