Tuesday, August 31, 2010
It is that time of the year again. I cannot recall if I posted about this last year, but we went to Smokey Land today yet again. I guess it is an annual thing, where we go to get blessed. Took me long enough to notice that we were actually going back there every year. I am not a very religious or superstitious person, depending on how you look at it, so to me it was not more than an opportunity to catch up with a couple of my cousins, amidst a very bad environment. Oh yea, and I have to return tomorrow for a Smokey Dinner. Way to spend the night before the first prelim paper.
One of my cousins had a few scars on her right leg, and bruises scattered around her arm. I was a little scary, but I looks like it has healed already, so I guess it was worse at one point of time. Anyway, she apparently survived some accident where a female driver (Not being sexist here, just stating the facts) drove into her because she did not see my cousin. I guess that is the disadvantage of riding a motorbike. If some idiot drives into you, she (or he) stands to lose less than you. The idiot driver offered to pay for a cosmetic surgery to fix up my cousin's leg, on top of the damages, but my cousin chose not to go for the surgery because they would have to take some flesh of her butt. I guess it is times like that you find out if you like your butt or your leg more.
The best thing about tonight was that it was also fruitful academically. Surprisingly enough, the same cousin involved in the accident asked me for some help in her architecture tutorial. Of course I could not do the questions that went "State the different characteristics of the following materials.", but she did not expect me to know the answer to that anyway. She wanted me to do the physics questions, where they have pretty scary structures and they required the students to resolve the forces acting on each component of the structure. Basically, it was a mega forces questions, where you have to find about 8 different forces, and state if they were compressions or tensions. I could not attempt either without a graphic calculator (damn those blasted things, I have become completely reliant on them), so I just remembered a couple of questions and did them at home. At the end of it all, my mastery of forces became so solid that I think I am ready to take on any form of forces questions the prelims or A-levels might feel like throwing at me.
For all those physics students out there who feel like doing some questions on forces, here it is.
Find and tabulate the following forces acting on each part (ie each line) of the structure, and state if it is a compression or a tension.
I was going to put both questions in, but this one took me so long to draw I changed my mind.
xw 8:32 AM
