My Name is Ari

Determine the Empirical Formula

datquestionoftheday:

An unknown compound is found to have 2 times as much carbon as oxygen, and contains no nitrogen. It has as much hydrogen as carbon and oxygen combined. No other elements have been detected. What is its empirical formula?

• A. CO₂H₂
• B. CH2O
• C. C2H3O
• D. CH4O2
• E. C2H5O2

See the answer here: http://datquestionoftheday.com/chemistry/determine-the-empirical-formula/

Requirement for Spontaneity

If a chemical reaction is found to be spontaneous under a given set of conditions, then which of the following must be negative?

A. Change in enthalpy.

B. Change in free energy.

C. Change in entropy.

D. Enthalpy.


To see the solution, visit the following link:
http://mcatquestionoftheday.com/chemistry/requirement-for-spontaneity/

Privacy Concerns for the Future of Social Media

I clicked on a Groupon and was lead to this screen. To sign up I got this message saying “all we need is access to all of your private data to optimize your experience”.

We now live in a world where clicking the Connect button has no significant meaning other than convenience, where we don’t value our privacy, and freely share through the ever growing amount of apps to record how much we sleep, eat, exercise, where we are, who we know, what we like (or don’t). Never mind that your smartphone - which you never leave behind - has GPS to always tell your exact location. And Twitter so you can tell everyone what you’re doing there too.

There is the argument, “If you don’t like the apps, don’t use them!”. That isn’t what I’m getting at here. I think these apps provide a great service, however, I am wary of how the data we’re freely sharing is being used - especially in light of recent bills such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, etc.

What I am most worried about is the future, when children begin to use these services. Our generation was a little lucky as we caught on with Facebook when we were 15-16 and had a little bit of judgement skills built up to not share everything (OK, maybe the senior prank wasn’t a good idea). We had some cognition of the way this data could be used.

What about when children begin to have Facebooks from the time they are born? When frenzied social media parents begin having kids, creating Facebooks for them, having them friend their kindergarten classmates and document their lives from the time they are born till the time they die? When you think about that, a $100 billion valuation seems like a steal!

With all this data pouring in and the increasing invasion of privacy, these kids will not know any different of a time where privacy DID matter. We will get a generation of adults who do not value privacy whatsoever, and then you begin down the 1984 path.

Now here comes another argument, “Just don’t let your kids use Facebook until you feel they’re responsible enough”. Acceptable at first, but really, when 80% of the other kids on the block are on Facebook, are you going to limit them? Even if you choose too, they will still find a way to create a profile and join; there won’t be a way to control it.

Again, don’t get me wrong, I still think Facebook and all these other social media companies are great. But moving forward, and especially for our children’s sake, we need to start understanding more about the dangerous game we’re playing with our privacy, and theirs.

As more children begin to sign up for Facebook, we need to educate them on privacy and to be careful online. Concepts of privacy and the possible repercussions of ignoring it are necessary skills in today’s world. This is on the level of importance of physical safety, nutrition ed, sex ed, and drug education (perhaps higher). I won’t be the crazy strict parent, but I will be forthcoming in teaching my kids to understand the online world and privacy. It will be an injustice to train their minds into just posting and uploading without thinking. 

Programming Escapades and Viral Contest Pages

I decided I wanted to apply what I’ve learned so far in Javascript to something useful.  While switching from Farhenheit to Celsius is crucial, I’m afraid the Weather Channel has got me beat.

Of course I’ll continue tinkering, but I found I learned a fair amount in a real setting too.  So www.contest.mcatquestionoftheday.com was made.

The site is run off half a Wordpress theme, several plugins, and my limited Javascript skills to glue it together.

I learned all about hidden divisions, something I think is super important for design (just hide all the bs until the user needs it), and a little Jquery to make it more pretty.

Now the site.  This site came out of inspiration for holding a contest for the MCAT Question of the Day site.  We want a greater reach, and had a healthy dose of new visitors from several sources.  What if we converted that search and referral traffic into social traffic? (Which by the way, Google Analytics should make social traffic a separate category.  It isn’t just a bunch of referral sites anymore).

