Category Archives: Nerdy

Nerdy

Calculus isn’t just a Waste of School

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Image result for calculus meme

Image result for calculus meme

Alright, I think the amount of calculus memes I’ve added are good enough.  Too bad none of them are amazing, but eh, you got to work with what you have.

Despite what most high schoolers or undergraduates in college say, calculus is not useless.  Well actually, I don’t think people really say that, but that’s not that important.  Calculus has a lot of real world applications that aren’t just completely random and only specific to one job.  Calculus can be used in architecture, literally any physics related thing, business, anything that changes with time, and being efficient.  Oh and computer programming.

The architecture and efficiency part kind of go hand in hand, because you can use calculus to find the optimal use of resources before it becomes a waste.  You can also use it to find distances, lengths, etc.  Again, business has to do with that efficiency part.  You can see how many units of a product can maximize product, or see how much material is needed to optimize a product, or in regular terms, what’s the cheapest we can get to?

Physics is obviously the main place where calculus is used.  It can be used to find rates, such as speed and acceleration and jerk, or distance, area, volume, etc.

Calculus is big on dealing with rates.  Slopes are pretty important in calculus as a whole, so you can tell how fast a function is growing or decreasing, or maybe not even moving at all.

Computers have to compute equations to do the stuff that they do.  Everything is in terms of math and/or code.  When you request an action, such as type in something to a calculator, that takes time.  Some functions are very complex, like trigonometry functions.  So in order to get past the lengthy time it would normally take to compute those, the computer uses a calculus technique to represent the function as a series in the form of a polynomial.  Usually the series don’t completely represent the function, and have a narrow window, but other series can represent the function for all real numbers, like in the case of e^x.  An approximation is a good option, because they can be pretty accurate, and very fast.

Calculus isn’t just some useless thing you may be required to learn at one point in your life; it actually has some purpose.  I only mentioned some applications of Calculus AB and Calculus BC, but there are way more, and even more in Multivariable Calculus.  So if you’re just starting Calculus, you should thank Newton for what he started.  Adios amigos.

Nerdy, Uncategorized

The Truth behind Fruit and Pollen…

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No it’s not, it’s an inflamed plant ovary with baby plants inside of it.

Image result for pollen grain

That’s not just pollen on those anthers, that’s plant sperm.

We’re well into spring, and I haven’t done another science related thing.  My teacher had reminded me of these facts, so yeah.  Today, we look at the biology of fruits and pollen.

Yes, the claims I made before are actually true.  Firstly, fruits evolved to attract animals to eat them.  The animals get food, so what do the plants get?  Well normally, the animals would eat the seeds inside the fruit, and then as the seeds go through the digestive system and eventually come out, they get fertilized, and take the excess compounds from the feces.  So it’s a win-win for both parties, and is a mutualistic relationship.  Now, where are eggs stored in plants and animals?  Ovaries…and fruiting plants don’t have a uterus like we do, so yeah, that’s what we’re eating.  Vegetables are different, but I don’t think the same holds true for veggies anyways.

Pollen is indeed plant sperm.  All plants utilize pollen for this aspect, but have different ways of carrying it.  Pollen is often sticky or very light and can travel with the wind.  The anthers, the pollen producing and male part of a plant, is where pollen is.  The plant sperm will fertilize a plant egg like any other organism does.  Weirdly enough, two sperm can be required instead of one, because one of the sperms fuses with an extra egg to create a nutrient type thing for the actual plant zygote.  Yep, you could say it’s cannibalism.

Well that was probably a terrible explanation, but that about does it for me.  Have fun with those new facts I guess.  Use them how you want to.

Dragon Ball, Nerdy

Dragon Ball Review (First Third of the Show)

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Image result for juju dragon ball

Image result for juju dragon ball

Sorry, I just had to rep Juju.

