Continual Water Clock

For the final action project of Light and Sound we were asked to design a unique clock that had some significant value. Coming up with an idea for a new clock was extremely challenging for me because I feel that a perfect clock has already been made, the atomic clock. However, I persevered and came up with a redesign of the water clock. I felt that the traditional had no way of renewing itself and I figured that gravity in combination with gears could fix that. I did not design the gear train that would be needed for this because I did not have the time or the means but I did draw out the basic layout of the clock.

The Continual Water Clock consists of two chambers that each have a 5 cm diameter and are 12.73 cm tall which gives them each an area of 1000 square centimeters or 1 liter. The chambers have two tubes coming out of them, one coming out from the bottom and one coming out of the top. These tubes are connected to the other chamber in the opposite position. This means that chamber one has a tube coming out of it that attaches to the top of chamber two.  Both chambers are resting on separate platforms that rise and fall based on a gear system that uses the flow of water through the tubes to spin a water wheel to turn the gears. These gears when turned will start to collapse a spring and when the spring is smallest, with the most potential energy (after an hour has elapsed and the tank is empty), it expands because the resistance of the gear it is set next to is equivalent to the expansion of the spring. This causes the gear to rotate raising the second chamber. While the second chamber is being raised chamber one is lowered. The water that was in chamber one at the start is now in chamber two at the top and it flows down into chamber one. Once chamber two is emptied into chamber one the process repeats. The time it takes one chamber to empty is one hour so every change of platforms indicates the passage of an hour. These switches make another gear system move which measures the hours like a conventional clock except that it is measuring the cycles of the platforms changing.

    This would be an effective way of measuring time because it would mark all the hours of the day and would never stop. The only downside to this would be that if it was in a hot place the water could evaporate causing a mess up in the system. It also would be hard to tell what the exact time was because it would only be marked at every 3.18 cm because that would mark the passage of 15 minutes.

    Water clocks in the past have been more of timers than actual clocks because most of them were non-renewing and would need to be filled once they were empty. They normally consisted of two bowls with one being raised above the other. The raised bowl would drain into the lower bowl and the time it took to transfer the water could vary, for example 1 or 2 hours. This allowed ancient civilizations to record time when it was dark or inside. However, they were largely inaccurate due to late or early fillings of the top bowl. The Continual Water Clock continually runs only using gravity as its power supply and refreshes the cycle automatically. This would have helped a lot in the ancient times because they would have been able to tell the exact time instead of just an estimate.

The Death Penalty

In the final unit of argument we learned about the Civil Rights Movement and how people had to come together and synthesis a new  way of living. We were then asked to find an issue in society where the two opposing sides needed to come to a synthesis. We were told to take one side and interview someone who supported the other side. Then we were asked to form a synthesis, which was not that hard in my case because I agreed with one of the points my friend made. The most challenging part was the research because researching conviction statistics proves very challenging due to the lack of information.

Thesis:

The death penalty should be enforced nationwide for first degree murder (A planned murder). Criminals who commit first degree murder are normally sentenced to life in prison and sometimes are sentenced to only 20 years (legaldefenderspc). Criminals who commit such a heinous act against another human being and against our society should not be allowed to ever see the outside world again because they claimed someone else’s life and have proven that they cannot function according to societies rules. The sentence for first degree murder should be the death penalty for adults. This will ensure that no murders are allowed to claim a life again and that they receive proper punishment for committing a crime against humanity. The proper punishment for murder is the death penalty because you killed someone who did not choose to be killed but you chose to kill so your punishment should be the same as theirs or worse. If we give murderers 20 years they can be free again while the person they killed will never be free.

CNN,2014

The other issue of not enforcing the death penalty is how much money it costs law abiding citizens to keep these murders alive. According to Vera.org, it costs $38,268 to house a criminal, which with the minimum sentence being 20 years is over $750,000 for someone who murdered another person and is not contributing to society at all. According to RebootIllinois, there are almost 9,000 convicted murderers which if they all are given the minimum sentence of 20 years that is 6.75 billion dollars just to keep murderers alive. All of this money comes from taxpayers. Why should society support someone who cannot abide by the simple rules of society? We shouldn't; they decided to take their own path and kill someone and break the rules of society so society should not have to support them.

Anti-thesis:

The death penalty is a barbaric way of inciting fear in the masses and controlling the population through fear of death, which is how dictators and tyrants control their countries. The United States fights against oppression and crimes against humanity across the world.

Use of the death penalty is hypocritical because it strips the rights away from people who are convicted by a flawed judicial system.

According to Ohio State University, nearly 10,000 people are wrongfully convicted for violent crimes including homicide, rape, and armed robbery. How can the populous allow the government to kill people when there are so many innocent people in prison? They can’t. The reason that people are sentenced for 20+ years and not death is because the government understands that their system is flawed and they cannot kill innocent people.

Paul Kieran Jeffrey, 2010

To claim that the costs of keeping someone alive is too much to pay and that they should be killed is cruel. There are people in society who are so below the poverty line that they cannot afford food or shelter and use the government's aid to stay afloat; should these people be killed just because they are costing the country money? No that would be a blatant crime against humanity. The same as killing criminals just because society does not feel like supporting them.

