Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Tcefrep eb ot deirt I
Ti htrow t’nsaw tsuj ti
Gnorw os eb reve dluoc gnihton
Em eveileb ot drah s’ti
Ysae steg reven ti
Gnola lla taht wenk I sseug I
Luos ym ni s’ti eveileb uoy fi
Wonk I taht sdrow eht lla yas d’i
Wohs dlouw ti fi ees ot tsuj
Wonk uoy tel ot gniyrt m’I taht
Nwo ym no ffo retteb m’I taht
14 Mus – Seceip

Sorry, had a Da Vinci bout I had to work off.
After reading a book on Sunday, I decided that I am morbidly happy. I had a quiz on it which checked how happy you were about yourself. I scraped through the morbidly happy section but I’m still happy. Also, I have a dastardly low IQ level and am not logical.
I am going to a corner and cry.
But that’s not going to happen! Because I am supposed to be cheerful!
Man, paradoxical.

Anyway, I was thinking, should I just flame the SPKC blog and blog here instead?
But no! That’s not happening!
Wa hahahaha
I am mad!
Oh yes.
Do you know what happened just now?
My mom asked me to switch the lights and I accidentally switched off the power point to my com! The song that was playing, 3 Doors Down’s ‘Let Me Go’ just went ‘boop’ and died! The monitor went dead and I vaguely heard a ‘biaaaooo’... the sound you hear when the power goes down.
I was laughing my head off at my stupidity whooo!!

Oh yeah! My sister treated me to dinner yesterday! (Sunday) I am happy for her! :D
She treated me at Fish & Co. and I was thinking maybe next time, to make up, I’ll need to treat her at Swenson’s! She choked on her prawns when I said that. :D

Yes. Anyway, it was a nice dinner, we were very stuffed and everything.
Also, I have said that I wouldn’t tell anyone the matchstick trick. But it’s there!
You just have to look a little bit harder, and highlight some stuff. Wheee.
Have fun figuring it out.

Posted by norbert at 3/15/2005 12:29:00 AM

Sunday, March 06, 2005

[Attention to all readers! The first bit is about TTSH and the second bit is about NUS's visit. Should you feel that you do not want to be blasted by Physics, please just read the TTSH bit if you want to.
Disclaimer: Any deaths of readers due to intense boredom, acute myopia, frustration at not finding the author of the post when you need her, and any other author- and post-related deaths is not the author's fault and is directly due to your stupidity at not reading this message in the first place.]

What Tan Tock Seng Might Have Felt Walking through TTSH Today:

