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Physics Throw

Student Posts

Since the video is in 0.25 x slow motion, I hope everyone can spot the details in the mechanism of this “throw”.

The whole process of this task based heavily on the concepts in physics, even though physics is my most hated science subject. The first part of the process used Domino effect using books (books about physics just to correspond with the title, even though nobody can spot it). Once the last domino falls, it triggers the second part of the process–a seesaw mechanism made with a soup ladle and the bottom part of a blender. The weight of the book pressed one side of the ladle down, which triggers the third part of the mechanism–a pulley system. The other side of the ladle is attached to one side of the string, which forms a pulley with the shelf hanging from the ceiling and the other side of the string that’s attaching to the paper ball. Once the ladle lifted with the seesaw mechanism, the string loosens, and the paper ball fell into the basket.

Even though my throw (actually not at all a throw) did not involve any uncertainties since the bin is right below the paper ball, it did include several trials and calculations, and I enjoyed the process of coming up with different mechanisms and combined them to form a big system. Main obstacles were about what objects to use for different mechanism since several factors such as weight and friction matter. Link is attached here

Some game resources in time of physical distancing

David's Posts

Here’s some resources that might be useful for you as you think about your podcast episodes, or if you just want to play some games while you’re engaged in physical distancing.

  • Yucata is a site that has a bunch of online versions of board games. (Two from that list that jump out at me are The Castles of Burgundy and Puerto Rico). Players have to register for a free account at Yucata and then invite friends to play with them online.
  • Settlers of Catan (which Keita and Alan are covering in their next podcast episode) is available online, via a free app, in Steam, or in browser.
  • Town of Salem, a version of Werewolf where townsfolk try to rid themselves of Mafia and Mafia try to kill off townsfolk who might stand in their way. Available in browser (requires Flash) or via Google Play or iOs apps.
  • Airconsole is a site that allows you to play video games online using your phone as a controller. Cards Against Humanity is one of the free games available.
  • Secret Hitler is available to play free online. Registration required.
  • The card game Dominion — base game is free online, expansions available to buy. Registration required. 2-6 players. A deck-builder resource management card game.
  • Shadowverse is a collectible card game sort of like Hearthstone. Available on mobile app or in browser.
  • Lichess is one of the more highly rated chess clients.
  • Zynga has a bunch of mobile games, including Words with Friends, which is a Scrabble emulator.

I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting links I had been meaning to include here, so I’ll update this post as I come across more.

Embedding video into WordPress.com

David's Posts

Hey everyone, excited to see the posts that have already gone up and the posts to come. Let’s get the video embedded directly into your posts themselves instead of just linking to videos, though it’s probably a good idea to just leave a direct link to the video in the post too, just in case.

It looks like so far most of the videos are hosted on Google Drive, so here is a quick tutorial focused on embedding a video from Google Drive. Other services down at the bottom of the post.

(Click to embiggen any of the screenshots below.)

Open the Google Drive hosted video you want to embed in a tab on your browser. Click on the “More Actions” button, which is usually just three dots, then select Embed item… from the pull-down menu.

Click to embiggen

A dialog box will pop up with the HTML code you will need to embed the item into your post. Copy and paste that snippet of code.

In case you’re interested in understanding how the code works, it begins with a <iframe> tag that basically creates a small picture frame in your page, then it instructs the browser where to go and find the thing that will be displayed within that frame (that’s the src=”” part of the code [src means source]), adds a bit of information about how big the frame should be, and then closes the </iframe> tag.

Then switch over to your WordPress site with your with your post open in the editor. Click on the three little dots for “More tools and options” in the top right corner of your editor window.


Switch from the Visual editor the to the Code editor. The editor page will switch from the WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) view where your editor looks pretty much the way it will display once you publish the post to a view that shows the underlying HTML code for your post.

Paste the code into your post where you want the video to display.

Then you can switch back to the Code editor and you should get a preview of the video showing up in your post (sometimes it takes a moment to process as the frame has to load separately).

That’s it! Publish or update your post and the video should show up within the post itself.

Other media hosts

If your video is not on Google Drive but is instead in YouTube, you can do the same thing with embed code, or WordPress will automatically embed YouTube videos if you just paste the link.

For TikTok, instead of just copying the link to the video, select “Get embed code” just above that link.

Copy and paste that code into your post following the instructions above.

If you don’t want to switch to the Code editor, in the visual editor you can also add a new block, but select a Video Block instead of just a text box.

Click on “Insert from  URL” and then paste the link to the video (not the embed code from above, just the normal link) into that box.

When the cat is actually cooperating

Student Posts

This is Mika, Ruohan’s cat, who enjoys knocking thing off the table when bored. So I immediately thought of throwing a piece of paper on the table to let her push it off the table and into a bin when David mentioned this quest in the online lecture. In one try, I accidentally throw the paper too far away from the table, and she still managed to get it into the bin, and of course I was not recording during that time. But I thought it’s more interesting this way, and it took me many more take to get another successful shoot.

Hometask1: an unintentional throw

Student Posts

The coronavirus locks down limits my movement in the house, and I had no idea about making a spectacular throw of a piece of A4 paper. Therefore, form one extreme to another, I decided to do an unintentional daily throw that is a chill coincident. This piece of video is a record or my daily struggle of doing Differential Equations. Special thanks to my cousin as the guest actress who changed her pajama for the first time this week to help me filming the clip.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qXnITt-RTIWwI0xwOyrXrlkWjdCq34fk

Steph Curry Makes His Return

Student Posts

Here is the link to my shot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kHncQh8CWhn192kCiyTCd4qsbkQAIZlE/view?usp=sharing. To honor the Coronavirus induced NBA suspension, I decided to shoot my paper ball like a basketball. Steph Curry had just returned to playing in games after his hand injury in the fall, so I decided to honor his return as well by taking my shot from 3 point range. This task turned out to be more difficult than I’d expected, but the only irritated person was my sister, who was forced to record my 50 consecutive tries in NJ’s 40 degree weather. This assignment was a blessing in disguise because I went outside for the first time in days, and I also got to relieve my quarantine boredom for a few minutes. I think this shot is easily one of the most interesting so far, but I’m curious to see the rest of my classmates’ performances.

Paper around the World

Student Posts
I created the most epic paper toss into a bin. The paper makes its journey across my house. There are many rooms and locations outdoors that this paper has to travel through just to get to the bin. The bin is so far away that it has to go in through the house, outside and around the house, back inside and up the stairs all in one toss! It was so spectacular I had to do a celebration dance. https://vm.tiktok.com/G1goRe/ Watch my TikTok to see this fabulous throw.

Throwing Away Trash Without Throwing Trash

Student Posts

Many videos on twitter showed a few people collaborating to throw away trash in a spectacular way. Sadly, I was alone, and my left hand was already used to hold my phone. Therefore, I had to find a way to throw the trash with only one hand…

Although I did not like my video, some people actually said it was good, so I decided to upload this video. Here is my spectacular way to throw away trash without throwing trash… I do not know whether I can call this as magic, but I hope it looks like one. I think some people do not want to know the mechanism (or the mechanism might be obvious), so I will just leave as it is. Since there are already many great tricks on twitter, my biggest challenge was making my video creative and entertaining. It actually took me a whole day to think of this idea.

#sq8

Things you can do with a Zoom virtual background

David's Posts

Please don’t do this in my class (we’re small enough that it would be obvious) … and if you get caught doing this in any of your other classes, please don’t tell anyone that I’m the one who told you how to do it, but that said, there might be some situations where this little trick with Zoom’s virtual background could be very handy:

 

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