Air Quality in Alhambra

          I have moved in Alhambra as a new place for one year and three months.  The environment such as shops, library and restaurants are good to my standard but the air quality of the city is pretty bad sometimes.

            When I had just moved in my new place, I tried to find streets that I can take a walk because I notice the air quality is bad with the heavy traffics in the Atlantic boulevard.  Later on, I learn the Common Wealth street has much fewer traffic and better air in the morning.  However, I also found out:  if I take a walk on Common Wealth street around 8:00 am, I will bump into lots of cars those are parents trying to send their children to schools.  The air quality at that time is terrible.  I also found that there are two basketball courts within the walking distance.  I only use one of them so far because the other one has sign on the fence indicate permissions are required before you can use it.  The basketball court I use from time to time is on a parking lot and still has the same problem as the Common Wealth street; when there are many cars go in and out, the air quality is bad.  Many restaurants I tried in the close by also have bad air times.

            Is there a way that we can clean the air and make our community better?  I read an article many years before and it said a strong enough wind can clear the smog problem.  There is another article I saw related to controlling weather.  Maybe we can clear the air by creating twenty miles per hour wind cross one mile area for five minutes.  The energy source of this wind can be very demanding.  As I have heard before, a storm usually carry the energy of many nuclear warheads.

Spaghettis Tower Competition

          After the spaghettis tower competition, I gained some experiences.  The result is:  only one team can hold up three cups of water and the other teams can only hold one cup of water.  I was surprised at that the tapes seemed to worke so well at the joints but it also gave weakness to the towers.

            The team that holds the most weight is very small from top to bottom.  I believe the smaller the structure, the easier to make it symmetrical.  Other towers all have bigger structures which make symmetry hard to achieve.  The winning team also has tapered spaghetti bunches on the bottom to support the load which I consider a great design.  I think the joints of the towers are what made these towers fail to hold more weight beside the symmetry.  As I saw the water containers are stacked to the top of the towers, the towers show their limits by tilting to a side or corners.  This indicates the weakness of the joints and lack of symmetry.  If the whole structure crushed as the water container is put on top, then this will mean the structure is definitely not able to stand that weight. 

            Our team’s design is to make a structure with two triangles from cut and bunched spaghettis for a top and a bottom and then use three bunched long spaghettis to connect the top and bottom.  We use three of these structures to surpass the require height of 24 inches.  The triangles we made are about 3 to 3.5 inches on each side.  I don’t feel it is too large.  However, not all three of the structures are leveled when it is on the table.  Even though the top of the tower is leveled, the tower leaned to one side when I tried to put the second container on the top.  If all three structures are level, I think we can do better.

            I feel our design is harder to achieve symmetry then the winning.  We started to build before everyone else did, but still can’t win the competition.  The important lesson is:  Bigger is not necessary better, and shoot for the key success factor, which is symmetry in this case.

Hispanics in Los Angeles

          I think Hispanics take a large part of population in Los Angeles and they occupy many labor positions, such as:  cashiers, cooks, or jobs relate to the fast food restaurants.    I feel they excel at these jobs and form important foundation to our community which makes our labor services at low costs.

            One day I went to a place called Burrito Kingdom in Alhambra and notice the owner of the place spoke Korean.  Later on, I notice the Mexican-like worker spoke Korean to the son of the owner.  I was amazed: A Mexican speaks Korean.  Another day, I went to 7-Eleven to get something and the cashier was greeting the next Chinese customer with Mandarine.  The cashier looks like a Mexican.  Also, when I was getting dinner from a Chinese restaurant, there were some kitchen workers hanging outside, some of them are Chinese and some of them are Mexicans.  Just some examples of Mexicans become diverse and working in different environments. Two years ago, when I was looking for a position as a quality control personnel, there was a position working in refrigerated rooms and requires the quality control worker to speak Spanish.  I was interested because the location of the company is close to me but I did not speak Spanish so I could not apply for that job.  When I was about eighteen years old, I was looking for a job with “Jack In The Box.”  I got hired as a fryer.  There were at least three Hispanics working there. 

            Time may change and some businesses or restaurants did not last, but Hispanics seem always be the foundation of Los Angeles labor force as I observed these twenty five years.  Their services are also good.  I feel they are important part of this community.  I saw on T.V. there were some Hispanics worked in the fruit field.  They were paid very little but they keep fruits we get in low prices.  The news men tried to do the same position but he did not work enough to get paid.  However, his message gets through:  these Hispanics are good labor workers.

           

What I Learn From The Egg Dropping Contest

          It took me three to four hours at Wednesday night to make the twenty inches by twenty inches by twenty inches Styrofoam board container my team had decided.  I even took two more hours on Thursday morning to add feet to the box so the bottom of the box can bend down to lessen the force.  However, after I brought the box to the classroom, my team cut the feet off and cut square holes on all five sides of the box to lessen the weight.  They put a stretchable bag on top of the box so cotton balls do not spread out.  Even though we have the highest dropping point and success rate of three out of three, we only got to the second place.  Yes, I would like to be in the first place but our box is just too heavy. If there is another egg dropping contest with the same rules next time, I will prepare for it in certain ways.

            First, reduce the weight of the container to the lightest.  Our container on this competition is just way too heavy.  Yes, I e-mailed everyone before I made the box on Tuesday night about the dimensions of the box but no one changed the plan so the box is 20X20X20.  After the modification on Thursday afternoon, the sack stabled to the box to contain the egg is less than half of the box volume.

