Category Archives: Informative

Seventh Grade Reflection

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When I started 7th grade in August, I expected the year to be extremely brutal. In the first week, I had to turn in two essays. That’s a little…excessive. Along with those essays, Pre-AP Algebra was churning out homework faster than a factory in China, not to mention the supposed large quantity of work you had to do in a language course. Initially, I thought this was going to be a loooooong year.

However, I later found out that significant amounts of hard work mitigated the difficulty of 7th grade significantly. Occasionally, I found the homework assignment to be quite fun, or at least simple. Despite that, there was still that piece of math homework or a project that would swallow up my time and/or was nearly impossible to complete. It also turns out that the extra work that needed to be done caused me to end up sleeping less and less. When my circadian clock gets disrupted, my brain no longer functions properly, and I get really cranky.

I can say for sure that 7th grade was odd, and I passively or actively experienced middle school drama (though watching the drama of my peers was sometimes slightly amusing). I also learned numerous things, some of which include:

  • that Spanish is an awesome, interesting, and easy course to take. My tongue still suffers from violent muscular spasms when I attempt to roll my r’s, though.
  • that I’m not super terrible and Algebra, surprisingly. That doesn’t mean it is an effortless experience, though.
  • a few shortcuts to get to my classes
  • that it takes a lot of work to get into All-Region for orchestra.
  • that you should set your mind and try to think positively when confronted with a major issue.
  • a bit more stuff related to science, and that dissecting things like chicken wings and deer hearts rank as one of my most favorite things this year (though 7th grade science could use a little more chemistry and physics).

Now that 7th grade is nearly over, I have some advice to share with the 6th graders that are about to come in.

First, work hard and try to reach a balance between work speed and work quality. Too much of one will typically compromise the other. Also, try to keep your mind open and be sure to talk to lots of people. You might make a new friend. Finally, those in double-advanced math should study a lot and ask tons of questions. Pre-AP Algebra will be demanding and difficult, and if you try to shrug it off and not put some effort, you will be destined to fail. And most importantly, have lots of fun!

 

Twenty Minutes In Heaven

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“Today, we’ll be going up in some aircrafts for twenty minutes. You can go up in both the airplane and the helicopter if you want to,” the flight instructor/troop member/ good friend of mine said.

Awesome, I thought. Not many people get their first moments piloting an aircraft at my age.

Just in front of where I was facing were two aircrafts: a Cessna 172 and some Bell helicopter built in 1956. I wanted to complete my Aviation Merit Badge for Boy Scouts, and one of the requirements was going up in an aircraft. I had a head start over the other Scouts because I went to a special place to do some of the requirements for certain merit badges(though that’s a different story). Here, I could finish the job.

Finally, after waiting patiently for a long time, I was called up to fly in the Cessna, along with two other Scouts. A total of three scouts went up into the plane, one responsible for takeoff, the other does airwork(which was me), and one responsible for landing. Once we clambered into the cabin of the aircraft, we put in some earplugs, while the instructor relayed instructions to the Scout at the controls. Soon, we were ready.

The plane’s engine sputtered and roared like a lion, and I was thankful for the earplugs. It started taxiing to the runway, and soon, we were going to spend twenty minutes in heaven.

As we were going over flight checks, I spotted a sailplane swiftly soaring to its landing zone. Its carrier aircraft followed suit. Afterwards, our plane arrived at the runway, and our twenty minutes started now.

WHOOSH! The Cessna started rapidly picking up speed. The scenery around us started passing by quickly, and my stomach suddenly dropped. I saw the hangars, runway, the trees, the sailplane crew waving at us, and everything else shrinking as we were gaining altitude. Soon, they looked like little ants, and the forest around the airport looked like a patch of tiny bushes. Our instructor gave the Scout at the controls some commands and instructions, and we were soaring over the landscape.

“Kevin, you’re up next.” If there’s anything I dislike, it’s having to switch seats in such a cramped space. I figured out a solution though, and soon I was in the seat, at the controls. Our flight instructor told me about the horizon line, the gauges, and how to control the aircraft. I found out firsthand that this was an extremely stable aircraft- it could almost fly itself, no autopilot! I pushed the rudder pedals and rotated the yoke around, and I was doing slight turns and sharp banks. There was plenty of turbulence trying to hamper me, but the feeling of being control and the excellent view of the ground canceled that out.

