My robotics work this term

 This term, I have achived a lot. In robotics. Mostly. I have made many high-ish quality computer programs that have impressed even my self. I started about 5, but only finished 3 of them so . Still, it's worth a look.

1. Prime number finder

I made this in scratch. It is simple on the outside, but uncomfrtably complicated, even for myself. You simply enter 2 positive integers, one big, one small, e.g 5 and 10. It will then proceed to find all prime numbers between the two said numbers, using an anylisis algoritom that used to involve lists, but now doesn't because that was too much, even for me. 

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/556087626/

2. Micro:bit robot

I made 3 versions of this: 

The line following one. It could follow a line on a large sheet of paper. Awesome.

The sentient one. It won't become evil and take over the world just yet. All it can do is avoid walls.

The remote controlled one. This one won me a chocolate bar and my class a shared lunch, as I entered it into a robotics race and won! Fantastic.

3. Tiddlescoin

I'm quite proud of this one, as it is the most advanced. It is a cryptocurrency app, that allows users to convert their money into an online currency, send it around, and cash it back in for money. It's also good in the way that it's being used for my entrepenur project in Social studies, as I can make money from it if I get enough users. 

Magnus effect

Earlier today I watched this video, where some guys dropped a basketball off a dam. Interesting, I guess. Then they threw another one off, but this time they made it spin backwards as they dropped it. It fell, but it fell sideways, in a similar fashion to a ball rolling down an invisible skateboard ramp.

This is called the magnus effect. It's where as a spinnin object goes through the air, the air on one side goes along with the spinning motion of the ball, and the other side goes against it, creating drag. The side that's going with the ball creates an equal and opposite reaction, pushing it sideways.

This has been used in a few engineeing feats, such as a boat that had 4 spinning rods on the top of it, with no propellers in the water, or sails, and just by spinnging those rods it pused the boat forward, using air propulsion.

Aerogel

 Aerogel was invented by Samuel Stephens Kistler, in 1930. 

Aerogel is made by combining silica with a solvent to make a gel. This gel is then subjected to supercritical fluid extraction,which is where they introduce liquid carbon dioxide in liquid form to the gel, the decompress it so it all evaporates out, leaving just the structure of the gel, and air.

About 99.99% of aerogel is air.

Nasa uses aerogel as an insulator to keep its eletronics warm, on the mars rover, and they also use it to catch space dust and debris.

Flat earth

 Here's how we can prove the earth is round. 

The first way:

We get two big wooden poles. We stick one in the ocean floor, at the coast.

We get another, and stick it into the ocean floor 20 km away. Make sure both poles are the same height above sea level. 

Drill a hole in the one at the coast. Make sure the hole points towards the other pole. 

Shine a strong laser through the hole. 

Contact a person viewing the other pole. If the laser hit the other pole at where the hole should be, we can see that the eart is indeed flat. Otherwise, if it hit above the pole or above where the hole should be, the earth is round. This drawing should show it.

This experiment has actually been done, by a group of flat earthers. 

They ended up disproving themselves. They repeated it several times. Every time it said that the earth was round.

The second way.

Look out of your front porch. Do you see the Eiffel tower? The shard? The skytower? The empire state building? Mount everest?

No? Thats because they are all hidden behind the curviture of the earth. If the earth was flat, with some good telescope eqipment, we could all see things like this. 

The third way. 

Go for a walk. A very long one. A very, very long one. If the earth was flat, when you're at the middle of the earth, everything seems normal. But as you get further to the edge, it's like walking up a skateboard ramp. Everything feels like its getting steeper, but it's just the gravity trying to pull you back into the centre.

Here are some screenshots of a pysics simulation game i used to prove this

Flat earth:

The black dots are a gravity pulling surface.

Round earth:

Notice how none of the entities are inbalanced in the round earth one, whereas in the one where the ground was flat, the ones tothe far left and right were about to fall, while the middleone noticed no difference.

Obviously, we don't feel like we're on a sloped surface if we are far from the North pole, so we can see from what we've observed here that the earth probably isn't flat.

Questions about space suits.

 1. Why is a cooling system necssary?

Because inside the space suit is a ontained atmosphere and withou a cooling system, the astronaut could overheat from his own body heat.