Anyways, I’ve watched roughly the first 50 episodes of the original Dragon Ball, dubbed of course.  I started it in spring break, and I am starting to enjoy it a bit.  I really want to get on to Super, but I don’t want stuff to be out of context.  I’m not really into anime in general, but this show breaks that pattern for me.

Dragon Ball is the first show in the Dragon Ball series, with Goku, the main character, starting out as a kid.  Initially, he collects the Dragon Balls (7 grants a wish) with Bulma and others just for an adventure.  He is a talented martial artist, and is later revealed to not be human, but the show, at least where I am, mentions that he is possibly an alien.  I mean, having a tail is pretty obvious to that fact.

Anyways, the Dragon Ball world has advanced technology, which Goku doesn’t really understand much because he was isolated with his grandfather for most of his life.  The world is full of many races and species, with some animals being able to talk.  Martial arts is pretty big in the world as well, with tournaments and the what not being held.  The show is focused on Goku getting stronger, him overcoming trials, and appreciating the new world around him.

Goku is shown to have pure innocence, and isn’t very knowledgeable of the world around him, and the show usually shows this in satirical ways.  One weird aspect of the show is the perviness, because one big character, Master Roshi, is really pervy, and it usually ends up bad for him.  It just had to be mentioned, because of how odd it is, but it’s there.

Overall, the themes present in the show are great.  I’m not sure what the audience would be, because of the perviness of Master Roshi, but it’s probably teens and young adults.  I’ll continue to watch the show.  Something to note is that the episodes really like to put cliffhangers at the end, sometimes literally.  Well, have a nice day guys.

Nerdy, Uncategorized

Ultra Instinct Ricardo

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No, this isn’t actually about Ricardo, because I’m not trying to get demonetized, but it is about Ultra Instinct.

I haven’t actually watched much Dragon Ball, except a little when I was a kid.  The anime series is pretty good actually, and I’m thinking of watching it, all because I saw this Ultra Instinct Ricardo meme.  It’s a long story, but the meme got me interested in Dragon Ball Super, and now, the entire series.

Ultra Instinct was one ability that was focused on during Dragon Ball Super.  With Goku now as an adult, he was extremely powerful, and basically god-level.  The state of being is pretty cool, because in a fight, you don’t actually have to think much, because your body is doing it for you.  All your moves are entirely based on instinct, depending on how good you are at it.  Dodging is slight, and attacking is easy.  It’s not a transformation, but a state of being as I said earlier.  Goku masters it during the series, because he’s Goku.  Anyways, the effect they use looks really cool too, so it has inspired me to make a meme using it.  I have the effects ready, but I just need some good clip.

Image result for ultra instinct goku

Like come on, this is just tough.

This is too.

The yelling has always been a known part of the series, and of course, it is well displayed here.

Goku makes sure to keep da block hot with his Ultra Instinct capabilities.

Nerdy, Uncategorized

The Hobbit Series Review

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From amazon.com

Bilbo Baggins is a great name because its initials are BB.  End of story.  Anyways, The Lord of the Rings universe is a classic fantasy world, with The Hobbit series being the prequels to the original series.  The prequel is really just to get to know the story of the characters before the events of The Lord of the Rings, and how Bilbo got the Ring in the first place.  And money of course, but that’s the boring reason.

Possible Spoilers

The Hobbit refers to Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit who lives in the Shire like any other hobbit.  He is put on a journey by the wizard, Gandalf, to help the dwarves reclaim their home.  They are successful in the third installment, but a lot is lost.  Bilbo returns to the Shire with the Ring, and lives his life peacefully, and then The Lord of the Rings starts.

The story of The Hobbit is fairly good.  I may be a little biased towards it because I watched it when I was young, and I watched it before The Lord of the Rings.  A goal is achieved through struggle.  The protagonists all went through internal struggle, especially Thorin Oakenshield.  I thought his story was great.  I personally love personal struggles of what’s right and what’s wrong as long as it’s done tastefully and not too cliche.

