Arduino101

I am going to save us a lot of bullshit and just jump into one of the main koko of the thread- how to use an Arduino board. Wait!! Do you know what an Arduino board is? Hahaha!! Sounds funny and ridiculous – I know. But no offence!! Even Sheldon Cooper doesn’t know everything! Let us briefly talk about it. Arduino is a microcontroller development board. A microcontroller is an IC (Integrated -circuit) that is really smart. It has its own memory inbuilt and quite small- since it is actually a more specific something. A microcontroller works on the principle of logic gates and ….well; let us just stop there for now. Have you ever wondered how eateries and shops and supermarkets do their this ‘sliding message’? have you ever wondered how the car key remote works or how the automatic pumping machine works? Or how the DVD know where you stopped the particular disc or how a microwave knows that a particular temperature has been reached and should make a sound and display the status? Well, like I promised, I am here to do my best in clearing these ‘HEADACHES’ you have been having. The answer to all of the above is something we call: A MICROCONTROLLER. It is small and have some legs (some have just 6 while some have over 30) and can be used for virtually any cool thing you can think of. The problem however , with microcontrollers is that it does a specific job and its memories (RAM and ROM) are very much limited and so small that they are most measured in ‘kb’ (kilobyte). Imagine your PC having a 1kb RAM/32kb ROM. Funny!! Luckily, your PC has a microprocessor not a microcontroller. Instead of having its memories built in, it has a RAM slot and HDD-Hard disc drive or SSD – Solid state drive SSD. A microprocessor also has the ability to do many things at a time. These are the direct opposite of a microcontroller, and are the major differences. So our dear Arduino is one of these. As time goes on, we will see more wonders of Arduino/microcontrollers.

Gravity: a simple and epic explanation cont'd.

Hey guys. Here we are again for our article on gravity Leggo…..

                        Revolving (orbiting) each other.

As we were saying the last time, who on earth is this father of modern physics? And what the hell causes this ‘attraction’ between objects? Perhaps the objects and bodies have some internal magnets? The bigger the body, the larger the magnet hence the ability to attract other objects to itself? Abi wetin wan cause am na? SORRY BRO! But you are wrong. Oh!! Yes!! Some bodies have magnetic field (Yep!! Mother Earth got that shi too!) but that is very much peculiar to planets and really really big astronomical bodies. So then, that is not what causes gravity.

                        Dr Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics came to our rescue and he said that: GRAVITY IS CAUSED BY THE DEFORMATION IN SPACE-TIME (of course, he didn’t say that verbatim). Deformation by what? Well, I am sure most reading didn’t bother to ask that question. If you did, you are really following me. Einstein said that when there is deformation of space time, the effect is gravity. Bro and sis, no be say person get magnet or something get magnet na im come dey attract another person or object o. Let us have it in mind that gravity is the most constant force in nature. Well, that is pretty obvious. From mars to Uranus, scientists keep talking about gravity. So what is the deformation about? Deformation is due to the uneven distribution of mass/energy.

Let us put it this way that Einstein said: Gravity is due to the curvature of space-time because of the uneven distribution of mass/energy.

                        The effect of this ‘curvature’ is that in places where there is greater ‘GRAVITATIONAL POTENTIAL’ (Erh, what does that mean, Maazi Dekatron?). (gravitational potential simply means the work that gravity would do if the body was moved from its position in space to another point that serves as source of reference), there would be passage of more time corresponding to the other that doesn’t have such large mass/energy. Let us put it more nicely. When two people are traveling relative to a specific object that has the source of gravity, and each has a clock, there would be difference in the time that the clocks would display and the farther a traveler is from the object, the faster time would travel. Actually, the pound-rebka experiment and the physical proof of the orbiting satellites and space stations(crafts) are solid proof that the above isn’t a THEORY or a lie. We all have GPS in our phones now (erh, maybe you still use a 2007-2009 device sha), which apps like Google maps, Nokia map, and etc use to determine routes and locate your positions. There are satellites in space that make sure that you are able to use this beautiful feature, and these satellites are affected by time dilation.

                        I would love to use an analogy that a friend of mine uses. Imagine you spreading a nice bed sheet. You sit on the bed and the sheet “deforms inside” the shape of your bottom. The bed sheet is space-time, the sitting down that you sit down is called the mass/energy and the deformation/curvature is called GRAVITY. It is this gravity that makes sure that there is tide when you go to the beach, when you throw a pencil up it comes down, when you fire a gun, it moves in as a PROJECTILE, not like a space craft, and even responsible for our revolution around the sun, revolution of our satellites around us that enables us watch EUROPEAN LEAGUE and FA cup live, be able to use the GPS, and to be able to browse. TELL ME, AIN’T GRAVITY COOL??

Gravity: a simple and epic explanation.

GRAVITY: oh well!! We are all familiar with this …. Thing. But I want you to ask yourself if you really know what gravity? Permit me to use another approach.

