So passes another year..Today, this post marks the last entry of the year. Somehow I am nt looking forward to the new year at all. Boredom and dread awaits.

Boring topics.
Next year, physics would include electricity topics and modern physics. In my opinion, they dumb down the modern physics topic so much, tht it is arguably the easiest to learn among all the physics topics. Just memorise and spam during exam. C'est annoyeaux

Chemistry is an excpetion, having taught all the boring topics first, and covering the interesting ones in year 2. Though people find physical chemistry difficult, I think it is interesting, more bangs and results.

Maths, having finshed the important part, which is calculus, the only topic left to teach is combinatorics. Another boring topic in my opinion.

Econs, nothing to say, not my area of specialty, but i can say its going to be pretty boring too.

GP.. they are expanding the period of lessons next year. All i say is that i will be spending more time stoning.

PE, here comes the real pressure next year. Will they give up like their predecessors? Haiz

I wonder how i will survive next year. Next year would come and pass in a blink, and then after that, its hell time.

Happy New Year guys, for those that took time to read this.

北方有佳人，

绝世而独立，

一顾倾人城，

再顾倾人国，

宁不知，倾城与倾国，

佳人难再得。

Hmm..they say that passion is infectious. Showing your interest in something could potentially spark others with the same passion. Ah well, here I am then, do present you with more thoughts on science, maths and life.

Ever noticed that while waiting for buses at the bus stop, you tend to wait a long long time for buses? Then, suddenly, 2, wait, 3(!) buses come one after the other. Perhaps you have never seen this phenomenon before. But I have. YH was incredulous that there was such a thing happening. But I showed him that phenonmenon in a life demonstration, and I think he was stunned after that.

We all know, that buses arent scheduled to do that. They are scheduled to move along at regular time intervals. But somehow, along the way, they seemed to have bunched up! There is an explanation for this, and I think you can find it on the Internet. But unfornately, the math explanation involved was a bit too complicated. And I have got an easier one.

Lets say buses move out from the Bus Interchange at 30 min intervals. But, you know, bus drivers arent all robots. Not every bus driver drives at a uniform 70 km/h. They are bound to speed up and slow down. Therefore, all it takes for the phenomenon to occur is 1, yes 1, bus uncle to drive slower than normal. This particular bus is going slow, and therefore the time it takes to reach the bus stops are longer. As a result, people have to wait longer for the bus to come. In this time period, more people would have accumulated at the bus stop. When the slow bus finally do arrive, a huge bunch of passengers board the bus. They take time to board. The bus becomes much heavier in mass and have to drive slower.

Now, the second bus that drives off from the interchange would catch up with the first abnormally slow bus. Being almost right behind the first bus, it would not pick up any passengers. Hence, it would be light in mass, and has a tendency to travel faster, since there are no passengers to drop off and pick up. So now, we got 2 buses that follow one after the other. Since the second bus is fast, it services all bus stops quickly. But the 3rd bus going out from the bus interchange is not going to set out earlier. It has to adhere to its timetable. So to the people waiting at the bus stop, the time gap between the 2nd bus and the third one is longer. During the lengthened time interval, lots of people gather at the bus stop..When the bus finally do come, alot of people board the bus. Thus creating another slow bus.

See now? 1 slow bus, creates many pairs. One slow, one fast. Each following each other. This is self perpetuating. Sometimes, instead of pairs of buses, you see triplets. Its much the same explanation too.

Think this phenonmenon is one of its kind? Wrong. I see the same thing occuring in superconducting materials too. The quantum phenonmenon is called Cooper pairs, where pairs of electrons team up just like the buses to travel through metal.

I hope you would spend some time next time, while waiting at the bus stop, to observe this curious phenomenon! The advice still stands: If you have been waiting for very long for a bus, and when the bus finally comes but it very full, wait for the next one. It should come shortly.

Cheerios,

New blog design.. One that has took me 1 month to complete. Had to settle for this one, because orginally my design was too complicated, and when loaded on to Blogger, it took a darn long time for blogger to download all 12 parts of my images. The result was a super pixellated version. Therefore, I opted to change my design, one that is simpler. This is the one that you see now.
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I am bracing myself for another Great Sale in Singapore. If you ask me, discounts are the world's most evil economic ploy. Especially for Singaporeans in particular. Due to innate nature. we tend to go completely berserk when we see a price tag that say "50% off". We tend to buy a lot more than we intended originally. As a result, we actually spent more money than we would have spent if there was no Great Sale. Ah, human nature I suppose. Another dark side. Though not as dark as to be evil I suppose.

