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Introduction Lately, when not crushed under the tedium of self-studying two AP exams, I’ve been trying to refine the clay soil from my backyard into clay. A post about that is coming. This post is about an interesting effect I noticed today as I test-fired pieces of clay. Basically, clays often contain iron oxides (compounds containing different ratios of iron and oxygen with distinct properties) as an impurity, which gives them their color. Depending on whether the kiln’s atmosphere is oxidizing or reducing, these oxides can be transformed into one form or another during firing, changing the surface color of…
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This one was held in San Mateo Public Library. First, I worked on a rice cooker whose non-rechargeable lithium battery had run out. From my understanding, the battery was used to avoid the need for an AC power supply, needed not only to keep the clock running when the appliance was unplugged, but also to operate the entire user interface. After disassembling the device, we replaced the battery by desoldering the old one and soldering the new one in. It was pretty clear to me the battery was not meant to be replaced, which surprised me since the rice cooker…
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This was my 2024 Synopsys science project. Abstract While liquid cooling presents itself as an efficient cooling method for ever-hotter integrated circuits, it is confined to mostly commercial applications and occasionally premium desktops. Instead, high-performance laptops rely on heavy and bulky heat pipes to bring heat from processor to radiator, somewhat defeating the purpose of a portable computer. I aimed to create a ferrofluid pump without moving parts capable of cooling a laptop effectively. My solution involved creating a closed loop of ferrofluid and pumping it magnetically. I tested four different designs: three using traveling magnetic fields in different forms…
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This event occurred at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, a collaborative hackerspace for software projects. I first worked on a portable electric radiator with a detached cord winder (the plastic thing you wind the cord around for storage), a loose caster, and a plug with burn marks. The cord winder had a cantilever snap-fit that was bent back so it wouldn’t clip properly. I used a heat gun and file to bend and shape it back into place so it could be reinstalled. The plug’s burn marks were most likely due to arcing from an improper connection, and we…
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Featured image source: Donald Trung Quoc Don (Chữ Hán: 徵國單) – Wikimedia Commons I had to write a 650–1000-word memoir for my English 10A class. Here it is: Short Wave One summer, my family and I went to visit Hong Kong and perform the duties of Chinese-Americans visiting their families back home. We brought gifts of See’s candies and Polo shirts, ate fancy food with relatives numerous times (often in the same restaurant), and visited wet markets with their exotic fruits and shellfish sold by the catty (a mass unit equal to 1-1/3 pounds). We went hiking and saw enormous…
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Introduction I have a … thing for the periodic table. In elementary school, I copied it twice, by hand, of my own volition. The first attempt was crooked with many spelling errors and multiple different pen colors. The second was neater, but element 8 was still written as “oxegen”. Last year, in the never-ending quest to discover an “ideal” periodic table that has all the information you need, yet is easily readable and printable, I took the one from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and edited it. The IUPAC’s periodic table is available here. Americans: note …
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A drafting pencil is a mechanical pencil with a long (~4mm), thin tip called a “lead sleeve” that makes it great for scribing along the edges of rulers, also making it easy to see what you’re writing. Unfortunately, the thin lead sleeve gets damaged very easily when the pencil is dropped, breaking the brittle graphite inside as it’s forced through. Although it’s usually possible to un-bend a bent sleeve by pushing it on the edge of a table, a particularly violent impact can cause an unfixable dent. (Based on my experience, drafting pencils are a poor choice for emotionally volatile…
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The event was held at the Museum of American Heritage from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. First, I worked on a Technics SL-MC7 CD changer. It had a magazine into which up to 60 CDs were loaded and a sliding carriage to select and play discs. When plugged in, the machine showed “checking discs” on its display and made various mechanical noises as it attempted unsuccessfully to move the carriage. The problem (as with many old CD players) was that the belt driving the carriage was loose and had to be replaced. Fortunately, there were plenty of spare belts on…
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This Fixit Clinic was held in the Hayward Public Library from 11:00 to 2:00 PM. I took on the unwise challenge of attempting to repair a person’s VHS VCR, a task probably best left to someone older with direct experience with these devices. Luckily, I had watched a few YouTube videos on the subject so things weren’t as bad as they could have been. First, given that the year is 2024, let me put a brief explanation of how VCRs work, taken from pages 260-261 of The Way Things Work, a wonderful book that you should read. Like a …
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Some time ago, a lighter in my house ran out of fuel and I decided to take it apart despite “common sense” (i.e. a blind and baseless fear of fire) telling me not to. To be fair, the last time I took apart a lighter, there were hair-singeing consequences, but this time, I verified that the lighter was completely empty of fuel to avoid this risk. The lighter is disassembled by removing a single screw towards the back, a press-fit collar towards the front, and prying the two halves of the glued-together case apart. Inside, there are two levers: a…
