Don Khuth Chronicles

When I was in high school, I loved science class. I was fascinated with all the cool things that the teacher was telling us. I loved it more than math. If computers didn’t get in the way, I would have probably turned out to be a scientist. I’ve always found it fascinating when they discovery new things.

Science class was the one class that I looked forward to attending. I didn’t always like the teacher because some teachers can’t really teach. They say that “those who can do but those who can’t teach.” What do you do if you can’t do and can’t teach?

I’ve had some lousy teachers during my days but there are the few that stands out and captures the imagination of a teenager. Those are the teacher that makes the difference. I’ve been lucky enough to have two. And although they weren’t computer teachers, they did teach me some valuable lessons in life.

Anyway, my most memorable science class was when we did an experiment that requires the use of a microscope. We got the class to look at small things up close like a strand of hair, a dime and some cells. When I looked at a strand of hair up close, I was fascinated by the way it looks because it’s not as smooth as you think it would be. One of my class mates dyed her hair often and when we looked at her hair, it was almost transparent. I don’t know if that was caused by all the bleaching or not but I had no idea that it was that transparent.

For the close up of the cell, we had to scrape off a bit of skin from the inside of our mouth and place it on a slide. When we placed it underneath the microscope, it was hard to see so we had to add a little iodine to help outline the walls of a cell membrane. It was interesting to see the lining of the cell walls but I don’t think the magnification was strong enough to see the nucleus. Maybe we were able to see a little dot but I don’t quite remember.

But those two close ups were nothing compared to the close up of the Canadian dime. On one side of the dime is a ship called the Bluenose, a Canadian schooner from Nova Scotia. I think the ship was placed on the coin because it won the 1921 International Fishermen’s Race. I remember looking into it when I was in high school and seeing a dog at the back of the ship.

As you can see now, there doesn’t appear to be a dog on board. I think it might have been the imagination of a teenager that saw the dog because it’s no longer visible. My coworker took this picture using a powerful microscope in the engineering lab. He checked out a few older dimes as well in case they might have taken the dog off for the newer coins but those came out negative as well.

The whole dime and dog thing was just a curiosity that I’ve had since high school. I thought it was cool that they were able to add a dog onto the back of the ship but I guess it turned out to be my wild imagination. But still, it’s nice to see things up close like that. Things look a lot different when you look at it from a different perspective.

After reading Final Theory I started to notice that there were a lot of news about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN). This multi-billion dollar project is set to start up its engine tomorrow and it has a few people on their toes. If their speculations are true, the end of the world is near.

The LHC is the largest particle accelerator facility in the world. It houses a twenty seven kilometer long tunnel which is located 174m underground. Part of the tunnel is in Switzerland and the other part is in France. On Wednesday, they will accelerate protons to more than 99.9999% the speed of light before smashing them together. The beams will be running parallel to each other but in opposite directions. When they’re ready, powerful superconducting magnets will bend the beams so that the particle stream collides inside four large chambers. The collision will generate temperatures about 100,000 times hotter than the sun. Scientists believe that this will created the conditions that were present after the Big Bang some fourteen billion years ago.

By performing this experiment, physicists hope to find a subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson or the God particle. If I understand it correctly, the Higgs boson is the particle that gives mass to other particles. It is the key to unlocking the mystery of the fundamental particles. Nobody knows why particles are charged the way they are or why they weigh differently so they’re hoping that the LHC will shed some light on the matter. The LHC won’t be able to measure the properties of the Higgs boson precisely but it will either discover it or exclude it. if they discover it, that’s good. If they exclude it, that’s bad.

On the other hand, there are people who are afraid that the collision will cause a something bad. If all it took was a spark to create the Big Bang, what’s to say that the same won’t happen when the particle collide? If the collision is concentrate at a small enough point, it could puncture a hole in space and create miniature black hole which will swallow the Earth from the inside.

All of that sounds implausible but then again, I don’t know much about physics. I don’t know much about black holes but a small one is probably too small to do any damage. But if one does open up, how do you plug up a hole in spacetime? Science has always boggled my mind in some way and I find myself asking questions and then trying to stop before I go crazy.

You can watch as they fire the first beam via a live broadcast. They’re schedule to start at 9:00am CEST which is 3:00am EST. If you want to tune in, you’d have to be up pretty late. And, if you’re reading this after Wednesday, September 10, 2008 it means that the world is still here and that we have billions of years to go before our demise.

I was sitting in the car this morning, waiting for it to warm up when an advertisement came on the radio about cancer. The ad involved a guy narrating his experience with the “Walk for Cancer” awareness campaign. These people walk to raise money to help with the research to find a cure for cancer. To be honest, I don’t think it should cost all that much to find a cure for a disease. It probably cost so much because there are people who are standing in the way of progress. The people performing the researching think that it’ll cost millions, if not billions to buy the technology needed to perform the reason.