At least now, I know what pilots feel when they control an aircraft and fly it over the landscape. What do they feel? I can say that they most likely felt a crushing sense of complete air superiority over the land, even if they aren’t flying fighters. Your fancy cars are nothing compared to the plane I’m flying. I can go to places you can’t. I was really disappointed when my shift ended and were going to land to the surface where we belonged.

Now I have finally fulfilled my dream of being able to fly an aircraft, even if the flight time was only six minutes long. Not many people can say they got their first five minutes of flight time when they were still in middle school.

And yes, I did get that merit badge.

Cessna 172

Photo Credit: David Smith via Compfight

 

Sun Facts!

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Ah, the sun. Its energy keeps the food chain going, provides us with power, and its great to play outside in the sunshine! However, there are some interesting facts about that star, so I’m going to share them with you.

1. The sun’s surface temperature is 10,000°F(6,000°C), and its core has a temperature of 27,000,000°F(15,000,000°C). Definitely something you don’t want to be enveloped in!

2. Sometimes, huge energy bursts explode from the photosphere(surface of the sun). These are called solar flares and prominences. Solar flares are short bursts of energy, while prominences look like giant arches that stretch 60,000 miles high and can last for months.

3. If you are KNOWING what I mean(get it?), the actual solar flare or prominence cannot reach the Earth. They don’t even make it to Mercury, meaning we don’t have to worry about something like what happened in The Maze Runner and its 2 sequels and prequel. However, another event occurs along with the solar flare called a coronal mass ejection(CME), which is a large burst of particles that spread all around space. These particles interact with the magnetosphere in the two poles, producing those beautiful auroras. However, a large burst would wipe out a good portion of the magnetosphere, shut off all our satellites, and destroy communications and electronics(read my EMP post for more).

4.  The sun’s core turns hydrogen into helium in a process called nuclear fusion, courtesy of all that pressure caused by the other layers of the sun. Once all of its hydrogen is turned into helium, it starts fusing helium into heavier elements, and turns into a red giant in the process, and will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and potentially Earth(don’t worry, this will take 5 billion years). Once it runs out of helium, the sun will shed layers of matter in a special way, creating a planetary nebula with a white dwarf in the middle. Remember, the sun will not go nova!
Chandra X-ray Observatory: 10 Beautiful Years! (NASA, Chandra, 7/23/09)
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center via Compfight

 

Do You Know That…(Seismic Edition)

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Yay, a second edition of Do You Know That! Here, we will be going into the seismic world. Grab some pickaxes and helmets and don’t fall into the earth’s core!

Anyways, let’s begin.

  1. The maximum possible magnitude for an earthquake is determined by the fault line’s depth, length, and speed in which it ruptures. Currently, history and our knowledge of faults and quakes have shown that the highest possible earthquake that the earth can generate is a magnitude 9.5. So don’t worry about any 10s causing California to fall into the sea!
  2. However, there is a theory about fault lines called supershear rupturing in which the fault line could rupture at a speed higher than its limits dictate. In this case, the seismic waves would form a cone-shaped pattern, similar to what happens during a sonic boom.
  3. Contrary to popular belief, California is not the state in which a quake would be the most damaging. After all, the state has had a trillion earthquake drills and the buildings there were built to be earthquake-resistant. A far more damaging site would be the Missouri, in the heartland of the United States. This is thanks to the New Madrid Fault Line, a fault created when North America attempted to rift itself apart millions of years ago. This left that area seismically weak, so a fault line formed. It ruptured several times from 1811 to 1812, which it demolished the town of New Madrid, woke up the President in D.C., and even made the Mississippi River flow sdrawkcab(read that word with a mirror)! Read more here.
  4. The Cascadia Subduction Zone, off the coast of Washington and Oregon, ruptures with a magnitude 9 every 300 years. As it last ruptured in the early 1700s, we’re kind of overdue. That’s definitely not good.
  5. Relating to the first fact, while a 10 cannot be generated by a fault, extraterrestrial events like asteroid impacts can release energy with the force of a 10( the amount joules equivalent to the force of one is about 63.1 exajoules). This happened in Mexico 65 million years ago, when that asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula. Though, if you consider the fact that an impact like that would’ve caused firestorms on every landmass on the planet, the earthquake would probably be the least of your worries.

