And so it begins

Oddly enough, courses have already started. These units don't even have to be in until 3 hours time (12/90/14) so I have ages. Sort of.

This may be my final post. I never really did finish the game within these posts, but oh well. I can assure you that progress is slow but steady. I'm very busy so my time for these things is usually very short. You'll all have a great combat flight simulator soon :)

As for the physics classes themselves, they're not half bad. Join us, we have cookies. No, but seriously, one of our teachers has a 'biscuit rota', meaning that we get to eat free delicious food and do physics. Fun fun fun.

So far we've learnt that it is no longer m/s, but infact ms^-1. And for acceleration, ms^-2. That's pretty much it, except for going over the good old GPE and KE formulae, and being told that GPE may now be called EK. The teacher's not quite sure, which I am positive is a good omen for the rest of the course.

Thanks to anyone who spent a little time reading these (especially my form tutor who has a name that I have as much trouble spelling as his fellow Greeks have with dealing with their own money. Political debt banter!), i really appreciate it. Maybe I'll carry on with these some day.

Winchester Science Museum 2

The Winchester Science Museum also features an on-site planetarium now. Which I went to. Twice.

The shows there are very interesting, and the dome is one of the largest in the country. The confusion between your brain -which thinks you're stationary- and your eyes -which makes you feel like you're moving as the stars rotate around on the fixed screen- makes your brain think you're floating sometimes. Cool as hell.

The staff are very friendly and enthusiastic about their work (and why wouldn't they be?) and give fantastic talks on current astronomical events as well as old knowledge. I can now find a few more constellations in the night sky, as well as knowing how to find them.

Some talks are 'more sciencey' than others, with a few of them being aimed at younger kids, and the more technical ones are great. There's a detailed presentation on each of the planets (including their distance from earth and the sun, size, atmospheric and ground conditions, etc) and how orbits work, how spaceships and satellites navigate, how many satellites we have, their types, and a whole host of other things.

Summary: Space. Physics. Yay.

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

Winchester Science Centre 1

This interactive museum (which was called Intech when I frequented it in my 'youth') is essentially a warehouse with nice architecture that holds within its square-based prism walls a collection over over 100 interactive exhibits. And it's awesome!

The museum mostly deals with physics displays, with everything from a bridge demonstration to crane operation to lateral spin. There are also displays on chemistry and biology, with a few technological showcases such as how mobile phone networks work, too.

There was also a sports section where a camera tracked your jump height and predicted how long it would take for you to run a certain distance. I found it to be quite accurate, and I managed to cover the distance in around 3.6 seconds with a couple of 10 year old absolutely trashing my time. (I need to work out, okay?).

Here's a shortlist of all my personal favourite exhibits:

• The flight simulator
• The crane
• The giant plastic ball twirley-whirly transportation machine (twirley-whirly being a technical term)
• The sound amplification dishes
• The interactive astronomical displays
• The large-feature recycling exhibit
• The biological displays (killing the dummy is fun)
• The light-beam activity
• The infrared camera
• The cafe (foooood)

The que for the flight simulator is usually worth it. Except for the fact that their joystick is incredibly dodgy and you have an almost complete lack of control over the aircraft.

Bletchly Park 2

Also at Bletchly were the renovated huts that the likes of Alan Turing once worked in. Most of the buildings and huts are fully renovated, with the current project expected to finish in 2020. It's hard to imagine the euphoria in those huts when the codes were broken thanks to a few silly German operators sending the same words/messages frequently with the same/similar codes (which was aided further by the fact that their cypher machines couldn't encode a letter as itself).

One of the encryption techniques was to turn each letter into a series of 0s and 1s (sort of like Morse code), and then for each letter in the message add a random letter to it in a boolean 'Exclusive Or' (XOR) style. The same (a 0 and 0, or a 1 and a 1) would make a 0 when added together, and different (a 0 and a 1 or visa versa) ones would add to make a 1.


Imagine you wanted to say "Hi". For the sake of this exercise we're going to assume that A is 0001, B is 0010, H is 1000, and I is 1001. We'll also assume that the key here is AB (as in, we're adding an A and then a B).

H + A = I
1000 + 0001 = 1001

I + B = K (if we count up in binary for the alphabet like we did here)
1001 + 0010 = 1011

HI = IK


The brilliant thing about this system is that because of how it works, when you add the key to the encrypted message it will actually decrypt it:

I + A = H
1001 + 0001 = 1000

K + B = I
1011 + 0010 = 1001


Amazing.

Computer Science Update

School hasn't exactly been very helpful with the whole 'No CompSci for you' thing. I know exactly as little as I did yesterday. Seeing as we get our timetables tomorrow and I haven't actually made a decision as to what I'm going to do yet, this probably isn't a good thing.

My CompSci teacher better name her kid after me...

