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Physics

Importance of Physics in Different Fields

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Physics is the foundation of other sciences, technology, and most engineering, which develops mathematical literacy. The most common complaint of a student usually sounds like this: “Why do I need to study this subject if I’m not going to do it after school” or “What are my benefits from studying this subject in the future”.  This is due to the fact students face difficulties in physics studying during classrooms and in most cases, they require physics homework help online from real assignment experts.

Indeed, does a student need to cram formulas and deal with the laws of Newton and Faraday? Maybe, let’s do something interesting better? Surprisingly, even many adults do not understand why they taught physics at school and sincerely do not see the connection between this entertaining science and everyday life. Let’s find this connection.

So why do we need this science? Its task is to understand how certain phenomena occur, and why specific processes are formed. It also helps predict certain events. Have a look at the elevator, which quickly and easily takes you to the desired floor, different means of transport, computers, tablets, and phones – all of them won’t work without physics.

It is not just a school subject, it is something more. Many natural projects are performed with the assistance of physics, e.g. the simplest example of a physics process in life is the brewing of tea. This process is called diffusion. Weather is another great example: rainbow, shadow, refraction of light are all wonderful sciences. If physics did not exist in life, it is unlikely we would have such a convenient life now. This science is an irreplaceable thing in the life of every person.

Physics and Other Sciences

Physics is the basis for STEM subjects that are studied at a technical university. For example, electronics is a synthesis of several branches of physics: electromagnetism, solid-state and gases, etc. Even the queen of sciences – mathematics is a tool for physical research. Lasers are the physics of the stimulated emission of atoms and molecules. Holography is a technical use of the phenomenon of interference and diffraction of electromagnetic waves.

Chemistry is influenced by physics more than any other science. All chemical processes are the formation or destruction of bonds between valence electrons. In essence, theoretical chemistry is all physics.

Astronomy is older than physics, but it became a science when experts were able to explain why the planets and stars move exactly the way and not otherwise. The most startling discovery of astronomy was the fact that stars are made of the same atoms as Earth. This has been proven by spectroscopic physicists. Where do stars get their energy from? This became clear only by 1940, after the discovery of the fission reaction and thermonuclear fusion.

Furthermore,  with the help of knowledge of physics and thanks to physical equipment helpers used in biology, the mechanism of all biological processes can be understood at the molecular and intracellular levels.  DNA was discovered with the help of electron microscopes. What about the most complex processes of nervous activity? These are electromagnetic phenomena.

Dust Removal

Clean air is required not only for a person but also for technological processes. Due to the presence of a large amount of dust, all equipment becomes unusable ahead of time. Escaping dust with gases is a very valuable process. This is since the purification of various industrial gases is extremely necessary today. Now, this problem is very easily solved by an electric field. How does it work?

Inside the metal pipe, there is a special wire that plays the role of the first electrode. The walls of the pipe provide the second electrode service. Due to the electric field, the gas in it begins to ionize. Negatively charged ions begin to attach to the particles of smoke, which comes along with the gas itself. Thus, they are being charged and begin to move to set on the pipe walls. After purification, the gas moves to the exit.

Health Monitoring

Thanks to physics, a huge contribution to the development of medicine has been made. The discovery of X-rays made it possible to identify various diseases of human internal organs and detect bone fractures. Specialists can measure blood pressure, use electric currents and magnetic fields for treatment, and other lasers and optical devices. Still,  this is not a complete list of the greatest achievements and possibilities of physics in medicine.

Gravity, Momentum, and Other Availability

Physics discovers the principles of the law of gravitation. That is, we already know that if you throw an object, it will fall on the ground. What does it mean? The planet Earth pulls down us and all things. Moreover, it pulls down even such a heavy space object as the Moon. Also, any things that we throw on the floor, do not hang in the air because thrown objects are affected upon by acceleration created by gravitational and friction forces.

Therefore, knowing about these laws, you can understand what happens if you jump with a parachute. Is the area of the parachute related to the slowdown in the fall rate? Maybe you should ask for a larger parachute? How does the impulse work on your knees, and why can’t you land on straight legs?

