Vaya Con Dios, Aki

I am Ben, Aki's Fiance. This is Aki's spirit.

She was a child in spirit. I was always amazed at the kid in her.

She made me laugh a lot. Always. Every day she would say something that either amazed me, or made me laugh so hard I had to clutch her.

This is her and her caring for her kids



She said "Maybe I am in the wrong vocation"

She loved her kids.

They loved her.

Thw World did.

Wait for me, Aki-Chan.

Tribute

I have come here today to pay tribute to Blogger, Scientist, and Friend, Doctor AKIKO ITO, who I am told has died at a tender young age. She had been ill for some time. If those in the know wish to share the details, I will leave that to their discretion. This is a tribute.

To me, AKIKO ITO was a young lady with a brilliant mind. When we first met online, around 5 years ago, she answered some questions that proved to me she knew her Physics. I often understood her explanations better than the explanations in the many science books I own and she used to laugh at, because I own too many. Let me admit, my interest in science is that of a lay person, yet in many a chat, I brought up things she knew and understood with ease, which only a person in Physics could know so clearly. Some took her claim to be a scientist as a joke. I can say she's one of the most intelligent people I have ever known.

Even so, her true brilliance was in all the non-science chats we had, where she showed more knowledge than I thought one person so young could cram into a brain, even if that is all they did their whole life. One of my greatest joys was chatting with her. She will be a serious loss to my life.

Her last post was about young students she taught Englishh to. This spare time work she did was one of her greatest joys. She loved young people very deeply. She missed them, once she was too sick to work. I have lost a very great and very dear friend.

Although I may return to post more thoughts here, my fervent hope is all those who knew her, will post their final wishes too. Her boyfriend and cousin, her two greatest treasures, will decide what to do with my post and AKIKO ITO's Blogs. I hope they will leave her Blogs up for at least one year, for there is much interesting science here. AKIKO has passed on. She now has all the answers she sought as a scientist and as a human being. I will miss her. What I want you to know is what a wonderful joy she was to know. I am only sorry I never met, not Doctor AKIKO ITO, but my human friend, AKIKO ITO. She was very special. God bless your soul AKIKO; may you Rest In Peace. I will dearly miss chatting with you. AMEN.

I choose to leave my typos, for one thing AKIKO and I both agreed on, is we did not like to make typos. By leaving mine, this is my sign of her perfection over my imperfection. I think she would understand, then tell me to correct my typo. She had a wonderful sense of humor. AMEN. AMEN.

Sat Jul 04, 10:39:00 AM 2009
Delete

Magic

One of the most poignant moments in class was when one of my students insisted her name was "Jamie".

Pronounced as "Jay-Mee".

She spelt it as "Jammie".

In the UK, it is slang for either something with lots of "Jam" (as in the fruity sticky stuff), or someone who is really lucky (Jammy).

Pronounced "Jam-ee"

My sense of humor took over, and I referred to her in class as "Jam-ee" thereafter.

A few days later, I noticed that she had become sullen and unresponsive in the classes.

She would not speak to me, nor even look at me.

I asked her in Korean was she ok.

Emma, a younger (and sassy) student then spoke up. She explained that Jamie was hurt about my making fun of her name. Jamie still looked at the floor.

So, I did the necessary.

I got down on both knees in front of her desk and bowed my head and asked her forgiveness. The entire class (15 kids, boys and girls) were in silence.

I cried tears and I wrung my hands. I begged her to forgive me by banging my forehead on her desk.

Jamie still refused to look at me.

I then handed her my marker pen with a tearful eye. I urged Emma to tell her to write on the board her feelings.

Jamie just about managed to suppress her smile as she stood up. She stalked past me to the front of the class and scrawled, on the board, in big letters, this:

"I love you , Teacher".

"Darkness Falls Across the Land..."

WARNING! - SUBJECTIVE POST!!

Princess Di, Elvis, Karen Carpenter......We will all remember where we were when we learned that they had gone.

And now, Michael Jackson.

Given that he in his later years was, shall we say, a little "Off the Wall", there is no denying that his contribution to the music business was nothing short of phenomenenal.

John Landis recognised the potential when he was asked to direct the video "Thriller". Upon hearing the music, his immediate remark was "Why not make it into a two-reeler?", and subsequently a legend was born.

And now he is gone.

I was never a particular Jackson fan, but it has to be said, "he could dance a little".

