I love soccer, camping, road trips along the California coast, traveling, learning from othere cultures first hand and applying that knowledge to my everyday life, hanging out with friends, bonfires at the beach, music, art, reading, adventures(kayaks in big bear), walks along the beach, shopping, movies, crime shows, designing clothes, baking, and falling asleep on the sand.
Evelyn Glennie's performance at the TED conference was very stimulating both to the eyes and the ears. She had a very unique style of playing in both her body movement and the actual sounds she created with the instruments she played. It was very calming in my opinion to hear her play music. Even when she was talking she was captivating. What she was saying was so inspiring. People are so narrow minded to think that we can only hear through our ears. There are so many other aspects, as she said, to listening and hearing music and the sounds around us.
It was inspiring to hear her play because if a deaf person can play better than a person who can hear through the tiniest vibrations, then why can't someone like me learn to play just as well? People are often held back by their belief that a handicap cannot be overcome. Why can't someone in a wheel chair dance, or someone who's deaf play an instrument? You're only as handicapped as you let yourself be. I'm so fortunate not to have a disability to overcome, and yet I don't try nearly as hard as I should to achieve my goals.
This woman, Evelyn Glennie, was able to mimic the exact sounds and vibrations in order to create a specific experience for the audience. She knew what she wanted to play, and how to get it across to them using tempo, beats, and compositions, however as she said "each person experiences music in their own way." By this she means that no matter who you are you're going to feel music in you a certain way and "hear" it differently than others. She feels the vibrations of the notes in her hands, her fingers, her legs, her stomach, and her arms. I hear it and feel it emotionally. Some may just hear the music, having it go in one ear and out the other. It's all different and unique to every person.
Although we have had the ability to watch television on mobile devices for some time now, this new technology will allow us to more efficiently watch TV on devices such as cell phones, netbooks, computers, etc. using antennas for older devices and new technology built into newer model cell phones and other devices.
Importance:
Before this new technology was developed, it was very hard to watch live television on the go. The connections were unreliable, expensive, and didn't have local channels. However now stations will be able to broadcast to small devices such as computers and cell phones for less than a penny a minute. This new service, Mobile Digital TV, allows devices to receive signals directly from signal towers verses over the 3G wireless Internet used in cell phones and some computers. By the second half of the year we should have this new technology in stores, unless any problems arise.
Setbacks:
For now there are not setbacks in the production of this new product. However, I do imagine there might be some connection problems with the antennas at first or some other mechanical problem, just like most new equipment.
A decade ago the world's leading ichthyologists set out to create the world's first ever census of marine life. This was a seemingly impossible task, as over 1,400 new species are discovered every year, but with over 2,000 scientists from over 80 nations working to develop the census of marine life from both past, present, and future, the task is not as large as it once seemed. Once done this census will approximate how many of each species exist and where they live, as well as the ocean's overall biodiversity and the results of their studies will be revealed on October 4th, 2010 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London.
This census will help scientists to keep track of past and future discoveries in marine life, and, using a computer program they also built, predict the future ecology in marine life.
Importance:
Because of this census scientists can now efficiently predict the outcome of a species in years to come, which species will be extinct due to overfishing etc., as well as monitor the rapidly changing biodiversity in the ocean and ocean acidification in the coral reefs.
What is Going to Happen to the Census in 2010?:
This census will be released to the public on October 4th of 2010, providing it's extensive knowledge and findings with the rest of the world.
Setbacks:
Every year about 1,400 new species of marine life are discovered which could potentially set back the release of this census or how updated it is when it is released this October.
I thought the articles were very interesting when they were talking about the number zero's origin. They both talked about the cultures creations of placeholders such as zero, but detailed that the exact origin of zero has not been pinpointed.
To me zero was not necessarily discovered by any one person. This is because the exact origin of zero cannot be pin pointed, and if a civilization was developed enough to have quantities larger than 99 or even occasionally 10, they would in fact need a number or place holder such as zero. Regardless, a person came up with the concept of zero, but we do not know who or where the original founder came from. For instance, the Chinese would use a symbol similar to the modern day 0 (zero) and the Romans had roman numerals such as X and C which represent the numbers 10 and 100. So, even though the Romans or Chinese were not necessarily using zero how we use it today, as a number, they were using a placeholder of sorts to represent it, and so were many other civilizations and cultures around the world.
