Shadow

Yesterday I was waiting for the bus in Golden and it was 9:30PM. It was dark and cars were passing every minute or so. The bus was supposed to get there by 9:19, so I was starting to get impatient and started pacing. I'm not much of a pacer, but that was the best thing I could think of doing at the moment. I noticed the shadow of the bus stop sign moving whenever a car would pass. The headlights were shining on the sign and the shadow would move along the bench. In my pacing I started walking along the shadow and wondered, if I know the speed of the shadow, can I calculated how fast the car is moving? Nope. Can't do it.

I was so disappointed, but i realized why I couldn't do the calculation. The shadow is just a projection from a moving light source, past the sign, onto the bench. The shadow doesn't contain every piece of information that the light source and object contains. There's always a loss of information for a projection. Like if you saw two shadows of people with identical head shapes, but different noses, you'd never be able to figure out who had the bigger nose. It's sad, I know. And even if you had an infinite number of shadows, you'd know who had the bigger nose, but wouldn't know if either person had eyeballs, unless they had particularly bulgy eye balls. So projections are cool, but they always have a loss of information.

Thecool thing is that the more projections you have, the more information you have. That's why 2 eyes are better than one. Two different perspectives or projections allow you to have depth perception. And if we had 2 more eyeballs on our hands, then we'd have even better depth perception. We only have depth perception for things that are moderately close, because when you're looking at Russia from Palin's backyard, the picture in one eyeball is about the same as the picture in the other eyeball. The eyeball separation is so close compared to the long distance that it doesn't really make a difference. It's basically two copies of the same picture.

In calculus, a derivative is a loss of information (like a projection) and an integral is an increase of information (like an antiprojection (whatever that is)). So it goes to show that an integral is way cooler than a derivative for this reason:

• A derivative is an old fashioned overhead projector that your high school literature teacher used to tell you that The Great Gatsby is the best book ever.
• An integral is the hologram that your high school physics teacher used to set-in-stone that physics is so much cooler than any other subject.

'nough said.

So now you know that I like physics and math, but don't really like The Great Gatsby...One of the things that I passionately dislike. Sorry for the extremely nerdy post.

Introduction

My favorite coffee cup. It’s my favorite because I like the tall, but wide shape, the rooster, the lip, and the fact that the inside is colored.

I’m about to start a new life. Since I was 4 years old, my life has been nothing but school (That’s 19 years now) and I’m finally done…for good. I have no job lined up, but thankfully the school paid me way more than I needed for my living situation during grad school, so I was able to save up a LOT of money to just live off of once I’m done with school. I have no job lined up, just a place to live for as long as I can keep paying rent.
In light of my lack of job, being fully aware that I’m going to be bored beyond my imagination, I put together some things that I want to do every week so I can at least look back on my time being unemployed and say I accomplished something. One of my plans is to write a blog, at least 2

entries per week. If you like my writing, then get mad at me when I start slacking. If you hate my writing then send me a note thanking me for quitting to spout out word after word of nonsense. I don’t have a plan for the subject of this blog, but I’ll let you know when I decide…maybe. It’ll probably have something to do with Physics, Bikes, God, Coffee, Baseball, Romance, My Hatred for Computers, How Delicious Food Is, Mountains, Living in Denver, Music, My Favorite Books, or My Passion for Online Flash Games.

Hopefully I don’t bore you to death.

P.S. My name is Jon Banks. I’m almost not a Mines student anymore who used to study physics. I live in Denver. I do stuff that I do and passionately don’t care about things I don’t care about.

Thoughts for the night 'bout the adventure that pursued

-Weird, the bus is at least 10 min late or was over 10min early...

-I'll try out the new bike route that I planned on google maps

-I sure hope google maps is right...

-Nope, google maps wasn't right...NREL likes their high security driveway...

-Oh crap! There's a man wearing minimal clothing standing at his doorway, staring at me...I should turn around...

