Grade 12

Motivational Monday Response

zayda2016 Engineering 12

I think the true measure of success is in the product someone is able to produce, I have always told myself that you can estimate your success by saying that your product will be the product of both your knowledge and your effort that you put into something. What I mean by this is that someone with more skill in a certain area will be able to produce something of equal quality to something someone less skilled made in more time. Likewise, no matter how skilled you are (or not), you can continue to put in the effort until you have learned from your experiences, and you will eventually have a product equal to something a very naturally skilled person could have made. What’s important to my ‘equation’ is that neither skill nor effort can be zero, you can’t put no effort into something and expect something in return, similarly, you can’t overestimate your skills and skip to the dreaming phase, we all work up from zero.

To better my chances of success, I think something I really need to learn is time management and motivation. Firstly, I definitely have a problem with managing my time, I always put the things I enjoy first, and that sometimes gets in the way of my other tasks. Luckily, most of the things I plan to do for the rest of my life are what I find enjoyable, and I think motivation will not be a problem for me in those fields. Where motivation is a problem for me is in things I am not so fond of, particularly repetitive work that requires no logical thinking, or work that has no definite goal (how else can I say art?). I know that if I think more open-minded I could find joy in everything, so it is something I acknowledge I should work on. As for time management, I would call myself pretty efficient at getting work done at the last minute without compromising on quality, but I know I could do so much more if I always worked at that rate.

I have experienced my share of “you can’t do that” comments, but I actually appreciate them a lot, if someone took the time to tell me what I can’t do, I will gladly prove them wrong; I think criticism is a much stronger drive than support because telling someone they are doing great puts a ceiling on their thoughts, it tells them they should take a break and walk because they have already run so far. The quote I will always live by relates to this thinking: “As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.” – A. Einstein

Jumbo Arcade Machine Design

zayda2016 Engineering 12

Here is the arcade machine I propose:

When picking a design for the 50″ arcade cabinet, I thought that starting with a normal ‘modern’ arcade machine form-factor (one with a thinner body to accommodate a larger screen) would be a good start.

For the aesthetics, I thought going with classic SNES and Atari games for the side decals would look nice, and bring a nostalgic look.

Because I think using a 4k HDR tv for just Atari games would be a bit of a waste, I think the best option would be using a gaming PC as the host for all games. A PC is especially nice because along with modern titles, you can emulate practically any system ever made, and to make it even better, a PC’s excessive amount of processing power allows for upscaling of games made for a lower native resolution.

Here’s an example of a PlayStation 2 game I upscaled to 1440p from 480p (not bad coming from a CRT!):

For controls, I thought it would be a nice touch to incorporate the classic feel of ‘real’ joysticks and buttons, which can be connected to a microcontroller that talks to the PC. In terms of storage and security, there are cabinet doors on the front of the machine for external remote and PC access. The body of the console will be built around the TV, so there would be no non-destructive way to remove the TV without access to the mounting device from within the cabinet, deterring any theft. Finally, for safety, the arcade machine will feature an internal power bar, so only one cable will go to an outlet (yes, one outlet is more than enough power to dedicate to a PC and a TV), to reduce tripping hazards. I think a simple solution to the cabinet tipping would be to all some L-shaped mounts on the back, where the cabinet could be bolted or weighed down, tipping horizontally is very unlikely due to the width of the machine.

Overall, I think this would be an interesting project and a good blend of classic and modern gaming technology.

Quarantine Game: Extreme I-Spy

zayda2016 Engineering 12

During quarantine, we’ve all certainly reached the peak of boredom, so some of us have found joy in playing games, whether it be alone or with friends. Instead of a normal card or board game, my friends and I have made what I think is an interesting game to explore the outdoors from within our homes.

As I certainly missed exploring the outdoors, I wanted a way to adventure the world from my computer, and it turns out Google Earth was the perfect solution. The desktop version of Google Earth, Google Earth Pro, allows for a fullscreen bird’s eye view of any building, and it’s even in 3D! It’s truly amazing how much of the world has been mapped and saved on computers, and it’s almost uncanny walking around a virtual copy of Port Coquitlam.

Below is a screenshot from Google Earth:

This brings us to the game my friends and I played, virtual, extreme I-Spy…

The rules are simple, one person sends another a screenshot from Google Earth, and the other tries to find the exact location, utilizing any hints they are given. Of course, you could add elements such as points and a time limit to your liking. The way my friends and I played was by finding a picture online and racing to see who could find it first, this allows for both players to be playing at the same time.

For the sake of standardization, here are some rules for the version of the game with turns…

  1. The Chooser finds an image of a place and gives the Finder one hint about it’s location
  2. The Finder is able to ask one question per minute (for a total of 3 questions) regarding the place, however, questions that narrow the possible location to a finer point, such as “what street is this on?” are not allowed.
  3. The Finder has 3 minutes to find the location and upon finding it, is given 2 points, plus an additional point for any unused hints (no points are lost for an incorrect or missing guess).
  4. These steps are repeated for the next player, where the Finder then becomes the Chooser.
  5. The first player to pass or hit 20 points wins, however in the event of a tie on 20, the game will continue until one player passes the rest by more than 3 points after everyone has had an equal amount of turns (so one person must have made a perfect guess, while the others didn’t in order to win on the next round).

