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- Autobiography of myself (28th March 2004)
[The picture
on the left shows me working with my ignition coil setup. Of
course it's taken by myself with the camera timer function..]
Before I begin my
autobiography, I would like to mention that this autobiography is
up to my current life (14+) and I will update it once in a while,
as I get older. :). Now lets begin.
I was born in Singapore, which
is a tiny island at the tip of peninsular Malaysia in South East
Asia, on the 26th December 1989. I am now a 14+ year old secondary
3 student at time of writing,
and I am currently studying in Raffles Institution, possibly the
top secondary school in Singapore. :-) I was quite surprised that I
actually managed to get into the Gifted Education Program (GEP)
since I didn't particularly do well in many subjects in primary school.
Ever since I
was young, I always had a great fascination for all things related
to science. I remember being curious and inquisitive, often
visiting the library to borrow books. I also had a great interest
in constructing things... the earliest I could remember was when I
was just 6, and I made a nice portable rubber band gun out of a
pair of chopsticks and rubber bands. It worked quite well and was
rather accurate. I also tried to develop a paper pallet shooter,
but with not much success. As you can see, I had a large interest
in devices which could propel objects.
Lets jump a few years to when I
was 10. After playing around with simple rubber band guns, I soon
began to feel that they were weak device, not capable of doing
much, and I knew I needed
something more powerful. It was then I came across the idea of the
bow and arrow. Bows were relatively simple devices, yet could
propel an arrow a far distance. I began doing some research and made
my first bow. The bow was made out of cane, and the arrow a
straight twig. While doing the self research, I came across the
slingshot catapult. This immediately gave me new ideas. I made my
first sling shot with a cloth hanger, rubber bands and a tough
piece of material for the sling. The next inspiration for my
projects was when the game Age of Empires came out. It was a
simulation game about medieval war and survival, where the player
creates an empire and fights to survive. Some of the units in the
game were the crossbow men, and the power siege engines. This
drove me on to read up on medieval weaponry, after which I
fabricated my own sling and crossbow. After looking through several books
and websites, I began to have an idea of how medieval siege
engines worked. It was then I decided to build my own model
trebuchet and onager. I got some scrap wood, and constructed the
trebuchet first. It stood about 40cm tall, and had a 3.5kg weight
as the counter weight, and despite it's small size, it could fling
a small pebble a good 20 metres, based purely on gravity for
propulsion. My onager model was constructed out of wood which I
sawed and fitted together. Using nylon as the tension rope, it was
a quarter the size of my model trebuchet, but had almost the same
performance (i.e. distance it could throw stones)!
 Sadly, the trebuchet is now
dismantled and the onager is broken due to over tensioning of the
nylon bundle, which cracked the wooden supports. (The picture on
the right shows the fixed onager, with duct tape, an added wooden
support, and a green marble - excellent projectiles) After the major Primary School Leaving Examinations
(PSLE), I had more time to do my projects, and using only Lego and
a nice piece of wood, I constructed my Lego Crossbow. This was
very powerful, and very accurate. I also made my own boomerangs
out of wood. I was quite surprised when I threw them and they
actually flew back! Working with all these projects taught me a
lot about working with plastics and wood (especially).
When I entered secondary
school, I began reading up more on everything related to science,
be it magazines, books or internet websites.
I became fascinated with many different topics, electricity being
one of the main one. I started experimenting more seriously with
electricity and electronic circuits. Probably the first electronic
circuit I fixed together would be my
glow pad,
powered of a USB port from a computer and lit by 3 LEDs. As
I continued to read up more on electronics, I also began building
electronic devices from plans I found in some electronic websites.
It was also then that I build my first 'high voltage' project -
the coil
gun. This operated at 330V and was a significantly
higher voltage than the batteries other students were still
playing with. Running from a single AA battery, a circuit raised
to voltage to 330V which charged a small capacitor bank. Of course
it was a matter of time that I got myself shocked with it when I
accidentally touched the non insulated circuit with the charged
bank of capacitors, which made my hand go all numb. Although the
stored energy was only 13 Joules, it was painful and left burn
marks where my fingers came in contact with the bare wires...