Anyhoo, as I mentioned before I have a 1% chance of getting into North Notts College for the AS CompSci course. The other 99% seems rather dismal, however. In the likely case that CompSci isn't available at all this year I'm not sure what I'll do. I'll see if I can take ICT AS and A2 this year and then CompSci AS and A2 next year, but I feel like doing both qualifications (I assume A2 is harder and requires knowledge from the AS course for you to understand it) may be too much of a challenge in the same year.

Due to all of this, I may need to just pick a different subject for my fourth option and take the CompSci AS course next year and get by on that. Explaining my lack of an A2 qualification because my teacher was pregnant will look great on my CV, I'm sure.

Bletchly Park 1

Had an amazing idea. I can fit two bridging unit thingies into eachother. I can write about the Bletchly Park visit I made for another bridging unit. God knows why it falls under the subject of physics (the mechanics of the machine, maybe? No sophisticated electrical components and computer code in those days).

Anyhoo, the park was once an estate belonging to a wealthy family, which was commandeered by the military in WWII to intercept axis messages and decrypt them (most notably the Enigma and Lorenz cyphers). A lot of work was made by Alan Turing, who constructed the world's first computer to help with this.

This was the Bombe Machine, and it was incredibly big, with prop shafts and mechanics shifting wheels around with basic electronics all over the shop to turn several sets of 3-columned wheels around. The middle set would turn one increment for every complete rotation of the top set, and the bottom set would turn one increment for every full rotation of the middle set. There were 26 increments (one for each letter) and the system was set up in a sort of 'menu' where hundreds of cables would be set up in an array at the back of the machine. If the machine found a possibly valid combination it would pause until told to continue, with the possible combination to the Enigma code displayed on a separate set of 3 wheels.

Once the code was broken for that day (a new code was set at midnight every day by the Germans, with different codes for the SS, Navy, Airforce, and Army) work could begin on decrypting every incoming message on a modified Type-X machine, which was sort of like a typewriter. After midnight the whole process had to be done again, with a run on the Bombe usually taking around 15 mins. That's assuming it didn't stop and find a valid combination on that run. 'Twas a lengthy process, but many argue that it won the war.

How did we repay Turing? Well, he was gay. That meant that once the war was over he could choose either prison or 'hormone altering injections' to try and 'make' him straight. Arseholes. Instead he elected the fatal way out and the Earth lost one of its greatest minds.

And on that cheerful note, good night.

Goodbye Computer Science?

As most of you reading this will know, I was intending to take Computer Science for my A-Levels. Unfortunately, the only teacher who's qualified to teach us got pregnant, so the school can't provide the course this year.

This gives me a few options:

1. Where I'm timetabled for CompSci school will taxi me to a local college where they're doing the course. This will only work if their timetable doesn't clash with ours (and it's likely that it will), they actually accept us, and if they're doing the correct course.

2. I will instead take the ICT AS and A2 course this year, and then the AS and A2 CompSci course next year. Providing the school lets me. This would be quite good, because here's what I was previously intending to do:

Year 12: Physics AS, ICT AS, CompSci AS,  Maths AS
Year 13: Physics A2, ICT A2, CompSci A2

Instead, I'll be doing this: 

Year 12: Physics AS, ICT AS, ICT A2,  Maths AS
Year 13: Physics A2, CompSci AS, CompSci A2 

I'll still be doing all the courses I want to, just slightly differently.

3. I could pick a totally different option this year to replace the CompSci AS course and then drop it and take CompSci at AS or A2 next year (small problem; I think taking an A2 requires having an AS).

As you can tell, I'm in a bit of a pickle here.

My current situation.

The Four Basic Forces of Flight

For an aircraft to maintain straight and level flight it must match the forces of nature (drag and weight) with what it is able to control (thrust and lift).

For an aircraft to increase its speed it must accelerate. To accelerate, the force pushing it along (thrust) must be greater than the drag (air resistance) it faces. Doing so will naturally increase the drag as it is hitting more air particles per second, but it's not enough to stop the acceleration.

If the thrust was equal to the drag then the speed (whatever speed it is) would remain constant. Be it 0 or 100 KM/H. If the thrust was less than the drag, however, the aircraft would slow down (decelerate).

The same can be said for lift and weight. If lift is greater than the weight the aircraft rises, visa-versa it falls, and if they are equal the aircraft remains at its current altitude.

An aircraft can utilise these laws of nature (like it wasn't already in order to fly) by raising air brakes in order to increase the drag on the aircraft (larger surface area, and less aerodynamic) and help it slow down. Lowering flaps increases lift, making it easier to take off as lift is being generated more efficiently.

Below is a diagram from NASA, explaining the whole thing.

NASA's quite good at making things fly, so I'd trust them on this one.

Control Surfaces 2

I thought I'd make this two posts, because combined they're a bit too long, and it's another excuse to up my post count.