I choose "Smooth Criminal" (long version) here as the obvious would have been well, obvious. His last best video and the climax to his movie "Moonwalker".

I loved his Persona. I loved his Style. I loved his Dancing. I loved the Coin.



This is my downloaded version.

Here you can watch in fullscreen on YouTube



His videos will now be collectors items.

It was in this light I decided to download Smooth Criminal and Thriller three hours after the news broke.

I expect the YouTube versions to be deleted in about six weeks (the probable date that the Post Mortem result will be revealed)

Whether it be Atmospheric or Not...

Predicting the weather is almost a mystery, but not quite.

It is true that the weathermen are, for the most part, fairly accurate. The truth is, it is an inexact science, in that it is quite difficult to make completely accurate forecasts.

A good starting point is to go over what we DO know.

Atmospheric pressure is a good indicator, and yes, here comes the blessed calculus again, because it is the rate at which it changes that gives us more of a clue as to what will happen.

On many weather charts you see "high" and "low" often with a number under it. So what is this number? Well, the answer is that it is how much the atmosphere is pressing down on the earth, and on us.

The normal number, that is, "normal" atmospheric pressure, the pressure that equals normal blood pressure, is 1016 mb (millibar). The numbers to look out for (in the normal northern hemisphere, in winter) are 990, 980, and, in rare cases, 970, the last being a really low pressure system. Expect typhoons.

For good weather, (in the northern hemisphere, in summer)look out for 1020, 1030, and in rare cases , 1035. Watch out for heat waves.

The key to further understanding in knowing whether the pressure is falling or rising. A "barometer" is an old-fashioned device for measuring this. For the most part, there is a box inside with no air in it. The box's size is determined by how much atmosphere there is above it. The weight of this bends the box and the bending is mechanically transmitted to a needle. To really find out what is happening, lightly tap the glass front. Most times the needle on the dial moves one way or another, indicating "rising" (good weather) or "falling" (bad weather) pressure.

Thermometers in the modern era are made from bimetallic strips. These consist of two different metals welded together to look like a single piece. The metals are chosen to have different expansion rates as the temperature rises. The upshot is that the thing bends the hotter it is. Attached to a needle, this registers the temperature.

Now, there are digital thermometers using temperature sensitive liquid crystals.

The World is divided into several climate "types".

America is classed as "Continental" and is influenced by the fact that the land heats up and cools quickly. Result, (for the interior) is hot summers and cold winters.

Almost the opposite is the Philippines, sometimes classed as "Tropical", and is influenced by the fact that the water all around the islands takes time to heat up and cool down. Result, temperatures are fairly constant all year round and hot. Because of the moist air, Typhoons (US: Hurricanes) are common.

In between, are countries like the UK, which is classed as "Cool Temperate Western Margins", and is influenced by the North Atlantic Drift (warm water) and the Jet Stream. Result, lots of mild rain from the moisture of the Atlantic.

As for Korea, it is similar to America only by virtue of the fact that it attached to China, and the climate here is influenced by the "Continental" climate of that huge land mass, with the added effects of Siberian (cold) winds in Winter, and Asian (warm) winds in the summer. Korea often gets the tail ends of Philippine Typhoons in the summer.

Of course, the tilt of the earth affects these effects also, the more northerly the country, the bigger the effect.

For instance, in England in summer, darkness falls at about 10 pm, and dawn breaks at around 4 am. Latitude is about 55.5 degrees. In Winter, it gets dark at 4 pm, and does not get light until 8.30 am.

In contrast in the Philippines, Latitude from 6-15 degrees, darkness falls at about 6 pm, and dawn breaks at 4 am, with almost no variation all year round.

In Korea, the sky is almost always cloudless blue. In London, if the sky is grey, it will be cold and maybe rainy. In the Philippines, if the sky is grey, it will still be blisteringly hot.

However, there are different kinds of heat. In Korea in summer, it is as hot as the Philippines, but because the air is so dry, the heat comes directly from the sun (it is cooler in the shade). In the Philippines, the heat comes from the air temperature, as the air is humid, often coming from across the sea. Standing in the shade makes no difference at all!

In Los Alamos, elevation 3500 m, the air is so dry that the snow evaporates without melting at all!

The Ultimate Thermometer

The substance, water, without which life would be impossible, has been used to measure all temperatures, in effect.

