Archive for Intellectual

A380 II

{ June 3, 2007 @ 12:27 am } · { Intellectual }
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As mentioned here are some of the specs for the A380. This is going to be very technical so please bare with me. :)

  1. The wing is made of a new material(composite) called GLARE. Let me see if I remember this from my materials’ lectures. It is 30% lighter than Aluminium and is fatigue resistant. Not bad. At least I did learn something in Imperial. :P Anyway, the downside to this is that it cost more and it doesn’t seem to perform well in hot temperatures especially in deserts.
  2. The flushing system. They used F1 technology. Ah ha. Cool eh. It only takes 8 seconds for the sewage to travel from the front toilet to the tail where the refuse storage is. Sounds long but traveling nearly 80m down with immense pressure losses and all it is definitely something to shout about.
  3. The engine. Made by Roll-Royce. The Trent 900. It provides less noise and less pollution but with more power. This also in general makes the flight more quiet. So yay! I can sleep more peacefully now.
  4. The vertical tail plane is as tall as a 7-storey building. And the horizontal tail is as long as a small plane. So, you can imagine the size of the plane. It’s just big!
  5. Control system. Everything went digital. Looks cool and it seems very easy to fly. Well, most of the time it will be on auto-pilot. But now, the screens are all digital. So okay la. We need some EE engineers out there. :) Don’t worry, they have a lot of satefy measurely if these were to fail.
  6. Landing gear. It is one of the most important part. It requires to withstand tonnes of load and especially absorbing the impact during landing. So, they have to be really really strong.
  7. Cabin bins where you put your overweight hand carry bags. I know you all definitely hit the 5kg limit. Heh. So, it seems that they have motor to open up the bins and can withstand about 70kgs. So, no worries.
  8. Seating configuration could go up to 800 seats. Now, that’s carrying about 8 full double-decker buses.
  9. All the main parts of the plane; wing, fuselage(body), tail, engine and all are built in different European countries. And all are brought to Toulouse, France for assembly. Airbus said that it would produce that plane every week.
  10. Wires. About 500km in length and about 300,000 joints. The is also one of the major setback to the first delivery of the plane. Hmmmmmmm. Now, talking about that much cable. :)
  11. The seats are also designed to be more comfortable. I know the present seatings on-board are hard and stiff but it is because they are made of fireproof materials. Hehehe. More materials come to play here.
  12. Due to its size, most airports in the world have to resize their gates and runways. By an extra 30-40%. KLIA can fit 3 planes at the same time for now. The furtherest gates at the satellite building has been resized and the runways are bigger now. An additional 3 more gates will be added when the second satellite building is completed.

And here is a picture of the plane flying into KLIA. I’m sure you know what those 2 buildings are framing the plane. :P I can’t wait to ride in it.

A380

{ June 3, 2007 @ 12:04 am } · { Intellectual }
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Talking about super planes. Now, this IS the real deal. The A380 is the biggest commercial plane to ever fly. Singapore Airlines is supposed to be the first to fly but sadly, it has been delayed for nearly 1 1/2 years. Hmmmm. However, a part of me says ‘Ah ha serves you right Airbus. That’s for rejecting me within 24 hours of my application.’ Hehe. Okay I’m not being a sour grape here but they mostly accept EU citizens and it is very rare for a non-Eu citizen to get a place in the European sector. Aihhhhhhhh. On the other hand, the aero side of me wants this bird to fly asap.

Anyhow, here is a glimpse of the plane. Actually, the interior was a reason for this bird to be delayed for so long. Airbus promised that each airliner could have any configuration/style. However, that seemed to prove difficult as customising over 60 requests with different specs is a nightmare. Definitely in my opinion, a recipe for disaster.

Ahem ahem First Class la. Can always dream. :)

Even a shopping boutique. Cool.

A bar too.

I could go on with some of the specs of the plane but that’s going to be long. Hehehe. I will save that for the next post. :)

p/s: Kai, does this post make my blog a boy’s blog now? You ah. :D

Top 10 Greatest Discovery

{ April 15, 2007 @ 6:40 pm } · { Intellectual, Random }
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Since I’m going to be busy with work soon, I decided to chill a bit by watching some Discovery Channels programmes. What caught my eyes was this 1 hour show on the Top 10 Greatest Discovery. And since I’m in the science field why not take a look? So geeky I know but something intellectual for the first time. :D
So here is countdown!