Lately, there haven’t been a whole lot of new inventions. You’ll hear about new stuff every now and then but those new stuff are just newer version of something that’s already out there. For example, the iPhone, it’s not new technology. It’s just a bunch of old technology put together into one device. It’s nice to have because you’ve got everything right there at your finger tips but it’s nothing new.

I’m sure that there are lots of things being invented everyday but it doesn’t make its way to the public’s eye. Conspiracy theorist could say that big corporations are buying up patents so they can have the technology for themselves and not release it. For example, if there was renewable energy that can used but it will cause the oil company to worry about profit, the oil company will go in and buy the technology and once they’ve got it, they’ll destroy it. It might not be true but it could happen.

Take a look at the video below. It’s about an old man who finds a way to kill cancer cell. This serendipitous find can save many lives but at the same time, it could resolve the high fuel prices that we’ve been experiencing.

If you want a global crisis to be averted, leave it to the retired folks. They have more than enough time on their hands to get things done. And I’m sure that they have enough money to fund whatever it is that they want to do. If you leave it to paid employees to work on, they’ll probably take their time to find the answer because the longer they take, the more money they’ll be making. Some people make way too much money for doing the little amount of work that they do but more on that later. Money is a great motivator to get things done because without it, not too many people are willing to do the work.

Everything that can save people any amount of money will somehow have a big impact on the economy. The country will go into recession if its citizen ended up just saving and not spending a penny. The people of the US are in debt for something like a trillion dollar. There’s no way they can pay for all of that because the interest alone will kill them.

There are many things that were invented to help resolve an issue but the solution had no money in it so no one is willing to invest in it. I read a while ago that there was an inventor that invented a device that converted some liquid into a sort of fuel. He wanted to mass produce this device but he didn’t have the money. So what he did was built the device, one by one and gave it away for free in hopes of word spreading. Maybe he had an ulterior motive of getting rich later on who knows but the bigger corporation wasn’t willing to support his idea because there’s no money to be made in it.

The concept of time traveling is not new to most. Anyone who grew up in the 80′s knows about the ‘Back to the Future’ movies. This movie was a great movie and it caught my attention right away. This movie was probably what made me interested into science in the first place. I was fairly young at the time but that didn’t stop me.

I remember sitting outside on the sidewalk one summer night. I lived in a small little neighbourhood on East Avenue North. It was warm and peaceful night and the sky was clear. Gazing up into the heavens, countless stars could be seen. There weren’t many street lamps on this street thought, only a couple on the corner of Barton and East Avenue. It was a perfect night to be star gazing but I knew nothing of the past time.

I was sitting on the sidewalk with my neighbour from across the street. When I first moved into this house, my brothers and I didn’t get along with them. We were the only Asian family that lived on a street that had a lot of Portuguese residents. The first few weeks, they kept teasing us and chanting, “Chinese people never swear! A hole! A hole!” My brothers and I looked at each other and I was like, “Are we Chinese?” I didn’t know much English back then so I had no idea what the word was for my nationality in English but apparently I was Chinese.

After a few of chanting I finally got them to shut up. They assumed that I knew karate so I used that against them. It worked out pretty good because every move I did looked cool to them. They were impressed with my martial arts. Yeah, my Kung Fu was good back then. Eventually, I showed them some moves and we became good friends.

The family from across the street had four boys, Mike, Paul, David and the little guy whose name I’ve forgotten. The one that I got along with well was Paul because he was my age. We didn’t attend the same school though. I went to Sandford Avenue School while he attended St. Brigid Catholic School. Attending different schools didn’t stop us from hanging out afterwards though.

One summer night, Paul and I were outside sitting on the sidewalk in front of my house. We were talking about time traveling. This is a pretty big topic for a couple of grade three kids. We were discussing the concept of time traveling and what we would do if we could travel back through time.

Paul: I would come back to July 29, 1989 at 8:30pm and talk to ourselves.
Me: Oh yeah! That would be awesome!
Paul: Yeah! And I would bring us some money too so we can buy lots of Bazooka Joe’s!
Me: Yeah! We’re going to be rich when we grow up. I’ll be driving those fast cars because I’m going to make a lot of money fixing cars!
Paul: Awesome! We have to remember this day. In the future, we are going to come back to July 29, 1989.
Me: You think we it was possible to come back?
Paul: Yeah! Look what happened in the movie. But when we come back, we’re coming back in a space ship!
Me: Coooooool! I get to drive right?
Paul: No! It will drive by itself!
Me: Oh yeah! That’s totally sweet, man!
Paul: Yup! Me and you buddy!

Even though it was 8:30 at night, we weren’t whispering because we were so excited about the concept. Now, my memory is not that good. I am not sure if that’s the exact tat we my friend and I talked about but it was something close to that.