I think the best part of this game is the fact that if you ever find a place you’d like to visit, you can put a pin down and navigate there when quarantine is finally over. Overall, I think this is an interesting game that we have made, and an excellent way to enjoy BC’s beauty safely.

Desmos Art Functions Card 2019

zayda2016 Pre-Calc 12 , ,

See the animations here: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/ln3asgblz0

Here’s an embedded version:

When I first heard about this project, I already had a picture of what my card was going to be in my head, I have made ‘artistic’ graphs in Desmos before, so I already knew all of Desmos’s features, and it’s drawbacks too. To start off my graphing project, I wanted to cover all of the required functions first so that I could mess around after, looking back, I really shouldn’t’ve worried about that, because I ended up using every function except log more than once, and log was already reserved for my logs in the fireplace joke, so I was safe there too.

As I was adding my functions, I realised how time-consuming it was to type in the same number over and over for the transformations of similar functions, so I solved this by making a few constants that all my functions could use, that way I only needed to adjust the translation relative to the object I was making (if constant was 10 for example, 11 would be c+1). Because I knew I was going to use a lot of circles in my graph, which are implicit relations with y not isolated, I wanted to solve for y and get 2 solutions so that I could use as many transformations as possible, a tool I found helpful to test graphs and solve is Wolfram Alpha, which allows you to copy Desmos’ functions in and returns solutions. Another disappointing thing about Desmos is the syntax for things like domain/range constraints, Desmos does not support commas, so if you want to apply a restriction to both x and y, you have to use 2 separate clauses. One thing I discovered Desmos does let you do, however, is set a restriction on a function defined by itself, so for example, you can shade in a function and apply a restriction that lets the shading keep its curve. Desmos also doesn’t let you set more than one constant at a time, for example y={1,2} should draw 2 lines, but does nothing. Because desmos will only let you use inequalities when equating to y, I got around it by defining my function, but not graphing it, then adding the restrictions in a separate line, for example: y>f(x). I also tried to use as few constant graphs as possible, and whenever I could, I used a high degree polynomial to draw 3 lines, but Desmos didn’t seem to like degrees too high, so the corners are slightly rounded, but I still think it was a good use of the function. I also encountered some cosmetic errors, for example, because the rational expression in my star never reealy does have a zero, there was a gap between the sides, which I ended up filling with a point, and it ended up looking pretty nice. When it came to my self-portrait, I really tried to bring out my non-existent art skills, but anything I tried was too scary looking, so instead, I put all my creativity into my clothes, to make the polka-dots, I used a relation with trig functions, that made circles, I then added vertical and horizontal scaling, and made it an inequality to shade the circles in, this would have taken much longer to do using normal circles, let alone semicircles. I also wanted to add many vertical stripes, and because Desmos didn’t like my use of restrictions, I just ended up using a transformed tangent graph, which produced similar vertical lines, again, saving me many function entries. Another thing that saved me from redefining a function was adding a second argument. If I knew I was going to rescale a function, I would define it as f(x,s) where s is scale factor, this again saved me from having to make new functions. Because Desmos doesn’t allow you to take the inverse of an already defined function (like f⁻¹), I avoided using the sine function, and instead used inverse sine (arcsine) whenever possible, the only downside to this is that arcsine is only defined for acute angles. Another challenge I faced other than Desmos itself was the letter m, I knew it needed to be quartic, but wasn’t sure how to get it in the right spot, I ended up figuring it out by first making a factored version at the origin, and adding the same translation to every one of the 4 x’s, and I ended up with it in the right spot. The only other challenge I faced was space, as I was writing out ‘merry christmas’, I ran out of space, but didn’t want to rescale every letter, I simply fixed this by writing R², because, it is the same thing after all. Finally, after completing the required parts of my christmas card, I knew I could have some fun with animations, after I accidentally stumbled upon the slider options while setting a constant. I started with a variable that increased indefinitley, and every time I wanted to use it to measure time, I would first take the remainder after dividing by a certain number, where a greater number is better, I did this using the modulo operator. After that, I subtracted it from a number, so that it would be negative for a fraction of a cycle, I could then use the sign function to return a negative or positive number based on the time. I ended up using this time variable to make an actual clock, which actually works. I also used the time variable to add flashing lights to my tree, smoke from the chimney, and a giant snowflake which took a table of points and transformations with sine and cosine. I definitely would not have known how to use these functions if it weren’t for computer programming, where these functions are used all the time. After my card was complete, I noticed it was very slow, and Desmos seemed to have not rendered all my graphs, especially the roof, which had some disappearing spots, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Because of this, my screenshot is made up of several zoomed-in ones, so all detail should be a bit better. I also added comments within my project, explaining some functions, so make sure to check it out to see the animations!

 

Overall, although this project took over 3 days somehow, I think it was an excellent way to review transformations, as I remembered how scales are always about the axis, and how you have to factor when you have both a scale and transformation. The project also showed how when solving for x instead of y, the opposite happens, and the y translation becomes negative instead of the x, this was very important when transforming relations.