Meanwhile, I am following Terry Brooks 'Shannara' series obsessively. Buying one book every weekend. There's 7 books in all in the series and I am lapping up every single one of them. Currently, I possess: The Sword of Shannara, The Elf Stones of Shannara, The Scions of Shannara, and The Adventures of Jerle Shannara. It seems like every fantasy tale must have an old man that wields impressive magical powers. In this case, we have a 500 year old Druid, Allanon, who walks about hooded, a tall, dark, and impressive figure, with eyes that shot right though you, laying your very soul bare.

Hmm.. in the book I encounter duality nature again. Sometimes truth can encompass all, for teh safety of others, one may have to decieve to hold true. Sometimes I wonder if its the same for science. Perhaps, its best to leave sciences to white haired old men who have genuine interest than to leave it to people who find no use in it and are not interested in it. Why force it to tons of kids who find it a bore and fail it regularly. Let them study other more interesting subjects. Seems like knowledge is not intended for everyone.

The following are some of the thoughts that I have been thinking about for the past few days. It concerns the analysis of forces. A lot of people look at the equations of gravitation and equations of motion and see nothing extraordinary about them. More often than once, we equate both equation and go on to solve without thinking what is actually happening.

Firstly, the equation of motion F=ma. From this equation we see a cause and effect relationship. A force is a cause. What does it cause? It causes a object of mass m to accelerate.

Next, we look at the equation of gravitation. F= GMm/r^2. Looky, looky, what do we have here? Now, the cause is 2 objects of masses M and m respectively. And the effect? Why, yes, the force F.

So we see, 2 equations, different causes and effects. Aha, when we equation the 2 equations to solve for acceleration, we are actually linking 2 cause-effect chains. Masses cause a gravitational force, which in turn cause another mass to accelerate.

There might be a question now, for the gravaitational equation. What if Mass isn't a cause? But an effect? Ooo, unthinkable consequences. Gravitational forces generate mass? Worth furthur thoughts perhaps.

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Obsessiveness.. Funny how love closely models the other emotion..that of, insanity. That's the defining mark in humans i suppose.

Here I am to blog again, not because I have blogged yesterday before, but because I am just bored. Was just thinking about the class affairs. Is it for better or for worse? Hard to tell. After a year, I would say its better and its still bad. Better because I think there is better mixing between cliques. Still bad because I am just like starting to get to know some of the people better. Eh like tianju rightly puts in a lightly amused manner, "Is this a get-to-know-me session?", I find even after 1 year, I hardly know much about the newcomers.

Oh, lets not talk about the fact I already know the RVians in the class pretty well. Knew 3 of them since Sec2, knew 2 of them since Sec 3, knew 1 of them because she's in the same cca as my bro. But overall, almost all rvians have the pretty the same 'cultures'. Influence from rv I suppose. In that respect, I know them better than frens from other sec. sch.

Haha, perhaps it is fate that the class was endowed with clumps of people with differing mindsets and interests. Naturally, cliques and 'gangs' of differing interests appear. And perhaps its due to high concentration of rvians in the class, that the class guys and girls are largely immiscible. They dont mix that well together. So much so, that even the CIP trainer can tell that there is a very obvious gender segregation in the class.

I suppose our class is slightly better off because there are still people who are actively trying the pull the class together. These people have never given up hope that the class might be strongly united one day. Perhaps we are trying to do this so hard is because we have experienced an alike situation, and do not want it to happen again. Obviously, united-ness can only be achieved when all participate. Its like a collection of molecules in solid state; every molecule participates in exerting a strong intermolecular force on all its neighbours. A few guys trying to pull everyone else together can only act like a catalyst. Facilitate but cannot take the place of the intermolecular bind.

One more year to go I suppose. I dunno whether I am sad or happy for this.





情为何物， What is this thing called love? Non-comprehende

Looks like everyone is spending excessive times at home being bored, stoning or just plain staring-into-space. At least YH isnt, he is spending every day outside, 24hrs almost.

So, my turn to spam my own blog. My spend my waking hours nowadays, in such a manner. Wake up at 9, eat breakfast, stone my way till 2.30pm, eat lunch, play Dota till 8.30pm, eat dinner, watch DVDs till 11pm then sleep. And so I have been spending my days as such.

....Any one fancy going out say for bball or soccer or badminton during one of these weeks? sian..

Haha, its been so long ever since the last time I have updated my blog.. PW is finally over..nothing between me and relaxing anymore, at least not for another month or so.