Time traveling isn’t a complex concept to understand but the theory behind it is somewhat mind boggling. There are a few paradoxes that can drive you crazy. If you’ve read up on some of these paradoxes you know that the contradiction is incomprehensible and will make you run in circles. Time traveling is something out of science fiction but it may actually become a reality. Scientists believe that they are able to send a photon back in time, thanks to quantum mechanics. I’m very eager to see if this little experiment of theirs is going to work. Logic says that if it did work and time traveling is possible, my friend and I would have seen our future selves that summer night in 1989.

There were a lot of stars out tonight. As usual, the big dipper was visual. You don’t get to see too many stars out in the night sky due to the amount of city lights. But tonight, I caught a glimpse of a shooting star. And not just one shooting star either, a few of them.

Tonight, I must have seen five or six shooting stars within a one hour time span. I didn’t see them straight on because I had no idea when or where the next one was coming from. I caught sight of them from the corner of my eye. As I turned to look in that direction, they were gone. But I turned just in time to see it. Never before have I seen so many in one night. I’ve read somewhere that there was supposed to be a meteor shower somewhere around August 20 but that’s a week away. The last time I saw a shooting star was around July of last year. I thought it was just coincidences that I saw so many.

I searched around the internet and found out that what I was seeing were the Perseids and apparently they are the most watched meteor shower. They were expected to show up around this time of the year with the peak periods being tonight. No wonder I saw so many! If I had stared into the night sky more, there was a chance that I could have seen 15-30 shooting stars.

Supposedly, there is this thing going around informing people that Mars will be passing close to the Earth again this year. The last time that happened was back in 2003. I remember because I was in Algonquin around that time. There was an old man at the beach who had a telescope and he has Mars in view. I got a chance to see the red planet up close. It wasn’t a clear view of it but it was still cool to see Mars with my own eyes for the first time. It would be nice to see it again this year but right now, Mars is too close to the sun for safe viewing.

Anyone wanting to see some shooting stars now is a good time. The meteor shower is supposed to last until August 25th with the peak being August 12th and 13th. If you are in the northern hemisphere look up towards the north western part of the sky. The area where I saw a lot was between the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia.

What you are seeing in the picture is the start of a project that I’m currently working on. The purpose of the project is to make a miniature air conditioner, at least that’s what the final product is supposed to be. In the picture, you can see the main components of the project, a power source, a fan, a thermoelectric converter (TEC) and a light emitting diode (LED) for show. Most of the parts are pretty basic except for the TEC plate. The TEC plate is a ceramic plate that will generate the cold air needed to make this A/C. How is it going to produce coldness you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked. I’ll try to explain it as easy as I can so try and keep up.

The TEC plate works on the principle of the Peltier-Seebeck effect. This thermoelectric effect ¹“is the direct conversion of heat differentials to electric voltage and vice versa.” What this means is that, as you apply power to the TEC plate, current, or the flow of electricy, is passing through two different semiconductors connected at two junctions and because these two semiconductors have different property, one side of the plate gets hot while the other side starts to get cold. The current takes the heat from one junction and disbursts it out the other junction. It does this because it is trying to return to the equillibrium that existed before power was applied by absorbing energy at one connector and releasing it at the other.

In order to make the cold side as cold as possible, I’ve attached a heat sink to the hot side. This will help draw the heat away from the hot side so that the cold side can get colder. Soemtimes the sides of this TEC has a temperature difference of 50 degrees Celsius. So if the hot side remains at 20 degrees Celsius, the cold side has the potential to be -30 degrees Celsius.

As you can see from the picture about, water droplets has formed on top of the TEC plate. The water droplets are made because of condenstation. I’m sure you remember that from middle school. Water vapour condenses onto another surface because the surface is cooler than the temperature of the water vopour in the air.

Now, if I pumped in enough power, eventually those water droplets would freeze into ice! If it does turn into ice, then I’ve got myself an A/C and all it costed me was 10 bucks.

Of course, using batteries won’t cut it. I have to build a transformer to regulate the power being used. This plate can handle 15V of electricy and all I’ve got to power it are a bunch of D size batteries. So it’s not going to freeze the water droplets that easily. I need better heatsinks, one to draw out the hot air and one to distribute the cold air.

If I make any progess I’ll let you know. Maybe I can sell the final product on eBay. Those people will buy anything!

On July 4, 2005 at approximately 1:52am a space craft, code named “Deep Impact” launched its impactor on a collision course with Comet Tempel 1. This event took place near Spica in the constellation Virgo. If you’re not into astronomy, Virgo would be somewhere in the southwestern sky, roughly in the same area as the moon around this time.

The impactor was totally vapourized by the comet. But before it was destroyed, it managed to take a bunch of photographs, at least 3sec before its destruction.

After the separation of the impactor, Deep Impact started its flyby mission and recorded the impactor’s course towards Comet Tempel 1. The comet is about 7km wide and the impactor is about the size of a coffee table. So you can image the kind of damage this coffee table size impactor caused on the comet. The impact between the two objects caused the comet to slow down a fraction of its speed. Imagine you’re driving down the street and you hit a bug, that’s how much slower the comet would be going.