World Cup and Increasing Nationalism

The FIFA 2014 World Cup has become a principal aspect of many people’s lives. Doubtless, players and coaches are greatly affected by the outcomes of these games; however, fans and countries as a whole are impacted by these games. Some of these impacts are beneficial to people and nations, but some are proving to be dangerous and may get us dangerously close to a global conflict.

What is the meaning of Nationalism?

na·tion·al·ism

ˈnaSHənəˌlizəm/

noun

1. patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.

   • an extreme form of this, especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries.

     plural noun: nationalisms
   • advocacy of political independence for a particular country.

( Taken from Google search)

Lets take a closer look at this definition. It has two main parts; a nation is better than other nations and a nation deserves freedom from another nation.

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Angular Momentum

By Eugene Toth

Rotation Inertia

Bodies that have rotation have rotational inertia.  They will continue to rotate around axis unless stopped by an outside force. For example, the Earth rotates around the Sun. Because of rotational inertia, astronauts are exceedingly careful to avoid getting into a spin.

Just as there are linear and rotational velocities, there are also linear and rotational accelerations.  As we use the Roman letter α for rotational velocity, we also use it for rotational acceleration.  Just as linear velocity is equal to angular velocity times the distance from the center of rotation. Therefore linear acceleration is equal to angular acceleration.

By the second law of motion, we know that force = mass x linear acceleration.  Let a represent angular velocity.  Let r represent rotation.  “τ” is the greek letter “tau.”  In our case, we will use it to symbolize “torque.” This formula gives us:

As you exert force on the pedal, the petal turns and the pedal and chain gains angular momentum

F = M r a

Force = Mass x Rotation x angular velocity

Force = mass x radius x alpha

Velocity

 By Eugene Toth

What is Velocity?  Many think velocity is just a scientific name for speed.  They are partially right. Scientist define velocity as distance covered in unit time as in feet per second or miles per hour.

The curve of Force and Velocity. As the force exerted on an object is decreased, the velocity of the object is decreased.

If a ball rolls at 2 feet per second, it’s average velocity is two feet per second, and its average velocity is 2 feet per second. At any given moment, however, the object is going faster or slower. This can be expressed as a fraction

     2 Feet       OR     2 feet/1 second
1 Second

It is important to recognize that the numerator and and denominator are units and not numbers.

The average velocity is 4 feet per second after it has traveled two feet.

In the third second, it covers 18 feet with an average velocity of 6 feet per second.

Chuck E. Cheese and a Rise in Materialism

I was recently at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant / arcade. I picked up on a few details about the place that you may not have noticed, but are very negatively influential to children who play there.

For those not familiar with the place, it is an arcade of different games and you get tickets from every game that you are able to exchange for receipts to buy prizes. Each game is worth a token that you can buy with real money.

Prizes of Chuck E. Cheese

See the problem yet?

Cynicism

There are two types of games, games for fun, and games that are chance based that get you tickets. The ticket games are often more prominent; however, they are usually rigged, making it hard or impossible to get a real prize. The number of fun games are decreasing and decreasing as the point of the arcade becomes more centered around getting enough tickets to get a prize. Again, these games are not fun at all, and only involve pulling a lever or sliding a coin down with accurate timing. Even worse, jackpot prizes reach only 25 or 50 tickets. The prizes are very expensive and often poorly made or easy to lose. They are often worthless. You can buy a small pack of candy for 50 tickets,and a good prize would be 4,000 tickets, an almost impossible task. These are usually supposed to be saved up for, but the store encourages children to cease to invest and instead buy small and cheap toys.

How is modern day economy similar to places like Chuck E. Cheese?

Ode To Binary

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0101000100111100100000010000100100100101

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01000001101000010100100001001101001011011100

110000101110010011110010010000001101001011100

France Advancing into the Future

By Eugene Toth

The New Yorker provided an excellent article about a hydrogen power plant that the government is building that will give almost infinite energy to anyone who uses power coming from it.  The power plant will be a vacuum filled with trillions of hydrogen atoms.  Then, the inside of the vacuum will heat up to enormous temperatures without melting the metal.  The extreme heat will create the hydrogen atoms to move.  This will make the hydrogen atoms fuse creating huge amounts of nuclear energy with only one millionth of normal nuclear energy’s nuclear waste.  This spare nuclear waste will be drained of its resources until it will basically not exist making the power plant, in some sense, have no energy waste at all.