Class chalet was held during Nov 1-3. Some wondered whethered it was a flop. In my experience, all chalets are almost like that, mostly spontaneous stuff, on-the-spur of the moment. Instead thinking of the result, what the chalet has achieved, think instead of the process. After its all about company, and I think i enjoyed the company of friends during that period, and that in itself is more important than what the chalet has achieved(practically nothing).

Immortals are boring creatures, because with a snap of the fingers they can achieve anything they want. Therefore, they alone understand truly how important the process of doing things, over the result. Contrary to what we think, immortals envy us in this aspect. I suppose sitting in the clouds day after day just brooding about philosophy and twiddling your thumbs is an extremely boring prospect. It is funny how mortals yearn to be immortals, and immortals yearn to be mortals.

Knowledge, in the respect, is like immortality. You are curious, and therefore you hunger for knowledge. After achieving that knowledge, you realise that having knowledge is not any better than those innocent blissful people.. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

Dota-ing now, signing off till then.

Finally the academic year is over, and I can finally not care anymore about academic stuff..and devote myself fully to reading other books and playing dota and going out with friends. Time to relax.

And so pass another year.. one more year together as a class..perhaps the class situation ain't so bad.. Things are getting better between cliques, and I think perhaps by next year the class spirit will be much stronger. Pity that by the time the class is well bonded, we will have to part again.

Who wants to watch The Inconvenient truth and DOA? I might sponsor half your ticket fees, depending on my mood and generosity.

Being naturally stupid is not a sin. No one is gonna blame you for being stupid naturally. Even naturally stupid people can be cultivated to a certain level of intelligence.

Now, it IS a sin, when you are graced with intelligence and the abilities to reason, and you choose to be stupid. Ironically, it is an extreme act of stupidity to act stupid when you are not, just because you are lazy to think.

For god sake, some have PSLE score better than mine, and a O Lvl score that is way better than mine, but for sheer laziness of the mind, are acting as if they are more stupid than me. I understand that not everyone is born a genius. Even I concede I am not one. But logic and reasoning is something that can be cultivated and learnt. Once learnt, then use it! More than once, you can solve a problem with just logic and reasoning and some contextual knowledge, instead of sitting down there and stoning.

That being said, it is also understandable that logic is slightly different for each person. Some people's logic is that logical consequences do not follow logically from logical sentences. But that is the minority. The 1% of the population. The rest of us share a common base of logic. From this logic, we can reach similar conclusions. All just with a little effort from the mind.

I just dunno whether people act stupid for the fun of it, or out of sheer laziness. Perhaps I will never know. I am almost past caring.

Two words : Depressingly Stupid.

An undispellable gloom seems to have settled itself over the country. The nation woke up overnight to find itself shrouded a by very thick layer to haze. Thanks to the forest fires, the latest PSI index is 150. Yes, unhealthy levels certainly. Surprisingly, the moon is beautiful tonight, full moon with a copper colour. Almost like a lunar eclipse. Well, well, at least the moon is bright red today. Could be a real lunar eclipse or could be the result of the the haze.

The haze looks gloomy to me. This morning while I was outside, I noticed that the sunlight filtering through the shrouded skies, was diffused. Hence, every object on the ground appeared not to have a shadow. Most unsettling. It gives the place a very unatural feel. Not just that, it looked like the entire place was being shrouded by the fog of war.

The consequence of this haze is that Games Day on Monday might possibly be called off.

An undispellable gloom seems to have settled itself over the country. The nation woke up overnight to find itself shrouded a by very thick layer to haze. Thanks to the forest fires, the latest PSI index is 150. Yes, unhealthy levels certainly. Surprisingly, the moon is beautiful tonight, full moon with a copper colour. Almost like a lunar eclipse. Well, well, at least the moon is bright red today. Could be a real lunar eclipse or could be the result of the the haze.

The haze looks gloomy to me. This morning while I was outside, I noticed that the sunlight filtering through the shrouded skies, was diffused. Hence, every object on the ground appeared not to have a shadow. Most unsettling. It gives the place a very unatural feel. Not just that, it looked like the entire place was being shrouded by the fog of war.

The consequence of this haze is that Games Day on Monday might possibly be called off.

Exams over..another annoying series of tests bypassed and neutralised.