Why just count the amount of visitors you have coming in from your marketing efforts?  Convert them to refer more people like them via their social networks!  Incentivize through a promotion your customer segment wants.  Those early adopters will refer other early adopters, and before you know it you got the virus! </alwayssunny>

The results so far have been great over the past few days.  It is sweet to sit back and watch the real-time stats in Google Analytics, and surprisingly our conversion rate is rather high.  Now to plot the next move to take it up a notch…

The Never-Ending Solutions for a Creativist

So you’re facing a tough challenge.  All the solutions are laid out, but none of them suffice to your level of satisfaction.  So drop those solutions and attack the challenge from a new angle.  There are many more solutions out there than you will ever think of.

Let’s examine multiplication.  The picture at the top of this post asks a simple question.  What is 23 x 13?  Did you go for the calculator?  Or did you think you could solve it like we learned in school?

Let’s forget what we already know and try something new with no assumption.  The answer is revealed at the top of this post.

Let’s explain what is going on here.  For the “23” I drew two lines for the “2” and then three lines for the “3” below it.  Then for the second part of the equation I crossed it with one line for the “1” in 13, and then three lines for the “3” in 13.

The answer lies in the intersections of these lines.  No multiplication skills needed.  Just add up the intersections diagonally and you get the answer, every time.

It doesn’t stop here.  There are many other ways to multiply numbers, all with their own advantages.

There is also the Lattice Method, which makes a bit more sense and is much more useful.  If you look close you can see it is actually just the line method in disguise with numbers. 

Simply multiply each number by the other one, fill in the box (if you have double digits then the first digit goes in the top half and the second digit in the bottom half), and add diagonally just like the last example.

Another magically looking method involves solving multiplication through the base 2 binary system instead of the base 10 we use.  It’s pretty sweet.  It used to be called Peasant Multiplication because you didn’t need to know any multiplication at all to do it.

Here we order both numbers horizontally next to each other. 

We halve the left number until we reach 1 as the answer and drop off the decimal places along the way (i.e. 11/2 = 5). The right number we double until we reach the amount of answers we have for the left number. 

Then we delete any even numbers on the left side and their corresponding right side answers.

Now simply add up the right side and you have your answer again!

For something even as simple as multiplication there are a variety of creative solutions.   So realize that the challenge your facing is actually an opportunity waiting to be tackled from a different angle.  The answer is out there, just let go of your notions.

How to Add Launchrock to your Facebook Fan Page in a Breeze

If you’re a startup, you know it’s important to get users quickly.  You’re probably here because you want your incoming traffic to get to your Launchrock as soon as possible.  I’ve been grinding for 3 hours now so you can simply follow suit!  Let’s begin.

I’m assuming you have your Launchrock setup and already being hosted somewhere, and you’ll be logged into your Facebook the entire setup (and you should be the admin of the fan page). 

I’ve been working at a local startup in Gainesville called Feathr.  Feathr is a mobile app that streamlines contact information exchange via digital business cards.  We’ve been working on web presence and I wanted to put our Launchrock on our Facebook page, which was a lot more difficult than I thought it was going to be, but ended up being really simple.

1.  Go to https://www.facebook.com/developers and click on +Create New App in the top right.

2.  Fill out the name and namespace for your app.  Your users will not see these, so organize it for yourself.

3.  Figure out a ridiculous captcha.

4.  OK, we’re in.  Go ahead and update your favicon (16x16, some great tiny icons here) with something, it’ll be what the user sees next to your custom tab landing page.  Don’t worry about app domain or anything.

5.  Navigate down to the bottom and click on Page Tab.  Name your custom page (this is the name your traffic will see). Point the page tab URL to your Launchrock page.  Point the secure page tab URL to the same Launchrock page, but put https:// instead of http://.  If you don’t have SSL encryption enabled for your server then users on Facebook with secure browsing on won’t be able to see your Launchrock via Facebook. 

Here’s the important part.  You need to put a forward slash after the URL you’re pointing to.