There are a few other control surfaces that I didn't cover before. Here's what they are, what they do, and how they work:

Flaps

If you've been on holiday to a foreign country within the past 30 years, chances are you've flown. You may have noticed that before take off something weird's happening to the wings. These are the flaps going down. Remember my little lesson on lift? Well, extending the distance that the air has to go over the top speeds it up, and in return you get more lift.

Whilst taking off and landing you want as much lift as possible. The former to get airborne as quickly and easily as possible, and the former to be able to come in to a landing safely at a low speed. You don't really need the flaps whilst airborne because you need just enough lift to get you airborne, not to go higher. This would be a waste of energy as you'd have to have the nose facing down in order to stop going up in order to maintain your cruising altitude, and less energy would be put into making you go forwards so much as 'downwards'.

Illustration depicting various flap types.

Slats and Slots

These funky things on the wing's leading edge are like little spacers that can be pushed forward in order to make the distance that air has to cover in order to go over the wing much larger. Once again; faster air, more lift. These are used at low speed for additional lift at takeoff, for the most part. They allow air to go through them from under the wing too, providing additional lift. The slat is the physical beam itself that extends from the wing's leading edge. The slot is the space it creates where it used to be, which air from underneath the wing is guided in to in order to have larger quantities of faster moving air on top of the wing to generate more lift.

Slats and Slots at work.

Trim Tabs

Trim tabs are like minor versions of all the previously mentioned control surfaces, with the exceptions of slats and slots. Trim tabs are small control surfaces that are usually at the very tip of the other control surfaces. their position is generally set pre-flight or during flight to counter any small instabilities of the aircraft. If you find that your aircraft yaws to port with no input from you then you'd set the rudder trim to starboard a bit to counteract this action, rather than holding the rudder pedals yourself. This way the aircraft can maintain full manoeuvrability, even if something is causing small changes of course.

Illustration depicting the position of trim tabs. Note that flap trim tabs are omitted.

Control Surfaces 1

Control surfaces are manipulatable parts of an aircraft that can be controlled by the pilot in order to change the direction of the aircraft.

There are 3 basic axis on which this takes place.

Yaw

The yaw of an aircraft is altered by its rudders. These are typically on the tail and turn in order to for air to make the aircraft 'brake' on one side, pivoting on that point due to the air resistance it meets. This resistance and directional change of airflow turns the aircraft side to side, in relation to the aircraft itself.

Pitch

Pitch is typically altered by the elevators. Some aircraft have canards that do this instead. the difference is where they are on the aircraft. Elevators are usually at the back of the aircraft, on the tail section. The flap up and down like the rudder turned on its side in order to make the aircraft tilt down or up in relation to the aircraft itself by providing more air resistance on one point and directing the airflow in a different direction. Canards are much the same, except they are at the front of the aircraft and fixated tot he fuselage rather than a tail wing.

Roll

The roll of an aircraft is how 'tilted' it is side to side. This is controlled by the ailerons. These are much like the elevators, except they raise and lower in alternate directions. Instead of combining aircraft to make the aircraft go 'up and down', one wing goes 'down' whilst the other wants to go 'up' (all directions being ambiguous and relative tot he aircraft), forcing it to spin on its axis.

Below is an illustration demonstrating what these control surfaces do and where they typically are on an aircraft.

A diagram depicting how basic control surfaces work.

More Efficiency

Ever wanted to do the same thing over and over again in some code, but don't want to write out the code for each individual thing? I feel the same way. It's too much effort and makes your code too large. Therefore, we use a for loop.

However, I don't feel like I adequately explained what was going on before. You see, I need to fill up content on this blog to get into an A-Level course and i really need to spam as many posts as possible. Leaving out information to be filled in later is a great way of accomplishing this, and it's how some companies and religions (*cough* Scientology *cough*) make a lot of money.

Let's say that you have loads of buttons. When you mouse over them, you want them to all do pretty much the same thing. However, writing the code for each button would be non-efficient. Therefore you'd construct a table of all the buttons, and in that loop write the function for the iterated button in question. In the functions you'd write code that applies to all buttons when moused over or whatever.

This can leave you with a lot of flexibility, as if you make the code as ambiguous as possible you can make each button seem more different and customised than it actually is. You can check out what I've done similarly below. As you can see, the loop runs through a series of buttons, and sets up a function for all of them. This way, if I want to do something for multiple buttons I only need to write the one function and be done with it. I can edit it later, change it, etc, but I only have to do it the once.

For looping to clone functions efficiently for multiple buttons.

A limitation with this method, however, if that this efficiency only goes as far as doing the same thing for the buttons you choose. If a button needs its own special thing (like sweeping in a frame or whatever once clicked) you'd have to do that separately, as you wouldn't want all buttons to do that.

A similar idea would be to write out the code like I've done, but add a function at the bottom wherein it checks a table. If in the table there is a value that has a key matching the name of the button it'll run the value as a function. I could write a table of functions and name them after the key, and this for loop would run through them individually.

All of these skills can be used in a variety of applications.