Most of us know Micheal Faraday as a great scientist but we do not know him as a follower of Christ. Michael Faraday is considered by many as the greatest experimentalist in the history of science. Despite his mastery of experimental skills, he never assumed the status of a Master theorist.He contributed significantly to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. Faraday held the post of Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in which he became the most famous holder of the position. Despite of these he remained humble and devoted to God.

Faraday started as a humble bookbinder at the age of 14 in which he spent time reading books which developed his interest in science. At the age of twenty he became an apprentice for Humphy Davis. Faraday was not considered a gentlemen and was treated like a servant. Despite of the discouragements he still persisted followed his interest in science.

Faraday is also an elder of the Sandemanian Church, a small Christian sect known for their cardinal theological tenet that saving faith is 'bare belief of the bare truth'. As an elder he delivered sermons or "exhortations" as they call it. Some of his sermons are recorded and we can look back and see that Faraday is a follower of Christ. His contemporaries Gladstone and Tyndall who wrote his biographies give us an account of Faraday's character as a Christian Scientist. Gladstone described him as having a warmth of temperament, a respect and love for others, and a reverence not only for God, but also for his fellow man. Another biographer (J. Kendall) described how Faraday "... was continually pressed to be the guest of the high and noble, but he would, if possible, decline, preferring to visit some poor sister in trouble, assist her, take a cup of tea with her, read the Bible and pray."

Despite of great scientific discoveries, which is the basis of most of our present day technology, he still values the privilege of knowing God's truth more than anything.

In his exhortation delivered in London on July 7, 1861 he closed with these statements:

Ever wonder how your legs work? Ever wonder how one person keeps his balance while standing? Ever wonder how the body coordinates your legs while walking or running? Ever wonder why humans have 2 legs instead of 4?

The biomechanics of human legs are very complicated. Engineers spent years trying to analyze how human legs really work. For decades, engineers are trying to replicate human movement using robots. But for many years of research, engineers cannot still perfect their design for biped robots. The most successful for now is Honda's Asimo, which can now walk and run at the rate of 6km/hour (average speed of fastest human is 36km/h).

The mechanics of our legs are very complicated. Standing may seem like very simple but it is not. Standing involves constant adjustment of balance. Adjustment of balance involves moving our center of gravity in different positions of our body. Walking is much complicated. It involves tipping slightly off-balance forward and to the side, and correcting our balance with right timing. It can also be analyzed as tripping of one leg and then suddenly catching of the other leg; the engineers use the term "controlled falling" for this mechanics. Running is like walking but in a continuous process-- the body is in a constant state of falling forward. You can just imagine how complicated is the mechanics for hopping.

In order for these dynamics to work, a system should compose of very sensitve balance and angle sensors, very efficient and fast processors and powerful but controlled locomotors. The human body is doing these processes everyday, and most of the time we do not notice it. That means our body is very very complicated, even more complicated that cars or robots! Most biologist regard bipedalism as a product of evolution. Plain reason convince me that it is not from evolution but designed by a Great Engineer. There is no way that time, chance and matter came up with the brilliant design of this mind-boggling system.

Reference: Wikipedia. url: http://www.wikipedia.org

I enjoyed working with our laboratory exercises for EEE35 (Signals and Systems) especially when our activity is to simulate the guitar string sound using signals (or a series or matrix of real numbers). Our approach is to use Karpus-Strong Algorithm implemented in GNU-Octave to produce the guitar string sound. It is amazing to know how Karpus and Strong came up with a very simple but effective algorithm for this simulation. The algorithm is to produce a white noise (or just a vector of random numbers; you can hear white noise when you have "NO" signal on the radio) then use a Low-Pass filter recursively to the signal then append each filtered signal. The sound signal will start with a burst of noise (or attack) then a decay then sustain. This pattern is general for percussive instruments such as the guitar, piano, and xylophone. The resulting sound we've produced is not the best guitar sound simulation I have heard but it is quite OK. It sounds like a electric guitar but not quite.
Included in the activity is to produce different note patterns using the relationship of the fundamental frequency and the white noise length. Then it came to my mind to George Frideric Handel's Hallelujah Chrous from Messiah. It's good that I still remember the notes from an excerpt of the chorus.After a series of computations and coding the simple piece is finished. It sounds like a ringtone from an old cellphone but still I rejoice that I was able to simulate a 1741 masterpiece which declares that "the Lord God omnipotent reigneth".

If you want to hear the simple simulation click here.

Our ears are amazing. In the cochlea, sound waves are being converted into electical signals. Hair cells, which are acoustic sensor cells, respond to different frequencies and our hearing process works by breaking down sound waves into several frequency components. This sounds familiar-- this process is analogous to the Fourier Transform-- developed by the French physicist and mathematician Joseph Fourier. Fourier Transform is very used widely in signal processing, but little do we know that our body has two Fourier transformers designed and tuned by the Great Designer and Creator himself. Not only did the Creator gave us this wonderful organ to use for hearing but He also tuned it. Tuned, meaning He gave a standard of what sounds are beautiful and which are to be called noise. With this standard tuning we are able to  appreciate music, which is a higher form of expression and comunication. People appreciate music, it depends on what genre. People use music for worship, for courtship, for expression and sometimes for business. I am always interested with music. And for one night, my appreciation for music amplified. My regard for music beame deeper for one night.

