Logarithms B.C.

Once upon a time, there was a village called Hambry, which was the capital of the barony of Mejis.

This is Hambry.

Hambry was located along the coast of the Clean Sea. The village grew rich and prosperous from the fish and crude oil it extracted from the Clean Sea. The fishing industry and oil refineries along the coast were successful year-round. Business was good… for a while.

While the fishing industry factories implemented stringent rules to prevent overfishing, oil refineries performed stingy and unreliable procedures to ensure environmental safety in order to cut budgets. The sulfur removal sector specializing in the separation of sulfuric acid from petroleum were most responsible for the events that unfolded.

Air pollutant and released wastewater levels skyrocketed, but perhaps most detrimental of all was the sulfuric acid byproducts released in massive amounts to the Clean Sea (ironic, isn’t it?). These acidic byproducts affected the coastal wildlife, fishing industry, and, much to karma’s delight, the oil refining industry as well. Needless to say, the town’s fortune dwindled and its people were left starving (fishing provided the main source of food) and furious.

The sulfuric acid released into the water spread….

and spread…..

and spread.

The high acidity (sulfuric acid has a ph of 1) of the refinery waste caused ocean waters nearer to the coastline of Hambry to decrease significantly. Though such marine conditions did not alter fish edibility or survival, something happened to the waters of Clean Sea….

I is ugly guppy. 😦

Yeah, that happened… Freshwater guppies, the only fish species that seemed to be affected by the acidified water, began to mutate to morbidly obese proportions and acquire the face of squidward. The guppies then proceeded to flip the food chain around by eating whole jellyfish, tuna fish, swordfish, narwhals, and sharks.

Omnomnomnom yumyum

However, due to its diverse marine and coastal wildlife, Hambry attracted scientists, environmentalists, and other professionals in the scientific line of study over the years. Among the brightest (aka least modest) were the deceitful marine biologist named Roland and self-righteous biochemist named Susan. Susan and Roland wanted to help the poor people of Hambry (aka retain their fame). Thus both worked together to develop a long-standing solution to rid the Clean Sea of its squidward guppies.

They decided that the most effective solution would be to neutralize the sulfuric acid and collect the resulting precipitate. In order to prescribe the correct amount of base solution to neutralize the waters near the coast, they needed to find the amount of sulfuric acid that was disposed of. Unfortunately, because of the poor planning and procedures occurring in the refining factories, such information was not consistently recorded.

Zzzzzzzz

Susan (the biochemist) proposed to calculate the ph level of the coastal ocean water to determine the increase in acidity caused by the sulfuric acid. She used the basic logarithmic equation , in which p(t) represents the actual ph level and the variable t represents the hydronium ion concentration in moles per liter. From there, the two measured the concentration of hydronium ion, and exponentialized and scientifically notated it to become:

Roland, being the deceitful and treacherous jerkwad he was, had long wished to snatch the glory and adoration to be gotten from presenting such a solution to Hambry… So it would not be out of his character to tranquilize Susan and make off with her hard-earned work in a wild dash fueled by greed. And he did exactly that, except he took her Ti-84 and laptop as well.

Beep beep.

Susan, fueled by the passion to kick 300 Spartans into a bubbling pit of the underworld, had no intention of letting Roland seize victory over her work. Her hardy memory, improved by the sophomoric years of recalling lengthy chemistry formulas to the monster years of university spent cramming in chemical processes on a molecular level, allowed her to easily remember the value of t (hydronium ion concentration). However, she soon realized after the disappearance of her calculator and laptop that 1: Apple won’t insure the loss of the laptop and 2: she would not be able to easily calculate the logarithmic values.

Boohoo

The aboriginal village people conformed to an irrational and nonsensical religion in which they could act excessively condescending towards non-believers (esp. scientists). The more educated folks, including fellow scientists and the like, quickly fled from the village for fear of air contamination sickness. With no one left to turn to for the aid of modern technology, Susan sprinted desperately to the local library.

She made directly for the maths section of the library…

made a quick turn to the second row…

and dramatically lunged for the topmost grandpa-of-a-math-textbook. (Resulting in a twisted ankle and chipped glasses.)