Good:  http://www.feathrapp.com/

Will NOT work in Facebook: http://www.feathrapp.com

6.  Save the changes and open a new tab.

7.  I haven’t found an easier way to link to your Facebook app to your Fan Page.  The following solution comes directly from Facebook guides. 

Open a new tab.  Paste this URL in there:

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=YOUR_APP_ID&next=YOUR_URL

Your App ID is at the top and your URL is at the bottom.  Plug these in and choose the Fan page you want to add the tab too.  Save the changes and you now have Launchrock right in your Facebook!

8.  Optional.  I’d suggest making this new tab your default landing tab for people who don’t like your page yet.  This way you get to the call-to-action ASAP and eliminate one more qualifying step.  You can do this by clicking on Edit Page in the top right.

And then switching the default tab to your new custom tab.

That’s all!  Now you got a snazzy Launchrock landing page for your Facebook and your social traffic is more valuable!

I don’t mind being paid in followers :) Follow me on here or Twitter!
www.rezaei.me

Never be Confused about the Temperature Again

Making a calculator in Javascript to convert degrees wasn’t all too bad actually.  I figured I could learn some more and threw in some simple CSS so it didn’t look like 1994 too much. 

I learned a couple things today.  First, Fahrenheit is a Taiwanese band, explaining why a lot of results in Google were about a boy band.  As for functions I learned how to round integers and how to form validate in Javascript.  Check it out, if you don’t enter anything in the box it gives you an error instead of assuming 0.  Pretty useful stuff, now I can check if people are submitting things in the correct format (like emails and phone numbers).

Programming is pretty fun after all this.  Getting started was a little rough because I had no clue what was going on, but after playing around thinking through how the variables will be set, where and how the functions will be created, it’s like a big game of Sudoku.

From here again I’m not sure what my next push will be.  I’ll keep my mind open to opportunities and continue Codecademy lessons.

Here is the glorious code.  I wish source code would show all nice and color coded on Tumblr.  It probably can, I should figure out a better way to share code. 

<html>
<head>
    <title>Convert Farhenheit to Celsius</title>
    <style type=”text/css”>
    body
    {
    background-color:#d0e4fe;
    }
    p
    {
    font-family:”Arial”;
    font-size:18px;
    }
    </style>
   
    <script type=”text/javascript”>
        //take input in farhenheit field, convert to celsius, then round to nearest integer and alert.
        function convertF(farhenheitInput) {
       
        //check to see if number entered, if not stop script.
        var x=document.Fahrenheit.farhenheitInput.value;
            if (x==null || x==”“) {
                 alert(“Please enter a temperature to convert.”);
                return false;
              }
       
        var newCelsius = (5/9)*(farhenheitInput-32);
        var roundC = Math.round(newCelsius);
            alert(farhenheitInput + ” degrees F = “  + roundC + ” degrees Celsius.”);
        }
       
        //take input in celsius field, convert to farhenheit, then round to nearest integer and alert.   
        function convertC(celsiusInput) {
       
        //check to see if a number was entered, if not stop script.
        var x=document.Celsius.celsiusInput.value;
            if (x==null || x==”“) {
                alert(“Please enter a temperature to convert.”);
                return false;
              }
            var newFarhenheit = ((9/5)*(celsiusInput))+32;
            var roundF = Math.round(newFarhenheit);
            alert(celsiusInput + ” degrees Celsius = “  + roundF + ” degrees F.”);
        }
   

    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <center>
        <p>Enter a temperature in Fahrenheit to convert to Celsius</p>
        <form method=”POST” name=”Fahrenheit” onSubmit=”convertF(document.Fahrenheit.farhenheitInput.value)”;>
            <input type=”value” name=”farhenheitInput” id=”farhenheitInput” />
            <input type=”Submit” name=”Convert” />
<br><br>
        </form>
        <p>Enter a temperature in Celsius to convert to Fahrenheit</p>
        <form method=”POST” name=”Celsius” onSubmit=”convertC(document.Celsius.celsiusInput.value)”;>
            <input type=”value” name=”celsiusInput” id=”celsiusInput” />
            <input type=”Submit” name=”Convert” />
        </form>
    </center>
</body>
</html>