Torsion

This is a picture of the awesome stuff I do in math class when polar coordinates are getting way too much attention. (They're super easy, by the way) Anyways, this is a picture taken from my crappy webcam that shows that those bracelets that people give away for just about everything are really good distractions. You might have been able to make one into three loops that lay flat (that usually fit snugly onto fingers), but I found out you can do two extra loops. I decided that there must be a way to make more loops, but the one I already did was pretty tight. Long story short, I did it. I'll explain how in a later paragraph.

College is pretty amazing right now, despite being one week from finals. My physics final is all multiple choice, and I get both sides of a sheet of paper in notes to take into the test. Looks like that test moved to the bottom of the study list. The only final I'm concerned about is my calculus final, because it is 50% of my grade, and we've gone through tons of material in just one semester. If I have to retake that class, so be it.

Anyways, back to the interesting stuff. It turns out that the twisting of the bracelet has a pattern. It is basically two intertwined helices (yes, I looked up the plural form). So you take the circular bracelet, and twist it twice, and let the spiral pull together, and you would (or should) have two circles, which you overlap vertically to form the simplest of the pattern. You can do the same thing except at the beginning, you twist it four times or six times. You end up with two spirals on each side of the bracelet, each with an opposite direction. You then simply stagger each loop with the opposite, and you get the awesome thing pictured above. I would try eight twists, but there are some problems. One, I don't think the thickness of the bracelet would allow it, I really struggled with getting six to fit. Also, this is the only bracelet I have, and I cant get it off of the pencil pictured. This is probably because I didn't get my pectorals sliced open in surgery (which I used to push the loops over the pencil) and my various back muscles did (which are required for pulling it off).

This is just one of many ways that the weakness of my back muscles is apparent. I don't feel like they are damaged and not repairing, they're just extraordinarily weak. I'm hopeful that the doctor will say everything is fine, and perhaps prescribe a way to increase the strength there, but he hasn't been too helpful in the past with ways to help myself get better, he just looks at x-rays and cuts my back open to straighten my spine out. Come what may.

Introvert

I'm a freshman college student. I do lots of silly things, like pulling an all nighter for no good reason or buying a pound of peach rings. I guess you could say I'm not really into the flow of college yet. But I am getting it, if a little slowly. I get my laundry, homework and dishes done, and I still get some sleep and social interaction.

Speaking of social interaction, I am what you would call an "introvert". This doesn't mean I'm shy or afraid, I just don't enjoy tons of social interaction like others enjoy it. I prefer a small set of close friends as opposed to a large group of acquaintance friends. I do have a few close friends here at college, and I'm very grateful for them. They  keep me sane in this new lifestyle. In fact, I had a party of the best kind tonight. It consisted of me and two others just talking about interesting things, getting locked out, sprayed by sprinklers and laughing alot. The opposite of this kind of party I experienced last weekend, where there was a large crowd, loud music and people trying to dance with a Wii remote in their hands. While I was with the same friends, it was far more draining than the simple, fun night tonight. 

Rouge Chalk

There's this weird thing that happens in my math class when my teacher erases the blackboard. Rouge clumps of chalk powder travel straight down the board at a constant(ish) velocity and pick up chalk residue (from previous erasing), leaving a vertical dark line. I wonder why It does that.

This last weekend was really terrible in some ways, but good in others. I stayed up late every night, came down with a runny nose, and "forgot" to do my laundry. But that's ok, because I learned that those things arn't as important as preparing for tests, or doing important homework. That's the thing about college. If you let the little things get too important, either you'll lose on the big things, or you'll go crazy trying to do everything. Sometimes its ok to let a little online quiz go if it means you'll be less stressed that night, or you can focus on one big test coming up, or a more important assignment. There's more to priorities than "do homework, do it now". You have to take care what really matters.

So I was going to post the answer to the weird phenomena in the first paragraph by quickly searching Google for the answer, but it wasn't anywhere to be found. (easily) But that's the best part! I don't know the answer. It's almost like the tiny chalk bits are attracted to other chalk bits, and if enough get close together, they fall and pick up the ones on the way down. I'll tell if I figure it out, but so far, its a fantastic mystery.

And then college kicked me in the butt

So it turns out that college math tests are really hard. I totally bombed my first test, and it felt like I got hit by a ton of bricks when I saw my score. I guess I need to revise my learning patterns to involve a lot more studying. I did every assignment, and I understood all the concepts, but I really needed to know a few details that made the difference between right answer and wrong answer. Anyways, I'm gonna keep fighting 'til good grades come naturally. Because they certainly aren't now.

Today's thought: There's a section of grass that is really wet all the time, and I usually walk across it on my way to my apartment. I'm pretty sure it doesn't get much sun because it's between two other buildings. But this path isn't used by me exclusively. Many others use this path and the grass is just starting to wear thin. This is somehow correlated to how muddy the area is, because today, my feet started sinking slightly into the mud, which has never happened before. I wonder if the grass is helping to absorb the water, and if so, will the area become increasingly muddy as the grass gets thinner? Time will tell. All I have right now is dirty shoes.

I don't have a bike

The amount of thoughts that go through my head in a day cannot simply be expressed in the limited "What's on you mind" box on Facebook. So I made a blog. It was far easier than I imagined, and its free too! Anyways, this blog is really going to be about weird things I wonder when I'm walking home from campus. They aren't always deep, but they are interesting to me.

Today, after finishing my torturous online math assignment with a friend on campus, he got on his bike, and I started to walk home. I fumed internally about how I can't ride a bike (legitimate reasons, don't worry) and wondered if two people could get somewhere together faster with only one bike. (no double riders, bike reconstruction,  etc.). Well my curious mind found out that that was incredibly easy compared to the math I was just doing 5 minutes ago, and yes, you can get there faster together on one bike, you just have the guy on the bike ride halfway and drop the bike and start walking. The other guy would reach the bike on foot and ride it to the end, where the now walking person would arrive at the same time. (assuming equal biking speeds and walking speeds) This is true because both individuals cover the same distances in the same amount of time, just in a different order.

But what if there were 3 people and one bike? Easy. Each would travel 1/3 the distance on the bike, and the rest on foot. This gets a little useless if the amount of people gets absurdly large, but it increases their travel time as an entire group. You can visualize this pretty easily too. The first biker rides out to 1/n of the distance. (n=#of travelers) and drops the bike. The next biker (in a group of walkers at the same distance) picks up the bike and travels to the 2/n mark, where he will meet the first biker exactly. This continues until the last biker rides the bike to meet the group of (n-1) walkers at n/n (the end). It's so cool! (to me anyways) I know there's a way to describe the ratio of time saved for any of these if I know the difference in the bike's velocity and the walker's velocity. But I'm too lazy to figure it out.

I don't always think about math, but today certainly isn't an exception. :D