Finally, after several seconds of flipping through pikachu doodles, she found the logarithm table. Her well-toned cerebrum from years of what seemed to be counter-intuitive arithmetic practice allowed her to WHAZAPP through the tedious decimal multiplication with ease.

Meep.

Susan first structured the equation by replacing the value t (representing the hydronium ion concentration) in the ph equation with her discovered t value, which was .

Thus, her starting equation was:

She then demolished the power values  by using the exponent log identity and expanded the parenthesized values using the multiplication log identity . She also broke down the value 429 into 4.29 x 100 so that the log value could be found on her logarithm table. The equation became even more grotesque:

Now, she simply converted the multiplied log values into additions using the multiplication log identity once again, and flicked the negative six exponent by again using the exponent log identity. The equation became a massive obese blob:

At this point, Susan replaced the log 10 values to their whole number equivalents and began running her finger down the rows and columns of decimals to solve the log 3.2 and log 4.29 values. Her terrible short-sightedness caused her to skip repeatedly over the necessary log answers. In the end she whipped the crap out of the damn book with her handy dandy highlighter. From then on, the remaining steps were pretty self-explanatory. This is what she calculated (in her mind. Get yo nasty hands off of that TI 84):

Susan concluded that the Clean Sea near the coast of Hambry had a ph level of approximately 4.2. Oceanic fish start to die when the seawater has a ph of around 3 or less. Thus, Susan discovered that although fish other than the bloated guppies did not seem to experience side effects yet, they were at high risk of poisoning because of such a high level of water acidity. This would greatly compromise the health of Hambry villagers if one were desperate enough to eat one, and ultimately cast the people into famine. (Others would later check her work on a calculator and find out that her answer was correcto!)

After her breakthrough discovery, the bright lights of fame shined upon Susan, which she later used to amass a fortune. Before, she was loathed by the villagers due to a poisonous combination of jealousy, sexism, religion-induced xenophobia, and archaic prosophobia. However, after her success, most villagers came to realize and respect the importance of technology and science and how awesome females are. Thus, they threw out their thousand-year-old religion and quickly adopted a new ideology which greatly empowered women both economically and politically. After Susan cooperated with other scientists to diagnose and create an appropriate base solution to eradicate ocean acidity severity, Hambry experienced a dramatic swell in economic growth. This was largely due to the fact that Hambry’s new ideology created room for greater industrial and commercial prospects. In fact, the town expanded and leached onto the entire left side of the Clean Sea that it became informally known as ‘Clean Hambry Thanks to Susan’ City. Most importantly, the semi-city implemented much stricter safety regulations for factory conduct, adopted greener renewable energy sources, and ultimately reduced air and water pollution levels significantly.

Had Roland calculated the logarithmic values of the plagiarized equation, he would certainly have beat Susan to the prize. (Un)fortunately, he accidentally divided by zero, causing a black hole to poof into existance in his heart, sucking him into an endless oblivion. 😦

FIN.

 

Logarithms were very useful in making calculations such as exponentials less laborious when there were few/no calculators. This is because using the laws of logarithms until the problem consists of whole numbers and logs, each corresponding logarithm value could be found on a log table, thus making the process of solving calculations involving logs much easier.

Usually, results are accurate to the fourth or fifth decimal place, due to the fact that most log tables available are limited to this many decimals representing accuracy. However, this can still be considered reasonably accurate, as the convenience in log tables had advanced numerous fields of science including astronomy. Thus, accuracy of such log values in a logarithm table with at least four decimal places seemed not to deter progress in science this way.

In the past before such logarithm tables were created, multiplication was used in prosthaphaeresis and other mathematical methods involving trig identities. For example, ships in the sixteenth century of Europe, especially those on lengthy voyages, required mathematical positioning of astronomical objects in the sky to find and keep constant track of their course. Thus, astronomers would apply the trigonometric equations of prosthaphaeresis to spherical trigonometry, which were used to compute models of star and planet positions. However, the creation of logarithms (and log tables) made the task less tedious.

Land use & Coastal management

Below is the land use + coastal management assignment:

Rokko Island Assignment

Thanks.