Entering the monstrous beige building from one of the many entrances, this being the main one, you are immediately overwhelmed by the roof of the building, which is spilt numerous quadrilateral shapes, each diamond-shaped hole fitted in with glass. A valet stares at you.
You have no idea what the word ‘valet’ means. (Come to think of it, neither do I.)
He is twiddling the keys to some cars, which seem to be very popular now, back in your time, only the rich and the famous had them; which shows how much your little hometown has grown. Upon passing through the automated glass doors which spring open without even needing you to do anything to them, you are immediately blown cool by some mysterious cooling air and welcomed by two posters proudly displaying your picture at either side of the atrium.
You look at yourself imprinted upon the posters, and try to remember who the hell drew you, planning to sue the terrible artist till his ancestors cried for mercy. You look slightly regal, sitting upon your wicker chair by a tiny coffee table, your legs neatly crossed with a feather fan in your hands.
You don’t see many of them now; you overheard someone saying that the birds had caught a cold. Can birds catch colds? You are thinking of looking into it when you get back home; that is, injecting the birds with saliva from a man with the cold and sitting tight to see what happens next. What was your picture doing there anyway?
Standing in the atrium, you let the surroundings wash over you and shiver slightly, trying not to sneeze. Every word whispered by the many people who visit this place is heard and echoed over and over again in these hallowed walls. At both sides of the atrium, it branches off into many other smaller compartments of the building; the walls filled with neatly spelt English. It wasn’t very popular in your time, everything was written in your mother’s tongue or your father’s tongue; it didn’t really matter- they both spoke the same tongues anyway. Now you stand in front of a counter made out of concrete and marble, where two attendants are patiently ignoring you. You look at the wall behind them, seeing a huge symbol.
There are two circles drawn a short distance apart, with a long line drawn below both of the circles. A long vertical line is drawn below the first circle which cuts the horizontal line, its end turning up towards the left. The other circle also has a vertical line below it also crossing the horizontal line, this time a straight one. Beside this straight line, below the horizontal line, you see a scribble, which looks like the English letter ‘S’.
-My description of stuff like this is awful. Don’t get it, I’ll send a sketch to you. :)-
You stroll into one of the passageways branching off to the rest of the building. You pass many shops, shops which seem to be molded into the building itself. All around you, people are seen walking about, you pass a Malay man sucking a carton of brown drink as though his life depended on it (It’s true! I saw him doing that! Chocolate milk DOES stuff to you…). You had heard that this was a hospital but you have no idea whose is it. Passing the REAL atrium this time (I didn’t know what to call the entrance area place thingy), it is a long rectangular area in which you can look up and see the sky through the glass ceiling. This area only has one floor as the other higher floors circle it, and you see people occasionally staring at you with curious eyes.
This hospital has grown. At least the people here are doing a good job. Not like the idiots back home…
You stroll on, taking everything in with patient eyes. Everyone seems to be in a hurry these days. You see a rectangular pool, with plants growing around it, where a small waterfall is splashing into the lowest pool. Amazed, you reach your hand in and taste the water. Back home, all waterfalls were always tall and terrible or had a stupid warrior sitting at the bottom of them, slowly being pounded to death while muttering on about something known to everyone else as ‘The Book’. You think they’re silly old dumb geezers.
The water tastes reasonably good. This people have got a source of water. They are knowledgeable. You don’t know why no one is drinking the water or bringing any back home.
You walk on and see some moving staircases. People are standing on them casually, letting the stairs bring them up or down. Curious, you take a step onto the moving staircase and are nearly swept off your feet. You are held firmly by a smiling gentlemen in a suit which the Englishmen used to wear half the time even though it was so bloody hot at home but this were Englishmen, they didn’t know how to behave. At least he was kept cool here by the mysterious cool air that blew around here. Most curious!
He helps you up and tells you to take a step at a time on the moving staircase. Armed with this new knowledge, you step upon the moving staircase and decide to move down the level triumphantly. On the moving staircase you see the English word ‘TTSH Medical Centre’ in neat words, even though you do not really understand the words- everything was in your parents’ tongue at home, everyone could understand that... The numbers 160 catch your eye. A small poster on the railing is displaying the numbers, something about ‘160th Anniversary, Celebrating Heritage’ (Or whatever, I can’t remember). Reaching the lowest level, your amazement that the entrance isn’t the lowest level, most intriguing, is minimal amongst the busy individuals. Stepping off the moving staircase, you walk out of the House of Healing into the roads beyond.
Thinking back about the place you just visited, and remembering that you didn’t see any doctors or physicians at all, you swear upon Heaven and Earth never to let your descendants into this place in the future.

Now I wish I can write like this in Chinese. ^_^

Yes, I wrote that a few days ago.
But today…
Today I went to NUS on the basis that our Physics teacher felt that our interest in Physics was failing and he needed to desperately revive it.
Well, he did it… almost. :D
The point is, we spent 3 hours in a small room filled with interesting devices on seven tables to keep a class of 30 entertained for a couple of hours. Bonus: It was Air-conditioned!

[Let the Author warn you again about her Disclaimer. Death due to intense boredom is possible!]