How to choose alpine skiing? Are you a professional skater or an amateur? Think about friction, check these parameters for your new skis. If you are a beginner and have a lack of physics knowledge, then more likely you’ll probably make a mistake in ski selection.

Okay, you are not going to skydive, and you don’t want to know anything about alpine skiing. Let’s get back to everyday life. Here is a nut and a wrench in front of you. What part of the wrench should you grab to apply maximum force to the nut? Those who had physics assignments studied will take the wrench as far from the nut as possible. To open a heavy door, you need to press on it from the very edge, away from the hinges. Do we need to talk about the lever and the fulcrum that Galileo lacked so much? It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of physics in all spheres of life. After all, it is everywhere: beginning from household and telephone to jetliners and space flights. It should be remembered that all the benefits of civilization became possible thanks to scientific discoveries.

Who doesn’t enjoy listening to a good story. Personally I love reading about the people who inspire me and what it took for them to achieve their success. As I am a bit of a self confessed tech geek I think there is no better way to discover these stories than by reading every day some articles or the newspaper . My bookcases are filled with good tech biographies, they remind me that anyone can be a success. So even if you come from an underprivileged part of society or you aren’t the smartest person in the room we all have a chance to reach the top. The same message shines in my beliefs. All it takes to succeed is a good idea, a little risk and a lot of hard work and any geek can become a success. VENI VIDI VICI .

Apps

Anyone willing to pay can now access the Tesla FSD driver assistance beta

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Elon Musk announced in a tweet that Tesla is opening up its so-called full self-driving (FSD) beta to anyone who has paid for it after gradually opening it up over the past few years. In North America, he added, “Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to anyone who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have purchased this option.”

With automated features like automated city steering, automatic parking, smart vehicle summoning, and traffic light/stop sign recognition, FSD builds on Tesla’s “Autopilot” driver-assist feature. The feature is a paid upgrade that costs $15,000 after a $3,000 price increase in September.

Tesla initially stated that it would introduce fully autonomous driving features in 2018, but they didn’t actually do so until July 2021, to a select group of “careful and expert drivers.” The version 9.0 beta saw a wider release, but testers could only participate in an early access program. Tesla removed the requirements for at least 100 Autopilot miles and an 80 safety score on the most recent FSD release, so now anyone can get it.

However, Tesla is widely implementing FSD at a time when regulators are closely monitoring it. In a recent expansion of its investigation into a string of Tesla crashes involving first responders, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now looking at most models. It is also looking into more than 30 incidents involving Autopilot in a separate investigation.

Musk has long promised fully autonomous vehicles without a human driver. Most recently, he said he believed it might come this year, but in Tesla’s most recent earnings report, he backtracked on those statements. Following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the price of Tesla’s stock has been falling precipitously recently.

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Consoles

Gotham: The Underrated Superhero Show

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Superhero media is the hottest thing on the street right now. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is now over twenty movies in, with Avengers: Endgame being the second highest grossing film EVER, beat only by the 2009 film Avatar.

Super Hero TV shows are also incredibly popular, such as Marvels Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and Agents of Shield, but Marvel isn’t the only studio out there.

DC has produced some great films as well, most notably Wonder Woman, and has licensed out to CW several TV shows, including Arrow, Flash, and Super Woman, Legends of Tomorrow, and the upcoming Batwoman.

However, there is one Super Hero TV show that I feel deserves way more attention; the Fox Networks TV series, Gotham.

 

Gotham: Spoiler Free

Don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything in this paragraph. Gotham, in essence, is a five-season origin story for basically everyone in Gotham City. “But wait!” I hear you cry, “We’ve already had Batman’s origin way too many times. I’m sick of it.”

Yep, but I didn’t say Batman, did I? I said EVERYONE in Gotham city.