-I sure hope my memory of the route doesn't fail me...

-Ugh, now that I thoroughly explored this neighborhood I realize my memory failed me...but it's back!

-Please God, let Denver West Pkwy turn into 20th...

-Thank you, God!

-Google Maps should really have an elevation graph that goes with your directions cuz I wasn't expecting this steep hill...

-Ok, turn right on Garrison...

-Oh wait, I haven't been watching for Garrison...

-Aaaah why are there 6 streets in a row that start with the letter G?!

-Missed Garrison...hmm what's the next road that would go all the way through?...

-Oh oh there's Carr! that one goes pretty far. I'll turn here...

-Blast you 6th avenue!!!!!

-Oh, good ole' 10th avenue...

-Darn, 10th stops at some country club...Oh wait, there's a bike detour that goes along a creepy side walk...

-I hope I don't get murdered on this creepy side walk with 6 foot bushes on either side...

-Please God, Please God, Please God, Please God, Please God, Please God...

-Thank you, God. Thank you, God...Hmm I should probably thank God as many times as I said Please, God...

-10th is a dirty road...why do they have to use so much sand in the winter and not sweep it all up?...

-Aah Sheridan, I'm tired of this adventure. Time to bite the bullet and ride down the bumpy sidewalk to 1st...

-Never!!! This adventure's not done!!! I still have yet to see if 10th makes it all the way to Knox! Forget Sheridan...

-Aah, Money Gram place. Such a sweet familiar sight...

-Oh, I the longer I've been riding, the more these thoughts have actually been me talking out loud...Oh well...

-6th Avenue, my arch nemesis!!!! I've defeated you this time...

-Aah, sweet Irving Street...

-I should write down all my thoughts I had while riding here before I forget them all...

-I should write something saying, "In anticipation of all you people who are going to comment, 'Jon, you could have called me and I'dve (best contraction ever!) given you a ride,' I'm glad I rode my bike home. It was an adventure."

-I think I might just work from home tomorrow since it's 12:27...

-I should go to bed...

Check out the sweet route I took

The American Dream makes really lame stories...just sayin'

Reading about adventures makes me want to have my own adventure. I want to be able to experience something unique that's not a prescribed "adventure" that hundreds of people have experienced. Something that is personal to me that affects the way I live afterward.

A lot of people feel the same way and my fear is that I would do what many of them do...start working a real job, live the "American Dream" and work till they die. Yes there is some enjoyment to that, in fact I find myself living that life all the time. I wake up at 6:30, go to work, come home at 5, then do something fun or relaxing in the evening (this is all assuming we're talking about the summer when I don't have any classes). All this is enjoyable if you have a tolerable job and things to do in the evening. But there's more to be longed for.

I remember visiting my grandpa in Tennessee when I was a child. Sometimes in the evening he would tell us stories about the war. His stories were real adventures, painful and world changing. Not long ago I read some stories that my friend wrote about his adventures in South America. His stories had excitement, danger, pain, and sorrow for the people he met. What stories do I have to tell?

"I went to Colorado School of Mines and studied physics. I had lots of great friends. I experienced new things like beer, tubing, having a girlfriend, and bratwursts. I had a few summer jobs where I worked in a building for 40 hours a week. I grew up and got a job...had some good 2 week vacations to New York City, Cancun, Rome, Tokyo, and Alaska where I grew up. I've had a good life."

Will this be the extent of my stories? Will I have such a nice life that I don't have clear memories of specific, life changing experiences? Or will I drop my shields so I can experience an adventure?...a painful adventure that's more than an adrenaline rush, but rather an experience that changes the way I live.

The Banksian Sphere (BS)-Your ultimate source for BS physics: Non Newtonian Physics of the Den's pool table

Introduction

If you didn't already know, my house has a name and it's called The Den. If you've ever played pool at the Den, you know that the pool table will curve the balls in the most unexpected ways. Some would hypothesize that the table isn't level or that it's deformed in some way. Others would guess that the bent cues force us to put strange spins on the balls that cause them to swerve back and forth unpredictably.

