Light Refraction

A simple experiment demonstrating refraction of a laser beam through water.

The golden gate bridge as seen through tiny water droplets on a window.

" Refraction can be seen when looking into a bowl of water. Air has a refractive index of about 1.0003, and water has a refractive index of about 1.33. If a person looks at a straight object, such as a pencil or straw, which is placed at a slant, partially in the water, the object appears to bend at the water's surface. This is due to the bending of light rays as they move from the water to the air. Once the rays reach the eye, the eye traces them back as straight lines (lines of sight). The lines of sight (shown as dashed lines) intersect at a higher position than where the actual rays originated. This causes the pencil to appear higher and the water to appear shallower than it really is. The depth that the water appears to be when viewed from above is known as the apparent depth. This is an important consideration for spearfishing from the surface because it will make the target fish appear to be in a different place, and the fisher must aim lower to catch the fish." ~The very reliable source of Wikipedia ~

PokeBlog #2

 PokeBlog Entry #2
First ever, fully completed pokedex, Sinnoh's. After about 25 hours of total gameplay I finally conquered an entire pokedex and even obtained some very intriguing legendaries along the way.

 After the completion of my Sinnoh pokedex I went on to further train my EMPOLEON, the dominator of Sinnoh's elite 4 and champion. At this current point in time, CHARIZARD (my EMPOLEON) is at level 83, the highest I have ever attained on any Pokemon game.

In between Platinum gametimes I worked on my Ruby playthrough with my MIGHTYENA and SWAMPERT. I had finally defeated the Elite 4+1 the other day, so I decided to hunt down RAYQUAZA and after many soft-resets I caught it with one ULTRA BALL.

Since Rayquaza had been captured and I still had my MASTER BALL, I had decided to, for the first time ever, attempt the capture of a random encounter legendary. After a few minutes of trial and error, I managed to encounter and capture LATIOS, the only legendary in the game that I have never seen before.

Pokémans!

Bagon was obtained a couple weeks ago and was soon evolved into Salamence, even with a level 51 Salamence I am still not powerful enough to defeat the elite-4. I grew weary of grinding in Ruby so I borrowed a ds lite and Platinum from a new neighbor, my team currently consists of a lvl 55 Empoleon and some hm slaves, plus my Porygon of insignificant lvl. Yesterday I obtained surf and defog, I can now venture out onto the high seas for my quest for hm-strength. Stay tuned for more pointless pokémans updates.

Stairventure

This was the beginning of our Stairventure last week. Originally we began our jouney seeking the motorbike shop at the bottom of the, when we happened upon this ridiculous set of stairs.

 More stairs, leading under a road.

 The first landing we encountered on our adventure up the mountain of Posillipo.

This set of stairs was discovered shortly after we had seemingly completed the task set before us.

Almost at the summit we discovered this private tennis.

 This was the beginning of our descent into madness (The Underground City).

 This was an ancient bathroom. After abandoning this place they also took the toilets.

This wasn't even the smallest of corridors we had to pass. Most of these passageways were designed for water flow, not people.

This is probably the smallest waterway we encountered. It was around 5' tall by 2' wide.

Epic Bikes I

 Not quite sure what it is or who makes it but it's pretty baller, Street Magic stickers, red grips, disc brakes, oh yes.

 100% street legal as well, you'll never see something as awesome as this street champ in the states.

 This would be the more modern looking and super-motoed out XR650L but here it is called the FMX-650. It has two mufflers thereby equalling more power obviously, why they wouldn't have put the 650r motor in it I don't know but either way its still a pretty kewl bike.

MX des Nations

MXD was in Belgium this year and we figured that since we are so nearby it would be a mistake not to go.  The trip started with another unpleasant trip to the airport where we were herded and crammed onto a 737 with no assigned seating.  Luckily the flight was only 2 hrs so it was at least somewhat bearable.  Just remember it is worth it to spend the extra money and not fly Ryanair.

We arrived at the Eindhoven airport where it was immediately noticeable that it was a much more organized and calm country.  Upon leaving the terminal in search of a rental car or taxi we walked through parking lot with a lot of money in it, Porsches, Audi's, Beamers and other assorted expensive, foreign cars.  We ended up just getting a taxi van to take us to our hotel because all the rentals were booked solid until MXD was over.

Saturday dad and I headed out to the track on foot (it was only a klick away), and when we arrived it was a little chilly and cloudy.  We missed most of practice but were still able to watch qualifiers but those didn't start until after it torrentially down poured on us and we were forced into a tent with a crowd of hundreds of other people.  Whilst in the tent I found some Brits near the center of the pavilion and we got to talking, real characters these guys, ended up handing me a beer which would later be stolen by mine father.  The rain eventually ceased and we went back to spectating, but before leaving the tent we found some other Brits with the most ridiculous chainsaw noisemakers probably known to man that they proceeded to start and run inside the tent(pictures to follow on Facebook).

As far as actual racing Antonio Cairoli won every moto he raced in, even qualifiers.  Americas team this year consisted of Dungey in Mx1, Baggett in Mx2 and Barcia in Mx3.  Barcia looked strong in qualifiers but ended up having issues in the final motos, Baggett rode really well and got us our best points but the compounded totals of our other riders wasn't enough to beat the Belgians or Germans.  Unfortunately for our other team, Italia, one of our riders crashed out, so all of Cairoli's victories ended up not counting in the end.

All in all a great time in Belgium, reminded us a lot of home, a little brisk and lots of foliage.  Almost forgot about the chainsaw dances, I'll try and post the video we took at a later time.