Part Time Scholar

Stability is merely an excuse to be content with the status quo.  This is why I love change! -PTS

Came across this  article  which is entertaining to read while keeping score!  I scored 2 of 9 - Uncertainty Principle and Maxwell's Equations. The good news is I do not qualify as a geek, but that also means there is so much more to learn when I retire. -PTS

A recent good read, which changed my perspective on what it takes to become a wild success in life. The  Outliers   is about how success is affected by external factors beyond individual characteristics. These factors include culture, social systems, even friends and families. Here are some highlights: The Matthew Effect  – Canadian professional hockey players are mostly born in the early months of a year because the age cutoff for tryouts is January 1st. These players when trying out during childhood, have months of physical development over their later-born counterparts. This is a huge advantage which gives successful candidates access to premium coaches and programmes for years, hence an ever increasing head-start eventually leading to professional careers. Similar patterns are found in Major League Baseball, English Premier League, among other sports leagues.  Even when it comes to school, kids born later in the year...

Almost a month into baby raising and I have caught my wind to blog again. Just the other day, I stumbled upon (no pun intended) this website called Science Exchange . The concept is quite simple as it is a platform for outsourcing scientific experimental projects to the lowest bidder. Think of it as eBay for services, the twist being the lowest bid wins. I believe this is a great idea for academic institutions to better collaborate and take advantage of each others' resources in economic ways. I do not have any pending experiments but set up an account anyway for exploration. Hope this concept catches on! -PTS

For many years, I have heard that babies are a handful! Well, I will get to find out very soon as my newborn was born today. Looking forward to more an even busier, but rewarding life with the new addition to my family. -PTS

Thinking of raising a family in the US?  Check out this survey . A wide range of criteria was considered to reach these conclusions. They include in order of priority:   quality of schools;  affordability and availability of quality housing;  low crime rates;  job availability and growth;  number of registered sex offenders;  recreational opportunities;  quality/quantity of pediatricians/family physicians;  commute time and distance;  proximity to a good children's hospital;  quality/quantity of childcare facilities and preschools;  and air quality. This list looks very comprehensive to me, giving the survey quite a bit of credibility. -PTS

Relocation always takes a toll on one's life.  I am speaking from experience as this is my second move in 2 years.   Worst of all, the 9 to 5 in Hong Kong is sometimes like the 9 to 10, especially when you work in a foreign company and expected to do early morning or evening meetings with North America. As a result, I have lost a lot of blogging time. Luckily, I recently managed to squeeze in time to watch the movie Thor , in 3D! I went to the movies not expecting any physics lessons, but Natalie Portman mentioned a number of astrophysics concepts, including the Einstein-Rosen Bridge that connected Asgard to Earth. In a layman's world, this bridge is more commonly known as a  wormhole . A wormhole is essentially a warp in space-time, thus creating a shortcut for traversing between two physical points in space and time. Think of the analogy of drawing two points on a piece of paper placed on a table. When the paper is lying flat, the distance between the two po...

In the midst of packing and cancelling bills, I finally managed to squeeze in time to blog.  A project at Kickstarter  that I have been supporting has kicked off at last. The project is called "A History of the Future in 100 Objects." The author will try to create podcasts and author a book on 100 objects representative of the 21st century. As we have only lived 10% of the century, most of these objects will only be predictions.  In fact, people who contribute enough can put their own predictions to work with the author.  I love this collaborative approach and look forward to seeing the end product! -PTS

Just over two years ago, I wrote a post about relocating to Sydney.  Little did I know then that I will be writing a similar post today with Hong Kong as my next destination.  Life is certainly an adventure and I really enjoy not knowing the surprises that are in store! Anyway, I will spend my last three weeks here wrapping up the 9-5 and enjoying the little things Sydney has to offer.  Hope this will not affect my blogging too much. -PTS

A magnitude-6.3 earthquake today hit Christchurch, New Zealand. Although less powerful than the one that struck in September last year, it is much more devastating. Many buildings in the city were demolished, including its iconic cathedral. The casualty toll currently stands at 63, but is expected to climb above 100 in the next few days. Today's earthquake struck 45km west of the city and is only 5km below the surface. This aftershock is much closer than the quake that registered five months earlier. My condolences to those affected and I hope the city can rebuild from this unfortunate episode! -PTS