Class outing I should say, does not leave up to its name..Should be renamed as clique outings..By and large, its not a wasted one, as I improved on bowling. Not too bad. At least there's less gutterballs now. All the physics knowledge in the world, and I cant do shit about it. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that people usually do not take out pencil and paper and start calculating whenenver they want to aim a basketball through the hoops, or when playing billiards. Its just pure instinct. In this type of games, if you let your brain rule, you are gonna be a second late in making critical decisions. Instead, you let your heart do the job. Pure instinct. Take a deep breath, the critical moment stretches to infinity as you aim and shoot. You release, and you turn away, knowing that you have just aimed correctly. As if on cue, 3 secs later, you hear the sound of all the pins falling. Bingo. The moment is vast.

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Heart confusion. I have better control now, able to think more clearly. Still, there are moments, I can not control anything. What's more, there is a certain urge not to do anything at all. To just let go and not try and control anything. I suppose I lack experience. Just like YH said, all the theory in the world, but no practical situations to rely on. Burnout, so weary, so weary. Half of me wants to retreat completely to inside my brain, the half wants to open up..

Next move? One step at a time.

Mugging and craving for dota has left me little time to post any new entries recently, but here is the latest post.

I haven recently looking into several problems in Maths, one pertaining to game theory and the other is number theory. Ok, playing 'Chopsticks' with some friends and my brother reignited a mathematical interest to the game. That is, is there a optimal strategy by any player, and what is the outcome when both players play optimally. First of all, lets have a recap on the rules of the game. The rules have been restated in symbolic form, to avoid all those material confusion.

1) Both players start with 2 piles, containing 1 object each.
2) When its the player turn, there are 2 legal operations.
-Lets label this player's piles as C and D.
-1st operation: Where x < (C or D); the player can move so that (C-x, D+x), or (C+x, D-x)
-2nd operation: The player can move so that: (D+C, C) or (C+D, D)
3) After each turn, update your hand, by taking modulus 5.
4) If both piles having nothing left, the player loses.

A bit of experimentation can reveal that there can only be 3 results from this game; either player A wins, or player B wins, or both players are trapped in infinite loop such that the game is a draw. I think when both players play optimally, the result is a draw. The reasoning is as follows. A starts first. A has a winning strategy that prevents him from losing. So the outcome for him is either win or draw. When its B turn, B knows for him, the outcome is either draw or lose. So B will choose his strategy such that he can minimise his losses. In this case, B will opt for the draw. So ultimately, both players will be locked in a infinite loop and be forced to concede to a draw.

Of course this says nothing about the optimal strategy itself. I am currently still searching for it. The best way to do this is to do an exhautive tree search, but this is proving tedious due to the great amount of possibilities. When I have the strategy, I will post it up here.

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I am also occupied somewhat with the problem of the Collatz Conjecture. This conjecture goes like this: Take any number, if its even, divide by 2. If its odd, multiply by 3 and add 1. Repeat the above steps with this new number. The conjecture states that all numbers eventually lead to the steps, 4,2,1,4,2,1, ad infinitum. Try it yourself.

First of all, we need to see that this involves 2 rules, a lengthening rule, one that makes numbers bigger, and a shortening rule, one that makes numbers smaller. It is impossible to predict on the outset whether a combination of lengthening and shortening rules lead to a specific number or lead to inifinity.

Next observe that all number of the form 2^x lead automatically to the loop just by dividing by 2. In other words, if you somehow hit on to this branch of numbers, there is no escape for you.

A bit of experimentation shows that starting with any number, you use more shortening rules than lengthening rules. I cant proof this, but I think it has to do with the property of the numbers itself. Still investigating.


In the meantime, we will all have to cross our fingers and hope for the best for Promos. Be sure to remember to study smart. No us spending 12 straight hours memorising everything, and not comprehending anything at all.

Lol, in reference to the previous post, I now explain my own rationale for mugging.

I myself cannot care less for mugging. I look only at the process and hardly at the result. Sure its great joy to see oneself getting A for the subjects. Gives me a kick to think about it. But that's not the reason why. I prefer to see friendships as more important than results. I study for knowledge sake because I appreciate beauty in Nature and its Laws. I can hardly care less for the cert at university. I get it only because for passion in the subject that I am studying and not because I memorised everything that I can find in the textbook. Probably why I managed to DSA my way into NJC in the first place.

I learn loads everyday in school, not just from lectures and tutorials, but also from esteemed friends and classmates, even though they themselves are hardly aware of the wealth of knowledge they hold that are unique to themselves.

Perhaps some of you do not see this rationale yet. But never mind, knowledge will open your eyes one day to appreciate knowledge in its beauty. Then you will see that when one has everything in his life, its not the result that matter, but rather the process by which one has achieved.