The characters are all very unique, with great stories.  The dwarves are very different from each other, yet they have a common bond that unites them.  They showed the theme of brotherhood quite well.  Bilbo tried to gain his confidence the entire trilogy, and he did.  He really grew throughout the trilogy.  Gandalf has always been an interesting character, and he was quite interesting here.  He didn’t change that much, but served as the quest-giver, the catalyst for the adventure.

The style was great, and mirrored that of The Lord of the Rings.  The designs were great, and looked really nice.  Animation was good too.

From imdb.com

Overall, the movies get an 8/10.  It’s good, but not the greatest.  The relationship between Bilbo and the Ring could’ve been expanded upon more.  Other story elements could’ve been expanded upon more as well.  I’m also a bit sad that they killed two dwarf brothers, mostly because of the good character development they had.  But that’s not bad of the story, that’s just bad on a fan’s view.  Otherwise, the movies are good, and I recommend watching The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

From tes.com

Nerdy, Video Games

The Best Battle Royale of 2019, and yes, it’s no longer Fortnite

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Image result for apex legends

From fortniteintel.com

Yes, Fortnite has been dying, and now, I think its end is quite near, with the addition of Apex Legends, developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts.

Apex Legends is the newest battle royale to be released, with it being released early February this year.  It takes place in the same universe as Titanfall, another video game, but not a battle royale, as it is a first person shooter.

Image result for apex legends

Now why has Apex Legends taken over?  Well I don’t know all of the reasons personally, but the abilities in the game could contribute to it.  Each of the choosable characters have three abilities, with one being passive, and two being active abilities.  This helps to contribute to a unique style of gameplay for players.

Apex Legends also doesn’t always feel like a battle royale, which can be good because everyone is kind of sick of them.  We’ve been playing Fortnite for so long, and PUBG even longer.  Blackout is alright, but many new battle royales just seem to try and get on the wave.  Apex has a nice artstyle, between realistic and cartoonish.  It reminds me of a balance between PUBG and Fortnite, because there is weapon customization, but it doesn’t feel quite as serious as PUBG.

Image result for apex legends

From cnet.com

Apex has some neat changes to it which I’ve never seen in a battle royale.  One addition is that a team of players can jump out together, with one person controlling them unless the other players break off.  This is a great addition, and I’m glad to see something like this.  One really unorthodox addition is that after someone has died, they can be respawned.  It’s not overpowered, as you have to recover a “banner” from your teammates body, and bring it to a respawn point, which are spaced out good distances from each other.  This makes it so that if one or two people die, they don’t have to wait a while to get back in for the next game, because they can continue playing in the new game.  Unfortunately and fortunately, you need to recollect loot, and you don’t spawn in with your items.

One thing Apex has been heavily criticized for is that guns do too little damage, or that people have too much health/armor.  This can be balanced easily, but we have yet to see what the developers do.  I do agree with this point of criticism, as it does make fighting quite weird at times, but it’s bearable.

Apex is overall a pretty fun game, but I don’t think it’ll last as long as Fortnite has.  I don’t know what the next wave of popular video games will be like, because battle royales are best with friends, but not so good alone.  I hope we get more games with better single player experiences, but that’s just me.  See you guys in the next post.

Nerdy, Uncategorized

One Strange Thing Our Body Does

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You’ve probably heard the joke where someone asks,” Hey, if you cut your leg off, would you feel pain?”  This sounds like a dumb question, because it is.  You would be like, “Well of course you would, idiot.”  Your friend would say, “But where do you feel it.”  You would say, “In your leg…”And your friend would just go on with this.  Now what does this have to do with strange science?  Well, out of the many weird things the human body is capable of, one completely doesn’t care about how your leg is gone, and how you can still feel pain there.  Although, you know, you’d feel pain in the nerves on the edge of the cut, there’s another possible way of pain.  Phantom limb is that way.

