Animation: Another Computer Media Venture

Animation: Another Computer Media Venture

PLEASE READ BEFORE WATCHING VIDEO

Over the last few months, I have decided to take up Computer Animation. People tend to take for granted its difficulty and tediousness. In order to properly build an Animation, you have to organize your original still graphics and a script.

The Animation Below is the "Battle of Cowpens" an American Revolutionary War battle fought in 1781 between the American Militias and Army and the British Army. The Americans are Blue, the British are Red. Daniel Morgan commands the Americans while Banastre Tarleton commands the British. The actual animation involves a voiceover of me explaining the battle setup and fighting while it is happening. The generals speak through humorous text bubbles. If you would like to skip me showing what's happening and seing the battle at the same time, a voiceover-less version of the battle can be found at 1:31, however you probably will not understand what is happening.

PLEASE READ AFTER WATCHING THE VIDEO

You may notice that during the animation, a part with 3 dimensional soldiers. This was created with a video game "mod," a downloadable 3rd party plug-in that allows the player to adjust certain elements, like in this case, turning a Napoleonic War Era into American Militias. The strategy of recording a video game's elements for use in a story or other purposes other than tutorials and walkthroughs is called a "machinima."

The still graphics used here were pretty abundant. In this case, all of the squares, circles, and stars were still graphics as was the background, the title, the arrows and the explosion animation. (The subtitles were added later) The actual animation work coupled with drawing the shapes, background and arrows, not to mention the voice over and subtitles together took me about a weekend to do, with about 2-5 hours of working each day. It took about 6-7 hours to put together.

I do have another animation that I'll probably post in this week sometime, however I can't access it right now. Stay tuned!

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor Published

Recently, I wrote a letter to the editor about Governor Jack Markell's Education Policies. It was published last week! Here is a screen shot of it on the Internet.

The Higgs Boson

THE HIGGS BOSON

Physics is as exciting as ever. The latest exciting event is the discovery of the Higgs Boson.   It was discovered on the 4^th of July but was confirmed by peer review recently. Well, so what’s so special about this “God Particle”?

            First of all, the “God Particle” is a very misleading name. It has nothing to do with religion or creation and only served as a catchy name to sell a book. The Higgs Boson is simply the missing final piece of the puzzle that is the Standard Model. The Standard Model is literally a theory of everything. This theory describes the results of a particle collision or what keeps the sun burning or what the Earth is made of.  The Standard Model predicted most of physics, and each time a new particle was discovered, the physics community wasn’t surprised, as the Standard Model had already predicted the possible existence of such a particle. The only particle that hadn’t been discovered until now that was predicted by the Standard Model is the Higgs Boson. Now since the Standard Model accurately predicts electrons, protons, particle collisions and most of physics, we can assume it is accurate about the Higgs Boson, so in reality, proving the Higgs Boson exists is just “Scientific Fact Checking.”

            But what is the point of the Higgs Boson, what does it do? Nothing. The Higgs Boson does nothing. So why do we care? Because it’s an indicator that the Higgs Field exists. The Higgs Field is what we care about, as it is the Higgs Field that helps with the Weak Nuclear Force and gives mass to all matter. But what is the Higgs Field? Well first we have to figure out what a field is. A field is just a way to spawn particles. Think of the field as a line or plane with squares randomly placed. The more squares there are in one place, the more concentration there is on that place. So if you have the electron field, then where there is concentration you find electrons, where there is no concentration, there are no electrons. What makes the Higgs Field so different from all the different particle fields is the fact that it is super concentrated at every point. This super concentration is the mass of the universe. Sometimes, after a particle collision, a Higgs Boson may appear, as a leftover from the Higgs Field. The Higgs Boson is the proof of the Higgs Field.

            The Higgs Field provides everything in this universe its mass. But what is mass? That’s a very difficult question. So let us ask, what is something without mass. A massless particle, like a photon (a particle of light) travels at the speed of light, about 186,000 miles per second. In reality, the speed should be called the speed of massless particles, but light was the first massless particle observed so it remains the speed of light. Massless particles can only travel at the speed of light, but on the other hand anything with mass, like you and me, cannot travel at the speed of light. However, objects with mass can travel at any speed and have the luxury of staying still.  On a different note, massless particles can bounce off of other particles. And since a concentration of the super-concentrated Higgs Field is a particle, a massless particle could bounce off of the concentration. Since it is constantly concentrated, the particle could keep on bouncing and bouncing at the speed of light, but would appear to remain still. And this imparts mass to the particle. Congratulations Higgs Field! So everything, even you, are just high-speed particles constantly bouncing and gaining mass. The Higgs Field also participates in Weak Nuclear force (one of the four fundamental forces along with the Strong force, electromagnetic force, and gravity) and powers stars, causes nuclear decay enabling carbon dating and can cause nuclear explosions.

This Diagram is a visual representation of the Higgs Field in action.
If you want to use the image, please link back here. By Rumi Khan.

                    

            The confirmation of the Higgs Boson is very important as it adds another puzzle piece to the Standard Model and may lead to more discoveries. Its most important contribution is its explanation of how mass is generated in the universe.