Sorry folks, regular physics doesn't work at the Den

All of these guesses may be very well thought out, scientific reasons, but they all make the same assumption: That Newton's laws of motion apply on our pool table. I claim that this is a faulty assumption. With the best of today's rulers, we have confirmed that the table is, in fact, level within a uncertainty of 1 inch. We have also performed thorough tests on the perfectly level street next to our house to confirm that the bent cues only curve the balls slightly in comparison to the curvature that is found on the Den's pool table.

Why it's so hard to not slide off a rotating ice rink

Since the first two hypotheses have been proven false, we must move on to a new theory. Imagine you were on a rotating ice rink. You can imagine that you'd have some difficulty staying on the rink because the apparent centrifugal force. Your body would be forced to move in an unnatural way because you would be in a rotating reference frame. If you by chance figured out how to stand up on the rotating ice rink long enough to hit a hockey puck toward the center of the rink, you would notice something interesting. The puck would curve to the left or right depending on the rink's direction of rotation. If the rink was rotating fast enough, you'd see the puck loop around a couple times before shooting off the side of the rink.

That was an incredibly satisfying tangent, but has nothing to do with my theory. My hypothesis is that there is some invisible force in the center of the pool table, causing the curvature of moving pool balls. It will be my attempt to convince you that this is possible if and only if (IFF) there is a black hole at the middle of the Den pool table.

Gravitational lensing and why black holes are like bifocals

Black holes cause gravitational lensing when something (matter or light) passes near the black hole. We see this on the large scale all the time with light from distant galaxies and we see a similar effect when a meteor passes near a planet, which changes the trajectory. This happens because the planet is incredibly massive and as we all know, two things with mass attract each other (and some like to say that every one in the world is attracted to them for this reason). We don't see this bending of trajectories on the small scale because things are just too light. We did a calculation in Intermediate Mechanics and figured out that it would take lots of years for two billiard balls to attract each other to the point of touching.

Conclusion

Since we've seen the effect of gravitational lensing on the small scale in short amounts of time (on the order of 1 second), I have concluded that there must be an extremely massive, yet very small, black hole in the middle of the pool table. Kudos to whoever can figure out exactly how the black hole causes the balls to jump off the table so frequently.

Acknowledgements: Much thanks to Nathan Jorgensen (AKA Jorgie) as he was my inspiration for this theory as well as the rest of the Denninites (old and new) who have played pool on the table and demonstrated it's ridiculous laws of motion. We apologize to anyone who was been pegged by a ball that mysteriously ejected off of the table during the experiments as well as the countless guests who lost a game because they didn't account for the gravitational lensing effect.

References:

D.A.B. Psycadelic theories on quantum gravity. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronucleicnewtonianbosonic Theory 6 (2000) 1312.

S. Lardenois, D. Pascal, L. Vivien, E. Cassan, S. Laval, R. Orobtchouk, M. Heitzmann, N. Bouaida, Idiot's guide to gravitational lensing. Forum entries from answers.yahoo.com 28 (2003) 1150.

K.K. Lee, D.R. Lim, L.C. Kimerling, How to use lasers to cook your dinner. Dear John Optics Letters 26, vol. 23, pp. 1888-1890, 2001.

F. Grillot, L. Vivien, S. Laval, D. Pascal, E. Cassan, Philosophical physics. IEEE Phot. Techn. Lett. 16 (7) (2004) 1661.

E. Cassan, S. Laval, S. Lardenois, A. Koster, Quantum electrodynamics for kids. Journal of Baby Einstein 9 (2003) 460.

L. Vivien, S. Laval, B. Dumont, S. Lardenois, A. Koster, E. Cassan, Physics is legitimate, I promise! IEEE Journal of Quantum Silliness 210 (2002) 43.