That’s all folks! Stay tuned for more!

 

Do You Know That….

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Woo, a different blog post this time! Here, I will be presenting some interesting facts you may not have known before

Without further ado, do you know that….

  1. The Mississippi River flows in the area where North America tried to sp-l-it itself apart millions of years ago?
  2. A giant fault system exists in Missouri because of this(its called the New Madrid Fault Zone), which if it ruptured, would be several times as devastating as an earthquake in California and would be felt as far away as the East Coast?
  3. A fault line would have to be 24,901 miles(40,075 kilometers) loooooooooong in order to generate a magnitude 10 earthquake? I mean, 24,901 miles is the circumference of the earth!
  4. Pistol Shrimp are one of the loudest creatures in the ocean? In fact, a small colony of them would be more than capable of disturbing sonar signals and waves, making them the perfect submarine hideout!
  5. If the universe was a googolplex meters long, and if you traveled far enough, you might find an exact duplicate of yourself!

That’s all folks! Stayed tuned for some more later!

The Threat of EMP

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For those that don’t know, an EMP, or an electromagnetic pulse, is a high intensity radiation blast that can be caused by a variety of different things, the most common being a high altitude nuclear detonation.

Now, I’m not trying to talk about what an EMP is, but what it DOES. EMP is probably one of the greatest threats to America, because it destroys the one thing everyone relies on- electrical devices. EMP essentially fries an electric device, rendering it a piece of junk. As well as that, however, EMP can do that to entire power grids, rendering them unusable, which would cut off power to an entire nation.

EMP would also shut off vehicles, cell phones, household devices, among several other things. In the event of an EMP blast, every single location in the US would be totally devoid of power. In neighborhoods, people would be wondering what the heck happened, and they might start calling friends or relatives to check on them and get some info about the event. Panic would rise when everyone realized their cell phones, computers, tablets, and other electronics no longer worked. If people tried to get into their cars, they’d soon realize that they wouldn’t work, and others may even see planes randomly falling out of the sky. By then, people would realize this was not a blackout- someone launched an attack on America, and was very successful.

With transportation, communication, power, and other vital things that keep the US running shut off, America would soon degrade into anarchy, and would cease to exist as a nation. With refrigeration and electrical pumps knocked out, people would have to go out of the comfort zone of their home to search for food and water. In doing so, they may encounter other people and have to fight them, get mauled by wild animals or the environment, or simply killed off by dehydration and hunger. In a short period of time, quite a bit of us- would be dead.

This post may seem extremely grim, but it is quite a possibility, considering that all you have to do to cause an EMP is to put a nuclear warhead on a cheap missile, launch it to a high altitude, then detonate it. Anyways, post your thoughts in the comments below, or you can request that I write about something else. Bye, everyone!

 

Mantis Shrimp

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Mantis Shrimp are some extremely interesting animals. They look like small, rainbow colored lobsters. Despite being small, however, they are very destructive. For one thing, they have two appendages on them, that can strike at blazing fast speed, at about 50-83 kilometers (31-52 miles) per hour. They actually strike so fast that the water around them boils. This produces bubbles, which collapse and release energy in a process called cavitation. These bubbles may seem harmless, but they are capable of destroying ship propellers, pumps, and turbines made of stainless steel. If you kept one in a tank and ended up ticking it off, well I hope you wanted to clean up some water and broken glass. They also have more than ten different color receptors, enabling them to process colors that we cannot, such as those in the infrared or ultraviolet range. Compare that to us humans, where we only have three color receptors (those receptors process red, green, and blue light, which also enables us to process colors like orange or yellow). I wonder what a rainbow would look like to a mantis shrimp. Anyways, what are some cool animals that you know about?