Phantom limb is a sensation that your limb or part of your body is still there, even after it has been removed or cut.  Usually, these sensations are painful.  It is extremely common for amputated people to experience phantom limb.  First described by French surgeon Ambroise Paré, who operated on soldiers, who described pain in amputated parts in 1552.

Image result for phantom limb

From npr.org

Phantom limb is not 100% figured out yet, but one interesting therapy caught my attention.  The mirror box therapy is where you essentially trick your body into seeing the phantom limb, and moving it out of its painful position, as most patients “feel” their phantom limb as being contorted and distorted.  It has had some success, but doesn’t work all the time.  Pain medication can help alleviate pain as well.

Image result for phantom limb

From researchgate.net

Phantom limb can occur from any part of your body being removed, even teeth.  It really only applies to cells that would send sensory information to your nerves, so phantom hair is not a thing (at least I’m certain of it).  Phantom limb syndrome is a strange occurrence for sure.

The main causes of phantom limb syndrome are virtually unknown, but scientists have estimated there are numerous mechanisms that contribute to it.  All hypotheses have failed, and do not independently explain phantom limb.  Some believe it’s just junk input from the peripheral nervous system, others think it’s due to reorganization of the parts of the brain, like the somatosensory cortex.  Who knows, phantom limbs are weird.

So, what do you guys think about this?  Is this your first time hearing about this?  When I first heard about this, I was confused.  The brain and its mechanisms are really complicated.  The brain, taking up roughly 3% of total body weight, takes up roughly 20% of energy used.

Nerdy, Open World Games, Video Games

Become an Assassin…by not actually being an assassin and being a mercenary

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Image result for assassin's creed odyssey
From assassinscreed.wikia.com

Back in October, the amazing game Assassin’s Creed:  Odyssey came out, and boy am I happy it did.  I haven’t played that many Assassin’s Creed games, and the only one I truly finished was Syndicate, I don’t have that much experience with the franchise as a whole.  Odyssey takes place in ancient Greece, during the Peloponnesian war.  It has a really large map, and highly encourages exploration.

Sailing has been pretty big in some of the games, and it really is in Odyssey.  Ship fights are really annoying sometimes, so I generally try to avoid them.  Sometimes, you have to go against a lot of ships, and it can get messy.  That’s why it’s important to stop by the shore and save A LOT.  Saving is super important, especially when playing on the hardest difficulty, nightmare mode.  I wanted to try that, and it really encourages me to try and assassinate people rather than straight up fight.

The RPG-style of the game makes me like it too.  It really makes sure you only go for things your level, as almost everything you fight is your level or higher.  The enemies go up in level with you, so that it always remains balanced.  Except when you explore an area and literally every enemy is like level 50.  Balanced as all things should be, yeah right.

There are so many things to do in Odyssey, so you really want to know how to focus on what’s important.  There are a lot of irrelevant quests that aren’t true sidequests, and are usually your basic fetch quest type.  Others are very complex and last long; those are the quests you want to do.

There are some animals you can hunt for various materials.  Some animals are even bosses.  For example, the Kalydonian Boar is a boss off of one of the “good” sidequests.  I’ve tried to beat it, still haven’t.  The boar is an actual cheat code.  It can spawn up to four boars at a time, which do a lot of damage with charging, and have tons of health.  There’s a cheese method to deal with the boar spawning, because the boss boar by itself is not hard, IT’S ALL THE BOARS CHARGING YOU.  The boar won’t spawn in more boars unless the boars die, so you can just knock them out with paralyzing arrows.

Anyways, it’s a fun game, try it.

Nerdy, Video Games

Smashing is Fun

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https://youtu.be/Q3nCE5ehv6c

Cool game.  That’s all I have to say.

It’s been almost two weeks since this game has come out, and man, am I enjoying it.  The intro song is amazing by the way.  The gameplay is amazing.  The graphics are amazing.  Everything is amazing, except some absolute queso within the game, but that’s more so based on the players, not the game.