While the show opens with the iconic Batman origin, it’s done from the perspective of Jim Gordon, who’s just at the beginning of his career. You see, Gotham is more of an origin story for everyone other than Batman, and like a progressive jackpot, the more you’re in Gotham City the crazier you’re gonna get out of it.

What makes this show so good is that it presents all of the usual comic book absurdity while keeping everything grounded by presenting it all from the point of view of the do-it-by-the-books Jim Gordon.

If I’ve intrigued you, I highly recommend you stop right now and go watch Gotham, because I’m about to enter spoiler territory.

Gotham: Spoiler Zone

Still here? Good.

What sets Gotham apart from, say, the CW shows is that the Super Heroes and the good guys never get any powers. Not one. No super strength, speed, healing, or magical hacking powers. No Stark Tech, holograms, or alien alloys. You see, when the Flash can run so fast he can go backward in Time, it’s really hard to believe that he can ever be in any real danger.

In contrast, in Gotham, the heroes are always fighting the odds against these villains, and at the same time the villains are never so powerful they should be able to kill the heroes. That doesn’t mean the villains aren’t scary, though.

One of this show’s strongest points is its characterization. Everyone is incredibly well written, from the believable relationship of Alfred and Bruce to the stubborn Jim Gordon to the psychopathic Oswald Cobblepot.

Oh yes, the Penguin is here, and he is scary. He isn’t the fat fish mutant from the Tim Burton days. He is machiavellian and murderous, and although at the beginning we see him licking the boots of Gotham’s organized crime lords, I assure you it doesn’t stay that way.

Oh, and here’s a major spoiler warning. I really recommend watching the show before I gush about this part. There’s a love triangle.

With who, you may ask? Jim Gordon perhaps? Bruce? Harvey Bullock, perhaps? No, no, and no.

Gotham features a love triangle between Edward Nygma (the Riddler), the Penguin, and a woman named Isabella. Don’t worry, it’s better than that because the two men aren’t pining over the woman; Isabella and Penguin are both obsessed with the Riddler.

It’s as absurd as it sounds, and devolves into the chaotic jealous murder-fest that such an arrangement must inevitably fall into. It’s amazing.

Final Answer: Why should you watch Gotham?

So let me summarize why you should watch the underrated Gotham. It’s got great writing, amazing character arcs, unexpected plot developments, and a level of tension and stakes that other super hero shows are just… lacking.

By making Jim Gordon the focal point, the show presents a strong sense of morality and justice by making it really difficult to do the right thing in a corrupt and collapsing world, when half the time it’s easier to just keep you’re head down and look out for number one.

It’s easy to be a hero when you’re Super Woman, but it’s so much more meaningful when you’re not immune to bullets.

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Gaming

Becoming Sombra: A Technological Retrospective

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Sombra's Conspiracy Wall

A Brief History

Sombra, real name, unknown. To the world, she doesn’t officially exist. Skills include computer hacking and cryptography. Her story is a hacker’s cliché. Orphaned by killer robots, recruited by a well intentioned Mexican gang, hacks an international conspiracy, and goes into hiding. She emerges a year later, a sexy, cyber punk hacktivist. Hold on, that’s not a hacker cliché?

Regardless, that’s exactly what Sombra’s story is. Ever since her family was killed in the wake of the Omnic Crisis, she turned to hacking. It was her intention to bring peace to a worn torn Mexico. She hacked politicians and police commissioners; not only to reveal their evil deeds but also to gain new knowledge. One might say that she had an addiction to information. It was this fixation on learning on learning the world’s secrets that put her in a compromising situation. As unveiling, a worldwide conspiracy is wont to do.

And so, like a scene from Mr. Robot, the girl “formerly known as” got rid of all traces of her existence and went into hiding. For awhile at least. It was during her time in seclusion where she donned her hacker moniker and enhanced her inferior human flesh with cybernetic implants. Thus the girl was gone and Sombra was born. Even more determined to unveil the network of shadows pulling at the world’s strings.

