How much is a barrel?

Recently, with the gas prices spiking, we’ve been hearing talk about the price of a barrel.

But do you really know how much liquid a barrel is?

1 barrel = 117.348 liters.

That’s 31 gallons.

A challenge to my blog readers

Which hand is your dominant hand? For 90% of you, it’s probably your right hand. For the other 10%, your left.

For the next week, try making more use of that non-dominant hand. After all, you never know when you might get an injury in your dominant hand… and when you do, you have yourself to thank for practicing non-dominant handedness.

I’m challenging myself this week by trying to hit the space bar with only my left thumb. Every time I look at my keyboard, I realize how many glossy spots there are, you know, the special spots on the keys where your finger oils have worn off the key surface. One quick glance at my spacebar reveals a massive glossy spot on the right side, but almost no damage on the left side. Being the OCD person that I am, I would like to see my spacebar symmetrical in terms of glossiness.

What will you try this week? Hitting the space bar with your non-dominant hand? Using the mouse with your left hand? It’s up to you, but appreciate that other hand. You never know when you’re going to rely on it.

Seattle is the worst place to live

If I could live in any city, it would definitely NOT be here. There are two factors that just make Seattle so deplorable:

The Weather

If you could describe this place in one word, that would be RAIN. Almost every day in Seattle is a boring, grey sky with rain falling down. No wonder there’s so many depressed people around here — grey skies contributes to lack of Vitamin D, which can lead to many other problems.

The Traffic

Yesterday, the State DOT closed down the 520 bridge for the whole weekend. Well props to you, DOT, for shutting down one of only two bridges on a weekend where everyone needs to go somewhere! The traffic jams were unbelievable: it took one whole hour to get from Bellevue to Seattle, and it wasn’t any better the other way around. A job that should have only taken 30 minutes took two hours, and a whole lot of frustration. Add traffic to rude drivers who honk at you for no reason, and drivers who can’t even parallel park, and you have a very nasty situation on the road.

So if you want to move somewhere, put Seattle on the BOTTOM of your list, where it belongs. That is, unless you want to deal with the constant rain and the millions of drivers who shouldn’t even have a license.

Meet π’s cousin, φ

So what’s that symbol, you ask? It’s the Greek letter Phi (pronounced FEE).

We’ve all heard of the (in)famous π, or 3.14159265358… Our math teachers pounded this into our heads every year, and the nerds would always hold competitions to see who could recite the most digits of pi. So far, computers have sputtered out over 5 trillion digits of pi.

But another number, just as beautiful as pi, is relatively unknown to the masses. That number is phi, or 1.61803399… It is the number that satisfies the following algebraic equation: (a+b)/a = a/b.

There are many ways of expressing this golden number:

As an infinite series,

As a continued fraction,

As a continued square root, which bears striking resemblance to the above:

But wait, there’s even more:

φ^2 = φ + 1,

and even more surprisingly,

1/φ = φ – 1. Wow!

If that surprised you, this will truly give you a shock:

φ to the nth power is equal to the sum of the previous two integer powers of φ. Check this out:

• φ^3 = φ^2 + φ^1
• φ^4 = φ^3 + φ^2
• φ^n = φ^(n-1) + φ^(n-2)

The same thing goes with negative powers! Try it out!

Thought it couldn’t get even more fascinating? WRONG!

Compare the digits after the decimal point in this table:

n	phin	phi-n
1	1.61803398875	0.61803398875
3	4.23606797750	0.23606797750
5	11.09016994375	0.09016994375
7	29.03444185375	0.03444185375
9	76.01315561752	0.01315561752

Lo and behold, the decimal parts in the latter 2 columns are exactly the same! Also notable: this relationship does not exist if n is an even number.

For those of you who are still reading, there is a special link between phi and the Fibonacci series:

Let F_(n) = 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …

WHOA! Who knew?

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. — Eleanor Roosevelt

TRY THIS IF YOU DARE

I’ve been trying out this music notation program called MuseScore. It can do some pretty awesome stuff, like mega-glissandos as shown below:

They are pretty crazy aren’t they?

