by ams9006

Complicated Timepieces

The mechanical watch market is an industry with an unusually high preference for tradition and history. This would make sense, since the advent of electronic quartz watches has filled the role of practical and affordable timepieces; anyone who is looking to buy a mechanical watch is doing so not solely for its practical value, but for its prestige, unique appearance, or craftsmanship.

Often, mechanical watches are wanted for their complexity. Watches with unique mechanisms are interesting, and knowing that all these mechanisms are sitting in a small cylinder on your wrist is awe-inspiring. Unlike most products, where simplicity is valued, the more complicated a watch is, the higher its value.

Watches are made complex by giving them extra functions called complications. Complications can be practical and mundane, like a seconds hand or a date counter. However, because of the allure of complicated watches, the the demand for increasingly complex watches is always there.

However, despite this complexity, the basic mechanism by which a mechanical watch functions is the same across almost all watches. The watch’s mechanical components, collectively referred to as the “movement,” consist of the mainspring, the balance wheel, the escape wheel, pallet lever, and the gear train connecting these parts to the hands on the face of the watch.

The mainspring stores the energy for the watch in a springy metal coil. This energy is released by through the gears of the watch. But how does the mainspring not release all of its energy at once in one great spin of the hands of the watch? The secret behind this is the escapement.

The escape wheel is the toothed wheel in the bottom left (yellow). The escape wheel is powered by the mainspring, but it is stopped from freely rotating by the pallet lever (slime green). The pallet lever acts like a gate that restricts the rate at which the movement turns, and thus the rate at which time passes in the watch.

The pallet lever pushes the balance wheel, which (relatively) slowly swings back and forth, which pushes the pallet lever back to its original position. In the process of returning to this original position, the pallet lever allows one tooth of the escape wheel to pass. In other words, the escapement (this entire mechanism) allows one tooth to “escape” every sixth of a second (which is the oscillating frequency of the balance wheel).

This is how our watches keep time. Without the escapement, mechanical watches would be nothing more than a springy gear train on our wrists. However, with the escapement, the springy gear train on our wrist releases energy at a constant rate, keeping constant time.

While this ingenious mechanism appears complex, it is old technology dating from the 1750s. Since that time, it has barely changed at all. This mechanism has endured the test of time and is still standard in almost all mechanical watches today.

by ams9006

The Simplicity of a Rocket

The space launch industry is getting a lot of press in recent years due to rapid advances in rocketry technologies and achievements. Most notably, SpaceX’s propulsive landings of their boosters have been very popular. These events get press not because they’re especially relevant to the daily lives of the everyday citizen, but because they are awe-inspiring. The amount of complexity and ingenuity that is behind these incredible events is beyond the scope of imagination.

However, not all rockets are that complex. There are a wide range of rockets of different sizes and shapes with different applications. Many other launch vehicles (rockets) do not feature propulsive landing or even reusability, vastly reducing the amount of complexity in the system. Going further down the scale, we find rockets that do not fully achieve orbit, but simply carry scientific equipment to the upper atmosphere or space for a short period of time. Once you reach consumer-level hobbyist rockets, certain aspects such as payloads, wireless communications, and navigation are not even necessarily included. In fact, you can buy a hobby rocket kit for as little as twenty dollars* that consists of less than 15 parts!

Fundamentally, all a rocket needs to be called a rocket is a pointy body and a rocket engine/motor that launches it up. At the most basic level, this motor can simply be a homemade concoction of sugar and Potassium Nitrate (bought from a home improvement store or a pharmacy) that is stuffed into a capped PVC pipe. More commercially available rocket motors may consist of gunpowder wrapped in a paper casing, such as this one made by Estes Rockets:

via Apogee Rockets

When these engines burn out, they usually also contain what is called an ejection charge, which creates a small, controlled explosion at the top end of the motor which would eject the nosecone of the rocket and deploy the parachute.