Small Print: Don't believe anything above this sentence since it was completely made up and was extremely unscientific.

Getting Hit by a Car...last year

I was reading through some documents that I wrote in the past and I came across this one that I wrote on October 21, 2008. I thought it was an interesting read so here it is:

It is a humbling experience when you get run into by a car while you are riding a scooter. Last night I was coming home from writing a paper at school and I ran right through a stop sign without slowing down. I saw a car coming from the left and the only thing I was thinking was, I hope I can get across the street before that car, because it as too late to stop. Typically I will slow down for that stop sign but not stop. This time I wanted to just fly through it because the next section is really fun if you go fast. I even thought that I could hear a car but thought that it couldn’t be because I didn’t see the light from the headlights.

Time seemed to slow down as soon as I saw that car coming towards me. I have heard that in stressful times, your brain will go at faster rate, making it seem like everything is going slower.

It was soo stupid of me to do that. I ran that stop sign just for fun and I was not being careful at all. The car hit me and pushed me to the right for about 5-7 feet. My body started falling towards the ground as the car continued to push me and I started going under it. Thank the Lord that the car stopped right before my body went under the tires. I was wedged as far back in the car as I could without being under the tires.

Immediately, the driver came running out of the car asking me if I was ok. As she asked me questions I pulled my body out from under the car. I had trouble responding to her. I could only get 2 or 3 words out at a time. I don’t fully understand why I couldn’t talk but I guess it had something to do with the shock. The driver kept asking me questions about how I felt, if I could talk, etc. Some people who lived in a house nearby came out to help. The blonde lady gave me water in a jar and the man called 911. I did not want him to call because I didn’t want to make a huge deal out of it. I wasn’t hurt that bad and I though I might be able to walk away from it.

In what seemed like 15 seconds the police arrived. There were 2 or 3 police cars and they immediately came up to me and started asking questions. The dark skinned lady asked me my name, where I live, my phone number, and if I could remember what happened. I answered all her questions and I was quite proud that I could answer everything without trouble. My body started shaking uncontrollably. The paramedic later told me that it was because I was scared, it was cold outside, and the pavement was sucking the heat from me.

In what seemed like another 30 seconds, the paramedics arrived. They immediately took over the situation. I asked if it was ok for me to stand up but they told me to wait till the buggy came over. I stood up with the help of the man paramedic and sat in the buggy. They pushed me into the ambulance. Inside there, he checked my whole body making sure nothing was broken. The girl paramedic took my blood pressure and pulse. My pulse was 83 or something like that. Once again I felt proud that all my stats were so good. They patched my cuts which I had on my head, hands, hip and knee. The man asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital with them. I told them no because I didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg doing it. I felt healthy enough. I was mostly just sore and my cuts hurt. The police officers came and asked me a couple more questions like how fast the driver was going. I told them 15-20 mph and they kept asking me if I was sure and I told them that there was no way for me to know exactly how fast they were going. They weren’t going faster than normal.

After sitting in the ambulance for a while warming up I decided I felt well enough to leave. I got out, grabbed my broken scooter, and the man asked me if I wanted a ride. I was partially afraid they would charge me for it so I was hesitant. He told me that it was free so I went with them. They took me home and I thanked them for their help. I walked in the house, put my stuff down and took a shower. Most everyone was asleep so it was really dark inside. The shower was pretty painful, but I needed to clean my cuts so I bore the pain. After stepping out of the shower I immediately started feeling nauseous and felt like I needed to vomit. I sat down on the floor and prepared to vomit into the toilet. Nothing came out. I just sat there for a while until I started feeling better. I went into Narf’s room and told him that I just got hit by a car. I told him that I may come in asking him to take me to the hospital in case my head, neck, or back started hurting or if I started vomiting uncontrollably. I went to bed and woke up at 7 in the morning. I went to the bathroom and it was very painful for me to stand. My shins hurt and once again I started feeling nauseous so I prepared to vomit. Nothing came out again, I just got really sweaty. I went back into the living room to lie down and them I slept till 10:30. I was able to continue with the day but I skipped all my classes because it would have been too painful to walk to them. I did spend some time with God and finished a bunch of homework so it was a good day.