When science, serious science began, it was realised that some sort of temperature scale would be necessary. Mr Faranheit came along with an arbitrary system. Then Mr Celsius saw common sense and invented another system, first calling it "Centigrade" before being modified to "Celsius".

He defined it very simply; with water.

"At normal temperature and pressure, let pure melting ice be zero Centigrade, and pure boiling water be one hundred Centigrade."

Just to make things easy. To convert from one to the other was fairly easy:

Celsius to Fahrenheit (°C × 9/5) + 32 = °F
Fahrenheit to Celsius (°F - 32) x 5/9 = °C

Or, in words,

°F to °C Deduct 32, then multiply by 5, then divide by 9
°C to °F Multiply by 9, then divide by 5, then add 32

Most Americans use Deg F (except for the scientists), whilst almost everyone else uses Deg C (because Celsius is the Universal unit of temperature as adopted by the Scientific Community - it is simpler).

One may have noticed that in the definition of zero and one hundred Celsius, zero is not simply "ice", nor is one hundred simply "steam".

There is a very good reason for this. Thermodynamics again. If you take a block of ice and heat it, it's temperature goes up like this:



There are five bits to it: three sloping bits and two flat bits. The sloping bits are easy. Over time, as more heat gets put into the substance, the temperature rises, the first slope is the temperature of ice rising, the second slope, that of water, the third, that of steam, as more and more heat is supplied.

But what about the flat bits? This is the interesting part. The flat parts of the graph are where the temperature stays constant because all the heat (therefore energy) is used in breaking chemical bonds, the first flat bit from ice to water (solid to liquid), the second flat bit from water to steam (liquid to gas).

Celsius used this simple fact to define his fixed points, the two flat bits, where the temperature is always the same.

So, if you want something to be cooled to EXACTLY zero degrees Celsius, stick it in a bag of MELTING ice, or if you want something to be EXACTLY 100, put it into a container of boiling water.

That is why water could be called "The Ultimate Thermometer"

( It is quite clear that the bigger the sample of ice, the more heat you have to put in to break the two types of chemical bonds. There is a measure for this was well, it is called "Specific Heat Capacity", but that is another story. )

Quark Strangeness and Yarn

Hello. This has strong ties with "Gauge this", but nothing is repeated, just reinforced.

Quark.

Armin Shimmerman? No.

I refer to the little people inside everything.

Here is what we have so far - - -

Atoms > > Nuclei > > protons and neutrons > > quarks?

What are they?

To illustrate, a potted history would help.

The Geeks, sorry, Greeks (bless 'em) figured out that stuff is made of smaller stuff.

They called them "atoms" and thought by reasoning alone, that nothing could be smaller. They were wrong.

Then John Dalton came along in the eighteenth century (didn't take THAT long, did it?) and did a bit more work on the idea, and came up with "elements".

There are 92 of these in nature, and what came about was that these "atoms" were not indivisible at all. Earnest Rutherford showed that by splitting them.

It turned out that they were made up of tinier bits which we called "electrons" and "protons". It took a while (until 1932 actually) to work out that there was another in there also (the "neutron"), but basically we thought we had the atom sussed.

What came about next was a mixture of conjugation and speculature ("conspecularity" if you like).

If protons were all the same electrical charge, and they were all packed together tightly in the nucleus, how come all atoms never flew apart ( a few do by themselves - this is called "radioactivity").

Think about it.

The only possible answer we could give was that there was another "force" stronger than electrostatics, but only available at very short distances ( a bit like two very passionate lovers )

To be picturesque, if I held a proton in each hand ( let's just say they were the size of tennis balls ), and tried to bring them together, I would feel an enormous force trying to keep them apart. This is called "electrostatic repulsion".

At some point, though, if I was strong enough, when these tennis balls were, say, 6cm apart, they would snap together as if there was an elastic band between them. This is called "the strong force".

Back to reality, then. This "strong force" (scientists are not heavily overvocabulariated) pulls the protons together inside the nucleus, despite the electrostatic process which asks them to go away.

But the end is NOT nigh.

It was established in the 1960's that this type of "strong" force was only a mere shadow of the strength of the "true nature of the Force" (see my post with the same title).

Okay, history lesson over.

The present case is this:

We now know that protons and neutrons are comprised of quarks. (See "three jets are better than two"). Electrons seem to have no structure at all (They may as well not be there). These quarks appear to act like electrons BUT we can never see one, simply because of this seeming cop-out of the very short range of the strong force. They remain inside the protons and neutrons and cannot get out.