Ever searched yourself why mug so hard? Study blindly, no actual appreciation for knowledge, no actual use to the knowledge. So why still study? Search yourself for that answer.

Some people pride themselves being ignorant. Ignorance is bliss. Many would not care a hoot whether hydrogen combustion forms water or not, or whether a pendulum is simple harmonic. After all what revelance is there do their lives?

Some people feel that this is ultimately boring, some stage that they have to slog through as part of their lives. Then what is the meaning of even doing this? No meaning at all. No wonder the increasing rate of people who commit suicides.

Search yourself. Search deep.

Ahaha, I found this by accident while solving a problem for a physics olympiad problem. Actually, the curve arose because I did not put my brackets in the equation properly..Imagine by surprise when i plotted the curve with the GC... Haha, one may go as far and say that this is the Equation of Love..Lol..Serenpidity favors the prepared mind.

Here's the equation again: e^(ln(sec x + tan x) * cos x) =y. Note that this should be plotted in polar coordinates. Hence you can see the wierd circular coordinates in the picture..

Haha, if only the real McCoy is so simple. If only the essence of love can be expressed so simply. Ah..the quirks of life it is. Possession is meaningless ultimately in the world..only thoughts and emotions..However we need to be wary of falling into the trap of immersing oneself in the emotion for the sake of the emotion...It can create all sorts of falsity, false realisations, false emotions..

Promos in 3 weeks..the 4C dota gang have a tendency of engaging in games just before a major exams..

What is IT?

Newton did IT while the apple fell from the tree.
Pascal did IT under pressure.
Hertz did IT frequently.
Faraday did IT while rotating.
Maxwell did IT under magnetism and electricity.
Boltzmann did IT randomly.
Thompson did IT while shooting particles.
Rutherford did IT with an atomic model.
Bohr did IT excitedly.
Heisenberg did IT abstractly.
Schrodinger did IT realistically.
Pauli did IT but excluded his friends.
Feynmann did IT jokingly.

Weakling. I gave in to my fears, I surrendered to my desires. I tell myself no, but yet I cannot control it. Failed in the test of wills. Rarr..I must not give in..I must not give in. Train myself in my mind I must.
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Its funny how decisions made a long time ago come back to haunt you with a vengeance. Future activities all decided by past decisions. One wrong move, you lose the game devastatingly.
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On happier sidenote, floorball is FUN! Even though it leaves me completely drained out physically after it. Haha here is something that I can do better than in soccer I think. Though I feel that the match that we lost to the IP was not exactly in taste. We did not lose gloriusly. We lost because the judge felt pressured by all the arguments from the IP side. I still don't see how they could have claimed that point though. The bloody net is inelastic, any ball that went in would have been caught inside it. Yet the ball bounced out with all the hallmarks of an elastic collision. Such a collision could have only occured if it hit the rock solid sides of the goalpost. Bloody hell.

But still I liked badminton the most. Its good that our class guys have warmed up to this game.

We contemplate whether we can are ever free. I think it has extremely strong correlation to randomness. Think about it, predictability makes one think that everything has been predestined, that is, all the events were afore-decided by a Supreme Being. Whereas non-predictability or randomness is what defines choices. Surprised to hear choices are what define randomness? Perhaps you are skeptical that the outcome of a coin toss, a throw of the dice is decided by choices. Well, yes, the coin toss and the throw of the dice are not controlled by choices, but that is because these events are not completely random. In fact, if you could had information of the conditions such as air flow, force of throw, shape of dice/coin, angular momentum, angle of force application, you could theoretically calculate exactly how the coin would spin, and how exactly in would land. In other words, if you knew enough information, you could actually calculate the outcome of coin toss. In other words, the outcome of the coin toss is no longer random. It is predictable. The only reason why it appears random to us is because no one alive or dead has been able to calculate this. Because so many minute factors are involved in the physics of the flight of the coin, there would be so many calculations involved that even the fastest supercomputer on Earth would blow up.

On the contrary to what other people think, I believe choices truly defines a random outcome. Consider 2 piles of carrots that are equidistant to a donkey, one on his left, the other on his right. The donkey could either choose the pile on his left, or choose the pile on his right. Both piles are equally tasty to him, and hence he has no extra incentive to favour any pile over the other. So we set up this situation and we observe that the donkey chose the left one. In this case, the outcome will be truly unpredictable, because it is up to the donkey to make a choice. This test would be even more reliable than a coin toss for randomness. If we set up the situation again, the donkey could have chosen the right one this time. One could conceivably conduct this a hundred times, or a million times and still cannot predict accurately the next outcome.