It is official: IBM's Watson, a supercomputer equipped with terabytes of RAM, was crowned champion of champions on Jeopardy this week. It smashed the show's two most accomplished human Jeopardy contestants ever by a mile. Prior to this challenge, Ken Jen and Brad Rutter both won over $3M USD on Jeopardy! It is amazing how far artificial intelligence has come over the years.  I was especially impressed with Watson's ability to interpret the play of words often found in Jeopardy-styled clues (or answers). Apart from the occasional mishaps when it completely missed the mark, Watson did extremely well even in categories like "Familiar Sayings" that require a certain level of intuition.  Enjoy this clip on the final 10 minutes of the competition: In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated fellow human grand masters like Garry Kasporav. Fourteen years later, we have a Jeopardy champ that does not require food or sleep.  One cannot help but wonder what next to expect in ...

Tropical Cyclone Yasi hit Queensland, Australia a few days ago, causing millions of dollars in damages.  The silver lining in this unfortunate episode, is that it missed areas of concentrated populations. It is worth noting that the sheer size of the weather system would have wreaked much more havoc  had it hit elsewhere.   What is a Tropical Cyclone A tropical cyclone is essentially a spiraling mass of wet air centred around an area of low atmospheric pressure most commonly known as the "eye". On the ocean, a cyclone is continually fed as evaporated water from the ocean surface condenses, releasing more heat as the air current rises. Owing to the  Coriolis effect , a cyclone spins counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Souther Hemisphere. Strength Categories According to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, Yasi was a category 5 cyclone, the strongest of its kind. It reached wind speeds of 250km/h, and storm surges of greater than 18ft....

I tried my hands on whip cracking in an Aussie sheep farm tour late last year.  Interestingly, whip cracking in Australia has gained enough prominence to be a competitive sport! I must admit that the whip is not my forte, as I could only get it cracking 10% of the time (when I am not hitting myself with it).  Staring at defeat, I decided to learn the science behind this in hope of conquering it some day. It turns out a whip cracks because a sonic boom is created at its tip or topper. A sonic boom is created when an object travels at supersonic speeds such that its surrounding waves of air pressure are compressed into a single shock wave at the speed of sound. The logical question then: what is travelling so fast in the whip? Well, it's the tip. Why? Conservation of momentum! Let's picture this: when you apply a force to a whip, the initial loop motion and wave are applied to the thong, which has a much larger mass than the whip's tip. It is worth noting that momentum...

Want to make   $250 000 ?  Find a big prime number, a really big one. It turns out there are organizations  ready to dough out good cash for a really large prime number.  This is because primes are used in   RSA cryptography . RSA Algorithm Let's look at the algorithm: 1.       Multiply two large prime numbers  p  and  q  to get the product  N 2.       Find two numbers  e  and  d , such that  ed = 1mod((p-1)(q-1)) , where  e  and  N  are relatively prime meaning they do not share any prime factors. 3.       Let's call  M  the original message and  C  the ciphered message:  a.       To encrypt: C = M e mod(N) b.       To decipher: M = C d mod(N)  In essence, using the public key   ( N,e)  will...

Last year, I took a number of vacations which involved cruising, diving, snorkelling and walking on glaciers. Thinking back on those trips, I could not help but notice that water and ice exhibited different colours in different settings.  I decided to dive deeper into the colours of water. Finally, here are my findings. Water’s True Colour The colour of an object mainly depends on the colour of light emitted from it. In the case of water its colour is also affected by factors like light source, absorption, scattering, and suspended materials. Absorption by water is stronger for red light, but weaker for blue light. Water is therefore, intrinsically blue. However, this effect is only apparent when the water is reasonably deep. This is why a glass of water appears colourless whereas a big aquarium looks bluish through the thickness of water. Why is the Sea Blue? I did two cruises last year, one in the Caribbean and the other in the South Pacific. Owing to the depth of the wate...

Happy New Year!  I fell prey once again to the 9 - 5 in December. Combined with the year end holiday season,  this blog saw very little action last month. However, my resolution this year is to post one article each week to make this blog an interesting read for all of you out there! I know they say that resolutions are made to be broken, but I have a great feeling about this one. See you all next week! -PTS