Apple doesn't fall far from the tree

Sir Isaac Newton is probably one of the most well known and influential scientists of all time. That’s quite a hefty title; It’s very well deserved though! Here I’ve got an allegory to help you all understand how darn important this guy is. He’s basically to science as Elvis Presley is to Rock n’ Roll. In retrospect Newton may be more important though.  Sadly, Sir Isaac Newton’s life wasn’t a very happy one at first. Let’s learn a bit more about this, dare I say, genius.

       Newton was born on Christmas day in Woolsthorpe manor England (or January fourth according to another popular calendar that England was using. Britain was just a really indecisive country) way back in 1642. He was the son of a skillful farmer, who also happened to be named Isaac Newton. Sadly, his father died before Newton was born. That’s pretty tragic, because he never got to witness all the exceptional things his child achieved. If that wasn’t depressing enough poor Isaac was born premature. This means he was born too early and hasn’t yet fully developed. Now back then, the infant mortality rate was of megalithic size when contrasted to know, so even healthy babies had a very big chance of dying. Its miraculous Newton survived. Now, Newton’s mum remarried when he was three, and then Newton went of to live with his maternal grandmother.
      Young Newton was a pretty precocious fellow, very intrigued by mathematics and science. He’s normally noted as being one of the first to employ the scientific method. However, his mother wished for him to fill his birthright as farmer. Newton hated farming, so this wouldn’t have been good. Supposedly, one of Newton’s teachers convinced her to let him continue his education. She agreed to let him go to college, so Newton set off to Cambridge! Thank goodness, can you all imagine what the world would be like if Newton became a farmer!

       Isaac Newton is a wild frat boy in college now! Okay, well, he probably wasn’t attending many frat parties, but I’m sure he was at least glad that he didn’t have to be a lousy farmer. Strangely, Newton was at first just a satisfactory student, but nonetheless he snagged his bachelor’s degree. Just in time too, because Cambridge had to close because of the, wait for it, Black Plague! Jeez the doctors sure were spooky. 

 

      Newton had to return home to Woolsthorpe for an entire year while the Bubonic Plague was on the rampage. That’s not all bad news because this was definitely Newton’s intellectual highpoint, his year in Woolsthorpe is even dubbed “Newton’s miracle year” (psst; kind of like how 1989 was The Cure’s highpoint because of how successful their LP Disintegration was). It’s called his miracle year because he made many pretty miraculous discoveries. Jeez, I don’t do stuff like that when I’m on leave from school, Newton’s making me look bad! 

      Allegedly, Newton was struck on the head by an apple and that got him thinking and he came up with the concept of gravity; Whoa.  He also came up with three laws of motion. First, an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Next he discovered that acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass; Force= mass times acceleration, and Finally, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  His Woolsthorpe endeavors also included him making contributions to the optics field. Newton revolutionized things yet again by coming up with the notion that light isn’t actually white. He discovered this by using a prism that diffracts light. The prism, called a dispersive prism,  is the same kind found on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album (Wow, that rock n’roll reference was actually easy to make this time). 

 

       He invented a reflecting telescope which made images viewed through it clearer opposed to preceding models. Newton also worked with money as well and helped prevent counterfeiters.  Newton also published a massive tome containing many of his observations referred to as “the Principia” Oh, yeah, he also created calculus. Seriously, that’s all super impressive and makes me feel so insignificant; I just want to cry in the corner while I listen to The Smiths and The Cure; I already do that though.

      Newton received many accolades for all of his accomplishments; thank goodness! Isaac Newton was knighted by Queen Ann for his contributions; an honor that was seldom given to scientists. Newton became president of the Royal Society and was re-elected every year until his death in 1727 at the ripe old age of 84. Then he was buried in Westminster Abbey; a tremendous honor.

 

      Isaac Newton had a rough start, but he went on to make waves in the field of science and math. I maintain that he’s a bit more important than Elvis Presley; wow, that was really hard to admit. I’ll leave all of you with some interesting factoids that I forget to fit in-between all the forced rock references.

