Stupid toy cellphones

Hello. So the other night, I was having a good night's sleep cause I was really tired, when all of a sudden, in the middle of the night at 3AM, this high-pitched noise wakes me up. It was one of the most irritating sounds ive heard in my life (it definitely passes the test for it to be a alarm sound), so I thought it was perhaps my neighbor's alarm...but then I thought to myself, why in the world would he wake himself at 3 in the morning?! But then I was yeah whatever, and I tried to go back to sleep, but this THING just kept on ringing, OVER and OVER again! And you know when you hear something repeat over and over again, you go crazy right?! OH, I got the PERFECT analogy for you DOC!. Just imagine you were having a perfect night's sleep and someone suddenly walked into your room with that casio piano that we used for the fundamental frequency labs and pressed the demo button on full blast...and left it on for a good five minutes AND danced to the music for good measure. The anger and irritation that you would have felt inside might have totaled to a half of my irritation. I was seriously going insane listening to this sound, so I decided to put matters into my own hands. I charged around the house and searched for the sound and I came upon this box of toys that I played with when I was young (maybe about 10 years ago). I dug through the box, and finally, on the bottom, I find the source of the high-pitched irritating sound that was driving me crazy....A TOY CELLPHONE. I was like WHAT?! I haven't touched this toy in ages! It's been in this box in my closet for the longest time. But I didn't care about those things cause i just wanted to turn the thing off once and for all. PLUS, when I took it out of the box, it was even more high pitched and irritating than I remembered.

This reminds me of the Doppler's effect that we learned about a few chapters ago. About how when a moving object gets closer to you, you hear a higher frequency of sound since the waves are closer to you. However, when the moving object travels away from you, you hear a lower pitched sound. In this case, on a smaller scale, I was the moving object, so when I got closer and closer, I heard a progressively higher pitch. So anyway, I took the toy cellphone and I pressed the fake buttons and I tried taking out the battery only to notice that the battery was unreachable because I would have to use a screwdriver to take all of the tiny screws out of the compartment that held the battery. I was already frustrated enough, so I tossed it with some good force on the carpet floor. This brings in the topic of gravity and projectile motion. I threw it straight downwards with a certain initial velocity, so if I knew the time it took to reach the floor I wouldve been able to calculate its final velocity when it got smashed into the ground (not like I cared about calculating its final velocity at the time). This worked (thank god) and it stopped making noise finally. I was VERY relieved. I was still very angry, but somehow I went back to sleep. I slept a good hour when of course, the cellphone goes off......AGAIN. My eyes shot open and I literally jumped out of my bed on a mission to break that cellphone. Unfortunately, this time, nothing worked, after a couple cracks, so I was forced to think of something before I went nuts. I ended up wrapping it in some clothes and putting it in a bag far from my room. Pretty smart idea, eh? Ahhh, so I finally got to go back to bed with some peace and quiet, but the next day I was really tired.

Well, that's the end of my story. Hope it was entertaining. Looking back on it now, I find it kind of funny, but it certainly was not funny that night. There's actually more to this story, but I'll probably write about some of it in the next blog. Shoots.



The evil cellphone looked similar to this, but it was light green. I would've taken a picture of the real thing, but I donated it already. I wanted to get rid of that thing.

Ice Cubes

Ok, so I had a feeling that I was going to forget to do my blog this week, so I decided to do it now. Last week, when we had that barbeque, I remember filling up this container with ice for everyone. However, by the end of the night, a lot of it melted to water since it was just left out on the table. This reminded me of dakine thermodynamics that we did last chapter. The ice gained heat while it was sitting there on the counter, and this caused it to change states into a liquid. The heat gained by the ice is quantified by the formula Q=cm(delta T). Haha, does anyone know how to write a delta on a computer? Anyway, the change is state also factors into the heat as an extra amount of heat is needed for it to change state. This is known by using the equation Q=LM. This gives you the latent heat for fusion. Oh, and one more example of heat gainage is when I just went to go eat yogurt mama in kailua. (The lychee and the mango are the best flavors, with some mochi balls on the top). The yogurt was really good. Ok, so when the yogurt came out of the machine, it was nice and cold and in solid form, but when i was eating it, it was constantly melting. This was due to the gain in heat since the surroundings were warmer than the cold yogurt. YOGURT MAMA.
TRY IT!



Mmmm. See. Even this guy got lychee and mochi balls!

Garden Hose

Hello. It feels really good to be done with finals, and its pretty nuts that second semester is just couple days away. This weekend's been by far the best weekend yet of this 2010 year. Anyway, my family hosted a barbeque this weekend, so we had to do a lot of housecleaning and tidying up the house for the guests. I had to help take out our 8 foot christmas tree, which meant that I did a lot of work, and then we cut it up. I then had to clean these plastic chairs that we have in our backyard since they were all pretty disgusting. I used the closest hose only to find out that it had no nozzle on it, so it was just water flowing out of a small hole. The pressure at which the water was coming out of the hose was really small, so it was no use using this to clean the chairs. However, this reminded me of the formula force times surface area (initial) equal force times surface area (final). If I put my finger to block some of the hole, the water flows out with more pressure, since area and pressure are inversely related. All right, hope everyone's having a good weekend.

