Solar Observation (12/22/15)

Telescope: Celestron Astromaster 130EQ

Mount: CG-3 (untracked)

Camera: Afocal Smartphone

Filter: 150mm Baader filter

Spots: AR12469, AR12470
Date: 12/20/15
Description: AR12470;

Solar Observation (12/20/15)

Telescope: Celestron Astromaster 130EQ

Mount: CG-3 (untracked)

Camera: Afocal Smartphone

Filter: 150mm Baader filter

Spots: AR12469, AR12470
Date: 12/20/15
Description: AR12470;

Solar Observation (12/19/15)

Telescope: Celestron Astromaster 130EQ

Mount: CG-3 (untracked)

Camera: Afocal Smartphone

Filter: 150mm Baader filter

Spots: AR12469, AR12470
Date: 12/19/15
Description: AR12470;

Solar Observation (12/18/15)

Telescope: Celestron Astromaster 130EQ

Mount: CG-3 (untracked)

Camera: Afocal Smartphone

Filter: 150mm Baader filter

Spots: AR12469, AR12470

Date: 12/18/15

Description: AR12470; Class EKO. Area: 610

Description: AR12169; Class HAX. Area: 20

Solar Observation (12/17/15)

Telescope: Celestron Astromaster 130EQ

Mount: CG-3 (untracked)

Camera: Afocal Smartphone

Filter: 150mm Baader filter

Spots: AR12469, AR12470

Date: 12/17/15

Description: AR12470; Class EKO. Area: 530

Description: AR12169; Class HAX. Area: 20

Description: AR12168; Class CRO. Area: 30 

AR12470's main spot shows a heart shaped Umbra

AR12469 can be seen to the top right of AR121470

AR12468 can be seen on the far right corner of the first 2 images

Faculae are prominent too.

,

Solar observation. (12/16/15)

Telescope: Celestron Astromaster 130EQ

Mount: CG-3

Camera: Afocal Smartphone

Filter: 150mm Baader filter

Spots: AR12469, AR12470

Filters: Broadband Blue, Red

Date: 12/16/15

Description: AR12470; Class EKO. Area: 610

Description: AR12169; Class HAX. Area: 30

AR12470:

WHITE

BLUE:

RED:

Solar observation. (12/15/15)

Telescope: Celestron Astromaster 130EQ

Mount: CG-3

Camera: Afocal Smartphone

Filter: 150mm Baader filter

Spots: AR12469, AR12470

Date: 12/15/15

Description: AR12470; Class DKI. Area: 360

Description: AR12469; Class CAO. Area: 50

Insects

These are some of the insects which I documented, during usual life at my house.
The golden ladybug is identified as: 1. Calligrapha multipunctata

The spider in the second picture seems like a salticus sp.

The 3rd spider seems like a type of orb spider.

The rest are obscure to me. Any help?

pakistani brain drain

Since I started my school, I was always looking for ways which me and my twin sister Khadija Niazi could do something extra. We have always been intrigued by self learning because I live in a country where you are forced to go with the flow of normal school learning.  From a very early age, we started using the internet for our self learning. Many online courses offered by prestigious universities helped in our journey and seeing our passion for learning physics ahead of our current capability, the University of Waterloo, which is a well known university in Canada, offered us a special place in a workshop for Quantum physics. 45 lucky students from the world are selected every year for this rewarding summer camp. Only the best of the best get to go there. And proudly, this is the first time 2 students (me and my twin sister) from Pakistan were chosen to avail this opportunity, and we are also the youngest students to attend that summer camp at the age of 14. I started searching for science summer camps in my own home country. I searched tirelessly, but sadly to my dismay, I found nothing…

In every foreign country this is a normal trend that in summers all prestigious universities offer exciting, innovative ways to introduce science, technology and engineering (STEM) concepts to high school students. Due to the fact that when you have summer holidays, this does not mean that learning has to stop. It’s a well known fact, and people call it ‘The summer brain drain’. A study shows that learning loss during summer has been recorded for more than a hundred years. It is the main reason for the rising drop out rates in many countries. It has also been observed in many studies that summer camps strengthen the academic and social skills of students, and also gives them experience on how these subjects are used in the real world. It also keeps the students engaged and active during the summer and they can follow there passion instead of sitting aimlessly at home.

I am a member of the Lahore Astronomical society which helps inspire people of all types and minds to have an interest for astronomy. They conduct public observations in schools, parks and universities to share the passion of the sky and to give our population a glimpse of what lies beyond. I wanted them to conduct a solar observation in my school so my fellows could think like me and that they could see what the sun really looks like behind the veil of brightness. Sadly, it took me more than a month to convince my school admin to let them conduct an observation. Even though I go to a very good school, their focus and that of many schools is mostly sports, debating and dramatics. Ok, again, these things are fine, but don’t ignore the most important thing, which is to spark the interest of science in our nation. Look at India, they have already sent a probe to Mars, while we are still struggling to get a few satellites in orbit. I visited SUPARCO, I thought they might have any summer camp to inspire young students. But no, I found them as dead as any science related organization in Pakistan.