Synthesis:

The judicial system that is currently in place does have many flaws, which would need to be addressed. To counter wrongful convictions and to make sure that a criminal is deserving of the death penalty there will be a panel of judges who review every first degree murder case after the defendant has been found guilty and determine if there is overwhelming evidence that the defendant committed the crime. If there is then the defendant will be sentenced to death. If there isn’t and the judges feel that the person got an unfair trial they can also decide on a retrial. The issue that most trials have is that the jury is all civilians who have little to no experience in courts and cannot judge the evidence as well as the judges.

xymonau,2013

While it may seem cruel to claim that a person costs too much money to keep alive it is true. When they aren't doing any work and are getting a free ride they are an even bigger detriment to society. With this new system, where every case that could result in the death penalty is reviewed by judges, there should be no need for appeals and the death penalty should be enforced soon after the trial so that society does not need to support someone who is going to die. Too many people on death row are in prison for extended periods of time because they keep appealing and this just drains the limited resources that the government has to spend.





Works Cited "First Degree Murder, Second Degree Murder, Manslaughter, Homicide - Illinois Lawyers." Criminal Legal Defense Attorneys at The Legal Defenders, P.C. Legal Defenders PC. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. Spring, Tom. "10,000 INNOCENT PEOPLE CONVICTED EACH YEAR, STUDY ESTIMATES." Researchnews.osu. Ohio State University. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. "The Price of Prisons." Vera. Vera, 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. Wilson, Caitlin. "Illinois Prisoners by Crime." RebootIllinoiscom. Reboot Illinois, 5 Apr. 2015. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.

3-D Printed Guitar

    For Light and Sound's second action project we were tasked with designing and building a guitar. With my knowledge of 3D printing I decided to 3D print my guitar. The issue with this is that it needed 150 successful hours of printing consecutively and in the realm of printing that is extremely rare. I had quite a few failures, which led to the project taking a long time to finish. However, the guitar is approximately ¾ of a full sized guitar and plays pretty smoothly.

(Guitar,JC,2015)

    A guitar produces a sound wave when it is plucked. It produces a longitudinal wave (a wave that collapses together and then expands because of the particles vibrating in the direction of the wave) because the vibrating string makes the air molecules around it vibrate. The frequency/pitch of the wave is equivalent to the frequency that the string vibrates at. Normally the wave would be very weak when plucking a string because there is nothing to amplify the sound. On a guitar since there is a wooden sound box, the string makes the whole thing vibrate just like the string so that more air is vibrated at the same pitch. Since more air is vibrating the amplitude is higher causing the sound to be louder. 

    The Doppler effect will also change the pitch of the guitar as the player moves. As the player moves towards the crowd the frequency will increase because the waves in front of the player will be pushed closer together causing the audience to hear a higher pitch. If the player moves away from the crowd the frequency will decrease for the opposite reasons. This will change how the pitch of the notes is perceived by the audience but will not actually change the notes themselves.

    The length of the guitar that I made was 29.25 inches from the bridge to the neck. The approximate frequency of an E note played on the E string is 82.4 Hz, one octave higher would be 164.8 Hz. The string width is .056 cm. The wavelengths are 3.64 meters and 1.82 meters respectively. The volume is 451.2  cubic inches.

(Sketch,JC,2015)

Amendment to the GCE Code of Conduct

To conclude Unit 2 our action project was to amend the current GCE Code of Conduct. This process brought together everything that we have learned in the unit because we had to come up with a formal argument on why our idea was right and had to defend it. I think the main concept that I learned from doing this project was that there is not always one argument describing things. The current section about food has two arguments behind why it should be in place and at first I had integrated them into one argument because I did not realize but through discussing it with my teacher I realized there were two arguments to be made. This made it easier later on to find flaws in the arguments because they were simpler.

The GCE Code of Conduct is filled with rules and guidelines on how to operate the school. To ensure that students feel safe and equal a code of conduct is necessary. However, some of these rules are flawed and contradict each other. For example the rule addressing food is as follows, “No food is allowed during class or in the classrooms…” The only arguments that could be made against allowing food in class are:
P1: Eating in class causes a distraction to the student and his peers.

P2: Students are supposed to be focused on class.
C: Students should not be allowed to eat in class because they will be distracted.

The other one being:

P1: Students eating in class will not pick up after themselves.

P2: The classroom will be messy if the students don’t clean up.

C: Students should not be allowed to eat in class because the classroom will be messy.

The first argument is made invalid by another section of the code of conduct. The Disruption section states,  “Any disruption, which interrupts or interferes with teaching or orderly conduct of school activities, is prohibited....” Eating does not interrupt or interfere with teaching unless the person is being malicious and purposely making loud noises with his or her food or, their food has a strong odor. These are the only times that food is a disruption to class so food should not have its own section but should instead be included in the disruption section and be at the teachers discretion.

The second argument is contradicted in the Code of Conduct’s Students Responsibilities. The students responsibilities state at the end of the Code of Conduct, which says that students are responsible to clean up after themselves. Kids are already expected to be responsible for their own stuff. They should be able to be responsible for their food waste. The argument made for not allowing students to have food in class is already covered in the Code of Conduct and is contradictory. Students should be allowed to eat in the classroom.

The argument for why students should be able to eat during class is very simple:

P1: Eating in class does not disrupt class except in the rare case of a loud or odorous snack.

P2: Disruptions are already covered in the Code of Conduct.

P3: Students are responsible for cleaning up for themselves as stated in the Code of Conduct.

C: Eating in class should be allowed because it does not disrupt class except very rarely, which would be considered a disruption and students are already expected to be responsible enough to clean up after themselves.

This is an example of an acceptable snack in class that would not distract or detract from the learning experience of the student
Katie Warner