Wakeboarding

So during winter break, I went wakeboarding because my friend's friend owned a boat at a club in kaneohe. It was a cloudy day but it was still really nice because the water in the lake was nice and it was cool to chill on a boat and just relax. The only junk thing was that it was freezing cold. Ok, so there were some other people that came too and they already had experience with wakeboarding, so I watched them first and it seemed pretty easy. Then it came my turn. They told me some words of advice and after that I was in the water in a fetal position holding on to the line in back of the boat. I gave them the thumbs up and the boat jumped ahead. I was expecting to go fast, but the boat jerked me way more than I thought. Hahah so basically, I ended up eating it really hard in the water cause the boat pulled me forward, and I kinda hung on to the rope so I was like dragging my face on top the water, if you can picture that. Yeah....it was pretty embarrassing. I actually didnt get to stand up although I was really close, but the engine started acting up so we had to go in a put the boat back. When we were back at the mini harbor, we used this pulley to bring the boat up to the dock. Then, while looking up at the pulley, I IMMEDIATELY thought "PHYSICS!" The concept of force was a while back, but I imagined two free-body diagrams since there were two ropes. Each rope had tension going upwards and the weight of the boat downwards. Then, I thought tension must be mg/2! Haha thats pretty much it. Physics follows me everywhere I go!





This wasn't exactly the pulley that I was talking about, but it is similar. And this was the position I started in for wakeboarding but I ended up just falling forward once the boat starts moving.

All I needed to know about globalization and a lot more

EY! It's the first blog of the year! So I read Friedman's The World is Flat book over the break and I gotta admit it was pretty interesting, but some parts were too long and went into very great detail. It was pretty good overall, though, cause I learned a lot. Here's my reflection:

I cannot explain the newfound awareness that I experienced from reading this book by Thomas Friedman. I learned so much about economics in the world today including the topic of globalization and its effects on the world today as well as its effects on the future. I find it amazing that all of the new technology has allowed almost any country around the world to participate in the world economy. Throughout the book, Friedman continuously mentions the phrase, “The playing field is being leveled,” and I would choose these words as the best way to sum up the book. The phrase shows the whole idea of equal economic opportunity that today, more people than ever before can collaborate and compete with other people on so many different kinds of work from different places around the world.

From “Globalization 1.0” to “Globalization 3.0,” I find it amazing how much the world has developed and “flattened.” I was astonished to learn that outsourcing was so prevalent in the United States, as Friedman states so many examples, one including U.S. tax returns and call centers being done in India. I didn’t even realize that Japan outsourced to China, and that so many countries outsourced to other places. It is scary for me to learn that a growing number of people in China and India will take American jobs in the future because they can do the same jobs for much cheaper wages. Friedman also addresses the fierce competition that will occur in the upcoming years to determine the top economies of the world.

In the book, Mayor Xia elaborates on how U.S. is currently the designers and that the many people in developing countries are employed by the United States. However, he claims that the Chinese can only learn from these experiences, and one day, the Chinese will be the “architects.” I found Mayor Xia’s words very symbolic of the developing countries’ fierce attitudes to learn more about the economy and how to become successful. Friedman also touches on how technology including computers, e-mail, and fiber-optic networks has allowed individuals and groups to communicate and do business all over the world.

In addition, I was very interested reading about how the UPS as the main example of “insourcing.” I learned that when one orders a pair of Nike shoes from its website, Nike.com, the order is actually routed to UPS, and is picked, inspected, packed, and delivered from a warehouse managed by the UPS. Furthermore, contrary to my old beliefs, UPS doesn’t just pick up and deliver the laptop that you shipped to Toshiba to repair. UPS actually repairs the computer in its own workshop dedicated to computer repairs and sends it back to you. Thus, this whole idea of “insourcing” allows UPS to manage and improve company’s whole global supply chain, while at the same time helping small businesses to go global.

However, what struck me the most was the realization that I, as an American, have to work even harder and become the best I can be in order to compete against the upcoming Chinese, Indians, or Brazilians for jobs. This is due to globalization and the idea that future jobs will go to the best, smartest, most productive, and cheapest works, wherever he or she resides. But most importantly, in the future, the most valuable people will be the people who know how to use their right brains. In other words, the most creative people with innovative ideas will succeed the most because the people with menial or tedious jobs that do not require higher levels of education will most likely lose their jobs to other people around the world who can do that same job for cheaper wages. This is a bit daunting.