Number 10 – Newton’s Laws of Motion

Don’t we all know it. First thing we learned in Form 4 Physics.

First Law
An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.

Second Law
The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction.

Third Law
All forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

Number 9 – Microorganism

The microscope used by Anton van Leeuwenhoek.

Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovered microorganisms in 1676. His famous discovery was the protozoa, bacteria and sperms. Using his first simple microscope, a magnifying glass mounted on a small stand used by textile merchants capable of magnifying to a power of 3, he was able to see all these that our eyes can’t see.

Number 8 - Penicillin


The discovery of penicillin is usually attributed to British scientist Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928. He grew a pure culture of the mold and discovered that it was a Penicillium mold, now known to be Penicillium Chrysogenum. Without it, many would have died. Guys and girls, do you still remember your biology? ;)

Number 7 – Germ Theory

I had no idea this theory existed.

The germ theory of disease, also called the pathogenic theory of medicine, is a theory that proposes that microorganisms are the cause of many diseases. Although highly controversial when first proposed, it is now a cornerstone of modern medicine and clinical microbiology, leading to such important innovations as antibiotics and hygienic practices.

Number 6 – Law of Inheritance

The laws of inheritance were derived by Gregor Mendel, a 19th century Moravian monk conducting plant hybridity experiments. He cultivated and tested some 28,000 pea plants. His experiments brought forth two generalizations. Mendel’s findings allowed other scientists to simplify the emergence of traits to mathematical probability. So, don’t worry Mathematicians.

Number 5 – Earth Moves

Ah yes. Very simple. But it changed everything. I still can’t believe I did this for A Levels.

The Copernicus Universe.

Copernicus was a mathematician, jurist, physician, classical scholar, Catholic cleric, governor, administrator, diplomat, economist and military leader(Gssssssssh! How many things can one person be!). He was an avid astronomer. So, he gave the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun not the other way. The Church weren’t happy about that since they believed that Earth was the centre of the universe. Oh well, they were proven wrong.

Number 4 - Periodic Table of Elements

Ah ha. Feast yourself on this Chemist.

Do you carry this table with you all the time?

The periodic table of the chemical elements is a tabular method of displaying the chemical elements, devised by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. Mendeleev intended the table to illustrate recurring (“periodic”) trends in the properties of the elements. He arranged them like solitaire cards and found that there were trends, 7 to be precised(at that time). He predicted other elements too like boron and aluminium. There is an element named after him. Which one?

Number 3 – E = mc²

Aiya. This equation. Who doesn’t know it. In physics, mass-energy equivalence is the concept that all mass has an energy equivalence and all energy has a mass equivalence. Who else thought of it other than the genius Albert Einstein.

Number 2 – General Relativity

Another one by Einstein. Till today, I still don’t know what it is about so I will quote it from Wiki. I know I cheated.


General relativity is the geometrical theory of gravitation. It unifies special relativity and Sir Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation with the insight that gravitation is not due to a force but rather is a manifestation of curved space and time, with this curvature being produced by the mass-energy and momentum content of the space-time. General relativity is distinguished from other metric theories of gravitation by its use of the Einstein field equations to relate space-time content and space-time curvature.

And finally,

Number 1 – Natural Selection

Quite bizarre. Biology stuff at number 1. I thought it would be the Big Bang, DNA or something. :)

An observation Darwin did during his trip to the Galapogos.

Natural selection is one of the cornerstones of modern biology. The term was introduced by Charles Darwin in his groundbreaking 1859 book The Origin of Species in which natural selection was described by analogy to artificial selection, a process by which individuals with traits considered desirable by human breeders are systematically favored for reproduction. Natural selection is the evolutionary process by which favorable traits that are heritable become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable traits that are heritable become less common.

Well, I hope this wasn’t boring. Well, hope there is more out there to be discovered.

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