I DARE YOU to try them out. See how much it hurts your hand. You can also access a PDF version here: crazy glissando

Listen to a recording of these played by a professional (NOT): http://oks.kicks-ass.net/~onekopaka/mwtrunk/images/6/69/Crazy_glissando.ogg. Oh, and if that link doesn’t work because you’re using a crappy browser, then head on over to http://oks.kicks-ass.net/~onekopaka/wiki/File:Crazy_glissando.ogg.

(Well actually, some of the notes are below the range of a standard piano so good luck!)

UPDATE: Added a nice coda at the end. Good luck with that!

A Simulated Explosion in Pictures

Red – Fire

White – C4 Plastic Explosive

Green – Nitroglycerine

Background – Air flow: Green = High pressure, Blue = Low pressure

The setup

First shock

Thrust upwards and killed

Air current disturbance

A new player enters

Flames of wind

Downdraft

Circulating currents

Corner shock

Calm

A Fire in Pictures

This is the third fire I’ve seen in a month’s time. It happened on the trail just outside my house. It was quite a big fire, considering that it engulfed a whole section of the trail. The fire was not easy for firefighters to reach, since their fire trucks couldn’t get through the narrow trail, so they brought in a smaller unit.

The fire may have been started by neighbors launching left-over fireworks, since I heard a few pops and bangs outside my house this morning.

My first sight of the fire

The fire spreads

A firefighter walks by, looking at the fire

A mobile fire truck pulls in to assist

Briefly engulfed in smoke

Starting to put out the fire

A fire truck waits outside

Up and Back Rattlesnake

Today, I hiked a short trail called Rattlesnake Ledge. It was a two-mile trail up 1700 feet or so.

I went with my youth group and my friends to go hiking there. I had been hiking near that area before, so I knew what to expect. But the trail that I hike before was much more steep and longer, so this one seemed comparatively easy, and it was.

Rattlesnake trail map

Rattlesnake Ledge was a fairly easy incline up. All around the trail were tall slender trees with only a few leaves, but they were so densely packed together that the whole forest we were in was washed in a vibrant green-yellow aura. Marking the trail were stones called erratics.

An erratic in the trail

These were large stones 10-20 feet across that were deposited by glacial flows from the last Ice Age. They were just sitting there in random places next to the trail.

When we got near the ledge, the trail forked. The left went to the highest peak at the mountain and the right trail to a platform not too much below the highest peak. We took the right trail onto the ledge.

A view from the top

The view from the ledge was gorgeous. I could see all around me for about 270 degrees. There were giant rock-mountains all over the landscape, far and wide, and were predominated by lush green foliage, especially trees. The sky was clear. We could see the city from where we were standing, and some very weird structures like a platform in the middle of a small lake. Most awesome of all was that we could see the lake below – Rattlesnake Lake. It was a sparkling mass of blue-green water.

Rattlesnake Lake from above

We ate lunch on the ledge and some daring people climbed into a small crevasse between a few rocks. I was too injured from my bike ride to go into the crevasse.

It was time to head down. Apparently heading down was more dangerous than going up.

Some tall trees

My friend bruised his knee, and everyone was slipping and sliding. Fortunately, I was wearing hiking boots so I didn’t slip. We got down to the bottom and hung out by the lake for five minutes. Then it was time to go. Since we had some extra time, we decided to go get slurpees, but I couldn’t go since my uptight dad wouldn’t let me.

Overall, Rattlesnake Ledge was an awesome hike. It’s fairly easy, and it’s great for everyone.

Post-school dreams

One weird thing that happens to me year after year is that I dream about school long after it’s over. My school year ends in June, but these kinds of dreams last until Mid-July, where they slowly fade away.

Last year, I dreamed of my school as a multi-level skyscraper, where I was going up and down all kinds of staircases and elevators, running around and confused. This year, I’ve been dreaming of walking up to the bus stop days after school is already over. The weird thing is, in each of these dreams, I’ve been walking in snow up to my bus stop! In one of my dreams, I had to climb a mountain to get back home, and while I was climbing that mountain, I discovered a hidden underground organization planning to destroy the world. Weird stuff.

I think that this condition is quite predominant in teenage minds, since they spend a large chunk of their 24-hour day at school or sleeping. So for all you teens out there, tell me if you’ve had any of these weird dreams, and if so, describe them.