FACTS:

Newton never married

“Newton’s” are units of measurement used to calculate force; named after Isaac newton.

I hope you all enjoyed that; leave a comment!

 

information is from: here

picture links are highlighted

Bringin' the Heat

It’s that time of year where all the other girls trade their skirts and summer dresses in for leggings and those trendy sweaters. Me? Oh well, I just wear jeans and post-punk band tee shirts all year round. Anyways, the point is, things are getting cooler as the female populous’ attire shows. I propose that we learn about something especially relevant this time of year: heat! Specifically how heat transfers so we learn how we stay toasty. First, before we go more into that, let’s briefly talk about temperature. Temperature is a measure of the average value of the motion of molecules. The more energy molecules have, the faster they move. Heat transfer is the transfer of thermal energy, always from a warmer object to the cooler object. The cooler object will become warmer and the warmer object cooler. There are three main ways that thermal energy is transferred: conduction, radiation, or convection.

            Conduction is the form of heat transfer via direct contact. It occurs mainly in solids and liquids. The atoms and molecules within the substance only move a short distance before they contact each other. That’s the reason it happens more in these matter states than in the gas state; because the atoms and molecules are closer together inside solids ad liquids. An example would be eating a hot french-fry and burning your tongue because you couldn’t wait a few minutes for it to cool down. Also touching a hot metal handle with a bare hand is an example of conduction; and stupidity. Both of these examples were experienced firsthand.

Radiation is received by light and heat. It is the only form of energy that travels in space. This is perhaps the most important form of heat transfer when it comes to all the ways we use it. We use radiation heating when we warm ourselves by a fire, and most importantly from the sun.

                                                        

Convection is another way to transfer thermal energy. This is the transfer of energy by the movement of atoms and molecules. Convection occurs mainly between liquids and gasses because the flow of these two forms is a lot more fluid than solids. These easily moving particles travel from one place to another while transporting energy. An example of this would be a pot of water getting heated on a stove.

Now that we know the rudiments of thermal energy we can talk about thermal conductors. Conductors are materials that easily transfer thermal energy. Conductors are used a lot in cooking for this reason.  That’s why your pots and pans are metal; they’re good conductors. Speaking of conductors, they sort of have an opposite; insulators. Insulators are materials in which thermal energy does not flow easily. Materials like fur, feathers, and plastic foam are all poor conductors, but great insulators.  Blankets keep you warm because they are really good insulators that trap your heat around you so you stay warm, obviously the same goes for feathers, fur, and clothing with good coverage. If something is a good conductor, like copper, it will be a weak conductor.

I also want to talk about how rooms stay warm. It’s in part to the insulation in your home, but also because heating systems. A heating vent should be placed on the floor in order to evenly heat a room, because the heat will travel up and down. If placed near the ceiling it wouldn’t heat the room as well.

Now for some interesting facts: Things with more molecules have more energy. Between a tiny, but burning match, and a large, ice sculpture, the sculpture will have more heat energy despite being frozen because it is larger and has more molecules! Things will also take up more space if they’re hotter. An interesting fact about convection is that it helps make the world habitable by keeping our temperature much cooler than it would otherwise be.

I’m pretty sure that about coves everything you should learn about heat transfer. Remember to stay warm this wintery season. Be sure to leave a comment!

links for images:
Types of Heat Transfer
Radiation
Convection
Conduction
Insulators
Conductors

Video Games and the Uncanny Valley

The article observes the possibility of Video Games and their relationship to the Uncanny Valley. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and make sure we know about the uncanny valley. The name and concept was coined in the 70’s by robotosist Dr. Masahiro Mori to describe what happens when a robot becomes too realistic. He discovered that after creating robots with human characteristics, people liked them. However, as Mori made them more realistic, people expressed aversion to the robots. Scientifically, they were impressive, but these bots gave people the creeps. Bellow is the Graph Mori created of the uncanny Valley.