Improv Note Writing!!! Oh yeah!! (like anything I write isn't improv)

If you have spent a lot of time with me, you may have noticed how I say, "You know, there's a Seinfeld episode about that." There is a reason I say this phrase so much and I told Diana about it the other day at Soiree, which I'm sure she was fascinated to find out. Seinfeld has many life lessons and you can learn a lot from watching every single episode multiple times like I have.

My dad, my brother, and I are slightly obsessed with the show and frequently quote it or reference how things around us remind us of a Seinfeld episode (and it annoys my mom). Of course, there are lots of quotes that spurr from Seinfeld that are just fun to say like No Soup for You, Serinity Now, I declare this the summer of George, frolf, Hello Jerry-Hello Newman, get out!, etc. But there are all kinds of everyday situations that Seinfeld presents.

Here is my version of 25 Random Things About Me:

1. The first I want to mention is this: Have you ever had a shirt that's precious to you and you've had it for years and years? I have a t-shirt that is from a camp I went to as a freshman in high school I think and it recently got a hole in it in the wash. Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, but there is a Seinfeld episode about this. Jerry used to have a shirt which he named Golden Boy that was his favorite t-shirt and after many years of having the shirt, it finally died in the wash and Jerry was devistated.

2. Have you ever had the choice of standing in two lines at the theatre or a concert or something and you stood in line for a long time only to realize that you should have been in the other line to get a ticket? There is also an episode about it.

3. Have you ever had the priviledge of hanging out with old people? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

4. Have you ever had a creeper try to talk to you while on the bus/subway? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

5. Have you ever been frustrated with giving gifts to people on occasions that don't necessarily require gifts? There is a Seinfeld episode about it.

6. Have you ever parked in a handicapped parking spot? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

7. Have you ever lost your car in the parking lot? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

8. Have you ever become obsessed with a certain restaurant? There's a Seinfeld episode.

9. Here's a good one! Have you ever wondered why you get more money for recycling in michigan and wondered if it would be worth it to drive to michigan and make some good money? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

10. Have you ever considered wearing a male bra (called the bro)? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

11. Have you ever done exactly the opposite of everything you would naturally do? There's an episode about it.

12. Have you ever looked into a friend's medicine cabinet? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

13. Have you ever wanted to buy something for a couple dollars but only have a $100 bill? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

14. Have you ever had a flight where you sat next to a beautiful woman and had a great conversation the whole way (or wished that that would happen)? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

15. Have you ever had a horrible flight where both people next to you are annoying and don't let you out to go to the bathroom? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

16. Have you ever bought a non-refundable plane ticket, hoping that you could return it? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

17. Have you ever had a girlfriend who does something really well for a living (like gives massages) and you try to get her to rub your shoulders, but she refuses? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

18. Have you ever licked an envelope? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

19. Have you ever considered changing religions for a woman? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

20. Have you ever found a $10 bill in your pocket that you didn't know was there? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

21. Have you ever wondered what the dentist does while you are unconsious for an operation? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

22. Have you ever seen someone with gigantic man hands, but is a woman? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

23. Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a hand model? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

24. Have you ever been really excited about getting a good parking spot? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

25. Have you ever felt under-dressed at a restaurant? There's a Seinfeld episode about it.

I think that 25 things sufficiently proves my point. I think it's wonderful how Seinfeld has so many everyday situations in it. I've considered writing a book about this and the lessons that Seinfeld teaches, but with the advent of Facebook notes I figured a note would suffice. So next time you are doing anything, just try to remember what Seinfeld episode relates to your current situation. Most likely, you will be able to think of one (assuming you've seen every episode multiple times).