Let us see the first table: Magnetic track, super conductor in a Styrofoam cup filled with liquid nitrogen. Basically the idea is to find a superconductor, which is supposed to repel magnets. Dr. Soh took out the superconductor and plonked it on the magnetic track.
It didn’t move.
Everyone was like ‘Uh?’ he just laughed and said that the superconductor only worked in extremely cold conditions and proceeded to pour liquid nitrogen from a cooler bottle thing into a Styrofoam cup. Having much experience with nitrogen and doctors who squirt it into your toe while asking ‘Do you know how cold liquid nitrogen is?’ over and over again like nitrogen was The Next Big Thing, I could obviously answer the question when he asked how cold nitrogen was.
‘Minus 196 degrees.’
So he plonked the superconductor into the cup using a pair of wooden tongs and proceeded to prattle on about superconductors and wires.
Apparently, a superconductor is something which has zero resistance, thus electricity is able to flow through it effortlessly and it is very economical and such to use as wires. Then he goes son about how these superconductor can only be used in extremely cold temperatures and thus defeats the entire purpose of finding a cheap superconductor.
Now he fishes it out of the smoking cup and places it on the magnetic track and whoosh, the little disc of the superconductor starts whisking around the magnetic track, floating in mid-air, and still smoking.
The record is like 3 and a half rounds around the magnetic track.
We got three and a half rounds. Wheee.
Anyway, the superconductor’s chemical formula is YBa2Cu3O7 and is this black flaky substance I think. We played with the nitrogen later. It was really fun, you pour the nitrogen on the floor and it comes out as liquid and ends up on the ground as a gas. And whoosh, the smoke coils nicely around your feet and mad people like me giggle insanely and do it all over again.
That same table contains stuff about magnets, and something about this two radio thing, which is really quite cool.
A radio connected to a coil of wire called a solidarism or something. Yes, it can create magnetic fields when electricity is passed through it. He switched on this radio, which is on top of another radio with the same solidarism thingy connected to it. It started sprouting French of all languages and he switched the sound off but it was still transmitting that sound waves. He then took the other solidarism or something thing and then placed it at the end of the first thing and the second radio started sprouting French! He moved the second thing around the first one to show that the magnetic field of the solidarism thingy had different strengths. So obviously, the strongest bits were at the end of the wire coil, like the poles of a magnet. Then he passed a rod of metal through the thing and then the sound got louder, because it was like a focusing agent for the sound waves and they focused on the rod and passed through the wire more. Yes. He then placed a plastic card across the thing and the sound waves continued blasting out of the radio happily because this was a magnetic field, magnetic fields didn’t care about plastic cardboards blocking their way, and it can go and die for all the magnetic field cared.
Next experiment!
Coil a coil of copper wire around something and then run electricity through it and then this whole round coil of wire is placed at the bottom of this rod thing which isn’t a conductor, ie glass. He was talking about putting little metal disc rings around the rod and then watching to see what happened. He placed a solid ring around it and the ring floated. He went on about how the magnetic field is formed around the coil of wire, something about North and South poles. Wasn’t really listening here… heh, heh.
Something about the metal not liking it, and then it gets North Poley nearer to the coil of wire because it doesn’t like electricity or something, so it floats up. And then he took that ring out and put another ring, with holes in it and then started up the magnetic field again and this time it floated lower due to the holeys! Then he placed this ring, with a slit, cutting the circuit- oh! So that’s how he did it. Yes something about the metallic electrons aligning themselves and then going in the direction of the magnetic field thus getting a North Pole, same as the coil of wire, then with the holes in the ring, the circuit isn’t so easy to go around any more and then with the slit, the circuit’s broken, so the ring didn’t float at all!
And then he put both rings and then both rings stuck to each other. Why? Because we cannot create a North Pole alone. With a North Pole comes a South Pole and then the ring at the bottom had a North Pole which is currently repelling the North Pole of the coil of wire and then the other side of the ring had a South Pole, which attracted the North Pole of the second ring and thus they stuck together.
What else, this is only one table I might remind you.
There was also this experiment about ‘Magnetic Phenomenon Drive’ or something. I was clicking the switch and watching the magnet turn first then the metal plate following it. Basically it is this flat metal bar with two magnets at the end of it and it is next to a metal plate, they are not touching each other. The metal plate moves as the magnet moves because, again, metal is very stupid and picky and annoying, and it doesn’t like the North Pole of a magnet whooshing all around it in a nice circle and it decides to attract the magnet with South Poles on the iron itself so when the magnet moves the iron also moves as the South Poles on the metal plate are attracted to the North Poles on the magnet.
The next little experiment thing was talking about Electricity again. Hahaha
There’s this metal plate with slits cut in it, slits to only up to a certain length, leaving the middle of the plate fully metal. Then there’s this little catch thing at the bottom, which conducts electricity and at the bottom as well, there’s like a magnet at both sides of the metal plate with slits.
Pass electricity through it and then the wheel turns. Why? Uhh because of the magnets. I can’t really remember why. Something about the electricity current, the magnet thing… oh err I think I got it. The catch will cause the thing to conduct electricity and then the magnets cause it to turn because of the electricity jump or something? Uhh…. Ruth!