 It is used to express peoples’ affinity towards robots (and also computer generated characters). At the start of the chart, lie robots with very little human likeness. People usually respond rather indifferently to these. However, when more human-like qualities are added, there is a huge spike in likeability. That’s because we’ve given it a personality; it’s charming. Then, if more is added on to it, there is a massive fall in likeability, the graph dropping considerable. This creates the uncanny valley. As we continue on past this point, adding more and more to make it realistic, the human synthesizer will become so realistic that it’ll become indistinguishable from a person.  The affinity felt towards it by humans reaches a peak as it now practically is human.

The reason for why things that lie in the Uncanny Valley disturb us is simple: give something not human characteristics that give it humanity cause the object to be likeable, even relatable. However, if the object is almost human, but not quite there yet, it’s non-human characteristics become incredibly noticeable, and people respond with aversion. That’s because we as people know when something isn’t human; and that’s unsettling.

      Now, back to the article, it speculates that through recent game development, the uncanny valley is being destroyed. Before I continue analyzing this, I want to say that the uncanny valley isn’t being destroyed per-se, what these games are attempting to do is jump the valley. According to the Uncanny Valley graph, there are two points that will make for optimal human imitation. First, is the point before the uncanny valley, where things have human characteristics, but are clearly not human. This is stylization. Stylization is currently favored among game designers because of the aesthetic diversity they can achieve.  Notably, gaming’s most recognizable faces are all stylized ones.  The second point on Mori’s chart, after the uncanny valley, is Photo-realism. This is the point where the human simulation becomes so realistic that we accept it as normal.

      When it comes to video games, stylization has always been favored. This is because of two things: limited technology and apprehension. Obviously, for many years the possibility to create realistic human emulater( sorta like a fake copy of a person) just wasn’t there because of our limited technology. Also, the uncanny valley has always made animators, robotic engineers, and 3D artists, extremely weary of attempting that second point; trying to jump the valley seemed impossible. However, now we are making big headway in trying to jump the valley and reach photo-realism. More and more games are now being created where it shows how far we’re coming to reaching photo-realistic graphics. Sadly, though the future is bright, we are still clawing our way out of the valley. Still, with our technology we aren’t at photo-realism yet. I feel this is also attributed with how easy it is to screw up photo-realism. Speaking from the vantage point of an artist, I understand the strife game designers face. Let’s say I was to draw you. I would have to be very meticulous in trying to capture your likeness, and every mistake I make would be very clear for you, or someone else, to see. This is because as people we notice immediately when something is off. This is also the reason why I personally favor stylization. Even when I'm drawing a person, like an actor or singer, I go down the route of stylization. I'm not aiming for photo-realism I want a stylized look, but I also want the drawing to be recognizably that person. When drawing people it's very much like what game designers do. They can either go stylized or all the way realistic. Bellow in a drawing I referenced off a photo of Brad Pitt, I wanted the drawing to look like him, but I was not  aiming for photo-realism.

 

 

If a human character in a game has qualities that are not human, they become glaringly obvious.  It’s not  just appearance, like texture or anatomy, but also movement. In games, if a character does not move like how a person should, this annoys the person playing the game. Strangely, if a photo-realist character were to move in a glitchy way people respond with much more annoyance than if it were a stylized character like Mario. This is why most game designers still favor stylization; it gives much more room for error.  It is a very arduous, stressful process to make a photo-realistic character seem believable.

 

     Despite  all the work and worry game designers must face in order to achieve photo-realism, more and more are taking the risk, and it’s beginning to pay off. Recent games depicting near photo-realistic characters (like the Last of Us) are winning awards and overall impressing critics and players with their  realism.

Although we haven’t quite reached Photo-realism yet, it’s nice to see we’re well on our way.  Leave a comment and tell me what you thought. I hope you find the Uncanny Valley as interesting as I do

(All links for copyrighted images can be found throughout the above passages)