Rocket hobbyists often like to know how fast and high their rocket went, so a more advanced hobby rocket would contain avionics. Avionics simply refers to all electronic components of a rocket. In this case, the avionics would consist of a battery connected to an altimeter which measures the rocket’s altitude over time.

High-powered hobbyist rockets that reach higher altitudes are under stricter regulation by the FAA because they can interfere with aircraft in the sky. These larger, more complex rockets may contain multiple motors arranged in multiple stages. They may also contain more advanced avionics, such as GPS-tracking technology and computer-activated parachute deployment at a specific altitude.

Even higher-flying rockets such as sounding rockets are the aforementioned class of rockets that often carry scientific equipment into space. These rockets now contain a payload (the scientific equipment) that the rocket needs to be designed around. One of these design requirements is likely a target altitude that the equipment must reach to obtain useful scientific data. These powerful rockets often need more advanced rocket motors than the standard solid rocket motors of the hobbyist world. More powerful rocket engines often use liquid fuels such as hydrazine, kerosene, or liquid methane. While using liquid rocket fuels massively increases complexity of the rocket motor, it allows for more precise control of thrust, as well as the ability to completely stop and restart the motor when desired.

sounding rocket via NASA

Last, but not least, we have reached where we began: orbital launch vehicles. These rockets differ from all the aforementioned smaller rockets not only in that their power, but also their precision. Not only does an orbital launch vehicle need to reach the speeds necessary to achieve orbit, it also needs to place the satellite payload in the specific orbit that the client has ordered. All of this needs to be achieved under the intense stresses experienced by accelerating a three million pound rocket to 32 times the speed of sound**.

Depending on how you look at it, rocketry can be dead simple or the most complex thing in the world. However, they all share the same underlying characteristics and structure.

 

 

*ten dollar rocket with ten dollar motor
**specifications of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy

by ams9006

The Science Behind Paper Airplanes

Have you ever thrown a paper airplane? How did it fly? Paper airplanes vary widely in design, and those differences lead to meaningful differences in the way that they fly. Some airplanes fly quickly through the air, while others glide slowly. Sometimes, a paper airplane will tip its nose upward, leading to a stall. Why do these things happen?

The mechanics of paper airplanes are interesting because they are similar to those of most things that move quickly through the air. They have four basic forces acting on them:

via auntannie.com

The thrust comes from you when you throw the plane. Thus, the plane has no thrust in flight. The reason it doesn’t continue to slow down during flight is because it is also falling, “converting” its potential energy into thrust as it falls.

The lift comes from the difference in air pressure above and below the wing. This is caused by the shape of the wing, known as an airfoil. Lift is proportional to the size of the wing and the square of the speed of the plane.

So how do these forces affect how a plane flies? Take for example the standard paper “dart” plane:

via Wikigami

If you have flown this plane before, you know that it flies quickly, but drops to the ground relatively quickly. This can be explained as the plane having little drag, but little lift as well. More specifically, the lift and gravity forces are not perfectly aligned like they are in the first image. Rather, the center of gravity is slightly ahead of the center of lift in this plane, causing it to tip downwards and fly towards the ground.

Another popular plane is this “glider”:

via Instructables

This plane has a slow and steady flight if thrown gently or even dropped from a high place. Even without thrust from the person who throws it, it is able to maintain steady flight, if at the cost of a slight drop at the beginning. This indicates that its gravity and lift forces are aligned correctly. While it does not fly as fast, it has a larger wing surface area, which allows it to get enough lift at lower speeds.

With these ideas in mind, it’s easy to pick the correct airplane for any task. (That’s a common issue people have… right?) I once participated in a paper airplane competition based on longest total flight time. Knowing this, I instantly started folding large-winged gliders. When my plane nosedived too often, I folded it to place less paper in the front half, which moved the center of mass further back to compensate for the nosediving, which led to a steady-flying glider.

I went on to win $20 in that small competition. While, in real life, paper airplanes competitions are few and far between, this knowledge is not useful exclusively in these rare situations. Just to understand the basic mechanics at work in the planes, drones, and squirrel suits of the world is enlightening.

by ams9006

What is File Compression?