I have a lot of mains now, mostly just the entire Zelda and Metroid character list, Richter, and that’s about it.  For me, Zelda, Zero Suit Samus, and Ganondorf (not really) are fun to play with.  The maps are nice, but stage hazards can be annoying, so it’s best to turn them off, or the stage will beat you, not your opponent.

Link, my original main, has the best side smash if I’m correct, and it can be ridiculous if you time it right.  Ganondorf also has a nice one, it’s just easy to dodge.  But if you get hit with that three times from 0.0%, you’re done for.  I generally don’t like fast characters, and am more into medium to fast speed characters.  I’m not into heavies too much, but I am generally more favorable of them compared to lighter characters.  Playing Ridley is fun, come on.  Unless you drag yourself off the edge of the map with him, which sucks.

I haven’t really played online yet, but I will in winter break.  I’m pumped to go and beat some scrubs online (you know who you are).  “THEY AIN’T READY FOR THIS”, is what I’ll probably say.

Anyways, go and play the game.  It’s literally the best, so play.  See you guys till next time.  And as always, stay nerdy.

Image result for super smash bros ultimate gameplay link

From technobuffalo.com

 

Nerdy, Star Wars

Are the Lightsabers from Star Wars even somewhat realistic?

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Finally, something truly nerdy.  I’m sure you all have thought of this before, and you probably already know the answer, but do you know why lightsabers aren’t realistic (or at least the way Star Wars portrays them).  Of course, it is just Sci-Fi, but the whole point of being a nerd is to overanalyze Sci-Fi things.  So just hear me out.

Image result for lightsaber in movie

From starwars.com

First thing’s first, the basic premise of a lightsaber is actually realistic.  In theory, lightsabers can be made.  The actual blade would be made of plasma, and you would need something creating a magnetic field, so probably a retractable rod in the middle with a cap at the end.  You would need to make sure that the plasma is not hot enough to melt or sublime the materials in the lightsaber, so perhaps Tungsten could be used.  There are other ways of insulation, but to actually cut stuff like how the lightsabers in the movie cut stuff, the lightsaber would be well over 1000 Degrees Celsius.  Tungsten has the highest melting point for any material we know of, so on the lower scale of a lightsaber, it could work.  The making of the blade could actually work (as far as my knowledge goes), but there are a lot of other reasons why lightsabers are NOT practical, sadly.  🙁

Lightsabers produce a LOT of HEAT.  At least 1000 Degrees Celsius would be produced.  This heat would kill any life form within a certain radius, so Luke Skywalker and Kenobi would’ve been burnt up in the above picture.  Plus, all organisms would explode.  Heat can expand matter, specifically when a liquid goes to a gas.  The water inside your body would literally make you explode, and hot water vapor (steam) would go everywhere.  This is the main issue of lightsabers, so you would have to use a special suit, and be really careful with that thing.

The other main reason lightsabers aren’t practical are the amount of energy needed to power a lightsaber.  A lightsaber can output about 1.69 Gigajoules of power, or is at least capable of doing so.  This was taken from context.capp.ca

First of all, we don’t have batteries with energy densities capable of doing that, but if we did, that would be one really expensive charge.  In the Star Wars universe, I’m pretty sure the crystals that power lightsabers are self-rechargeable (somehow) and they must give a lot of power.  Also, which I just found out, lightsabers don’t output energy until they interact with a solid object.  This still doesn’t actually solve the heat problem, as dust is a thing, and then you’d burn up regardless.

Image result for star wars lightsaber duel

From starwars.wikia.com

At the end of the day, it’s just Sci-Fi and entertainment.  It’s always nice when Sci-Fi creators go through and think about how the science of what’s in the content makes sense, but it’s not necessary.  Lightsabers are cool.  End of discussion.  There are definitely more ways lightsabers are unrealistic, but I don’t want to bore you guys too long.  Thanks, and as always, stay nerdy.