It was Febuary 25-26 6am to 6pm at the Saganang Ani Music Festival at Baywalk, Manila (see photos section for Saganang Ani). The is night full of excitement me and the whole fellowship went into a fieldtrip at the Baywalk. The whole festival is all about Philippine Music, and during the festival I realized the richness and beauty of our country's music. We watched in amazement at the performance of, ethnic musicians, wind ensembles, rondalla players, choir, contempary alternatives and some classicals. The whole night is a blast, we even had the chance to take pictures and talked with Joey Ayala and Noel Cabangon. I appreciated the music of Ayala and Cabangon because it talks about the country, the environment, our countrymen, and of course romance. Dr. Ramon Santos once said in our class that music is the best form of communication. With music, these artists can express their concerns for this country and for the environment.

Music is more than just sound waves that is amplified, transformed and analyzed by our ears. Music touches our hearts and speaks well in our minds. I believe that the Creator made music not just for entertainment, not just for expression of concerns and not just for us to enjoy. Music is made for us so that we can express our praises and thanks to the One who created and saved us. Music also is a very obvious clue of the existence and beauty of the other world...

Our second exam in Math 114 was released today. I have one mistake that reminded me of my Philo 11 class with Prof. Soberano. The problem is to determine is the set given spans the set of polynomials in degree 3. So my approach is to use a theorem in which I only need to show that the set is Linearly Independent, if it is then it spans the set of polynomials. But it turns out to be not Linearly Independent, then I concluded that it does not span the set of polynomial in degree 3. My mistake is that i assumed that in an "if P then Q" statement, if P is false the Q is also false, which is invalid. The Truth Table from Prof. Soberno's class came into my mind.
                                  if        P    then      Q            Validity
                                          True             True            True
                                          True             False           False
                                          False           True             True  ***
                                          False           False           True  ***

If the premise (P) is  false two things can happen, the conclusion can be either true or false.

This led me to think about the ancient argument about the existence of a creator in the book I read (The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel). The Kalam's Cosmological Argument state that: Everything that has a beginning has a cause. The Universe has a beginning therefore it has a cause. The first premise is very much true. Our human nature seeks out for reasons why, for every object or event we ask the questions why or how. Logically this is true, a donkey cannot just pop out of your computer, even so we ask how and why. The universe has a beggining, which can be easily shown by mathematics and can be verified by physics and astronomy. This leaves us to a conclusion that everything has a cause. Now that cause must be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He must be able to transend time and must have infinite power and wisdom. That leaves us to a conclude the existence of God.

Why did I name this site as Faraday's Cage?

Faraday's Cage is a cage which "shields" off electromanetic fields. If a person is inside the cage, he cannot receive any electromagnetic signals from the outside environment, and electomagnetic signals from the inside cannot pass out of the cage.

Same as with my life. I keep things for myself. Many struggles, desires, hopes and dreams I keep for myself. I am a person who tells lot of stories. But I am a person who "shields"off his emotions. I am a person who does not want other people to see me in pain or in joy. That is why I don't cry infront of other people ( but I cry in my quiet moments with Lord). Maybe its just my personality -- to keep these things between me and the Lord. I don't know what drove me to have my own blog. I think it is also related to the Faraday's Cage. My blog is entitled Gaussian Surface. Gauss's Law is one of the basis for Faraday's Cage. It can be paraphrased as: the net charge enclosed by a surface can be computed without actually measuring the charge, all you have to do is to measure flux lines crossing the Gaussian Surface. This blog serves as a Gaussian Surface-- people can know me without being really close to me. Actually, this can be applicable to all blogs.

May this Gaussian Surface serve its purpose. But my this site remain an ideal Faraday's Cage, wherein no information will leak out!

Information technology is fast evolving. Information now can be encoded, reproduced, transported and decoded using series of voltage impulses. As I type now, my computer recognizes electrical signals from the keyboard and then encoded using the ASCII codes, then processed by the CPU, then it sends signals to my monitor, the cathode ray tubes in my monitor shoots out high speed electrons which id controled by 4 charged plates, when the electron hits the screen, it glows and produces different colors. At the same time, when I hit OK, series of electrical signals are sent through UTP's, diverted by routers, sent to satellites then reaches the multiply.com server. All happens in less than one minute.

Thanks to engineers and physicists who, by their God given wisdom, able to develop these technolgies. But these technologies are often times abused. Man in his search of knowledge to make life more comfortable, is provoking more evil. Internet crimes are rumpant, internet pornography has become a billion dollar company, credit cards are being hacked, institutions' servers are vandalised and many more. Man has become so proud, but has fallen so low. Man became a slave to his evil desires. Man is sure lost...