                        One Sunny good day, Newton was chilling up under the tree. “Good lord!” Newton cursed softly under his breath. His bothersome wench of an aunt is calling on him for farm work again. ‘Omo!! Person no fit die abeg!! Make I chill a little’, He seemed to think (ah!! For him naija mind of course!!). suddenly, he felt a sharp brief little pain on an area of his head, signifying a point force. ‘Ogini?. Ah!! I could use an apple’, he muttered silently. He bit away into the apple. After a few bites, he remembered how the apple fell. But why did the apple fall directly towards the center of the earth? He wondered.Perhaps if Newton didn’t bother to ask, we might have had a delay in time for the launch of the space missions. I mean, another scientist would have done it, but not the time Newton did it.

                        So, what did Newton say about gravity? ………… sorry, took a glass of water. Before we talk about what Newton thought and or deduced about gravity, let us go back in history (yay!! That boring course is useful after all).  Galileo (1564 – 1642) demonstrated, on the tower of Pisa took two materials of the same weight but different materials and dropped them simultaneously from the tower. At this juncture, lemme ask, if you take 10kg of feather and 10kg of metal, which one would fall first? Hahahaha…..metal you say? Okay. You may be right. Maybe or maybe not!! ANYWAY, Galileo did this so that he would prove Aristotle was wrong. What was the outcome of the experiment? He succeeded actually and proved Aristotle wrong. Back to the question I asked. Well, they both would drop AT THE SAME TIME. Just as you were thinking, Aristotle thought so over a thousand years ago. He said that the metal would fall first. E do am like gunshot! Our dear Galilei proved him wrong.

                        Now, bringing that into our discussion, the honorable man has helped us show that two materials of the same weight (please boss-man and boss-woman, weight is NOT mass. Weight depends on the gravitational constant while mass remains. A 10N rod on earth would NEVER be 10N on the planet Mass) would fall at the same time. Now listen, there is a condition: “Provided air resistance is not taken into account.” You are reading this and you do not know what air resistance is? Please do not read further. As we were saying, provided air resistance is neglected or doesn’t exist, two materials of distinct material but the same weight will drop at the same time. So Newton, after tinkering and using the ALMIGHTY CALCULUS, said: “I DEDUCE THAT THE FORCES WHICH KEEP THE PLANETS IN THEIR ORBS MUST BE RECIPROCALLY AS THE SQUARE OF THE DISTANCES FROM THE CENTERS ABOUT WHICH THEY REVOLVE AND THERBY COMPARED THE FORCE REQUISITE TO KEEP THE MOON IN HER ORB WITH THE FORCE OF GRAVITY AT THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH; AND FOUND THEM ANSWER PRETTY NEARLY”.  The reason they fall down is that they are attracted to the earth. But this seem not to balance the whole thing. Hmmmm. The force that brings the bodies together or lets say causes force of attraction between two bodies is the FORCE OF GRAVITY!!

                        Lemme give you a little known fact: the bigger a body is, the greater its gravitational field. What is gravitational field? A field (region) where force of gravity is felt. Take for instance, the Empire State building in America or the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, or let us use Olumo rock. According to Physics, Olumo rock has some gravitational force of its own! Let us imagine it to become the size of Africa, theoretically, when we travel around this rock, and another person travels normally, having it in mind that we left simultaneously and at the same initial velocity, those of us traveling around Olumo would take more time that the other guys! Okay, cool! That means the concept of time is related closely to gravity. This is evident in blackholes (Dekatron, the F is a blackhole? Bro, no vex abeg).

                        So, what on earth has this Newton said? Seriously, I understand that you just read that line two times. I also never really got what he implied by reading it once. Well, he meant that the force that keep the heavenly bodies in their orbits (orbit is the path that the planet moves in space. Think of throwing a ball. The path the ball moves is the orbit. Apply that to planets) is the reciprocal (one over – 1/ ) of the square of the distance between the planets. The above can be fully explained as the LAW OF GRAVITATIONAL ATTRACTION which can be explained mathematically(nah.. I ain’t gon’ scare you with the partial differential and the integral signs) as:  F = G m1m2/r^2 (arrhhh. No vex. Na computer I use type am na. My geekiness doesn’t mean I can use office word. I really cannot. Lol). Anyway, for those that are not mathematically oriented (me too. Honestly), it says: F = G * (m1*m2/r*r). the 1/r^2 is what sir Newton was talking about.  The M1 M2 are the masses of the planets, r^2 is the square of the radius between the plants. G is the gravitational constant.

                        Anyway, we have seen that Newton was making sense. Now, what Newton said might be right, but it cannot explain the orbit of planet Uranus. Now, what could be wrong? But the thing work for other planets na. why e no come work for Uranus? Hahahaha. I bet Newton was sad, pissed and confused self. But wait, the father of modern physics comes in to do his fatherly job. Who is the father of modern physics? That’s left for you to figure out! No, seriously, Dekatron Dek, who is the father of modern physics?

                        In summary, gravity is that thing that makes a body attract another body to itself due to its bigger size. The above is evident among planets/celestial bodies which are

To be continued…

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Dekatron, EEE 200L writing for : THE GOSPEL OF SCIENCE, FUTA

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome! You can simply refer to me as Dekatron (ah!! it means a kinda old electromechanical component used in really really old computers). I am mainly for STEM- Science Technology Engineering Mathematics. I am also a Physics lover. I really love physics! we shall be discussing about technology and math and science and also- programming! I am really happy to have you here.