2. How do astronauts deal with sun in their eyes?

The visors on their spacesuits have a coating on them to protect against uv light and strong, unflitered rays from the sun. That's why you can't see the astronaut's face, usually.

The visors are made from polycarbonate plastic with a thin layer of gold. This blocks out most rays because it's so dense. Lead is also dense, but we can't use that, for obvious reasons.

3.  Why is a space suit needed in space?

I don't know, maybe: Unfiltered sunlight, uv rays, solar wind, debris flying past faster than a motorbike, extreme temerature changes from 255 degrees celsius to -145 degrees celsius, or even just the fact that there is no oxygen, or no anything really, in the void of space, so all your organs will be sucked out due to the fact that you will have air in your lungs as you exit the spaceship. You'll then become a floating corpse, drifted off into spae, getting cooked by the extreme heat of the solor rays, not filteded by the atmosphere, then deep frozen once you go into shade. Lovely.

4. Why are tools and equipmet tethered to the astronaut?

Because if they're not, they'll go drifting off into space, as there's no gravity to hold them down.

5.  What safety measures are taken to keep the astronaut safe?

Make sure they're in a space suit, make sure the space suit is functioning properly, keep them tethered to the spaceship, because theres no way to get back to it if you drift away, and most importantly, keep them focused.

Ruperts drop

 I just watched a video about the Ruperts drop - A very interesting piece of shaped glass, thats shaped like a tadpole, that is nearly indestructble on the head end. However, if you so much as chip the tail end, it will explode in to millions of pieces. 

I found out how this works however, the way it holds itself together is that when it's made, is that it gets taken out of the furnace on the stick, then the glass maker lets some of it drop in the water. As it falls, it still lets a small string of it stick to the remaining blob of glass. It hits the water. The string (Still molten) disconnects to the blob of glass on the stick. The string falls into the water. The whole thing cools. 

Now, when we take it out, it looks like this. 

The reason it dosn't shatter when hit with a hammer on the large end, is because the outside cools first when it hits the water. The inside is still hot. As the inside cools, the outside has already put itself into place. 

Now, when something heats, it expands. Likewise, when it cools, it contracts. The inside contracts as it cools. This means that it puts pressure on the outside, as to fill the space made by the contracting glass, it also has to contract. It doesn't break. It compresses. Now we have a very strong piece of glass. 

And I mean VERY strong.

https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5912fb961600002000c5a684.gif?ops=scalefit_630_noupscale

However, the string is obviously very fragile, since it's long, thin, and made of a fragile material. It's still part of the framework holding together the ruperts drop, however. It's all stable, until the string breaks. 

Once it breaks, that part is unstable, as all the potential energy used to hold together the drop is now gonna be released. That part now starts losing the connections between the glass particles. Imagine it's like dominos falling. 

As one bit breaks, the bit just up it also starts "exploding". This keeps going until it reaches the major part of the droplet. Since all of it has to be pulling in, now that the end of it has broken, it can't hold itself together.

It is now a pile of shattered glass.

Rather interesting, isn't it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe-f4gokRBs

What is local government?

 This video I made should explain it.

SNA, our thoughts and informatioin by David and Finn

 SNA stands for Significant Natural area, where all natural land areas will be under Far North District Council protection. Therefore this means that soon enough we’ll have to get a contract or even pay a sum of money to build, modify, or deforest our land. 

Though this may seem like a good idea at first, as it’s protecting our natural land, it also means things like timber businesses, farmers that own land, and even cold people in winter that need firewood, will be strongly affected, as timber and other wood will have far less sources. 

Dairy farmers will also be affected, as they can’t make any more fields for their increasing population of livestock. 

People also dislike this plan because they feel that the land that they have spent a lot of money purchasing and maintaining, won’t get any money back from it, and have a third party getting their sticky fingers all over it. 

I think that though it's good to try to protect New Zealand's ecosystem, They should consider the consequences on farmers, Milk farms, builders, lumberjacks and even cold people with an empty fireplace. 

The outsiders chapter 1 reflection

 The first chapter of The Outsiders showed the personality of charictors, and introduced an idea of the storyline. It had quite an abrupt start, with him nearly getting killed in less than 10 sentances, but it was a good start to a good story

My podcast, about me and human rights.

 I have written a podcast, about myself and a few things about my learning, but it's mainly about my current work on the holocaust and human rights. The file is attached.