That is of course assuming that the donkey has no directional favourite. And so we proceed to define a free choice. Because our choices are most of time affected by factors such as emotions, desire, and personal purposes, we are no longer unpredictable. We become predictable. I could predict with almost 100% accuracy if I whack kyan hard on the head, she would hit back with 3 times the force. We know she has the choice of either not hitting me or hitting me. But we already know what is her choice because, her choice in this case is coloured by her emotions. Revenge or just irritation in this case.

And so we discover that we are actually imprisoned by our emotions. We are no longer free under influence of our emotions and we are easily manipulated by other people. Though we continue to make choices, our choices are already predetermined. Slaves, in other words, to our fears and desires.

We come at last to defining free choice. Free choice is only possible when we free ourselves from our fears, our desires and our personal purposes. We are spontaneous when we make free choices because the outcome is random. No one will then able limit us, for they cannot predict what comes next.

Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

Today, the class had a wonderful class outing..the kind that we have not seen for a a very long while. It was at least heartening to see the class getting to gather like this.. Went to watch "Click" at old place, orchard cineleisure. Wonderful show, in my opinion. You laugh your way through the show, but at the end of the show, you find that the director of the movie have been laughing at you all along. This show is similar to the situation where God gives you infinite riches, and asks you what do you want to do with it. In this case, God gives you infinite control of time, and asks you to make your choice on how you want to use this power. The character in the story chooses to fast forward less enjoyable parts of his life. In doing so, he misses some of the most integral parts of life. He fast forwards for the most part of his life, till in the end nearing his death, he realises that he have missed half of his life.

When you have everything in life, the result does not matter anymore, only the process matter. Imagine you have godlike powers; initially you would use this to great effect to achieve results instantly. One snap of fingers, gold appears in front of you. Another snap of fingers, food and luxury appears in front of you. True, you would enjoy this initially. But after while you would get tired of this. There would be no meaning in life this way. In a sense, when you have godlike powers, you would value the process more. The process of getting the result.

Perhaps we are starting to realise that what is the meaning of education. More genereally, what is the meaning of life then. Recently I myself have begun to lose confidence in what I am learning. People gain knowledge in view of a better future. But once you gain enough knowledge, you see it is much better off not to know anything, "Ignorance is bliss". You begin to doubt what you are learning. But the answer to this seeming paradox, is that what matters is not the result, but the process. The process of learning. It may have been enjoyable, it may not have. You might have sweated and cried over countless exams. You might have gained innumerable friends during the process. You could have picked up other skills. Why bother about the results? You have enjoyed yourself in the process, and that is all that matters.

Finally, a proper class outing for the new S18..

Ahaha, I heard this marvelous problem that I want to include here for everyone's laughter, and to remind that physics is not some useless subject, but a subject about common sense.

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer."
The student had answered: "Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."
I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit since he had answered the question completely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit was given, it could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at answering the question I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the student did.
I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute he dashed off his answer which read:
"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula S = ½at², calculate the height of the building.
At this point I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit.
In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said he had many other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Oh yes," said the student. "There are a great many ways of getting the height of a tall building with a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer and the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building and by the use of a simple proportion, determine the height of the building."
"Fine," I asked. "And the others?"
"Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement method that you will like. In this method you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method."
"Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of 'g' at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference of the two values of `g' the height of the building can be calculated."
Finally, he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the problem. "Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: "Mr. Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer."
At this point I asked the student if he really did know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think, using the "scientific method," and to explore the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of the subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of America.

Hmm..We should of course ponder too about such situations where the answer is technically correct, but is not what the examiner wanted.

Unveiling my new blog!

Ok, here marks the start of my new blog officially. The background was painstakingly done over 2 weeks, effects all being done by hand, I created the water drop, the ripple, and the Matrix background. Oh, and the crystals at the lower right hand corner is done by hand too. Hmm, a note about the matrix background. If you look closely, you can see the entire class names up there. Ok, a guide to navigating around the site(surprise how you can get to this page if you do not know how to read). The fire dragon leads to my entries. The ice dragon leads to links of friends. The title leads to a description about myself. The water drop leads to the tagboard. And the crystals lead you to interesting quotes, though the quotes arent up yet.

Post your comments about my design on the tagboard! I want to hear how you all think of my blog, as long as you dont flame it.

Redesigning my blog

lol, i am redesigning my blog, this is a test post.