Enter Talon

Certain exploits under her new identity drew the attention of a variety of groups, including Talon. Talon is an extremist terrorist organization (depending on who you ask), led by former Blackwatch commander, Gabriel Reyes. To further her own quest for the truth, she joined their ranks. She views her time in Talon as a means to an end. A way to help uncover the secrets of the global cabal she stumbled upon all those years ago. I guess when someone destroys your life, you’re bound to have a vendetta against them. An itch that can’t be scratched, so to speak.

While on a mission in Russia, Sombra seized an opportunity to relieve that itch. If only temporarily. The assignment was to assassinate Katya Volskaya, the CEO of Volskaya industries. The hero of the Russian people. Things went awry when Sombra chose to take things into her own hands. She purposely triggered the alarm system to reveal Talon’s presence. But why compromise the mission? Well, because of a damning piece of evidence in her possession.

It turns out that the most powerful woman in Russia, who swore to protect her people against the Omnics has dealings with the enemy. Sombra decides to use this information as leverage and blackmails Katya. The two form a “friendship” based on extortion. Sombra vow not to reveal the career ending info as long as Ms. Volskaya does her a favor every now and again. As solid of a foundation for a friendship as any!

Information Technology

We’re all caught up on past events, now we’ve arrived at the real reason behind writing this article, technology. Specifically, Sombra’s technology. With tech that lets her hack the planet, vanish like Harry Potter, and teleport like Kirk and Spock, how can I resist dissecting it all as a nerd and former IT professional? Rhetorical question, I can’t.

Let’s start with the right mouse-button ability, hack. The hack skill allows Sombra to disable character’s abilities for 5 seconds. This brings me to my first question: How is Sombra able to access literally every character’s technology? And she does it within 0.8 seconds. How is it possible?  This question led me another video games that posed some of the same issues, Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs. You travel the streets of Chicago as master-cyberhacker, Aiden Pearce. But, this got me questioning his ability to hack a security system without batting an eye.

As I sifted through the lore of Watch Dogs, the answer came to me. In the game, Chicago put into place the ctOS, also known as the Central Operating System. The ctOS is a supercomputer that interconnected the technological world of Chicago. It’s the interdependency that lets Pearce hack everything with the touch of a button. Once the ctOS has been analyzed and infiltrated he has access to everything on it. Its greatest strength became its greatest weakness.

The idea of a central operating system is the perfect answer. After the Omnic Uprising, it seems likely that all the old systems and A.I.s were shut down. Meaning the creation of a brand new system. An operating system that is connected like the ctOS of Watch Dogs. That means, for a hacker of Sombra’s caliber, that once inside the system, she has unlimited access. Access which lets her into every character tied to the global network. Mystery solved.

Hack the Planet

But, that’s hardly the only question I have concerning her hacking abilities. For example, Sombra is able to hack Torbjorn’s IFF-tracking turret, but not Soldier 76’s auto-aim visor. They’re both technologies. So, why is that? After countless hours of research, I couldn’t find an answer. One doesn’t exist. At least not in the Blizzard lore. The only search results that came up were guides on how to play Sombra. Comprehensive lists on what she can and cannot hack. Not a single explanation as to why she can’t hack certain tech.

So, instead of looking to Blizzard for a logical explanation, I decided to look into real life hacking. And so down the rabbit hole, I went. Reading about the limitations of hacking, the moral code, hacking prevention, watched Zero Cool crash 1,507 computer systems in a single day…wait, I may have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I learned some things about hacking that likely put my name on a NSA watch list. But, I found my answer.

It came to me in a coffee induced stupor. While reading through ways to prevent unauthorized access to your personal system, I read something so obvious it didn’t sink in at first glance. If trying to prevent a hacker from accessing your system, the (non-conflicting) counter measures you have, the harder it is for them to get in. It’s a common sense solution, and something I’ve had to explain to many clients.

Security Plus

Say you have a two-factor authentication, an up to date operating system, a current anti-virus, and an active firewall. Those measures make it much harder to breach the system’s security. It takes a hacker much longer to infiltrate a PC with all of those precautions than it does a computer that only has a firewall. They’re going to go through a lot more Doritos and Big Gulps. The answer to my big question boiled down to one word, time.