China’s population growth presentation

Population presentation China

Food Waste: Tackling the problem locally

Japan throws away a massive 11 trillion yen worth of food every year. In Tokyo alone, 30 percent of total household waste is generated by food. ““In Tokyo alone, food accounts for 30 percent of all household waste, which is about 6000 tons a day” (Brasor, 2009). As the organic waste rots, the greenhouse gas methane is released into the air. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believes this gas to be 20 times more detrimental to the environment than CO2 emissions.

Japan is a tiny country, its land densely populated and scarce. It cannot afford much space devoted to landfills. Thus, ocean dumping has become a heavily embraced strategy for this growing problem. While this method provides an inexpensive and convenient fix, the ocean gradually becomes contaminated. The food resources that we extract from the sea, fish being a prime example, become poisoned (ironically) by our organic waste. Plankton, arguably the most fundamental aspect of the Carbon Cycle, is expunged by the masses. Usability of oceanic water in desalination plants is severely compromised. Ultimately, the negative effects of this method far outweigh the advantages.

The problematic food waste has indeed been an environmentally and economically tedious undertaking globally. A study on the amount of food waste Canadian Academy students are accountable for indicates how serious the situation is in our community. For four consecutive days, our food waste group weighed amount of food wasted in each grade. On average, each high school student (not including the real seniors) wastes approximately 21 grams of food during lunch every day. Although this is a relatively low figure, the resulting total amount of food wasted per day exceeds 3.5 kilograms. Therefore the problem resides more in creating a better use for the waste than decreasing food waste itself.

On a broader perspective, Japan has strived to develop its technologies to implement greener solutions for the growing food waste problem. In the past years, it has developed cleaner and safer methods for waste incineration. Discover Magazine’s McNicol (2007) states that a facility located in Utashinai “has been eating up dirty landfill and churning out clean electricity since 2003, using plasma (an electrically induced stream of hot charged particles) to process up to 220 tons of municipal solid waste a day.” While our community at CA is economically and politically restricted from implementing such advanced technology, we can adopt local and personal strategies to not only reduce amount of food wasted in CA, but more importantly to use food waste for more innovative purposes. Such solutions include composting, encouraging students to waste less food, and growing organic food from compost.

Composting can serve a multitude of purposes. It has the ability to greatly reduce the level of toxins in soil that has been exposed to toxic matter, for example petrol or pesticides, allowing faster regeneration. Composting also creates rich fertilizer, and plants grown using such soil generally require less water. By gathering the organic waste from our school community to form a compost pile, the resulting fertile soil can be sold to farming or gardening businesses.

Encouraging students to waste less food is obviously a more straightforward and cliché strategy. Although mentioned earlier that food waste reduction should not be the first priority in dealing with food waste, such a strategy would likely go hand in hand with greener alternatives implemented at CA to improve student psych on Compassionately Impacting the World ™  (one scrap of food at a time). Incentives of a point system per grade can induce motivation to waste less, such as finding the total weight of each grade’s waste and rewarding the grade with the highest number of points. Ridiculous as it seems, such methods have certainly worked in the past. CA students generally respond well to point systems for a ‘good cause’, such as the Thai Kids fund or the high school spirit points.

Canadian Academy can also allocate a portion of its land to manually growing food from compost. One particularly ideal location would be the grassy bench area that the large cafeteria windows face, as students can see the fruits of their hard work conveniently. Basically, 6^th and 8^th grade students and high school (7^th grade + elementary kiddies are a nightmare) cooperate to grow various vegetables and fruits from a ‘garden’ created by composting our organic food waste. Growing food using this method not only largely utilizes the composting process, but open up a greater range of student-led activities in CA. The soup kitchen, for example, can benefit by utilizing school-grown organic fruits and vegetables in the distributed food, or even branch off as a means to gain service hours (incentives!).

Each of these strategies for seizing the problem of food waste in the CA community is effective and ineffective in various aspects. Composting is wonderfully versatile in its uses as it can be sold to generate small revenue, incorporated with dry tree leaves on campus to create mulch and reduce labor of workers involved in cleanup, rejuvenating fertility of dried or damaged soil, and various aspects of plant protection and growth. However, this method does introduce problems in utilizing all of the food waste, as demand for soil would easily dip below our supply of potential compost.