Second Table: Crack Stoppers
Actually this isn’t a table. Wait it is. Well anyway, for the people who went the first time, you had fun smashing the ice into a zillion pieces and getting tissue everywhere. Unfortunately for us, they had installed some plastic shield around the table so every time we smashed the ice, the tissue got onto the plastic thing instead and didn’t splash across the room!
Dr. Soh was very grateful for the plastic shield, seeing me and Ruth hacking at the ice like no tomorrow.
So he was demonstrating with normal chalk and an abalone shell.
He smashed the chalk easily and then he banged on the abalone shell and nothing happened. He asked what was chalk made of, which was calcium carbonate and then what the abalone shell was made of which was also calcium carbonate and then he went on about the different composition and such.
Alloys!
Yes whatever.
Take a block of ice. Smash it!
Whee it breaks!
Take a block of ice with tissue paper mashed into it and smash it!
Damn it absorbs the bloody damage!
The tissue paper acts as the crack stopper, which stops cracks from widening due to pressure, force etc, and then inevitably it increases the durability and such of the thing.
So Ruth and I were hacking at the thing, hearing that the group before us broke two of the tissueated ice blocks. We hacked and hacked at it, got Mr. Low to whirl some preliminary hackings, could have done with the Barbarian’s Double Swing, got Minwei, Nyssa, Linda and such to hack at it also, and finally we broke it!
Yay! Such jubilation!
And then! We found out that they hadn’t prepared an extra ice block for us to break so we couldn’t beat the previous group’s record of two ice blocks…
I came out of the thing tissue-coated and wet, with a sprinkle of white on my hair, arms and everywhere else. This is a very good de-stressor. We were planning to write ‘F’ on the ice block.
That’s basically it. I like their hammers. :)

Table 3: Static Electricity
Static electricity producer is caused when you turn a wheel which turns some brush like bigger wheel thing which brushes on another same size wheel thing with rough surfaces which makes static electricity.
We could see the tiny sparklies!
It’s about 30 000 volts per sparkle!
Put your finger in between the two blob-like things where the static sparks from and you get a nice buzz out of it!
You connect the static electricity producer to many of the things there, like two horizontal places with a ballie in between then and turn the handle and then the ball turns with little sparkies of electricity sparking around it. The sparkies find a shorter path through the ball and then they spark and the ball doesn’t like the spark and that’s why it runs. :D
Then there’s the other one about this turning thing with sharp pointy ends that once you connect to the charger, starts turning on its own!
Yes. I can’t really remember all of the things, stuff like finding out how electricity can move things and the magic pith balls which dance around your fingers…

Table 4: Sound Bites
This table has the huge rolly polly thing which goes uphill.
It works because this is a trick. The rails which support the big rolly polly thing go wider as they go higher and the rolly polly thing is like two funnels stuck together. So there’s like an edge. As it goes uphill, the centre of gravity of the rolly polly thing is actually lowering itself as the rails widen.
There are also the tuning forks here, where we played out ‘Doe a deer a female deer’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’.
And the sound box!
A metal box is very fun to play with. :)
Put a radio in a metal box with a metal lid and replace the metal lid and the radio plays static. The metal acts as a deflector, which deflects the sound waves from the radio. Opening the lid and putting your finger into the box but not touching the radio, the radio seems to be doing fun, as our body is a conductor for the sound waves. The electrons in our hands are moving in tune with the sound waves and the antenna picks up the moving electrons and gets its transmission from there. Easy.
There’s a hemisphere here a mirrored hemisphere with mirrors on both sides. Hahaha that’s over using the word ‘mirror’. Anyway, the outside of the hemisphere shows you lateral reflections but the inside shows upside down reflections. However if you stick your finger into the inside of the hemisphere you will see your own finger sticking back at you, and this is a finger you won’t ever be able to touch. Hahaha
The other thing is this disc of a concave mirror and another disc of concave mirror and you fit the two mirrors together like a flying saucer and place something at the bottom of the discs, like the ‘PIGGY!!!’ the man placed there, you see a 3D picture of the pig on top of the disc there. Why?
Because of the different reflections of the pig, the reflections bounce off the mirror and enter the middle of the mirror. Bouncing off any part of the mirror, it still goes back to the centre. The brain receives all the information and interprets it as real and thus we see a nice 3D pig in the middle of the top of the disc thing. :D