You may have had to work with a compressed folder before. Likely, you’ll remember its icon (a folder with a zipper). Maybe you remember that the file you downloaded ended with the .zip file extension. Every time you download a compressed file folder, you have to go through the annoying step of clicking “extract” to get your files. What’s the point? Can’t the files you want just be downloaded as they are?

The answer to that question is yes, but not really. This is because while websites have the ability to host and send uncompressed “original” files/folders, these are much larger in size than the compressed version. In order to increase efficiency, downloads and uploads of large/multiple files are done using file compression.

But how does this work? How is it possible that a file can just become smaller?

File compression works by reducing redundancy. This is best explained with an analogy:

Let’s suppose you wanted to write a comprehensive list of instructions on how to assemble an IKEA dining table and chair set. When writing the instructions to install the legs onto the chairs, you probably would not write the instructions one time for each leg of the chair. Rather, you’d write it once, and then indicate to repeat it three more times, once for each leg. Similarly, when writing instructions for assembly of the chairs, you would only write one, and then indicate to repeat the process once again for each remaining chair.

via GIPHY

This is the essence of a compressed file. Repeated consecutive data is condensed into a single copy of that data with an indication of how many times that file is repeated. Other patterns in data can also be picked up by compression software and condensed into more compact data.

The above form of compression is called “lossless” compression because when decompressed, the output file is exactly the same as the original. However, for certain applications, not all data needs to be perfectly retained. In the world of audio and video downloads, “lossy” compression leads to even smaller files that, when presented to most consumers, are practically indiscernible from the original media. In this form of compression, not only is redundant data eliminated, but data that encodes details that the consumer will likely not notice is also eliminated.

Exactly what data encodes “details that consumer will likely not notice” is determined by the type of file compression used. For example, in audio files like mp3 files, one way in which compression is achieved is by ignoring very quiet sounds that play at the same time as louder sounds. Another way compression is achieved is by eliminating very high and very low frequency sounds that humans usually do not perceive.

With a lossy audio compression method like mp3, a song can be compressed to a file 11 times smaller than the original. In contrast, a lossless audio compression method like FLAC (which, again, only eliminates redundant data) can only compress a song to about half its original size.

From the outside, file compression seems like magic. At the detailed level, file compression is highly technical and difficult to understand. However, on the surface, file compression is comprehensible: it just gets rid of things you don’t really need.

by ams9006

The Strange, Exotic World of PC Cooling

PC cooling isn’t something you’d expect to be interesting at first glance. You probably are thinking of your laptop’s annoying fan that spins up occasionally, or maybe you think about your desktop at home and it’s dusty fans. However, in the world of hobbyists, anything can be crazy if you throw enough money at it.

People throw money at PC cooling usually for one of three reasons:

  1. They are a PC speed addict
  2. They are looking to break PC speed world records
  3. They have a lot of money to throw and nowhere else to throw it

Often, these hobbyists install a liquid cooling system (not unlike that in a car) with a pump, a radiator, and pipes leading to and from the hot components. These tend to look quite nice and perform well. However, things get more interesting the deeper down the rabbit hole you go.

If someone wanted a nice conversation starter as a PC, they could end up with something like this:

Taken from CNET

This is a PC submerged in a special liquid formulated by 3M that is electrically insulating and thermally conductive. It also has a very low boiling point (34°C) such that it simply boils off at the surface of hot components and then condenses at the surface of the fish tank PC and releases the heat to the air.

This is not the most practical way to cool a PC. (This is definitely not the most practical way to start a conversation.) Replacing a component would be messy work, and the PC would probably have to be drained and refilled every time it is transported. Oh, and 3M’s special liquid is $285 per gallon.

However, you cannot argue that this is not pretty interesting. Maybe it could get more interesting, though; we need to go deeper.

