Left-Right Brain

     Surfing the internet during Spring break, I found a .gif of a spinning woman. A caption underneath the picture said that right brained people would see the woman spinning clockwise, and left brained people would see he spinning counter clockwise. I started to wonder what the difference between the two were.

     First, I found that brained-ness determines what hand is dominant most of the time. This is caused because the left side of your brain controls your right side, and the right to the left. I am dominantly right handed (I can do everything with both, though), but I see the lady spinning clockwise. The fact about that is, is that it's not 100% consistent. Some right handed people will be right brained and some left handed people will be left brained.

     Now, I'll talk about different functions of different sides. First of those, the left side of the brain uses logic, detail oriented thinking, and is more sciency/mathy than the right side. The right side of the brain uses more imagination, abstract thinking, and big picture orientation, than the left.

     I found that learning for different types of things originates on different sides of the brain, though I can't find much information about that topic. There's a lot about the left side having much language comprehension.

     There is a lot of disagreement on the fact of left-right brained things. Some studies that I've read say it's real, and some say it's fake. It's true that it doesn't have an affect on your personality, but certain abilities.

Here is a viral image that says if you find the face in under 3 seconds your right side of the brain is well developed.

Article by Brian, Published 2011, Date visited 4/9/14, Website: lateralaction.com, URL: http://lateralaction.com/articles/left-brain-or-right/

Article by Utah Healthcare. Published August 14, 2013. Visited on 4/9/14. Website: http://healthcare.utah.edu http://healthcare.utah.edu/publicaffairs/news/current/08-14-2013_brain_personality_traits.php

Absolute and Relative Pitch

Absolute Pitch and Relative Pitch

     I was asked to play the National Anthem at a Texas Legends basketball game on my flute on March 5, 2014. So, I did that, and during the third quarter of the game, which I stayed through, a song played at a time out, I realized that I could somewhat accurately sense the notes. I could feel that I had gotten so used to certain vibrations from playing the flute for so long, that I could listen to the note being played, and reference the vibration, and know the note being played. I know this isn't perfect pitch, because I can't tell if a note is in tune or not, but I can tell what note is being played. So I'm going to talk about in this post how perfect pitch, being able to know exactly the note being played, and relative pitch, knowing the exact note with a reference point, work.

     First, I found that perfect pitch is mostly genetic. It being genetic means that it is learned through genes that you obtain at birth. It seems to be fairly rare in people. Early musical training is required for it to develop well, though. G# is a commonly misnamed note for many of those who have absolute pitch.  Perfect pitch dies off with age, though, causing people to lose their ability of absolute pitch naming.

     Having an absolute knowledge that I, myself, have the skill of relative pitch, I can say it isn't as accurate as absolute pitch. (I've never tested for absolute, but you know, it might be possible). If someone with relative pitch hears a note that they know, and then another note is played, they would know every note in the squence from that point on.

     I also found that absolute pitch is nearly impossible to learn as an adult. I know that learning is much more difficult as an adult because the frontal area of the brain has fully developed.

     This is probably one of the most interesting things that I've learned from doing blog posts so far.. Well maybe because I'm a band geek or whatever.. It interests me, though.

Here is an image of absolute pitch test results from a study.

     

Sources

http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/

I had done research on this topic before, memorizing the info, but not sites.

Electron Microscope

     So in science class the other day we were watching a video about the elements. In one part, they looked at atoms through a microscope, and I was wondering how that could work. This is how transmission electron microscopes work.

     They use a high voltage electron beam to make the image. Electrons are negatively charged particles of an atom, and they revolve around the atom like a magnet. An electron gun creates the electron beam by using a tungsten cathode. If you're wondering what a cathode is, it is something that picks up an electrical charge. The cathode would allow the electrons to be picked up, letting the beam flow forward. The beam goes through electrostatic and electromagnetic lenses, and scatters the electrons. Then image is seen with an objective lens.

     That's about all of my knowledge of electron microscopes for now. It's hard to learn about them when there's so many big words like the ones I had to use above.

I found this picture of a hydrothermal worm magnified by an electron microscope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_microscope

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/18/hydrothermal-worm-electron-microscope_n_901833.html

Music to the Brain

     I was reading around awhile ago, and I saw that a song that I really like is rated the fifth most relaxing song in the world by a lot of websites. I started wondering how on earth a song would be rated on how it would have effects on a mood. So I researched that a little bit, and here's what I found about how music can change your mood, and have an effect on your mental health.

     Scientists have actually proven that when you listen to music, your heartbeat sorta syncs with the music. It syncs with different sounds depending on the rhythm and key. If a song is in a minor key, your heartbeat will slow down a little bit. If a song is in a major key, and has a quicker tempo, your heartbeat will speed up, since your brain detects something exciting is happening.

     One weird thing I read (and no, I don't have sources for this because it was a long time ago and I don't have photographic memory) said that the sound of an air conditioner can change your mood. You know that buzzing sound you can hear when you're sitting in a quiet room? The sound of an air conditioner can change your mood depending on the tone of it.