Table 5: We didn’t talk to this table at all. Basically work, forces, gravity, acceleration stuff. This nice track made out of Lego. :D

Another day it is!
Table 6: Sugar anyone?
There’s a ramp. Ramp goes 2 ways, one a nice long straight down way, and the other a syncline. Take two goli, push them down the ramp and see which one goes faster.
The one going to the syncline goes faster because when it’s at the bottom of the syncline, it has more kinetic energy than the one going straight across the ramp and thus it goes faster later, than the one that was just rolling across the long straight flat down way.
Pepsi!
Now the guy places a can of Coca Cola and another can of Coca Cola Light in a tank of water. Basing on the fact that they are both of the same volume, 330ml, the Coca Cola Light can floats because Coca Cola Light has less sugar than normal Coke. So basing on that fact, the doctor dumped Pepsi, Pepsi Twist, Pepsi Fire and Pepsi whatever, Lemon Barley…
And only Coca Cola Light, Lemon Barley and Pepsi Energy or something floated. Hahahah
Every thing else sank!!
The tornado bottle was this two bottles stuck together and one bottle filled with water. What you do is basically how to get the water from this to the other bottle in the fastest possible time. So what you do is to spin the bottle, like how to get the lovely tornado thingy… and then it flows really quickly because the air has a path to escape etc. Then there’s the double straw bottle that the top straw spurts out water. The idea is like the tornado bottle thing, just that they placed 2 straws. One with holes punctured in it at the bottom, where the air can escape, so that’s why the water looks like its spurting out, when its actually the air from the bottom second bottle that is coming through.
Then the box of different lens, its all very nice and such, didn’t pay much attention to them.
Uber cool place man. Hahaha…

Table 7: All Things Light and Pullable.
The last table was about gravity. We had this round planet like thing that spun really quickly. There’ this ring of paper, which floats to the centre.
When air moves slowly, the pressure is high, when air moves quickly the pressure is low. Air molecules around the planet thing travel the shortest distance at the top and bottom of the planet thing, thus pressure is high there. The air molecules travel quickly at the middle, thus pressure is low. Therefore the paper likes low pressure and stays there. But it’s not fully at the middle because of gravity! Yay!
This has something to do with airplanes and such, likes how the wing is funny shaped because of air pressure and such. Like how the top of the wing has a longer distance, so the pressure is lower at the top of the wing than the bottom and etc etc etc so the plane flies! YAY!
Okay, even I am summarizing what I summarize. Hahaha
There’s this machine where the thing turns and the spinner goes lower. Something about lower base, centre of gravity more stable and thus spin better etc.
Also, the OHP had this flat box of iron filings that you use magnets to float them about, nothing much, didn’t really play much with this…
Then! The guy showed us this uber cool matchstick trick! Whee I like the trick! I shall spoil everything by not saying it!
Yes so that was a very fulfilling trip. I am happy for once. Wheeee I shall like to go NUS again. ^-^
(Frankly it’s just how you hold the matchsticks. There are two matchsticks, and you put one in such a way that your thumb and fore finger is holding it and your middle finger’s nail is against the match stick. Hold them like a cross! You rub the middle finger nail upon the matchstick which causes a vibration which cause the other matchstick to jump. The trick is to do it so subtlety that the person doesn’t see you twitching your middle finger, so it will be like the matchstick is jumping! :D)

Posted by norbert at 3/06/2005 01:04:00 AM