We are a country having 35% of the population being under the age of 15. Just imagine the brain drain which takes place in these summer holidays. Shouldn’t we address this major issue? The only common workshops I find in this country are all related to Social services, charity organizations. Okay these are an essential part to train youth and increase social responsibility etc. What about science? What about technology? Where are the top notch universities of Pakistan doing? I live in Lahore which is called the hub of education in Pakistan. We have many prestigious universities here. Yet, unfortunately, they are sleeping in the summer, and so is our whole nation with them. It’s high time our government and our institutes follow the footsteps of many developed nations if we want to utilize our young talented brains to benefit our country.

Synthesis of Cu(CH3COO)2 copper(II)acetate

I recently used 2 methods to produce Sodium 2 acetate at home. Mostly people use:
 
H2O2+Cu+CH3COOH

which is slow and can lead to impurities of other copper salts, due to acid treatment of H2O2. If you have pure H2O2, then you are good to go, but thats not that easy to have at home.

An easier way is to obtain some insolube copper compound. I had some Copper hydroxide from electrolysis and some copper oxide, which I obtained as powder, by burning some of the copper Hydroxide. For the acetic acid, take some vinegar. Note, it should say in the ingredients; "acetic acid, water" and not the other types which had added salt and sugar in it. as we dont want impurities. If you want a much faster reaction, then boil down half of the vinegar. Do it in a ventilated area, as you dont want the acetic acid vapours burning your lungs (as they did mine). I tested the two compounds separately as I wanted to see the difference in reaction rates.

These were the two reactions. the darker solution being reacted with CuO, and the lighter blue one with Cu(OH)2. I dont know why the solutions are having different hues, but im guessing it has to do with the water molecules in the acetate. 

I later mixed the two and added more, concentrated and hot acetic acid on to it, till most of the compounds had reacted. it resulted in this:

 btw the bottle shrunk due to the boiling acetic acid. After leaving in the sun for 4 days, I got these crystals,

Weird Sighting

Few days ago I was travelling in the dark night on the motorway coming to islamabad, and the sky was amazing!! I could see the milky way arcing across the sky! Infront of us about 15deg above the horizon two blinking lights appeared, moving towards each other. Both of them suddenly Flared up bright orange! brighter than Venus in the night sky! For almost 4 seconds they remained, till they dimmed out and were blinking again. Then they were moving in the sky, turning here and there, going up going down. More happened that night which freaked me. I drew a sketch of what I saw in my diary. Those 2 lights were dancing towards the East under rigel and to the left of Altair
the big dipper and polaris were slightly towards the right of the direction my car was going in
they kept appearing, disappearing, turning lights on and off, for a good 30minutes
till only one light remained, It went towards the North and then North West to the left of the Big dipper and slowly slowly it went and disappeared on the horizon. 15 minutes after this we stopped at a gas station. My cameras battery died, otherwise I would have shot the milky way. I was talking to my dad on the mobile telling him what I saw.
He told be that a few minutes ago he was also flying in that area (on a turbo prop), but he didnt see any lights or any other aircraft on the radar. My mom snatched the phone from me and started talking about her own stuff when suddenly I saw a pale blue glowing thing fly across the sky accurately speaking, it hit my view from under the big dipper, AKA north and went straight, very fast to South West almost it went through my part of the sky in about 4 seconds which is fast, my part of the sky being the whole sky above me.

My Crystals: Kyanite

Kyanite (Al2SiO5)  is one of my favourite crystals! Its beautiful and has this layered structure to it.  

My Crystals: Quartz

Quartz:

Quartz is the most abundant minerals on Earth. Like Most crystals it has the typical Silicon and Oxygen compound (SiO2). This one robust point I got from Amazon.uk. They are realtively cheap due to how common it is. You have quartz infused in glass, in granite, in watches and in many different gemstones. This is a 3-side sketch I made of the various sides and features on my quartz. The top part of the point is mostly transparent with many complicated cracks inside the thick crystal. It is 4inchs long. Most things I notice about Quartz points in the raw are that the base which is where the point is attached to the cluster of points is very opaque or translucent. In Quatz terms, it is milky at the base and as the point develops it gets clearer and clearer farther from the base till the tip off the point.

 This is the biggest side on the crystal. If you look very closely on the flat sides, or by reflecting light from the side into your eyes (which highlights the surface details) you see linear patterns and many interesting designs!! I think that is due to the layering while it was crystallizing.

 As I was saying you can see the gradient of clarity. You might notice the tip has many dents and is chipped off, well thats due to me dropping it constantly. Despite that its a hard rock, Moh 7 is not a joke :P

There are many things you can do with Quartz for fun. Try passing lasers through the crystal to see a multitude of interference patterns. Try putting it under UV or black light. Go wild with this stuff! You never know what might happen!
Its Great for one to have a good sized Quartz specimen in his collection as it is the basic crystal which is cheap and stunning at the same time!!
They come in many colours. Amethyst, Citrine are some gemstones which are actually impure Quartz. Agate is a slice of a Quartz geode too!

Mathematica Presentation 3: Harmonic Oscillator

Here is the link to it, hope you like it! :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w3eckvxvsxbcz68/Eqp.mp4?dl=0

Mathematica Presentation 2: Airy functions

I couldnt upload it, so here is the dropboc link to it, enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/id01sazu29cs6y1/eqp222.mp4?dl=0

Mathematica Presentation 1: Gaussians and Hydrogen Orbitals

I couldnt upload the video, but here is the Dropbox link to it, enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/id01sazu29cs6y1/eqp222.mp4?dl=0