(as little as 16 Joules is enough to be lethal!)
As I continued reading up, I
decided that I had to make a proper HV device. This was when I
made my first
Marx generator, charged by a
flyback.
This device used the flyback transformer to charge several high voltage
capacitors to around 5kV, and the capacitors were discharged in
series. It only ran at less than 50W, but was a pulsed power
system, and could deliver 30kV pulses every few seconds. For I was
still inexperienced with high voltages, I picked up the setup one
time, forgetting to discharge the capacitors, which still held a
high voltage charge. A fat spark
leaped to my hand, and by reflex, I almost crushed the device. I
learnt my lesson and I always discharged capacitors before
handling. Thankfully, the capacitor was a small one - for if had
been larger, the results would surely be fatal. After this
incident, I became more careful in my other experiments, and
carried out many safety precautions.
 In late 2003, I embarked on my
first large project - the construction of a
tesla coil.
As with my other experiments, I did all construction and research
myself without help from parents or other people. It ran at 225W
RMS and produced healthy 20cm+ continuous arcs. It was a fruitful
learning experience, and although did not function as well as I
had hoped for, I was satisfied with what I had spent the December
holidays on. This project was mostly sponsored by my parents, and
cost around S$100 to build. As I read more and more science
related books and websites, my knowledge and skills grew, and so
did the magnitude of my experiments. This posed a problem -
funding (now). More complicated projects involved special
components costing a huge amount and often end up costing several
hundred dollars. I thus have several projects running along side
each other, and work on them a bit at a time, as money and parts
are available. Currently, most of the costs are covered generously
by my parents, and also from my savings. Being a student, I don't
get much funding.
Of course doing projects /
experiments like this are dangerous. Fortunately, there haven't been
any large accidents, but there were a few close calls! One such
example happened during my Pyro experiments. I wanted to test my
'Fire cannon'. This project was basically using an air powered
accelerator to shoot a burst of liquid fuel mist (I used kerosene
for this attempt..) at a fire source, and using high speed photography to analyse the flame. A candle was set up in
front of the barrel, and I poured a too-large dosage of
kerosene into the barrel, and aligned it with the candle, the
target being a few wet cardboards sheets. I opened the valve and a
HUGE ball of flame erupted (I was expecting it to be large, but
not *that* big!), and a huge wave of hot air almost
knocked me down. The large subsonic wave knocked down a plastic
chair and a broom behind me. Since too much fuel was used, it
could not totally combust during the initial 'flight' from
the barrel to the cardboard, and got all over the floor. The
result was a large fire in my backyard. Due to the intense heat,
the wet cardboards started burning too! Luckily, the fire died
down quick, and everything was put out with water from the nearby
watering hose (Not the best idea... kerosene floats on water...
sand would be better). The backyard was filled with thick black
smoke after that which took a while to clear.. (kerosene doesn't
burn cleanly).
Of course it would be almost
impossible to write down everything, and I have obviously left out
a lot.. however, this outlines some of the work I have done... For
now, I continue my studies (in fact, this autobiography had to be
written for an English assignment!).
   Other than my projects, I do
other things as well. I am in my school Gymnastics team. I enjoy
gymnastics because it trains mental and physical strength, and
being able to do all the flips is quite enjoyable too. I also like
other sports like biking and running. Sports (and my projects
too) help me relieve stress of the 9 subjects I am currently
studying. Other hobbies I pursue are stamp collecting, and
drawing. Usually, when I am bored, feeling stressed, or have
nothing better to do, I'd do some artwork. On the left is an oil
pastel drawing I did in 1 hour some 2 years ago. If you thought it
looked familiar, you're right. It's a redrawn version on Van
Gogh's Starry Night, but now drawn in a daytime perspective. I
like both traditional and digital artwork (which also includes 3D
renders). You can check out my
art gallery if you are
interested. I am
also a fan of S.H.E, a Taiwan group, and Cyndi Wang Xin
Ling, who is also from
Taiwan. (photos on the left)
I am currently living in a
little terrace house in southern Singapore, where I carry out my
projects and experiments at my backyard and my room. (which is
always in a big mess!). If you wish to contact me, please e-mail
me. |