Because of things like the Silk Roads, a major point of evolution in history, not only were things such as languages developed and dialects brought to other places as well as religious ideas and mechanisms, so was the idea of Zero.
While we may, as people of the world, have different ways for communication, different languages, and different government ideals, math cannot change per country. Math is the same everywhere, regardless of which symbols we use in place of numbers. Because of this, the world had to eventually come up with a common number for zero, or at least a way to define it. No matter where you go, formulas, operations, and expressions will be the same. Zero is the same way, even if it is represented differently the meaning is the same around the world, and without it things could not be computed which is why all cultures have had to accept it as a number.
In the locker problem we had to find out which lockers, out of a thousand, were opened and closed after a thousand students changed the state of the lockers. The first person would open all the lockers, the second change the state of every second one, the third change the state of every third one, and so on and so on. After making a chart of about 50 lockers and going through the pattern, marking it each time it was open or closed as well as how many times its state was changed, my group found that every perfect square locker number was open while the rest of the lockers were closed. We also found that the lockers had a pattern, one open, two shut, one open, four shut, etc.
Looking at the data we found that every closed locker had an even amount of factors, meaning its state was changed an even amount of times. The lockers that were open in the end were the only ones with an odd amount of factors, and its state was changed an odd amount of times. This meant that only perfect squares had an odd number of factors, or an odd number of times their state was changed in the case of the problem. For example four has the factors two, four, and one, because 1x4=4, and 2x2=4, and you only count two once when you list the factors. This relates to the lockers because each locker number will be opened or closed by each of its factors once. Student one, two, and four are the students that will open or close locker number four because they are the factors in this problem. Four has three factors, so it was opened, then closed, then opened. In the case of another number, like 21, there will always be an even amount of factors, one, seven, three, and twenty-one, making it have four factors., i.e. being opened, closed, opened, and then closed by the twenty-first person, and never hit again. Only lockers hit an odd amount of times were open because, as seen in the diagram above (click on it to enlarge), when a locker was hit an even amount of times, it ended up being closed.
In the end of the problem we found out that there are only 31 perfect squares within a thousand giving you 31 lockers open, and 969 closed. In terms of finding a general rule in order to solve this problem further, it would be extremely difficult, even with the pattern found above (1 open, 2 shut, 1 open, 4 shut). The general rule is hard to find because as you extend the problem, the number of closed lockers increases, along with the number of perfect squares. So, if we had to solve this equation for two thousand lockers I would stick to using either the pattern, or just find the perfect square locker numbers within the total amount.
What does it mean to do math? What does math look like? Where do you find math? Who uses it?
Math is everywhere, and that's what I love about it. Because since everything uses it, it can always be solved. So no matter how long it takes you to figure out a problem, there is always a right answer and a way to solve. Now I'm not saying I want to do that, but the fact that I could if I wanted to Is exciting. When you solve math problems in class, it helps to look at them as real world problems v.s. pointless busy work. And the fact that everything you learn can, and most likely will, be used makes it that much more entertaining to complete. Math doesn't have a specific look, like almost like air. Although, unlike air, it can be unseen, or written on a sheet of paper. The best part is math is used by everyone. Our brains automatically compute things when we do every day tasks such as shopping, skateboarding, and even surfing. While in a store you calculate the price of items you want to buy into your budget, or how many of something you need. When playing sports your brain has to calculate the exact time to make a play. Math is so important to our everyday lives, and most people never take the time to realize it.
What is physics? Are we doing physics? Where can you find it? Who uses it?
Physics is a type of science that calculates many different things such as velocity, speed, momentum, and mass. Like math, it is used to solve many real world problems. In our class we use it for things such as labs. In Class so far we have used physics to solve problems like "What affects the speed of a pendulum?"