     I also read a site saying that singing along with the music can positively change your mood. Vocal improvisations while doing this also help. What I mean by vocal improvisations is like the difference of Chris Martin singing 'Talk' live compared to the recording. If you change the rhythm a little bit, maybe change a bit of tone, it will improve your mood.

     However, I read that listening to music all the time nulls our minds to the emotional effect. If we listen to music constantly, we don't feel what the song has for us to feel, since we're so used to it.

     This is really what I found on how music changes our mood. Thank you for reading it. I'll have a few songs below that will change your mood, and yeah, before you ask when you see the songs– I do like Coldplay

Songs to get you excited/in the zone

http://youtu.be/zTFBJgnNgU4

http://youtu.be/fyMhvkC3A84

Songs that will help with sadness

http://youtu.be/RB-RcX5DS5A

http://youtu.be/dsz-EeNZBkI

This shows what happens in your brain while listening to music.

Sources

http://bestbinauralbeats.org/how-music-affects-our-mood/

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-listening-to-music-lifts-or-reinforces-mood-051713

http://lifehacker.com/how-music-affects-the-brain-and-how-it-benefits-you-1469597259

Hybrid Animals

     A few years ago, I remember seeing something on TV. It was something about scientists discovering a hybrid dog that they decided to name chupacabra, after the mythical creature. I was really freaked out by it, and then I thought "That actually seems cool." I decided to get a little bit more in depth with hybrid animals, so I'll be making a blog post about them.

     I'm going to talk about how hybrids occur. It happens when two genetically distinct animals mate with each other. The mating usually occurs between two different animals of the same genus, which is the first part in a scientific name of an animal. The hybrid displays traits from both of the parents. Sterility is what keeps those 'chimera' genes from passing onto other animals. Sterility is usually defined by the amount of chromosomes that the hybrid animal has. A reciprocal hybrid is what happens depending on what the genders of the two animals are. If you, for example, when a male donkey and a female horse mate, you would get a mule. If you change the genders around, and make it a female donkey and male horse mating, you would get a hinny. The mule and hinny would have 63 chromosomes, as compared to the horse and donkey's 64 chromosomes. That would prevent a mule from mating with a donkey. That's really all I have to share about hybrid animals, and I'm glad even I have more understanding of this subject now. To close, here's a picture of one of my favorite hybrid animals, which occurs when you mix three completely different animals with Greek mythology.

Picture found at http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Chimera

Phsyics of Music

     This blog post is for my science class, first of all. I had to make a post about anything that had to do with science, so I decided to combine my passion of music with science. I'm basically just going to talk about how physics of waves create sound and how waves create chords and stuff.

     The way sound is created with an instrument is the first thing. For a guitar or piano, other stringed instruments, and percussion instruments, your fingers, a hammer, or a pick strike a string or surface, creating a vibration. The vibration moves the air around it and carries the sound around the room. With a wind instrument, it is a bit different. Many people may think that you blow through a wind instrument. That is incorrect, air is just the stimulant for the vibration. With a reeded instrument, the air just vibrates the reed against the part holding it. In a flute, the air makes vibrations and creates a pressure wave that travels through the instrument.

     Notes go out of tune because the wavelengths don't compliment each other. The higher the note goes, the easier it is for notes to be out of tune. This is because the wavelengths so small that even the slightest change could make the ugliest sound. Instrumentalists can change the pitch of the instrument slightly though, because they are able to use less or more air depending on if they are sharp (too high), or flat (too low). Every instrument has a natural register in which it is made to play in, and notes are usually slightly out of tune outside of that register. Most instrumentalists learn which notes are out of tune and learn to adjust their air to make that particular note in tune. Tuning also goes off when the temperature is different. Warm air isn't as dense as cold air, so the particles move around a lot more, making the sound sharp. Cold air is denser, which restricts particles from moving, making the sound of the instrument flat. Temperature differences are not good for wooden instruments, like piccolos, and acoustic guitars. Let wooden instruments sit for a moment before playing, to prevent cracking in the structure.

     One thing that makes a band sound good are the acoustics of the room they're playing in. If you have ever been inside of a band hall, you could see that normally, they would have carpeted walls, or have materials that aren't completely flat. Flat surfaces reflect sound more directly, so they will make more echoing, and make dissonance in the sound because the sound will last longer and interfere with new notes being played.

     I hope this helped understand music physics. I actually really enjoyed this science project, which is a difference from most projects I need to do in classes. 

The first two waves here are notes by themselves, and the third is a chord, which is two or more notes that have a constructive interferance. A chord would sound very pleasant to the ear. The rhythm guitar part in your favorite song would most likely play a series of chord.

The first two waves here are notes by themselves, and the third is the product. That is a wave that has destructive interferance. The waves negatively interact with each other, which would make a very ugly note.

Sources- Personal experience, some science classes about sound and waves, some band classes, http://www.theconcertband.com