            Second, find out how high the maximum height is going to be.  I think our container can take another 5 feet of the highest point we had.  But we can’t get higher than the bleachers.  If we did not go to the bleachers and do the contest in the place the teacher would like, our score is even less.  So find the maximum height next time.

            Third, make sure the cushion is just enough.  Our container is also the tallest of all.  This factor is of less concern for me during this competition but may be a factor in the other competition.  I feel my team did a great job in this consideraion for our container.

            Besides being better next time, I also feel:  in a competition, some people have to loose, it is better to be a good sports about it even we lost.

Is It Possible To Travel Into The Center of Earth?

          Many years ago, I saw a movie.  That movie is about there is problem with earth’s magnetic field and some people have to go close to the center of the earth to fix this problem.  In the movie, the vehicle that went under the earth was able to accommodate about five people and it used laser to clear away its obstacles.  It did not specify where the energy of laser came from.  Is it really possible to go to the center of earth?  If we do, can we get back up the surface?  We already spend tons of energy just trying to get to the orbit with gravity and air resistance go opposite direction of the loads.  If we get to the center of earth, we probably should take the same way back up.  So far no laser is powerful enough to enable us to evaporate any things in the way.  The power source of the laser is a problem also.  Maybe after we can harness antimatter energy, we can try to make a thin and long remote rod that drills into the center of earth with cameras.  The material of the drill is a problem; can it drill well enough for cameras is also unknown.  We may need to find a special path and yet the special path may not show us what we want to explore for.   Many movies show some people go to the inner of the earth and see dinosaurs but we do not know what is really down there.  Why should we go down there?  I will say because of our curiosity.  Is there really a hell down there?  Are there tons of molten rocks and metals?  I heard of the idea of making an elevator to orbit with nanotechnology material as its outer tube and use laser as the power source for the elevator.  The tube material can’t be made now because recent technology can’t provide enough concentration of certain material.  Maybe some other people can figure out how to get to the center of earth.  A trip would be nice.  An elevator to there is even better.  I would not say it is impossible to get there but we also need to aware not to collapse anything on top after we can do so.

What I Know About Chess

          A while ago I was searching in Google: what is the maximum number of possible moves in chess?  The answer I have is that maximum amount of moves is somewhere less than six thousand.  However there is the three-move rule, for example: if you move in two square back and forth three times it is a draw.  I was thinking about being a good chess player when I was about fifteen years old but I have never mastered it.  I found out to improve my chess skill it will cost me financially to certain extend.  I like the thinking process of the chess: the insight, the pin, the fork and the trap.  But it is hard to find other players.  Even if there are other player, the game is not necessary fun.  Playing with computer also gets dull.  Now I am forty three years old and I subscribed one year of Chess Life magazines since last year.  I enjoy them very much.  However, I can’t just read the text and picture the position of the piece very well.  I like to try some products advertised in the magazines, too, but do not feel like to spend more money.  According to the magazine, in the 2010 Chess Olympiad, US did not do very well for both gentlemen and ladies.  For men, the result is 5^th to 10^th rank.  For women, the result is 3^rd to 5^th rank.  To me, I would definitely love to make money by playing chess but I do not have the ability to do so.  I know some people take a long time to make a move in chess but I rather play the move quickly.  I have not play a real chess game for many years now.  I did play a Chinese chess game on an airplane when I was traveling to Taiwan last December.  Chinese chess is different from Western chess.  Anyway, I think reading about chess is a good way to keep me occupied.

What I Think About Movie: Inception

          I saw the movie “Inception” about 3 weeks ago in DVD.  I feel it has a great topic, as part of the word “Perception” is part of the word “Inception.”  The movie is about a person named Dom Cobb invented a machine that can make dreams feel like reality.  However, his wife Mal killed herself because she liked dreams world better than the reality.  That part of Cobb kept hunting him.  He also left his children because of money even though he regretted that later on.  However, he united with his children in the other person’s dream.  The movie seems to indicate with the machine Cobb had created a person can keep dreaming after he or she died.  At the end of the movie, obviously Cobb is drowned.  However, his dream still continues as he reunited with his two children in the dream.  I feel if a person is dead, his thought should stop and so does his dream but this is not the case in the movie.  There is also the idea of a dream within a dream when Cobb was trying to get the safe’s combination from a rich person’s son.  The time with the machine in the dream is twelve times as long as the real world.  These are interesting ideas to me.  The machine that makes dream world real can be brought into a dream and the time in the dream is actually longer.  There is a person died when he is in a dream within a dream.  In the movie, he was said to be in limbo forever but he seems to have a life somehow and I feel the movie contradict itself on this part.  In the movie, when characters are in a dream within a dream, they are things unpredictable happened that is why a person died.  To me, our dreams are not controllable.  I do not know what I am going to dream when I am going to sleep.  The girl that Cobb recruited helped him a lot in the movie.  She tried to understand his struggle in the dream and help him to complete the mission at the end.  Cobb said if he is in the other person’s dream, he token will spin forever, and that is what I see at the end of the movie.  Cobb was in a van diving into the water through the side of the bridge at the end.  There is the picture of him reunited with his kids with his token spinning on the table, so he died and keep dreaming.