Take D.Va for example, Sombra’s inability to hack D. Va’s mech while it’s self-destructing. There’s not enough time between the activation and the detonation for Sombra to be able to 1. analyze the security 2. access the system and 3. disable the explosion. Especially under enemy fire. Nor is she going to have the luxury of disarming Junkrat’s Rip-tire as it turns you and your teammates to ash.

So after all my research, too many cups of coffee, and hair loss due to stress, it came down to something as simple as time restraints…dammit.

Before I spiraled further into a pit of despair, I decided to move onto Sombra’s second piece of next-gen technology, the translocator. This is a piece of equipment stolen from Winston’s lab at Gibraltar. It allows Sombra to teleport around with the blink of an eye. To truly understand what makes the translocator tic we have to understand a little about the quantum mechanics behind teleportation. Yay science!

Beam Me Up Sombra

There are three different types of teleportation. The first is where the object you want to teleport is instantly moved from point A to point B, by wormhole or a tear in the fabric of space time. Number two disassembles the object at point A and reassembles it at point B. Lastly, the third method of teleportation is where you scan the object at point A and transmit the information on how to assemble it to point B. After careful examination and hours of game play, it became apparent that Sombra’s translocator uses the third type of teleportation.

This is called quantum teleportation. It’s a process that takes quantum information (i.e. the state of an atom) and transmits it from one location to another. And with quantum teleportation, there is a strict “no cloning theorem”. Unlike the teleportation of Space Balls and Star Trek.

The teleporters on the Starship Enterprise divide your molecules and assemble them in a new location. The newly constructed you looks like you and acts like you but, isn’t actually you. By all definitions, this is a clone. One that has all of your thoughts and memories. Your matter was ripped apart at the molecular level and used to fuel a battery that proceeded to make a copy of you. This happens every single time someone is teleported in Star Trek. That means there are thousands of uncounted deaths by the hand of the Galactic Federation. Way to go guys, you’ve been committing mass genocide.

A Quantum Leap to the Left

The type of translocation that Sombra uses states that it is impossible to create an identical copy (in a quantum state) without changing or destroying the original copy. What that means is no clones. And, no turning people in a soylent green type fuel. Quantum teleportation, instead of physically moving atoms, moves the information about the state of the atom from point A to point B. It does this without any information actually moving in between the points. What this means for Sombra is that her translocator scans her molecular information and teleports it to wherever the translocation beacon lands. The information compiles and becomes Sombra once again.

While the ability to transport humans via teleporter is still science fiction, it is theoretically possible. After all, there’s nothing in the laws of physics that says otherwise. Put that in your juice box and suck it, Einstein!

So we’ve explored Sombra’s hacking abilities, and the way her translocator works. That just leaves her cloaking device. Is it magic from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? Or perhaps something more science-y? Its probably not magic…right?

Missus Cellophane

Meet the Rochester Cloak, an invention cooked up at Rochester University. Hence the name. This device uses four lenses placed at specific distances to bend light around an object. Making it invisible. The item must be placed in the center of the lenses to make it disappear. While highly effective, it’s not likely that Sombra’s is going to carry around human sized lenses and placing them throughout the world of Overwatch. Seems like a lot of work for a little payoff.

It’s far more feasible that Sombra is using something closer to quantum cloaking technology. You can find prototypes of this tech in a variety of labs around the world. One such lab, at the University of Toronto, developed an active quantum cloak. The idea behind active cloaking is surrounding an object with a single layer of tiny antennae. This layer radiates a field that cancels out the reflect from the item. It turns the object almost fully invisible. With Overwatch being set in the future, quantum cloaking has probably been perfected.

Quantum cloaking sure beats a cardboard box when trying to hide from the enemy. I ought to box up Solid Snake and ship him off to the Caymans.

FIN

So, there you have it. How to become a cyberpunk, hacktivist. Theoretically. Until next time, see you space cowboy.

 

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