Encouraging students to waste less food is a very straightforward method of tackling the situation of food waste, as it provides a direct means to reduce the cafeteria waste in CA from the root cause. Unfortunately, students fail to see the global environmental problems food waste sparks as opposed to actually becoming involved in a green solution, as numerous US studies on high school students indicate.

Utilizing food waste by creating compost in order to grow fresh food allows students to develop a more aware mindset on the global severity of the food waste issue through experiencing firsthand the actual process of the green solution. However, finding an appropriate piece of land whether on or off campus to construct a suitable garden may be problematic. There are limited suitable areas to implement such a change, and one obvious alternative, using the grassy bench space in front of the large windows of the cafeteria, may likely upset students who use the place for recreational or dining purposes. However, simply purchasing a separate land area either as a physically connected part of CA or an off campus site would be an economically insensitive expectation, especially due to (presumably) tightened budgets caused by the shrinking student and high school teacher population (Mr. Norris has the awesomeness level equivalent of 9 teachers).

Depending on whom the compost is sold to, the positive impact we create by recycling food waste through composting can very in scale. The ‘upcycling’ process allows us to solve the wasted food at CA, however the use of such soil in factories that release heavily toxic byproducts can be ever more rewarding. One of the greatest problems caused by factory byproducts lies in their contaminated soil. As the level of toxicity in soil rises, the soil can contaminate water resource as well as nearby plants. Unfortunately, promoting industrial plants to adopt such a measure using our compost would realistically be (nearly) impossible. We can, however, expect reduction of total food waste actually thrown away by calculating the percentage of organic waste composted out of total wasted food. This composting will also carry a positive impact on the school’s ‘economy’ because of the revenue gained from selling the soil, no matter how small.

Encouraging students to waste less food with incentives would be a much more manageable task to measure our impact. Food waste reduction would ultimately decrease, even if minimally, the problematic ocean dumping and incineration processes which are one specific driving force of air pollution: “Up to 190 different types of chemicals are released into the air at one time” (Groundwork, n.d.). Weighing the amount of food wasted by each grade prior to setting up the point system incentive and after would provide useful incite of the reduction of negative environmental impacts in our community CA students cause from wasting food.

Growing food using the compost method described before would impact both the environment and (potentially) start or improve existing charitable activities students can become involved in at CA. Thus, the actual amount of a ‘difference’ that would be made using this strategy could be determined by weighing the total amount of composted food waste material required to build the garden and comparing this figure with the average amount of food students waste per day. This would show exactly how much ‘days worth’ of wasted food could be reused for this green solution, and the effectiveness of dealing with this environmental issue in our school community. In order to determine the success of harvesting food crops in charity projects such as the CA soup kitchen, the allocation of the total percentage of food crops extracted could be examined. Realistically, there would be leftover plants which could be used in Cezar’s Kitchen (extremely unlikely) or composted back into the garden.

Both composting and harvesting food crops from compost have the ability to get students involved and essentially builds upon student mentality of the environmental issues prevalent in the world today. By implementing these projects to overlap CA’s slogan of impacting the world compassionately and what not, the concept of “Think global, act local” reflects the ideally improved student psych. Both strategies, however, would be a burden to CA cost-wise as land would have to be reclaimed or bought to locate these strategies. Encouraging students to waste less food, on the other hand, is both cheap (depending on the ‘award’ from the point system, such as a visit to USJ) and although it probably would not save money for our school, the cafeteria would benefit economically in that with a common trend of less food taken (because a portion of that is dumped into the trash probably due to taking unnecessarily larger amounts of food taken), the cafeteria could highly consider reducing amount of food served. Ultimately, the reward of being actually involved in solving a huge global environmental problem on a local scale far overrides the reward of going to USJ in the long run.