They are constrained in a manner that is not unlike an elastic band.

Without going into further details, it will be sufficient to point out that it is like "electrostatic charge", but with not two but three different types of "charge".

They are called "red", "green", and "blue" (physicists are the World's Worst nomenclaturists (- apart from chemists, that is. I mean, who has ever heard of "1-bromo 3-dichloro 4-iodo pentane" for crying out loud???)

Anyway, back to the point, because this is what these "quarks" act like - points. The way of thinking now is that we imagine that inside the proton is a space as big as the earth. The three quarks in the proton will be smaller than a grain of sand each. They are free to roam, but can never get out. This is called "ultra-violet freedom".

BUT because of our quest to find the GUT (See my post "That GUT feeling"), the theory goes like this: If the quarks ever get close enough to shake hands (and we are talking two grains of sand in a container the size of the earth here), the WEAK force will assert itself and change one of them by exchanging one of the vector bosons, and the proton will effectively "decay" into a positron and an anti-neutrino. If this happens it is called "infra-red slavery" (We still are the champions of the non-vocabulary competitions - have to keep up appearances).

Because we are talking grains of sand inside a container the size of the Earth, it has been forecast that this will not happen for about :

100000000000000000000000000000000 years

(1 followed by 32 zeroes).

And I thought waiting for buses was bad

How to Twang a Tune

Ever wondered how a radio works? You twang it.

Here's how:

Timmy Mallett talks, and the moving air which is the sound of his voice jiggles a magnet inside a microphone, and his voice is converted into electrical squiggles in a wire.

This is then carried, amplified, and these signals are converted into jiggling bits in a large metal pole (we call this an Antenna). (The bits that jiggle are called "electrons")

The jiggling creates radio waves that move through the air at the speed of light and eventually end up being picked up by a smaller Antenna (your radio), where the opposite happens - the radio waves start to jiggle the bits in the receiving Antenna.

These electrical jiggles are fed into one of "these circuits"

(Use the back button to get back here)

This is called an LCR circuit and consists of the tuning process. The signals leaving the radio station have a very definite frequency. The LCR circuit vibrates with another frequency.

How do we make certain they match? Simple. We twiddle a knob which changes the value of the capacitor, changing the frequency of the circuit. It's just the same when you twang a ruler - different lengths of ruler give different twangs, only with a radio, the value of the capacitor, not the length of the ruler, determines which "twang" the circuit will pick up from all the many different radio waves in the air.

Now, in the computer age, the capacitors of old have all been replaced by other things, but the principle is exactly the same.

You twang or tune your circuit to the frequency of the radio station you want to listen to. Even if it IS Timmy Mallett.

You Go For It

In the spirit of Eurovision I post this for my little cousin Yuko.

They are called "Hinoi Team" and Yuko can dance this one.

Keika is the leader and what is astonishing is that the girls were aged twelve and thirteen (two of each) at the time (2005)

Yuko can do this and I have no dance in me.

I am too old for this Sh*t, as Murtaugh would say.

The title is "Ike Ike", which means "Go, Go", or, in Western terms, "Go for it!"

Fifty Bonus points only for sussing the pun in the post title.

Don't get me wrong - I am not going soft - watch this space for a deep physics post.

No Way!

WARNING: OBJECTIVE POST!




The previous post was written by a love-sick pre-teen and she has offered an apology, poor girl.

The Eurovision Song Contest, lampooned by many and oft shunned because of the terrible music.

Saturday, May 16th, and there where 42 countries voting for 25 finalists (where does Europe HAVE 42 countries???).

This is a contest, the winner of which will be singing a song that would appeal to all the Euro members. Sadly, a few countries (like Armenia) still cling on to the myth that singing about their own culture is sufficient to win a contest spanning an entire continent.

Norway, by tradition or otherwise, usually finish last, many times with zero points. There seemed to be a chance in a million they would ever even get "un point". Most critics wrote them off as, at best, a "bad idea". No chance of winning anything.

And then, after many years in the Doldrums, Norway came up with this one. Alex is famous in Norway for both song and violin. I watched all 42 entries prior to the contest and noted three potential winners: Iceland, Norway and Estonia.

Alexander Rybak absolutely STORMED away with the victory, becoming the highest points scorer in the history of the 50+ year contest.

This author predicts a worldwide chart hit for this song.