Each alternative to tackling the food waste situation in the CA community are beneficial in increasing student awareness of environmental problems as well as providing small economic support for the school. Thus, a combination of the three would maximize the advantages and be most beneficial. The first major step to adopting such a drastic change would be to either create a new point system in determining the grade to waste the least amount of food. Team competitions have always been effective in motivating students, as mentioned earlier. However, the teams should be close to equal, with grades 1-2, grades 3-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12 being an ideal matching in order to avoid obvious disadvantages caused by having a larger team (youngest elementary school students have a slight advantage due to inexperience on the subject, while high school is handicapped because we should know better!) as well as possible foul play. Middle and high school teams could be led by their corresponding SBC group so that any objections and suggestions can be filtered and voiced. Trashcans for each team during their lunchtime can be set up and weighed after over, with each advisory (or class if in elementary) taking turns in this process much like a typical lunch duty. A composting garden can be set up in the rectangular grass area in front of the cafeteria. With the permission and guidance of school and teachers, trees would be avoided during student-conducted clearing of all grasses, weeds, and benches. After this process, pits can be temporarily dug into the remaining soil, in which the organic waste is dumped and filled and covered with soil gradually every day. After this process is finished and the waste has been given proper time to decompose into compost, the planting process can begin. Finally, the student organizers of certain CA local charity or donation groups can consult their teacher (elementary) or SBC figure about planning and allocation of the compost resources. And after many months of hard work, hopefully plants will appear and be able to harvest.

This ambitious project in finding more environmentally friendly strategies in tackling the ever-rising food waste problem is designed especially to fully involve students and broaden their awareness of such a devastating issue. With such a mindset, we may be able to truly compassionately impact the world on a more magnificent scale.

Coastal management: Why is it important?

Why Coastal management is important

 

 

Coastal management: Groyne

 

 

Coast area

http://www.pref.chiba.lg.jp/english/outline/comp.html

Industry

Industry is the next step to production after resource extraction. It describes the process in which the raw materials are altered to create a finished product in factories. The above picture shows the Keiyo Coastline Industrial Belt, located along the Tokyo Bay. Among the various industries of this area include oil refineries, which are used to alter oil into a form usable in daily appliances, such as gasoline for cars.

http://tinyurl.com/7qnnbck

Resource Extraction

Coastlines provide a convenient method of extracting raw resources from the ocean, particularly so because of being located close to land. Above is a picture of a desalination plant under construction in Huntington Beach Pier. This plant extracts salt water from the sea and desalinates it, transforming it to drinkable water.

http://tinyurl.com/726pvqp

Transport

Sea transport is significantly less costly than air transport, specifically for transcontinental shipping. Coastal shipping, also referred to as short sea shipping, is another popular cheap alternative of goods transport through short distances, namely coastal trades. The large ship in the picture above is shown transporting crates of finished products (after refined in industry) at the Port of Oakland, a crucial port located on the Pacific Coast of the US. It is involving in coastal shipping.

http://www.travelzoo.com/au/local-deals/melbourne/Other/6185

Wildlife habitats

Animal species with certain adaptations/environmental niches would benefit most from areas located around coastlines. For example, swampy, rocky, or tropical lands could be prime breeding grounds for certain species. In the picture above, seals populate the rocky coast of Phillip Island. It also demonstrates tourism in the area, as the tourism industry for the cruise ship views these seals as a tourist attraction to bring in $$.

http://tinyurl.com/83wxl7j

Settlements

Coastlines also are used as settlement areas, for example because of visual appeal. For example, the Carlsbad waterfront homes depicted above are located on the coast of San Diego County, providing a purdy scenic view.

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=118667

Tourism/Recreation

Scenic coastlines attract tourists, which tourism industry can sprout from, such as cruises and reserved beach area. The picture above depicts a tour boat skimming along the Danube coastline. This tour is part of an alternative tourism attraction project in development by Bulgaria and Romania.

Haitian earthquake: Why was it so deadly?

HoHsuan Social studies haiti earthquake

Above is my Haiti earthquake analysis. Thank you!

Decision.

Will come up with an answer to life decision in a few hours. Bye

Math Cyclic behavior investigation

HoHsuan cycle trig assignment

Hi Mrs. Durkin, the link to my trig assignment is up there. Thanks!