Taken from EKWB

This is a computer motherboard. Yes, that is frost. For those few looking to break world records, this is how they go about it. First, they tell the computer to draw tons of power and ramp up its internal speed. Then, they pour liquid Nitrogen or liquid Helium into the “pots” on the (not for long) hot components of the PC.

This may seem like overkill. After all, liquid Nitrogen exists at -196°C and liquid helium exists at -270°C (which is 3 degrees above absolute zero!!!). However, people looking to break world records are looking for every last drop of overkill they can get.

At this point, it may seem a bit strange that these things even exist. What’s the point? Can’t I just keep on using my good old air-cooled HP laptop? Absolutely. Air-cooling still works and is still cheap.

Honestly, I can’t come up with a good reason for these methods to exist. They’re a waste of money for most people and don’t give much in return. However, hobbyists will be hobbyists, and I’m glad. I’m glad because they’re out there creating the next crazy technology and I get to sit here, on my regular air-cooled PC, and watch the incredible technology develop right in front of me.

by ams9006

Why 3D Print?

In a previous post, I explained how a standard consumer 3D printer works. However, why would anyone use a 3D printer? In this post, I will go over the benefits and downsides of 3D printing parts instead of manufacturing them with more conventional methods.

Before speaking on the use cases in which 3D printing is viable, I first want to cover 3D printing’s major downside: it’s takes a really long time to print large quantities of objects. On the other hand, traditional methods such as vacuum-forming and injection-molding can produce massive quantities quickly and cheaply once properly set up.

However, it is this setup that is what is holding traditional manufacturing methods back. These methods require that you take the time to make specialized molds and other specific pieces. This time is tough to justify when you only need to manufacture a small batch of maybe 50, or even 5 parts. This leads me to the major upside of 3D printing: easy, immediate results. Once a design is decided on, a 3D printer can print out a copy of the design within a day, or even hours. Especially for people prototyping and constantly changing a design, having to create a new mold for a traditional plastic forming method would be dreadful. With 3D printers, each new design can be (almost) immediately obtained and tested.

Another downside to 3D printing is the limitation in choice of materials. Most 3D printers can only print in a few types of plastic (and sometimes pancake mix). A few industrial 3D printers can print with metals and ceramics. However, if you want a part made of wood or glass, 3D printing can’t make it yet.

On the other hand, 3D printing can create things with these few materials that other manufacturing methods simply cannot do. Take, for example, this faucet:

taken from dxv.com

The water runs up through the inside of the spindly, hollow helices and converges at the top, running out the head of the faucet. Traditional manufacturing methods cannot produce complex geometries such as the hollow, spiraling, intersecting metal pipes seen here. This is something that is only possible through 3D printing.

3D printing is also known as additive manufacturing. This is in contrast to many subtractive manufacturing methods which carve out material from a large chunk to form the object, such as turning and milling. These subtractive manufacturing methods by nature waste material as they carve, making working with expensive materials difficult. However, with 3D printing, expensive materials can be preserved by only using as much material is needed to create the part. This is why additive manufacturing (3D printing) is becoming more popular in the aerospace industry; titanium airplane parts are expensive, and 3D printing enables companies to create large parts out of titanium without the traditional large amount of waste.

Because of the above reasons, 3D printing is becoming more and more popular in manufacturing and engineering. While it is slow and limited in materials, it can create things that other things simply can’t, and it can produce them immediately.

by ams9006

Wireless Charging: How???

The title says it all. How can you transfer energy from a wall outlet to a battery without touching it? After years of understanding electric energy as transferred through wires, wireless charging seems like magic.

This magic is important to understand because wireless charging is only becoming more ubiquitous. Wireless charging capability comes standard on most flagship smartphones produced today, and the technology is slowly being applied to other chargeable devices such as electric vehicles, wearable technology, and medical implants. Wireless charging is going to be a part of our society, whether you’re ready for it or not.

To be ready, here’s what you need to know. Wireless charging works by creating a magnetic field generated by electricity passing through a wire coil within the charger. This magnetic field is the “invisible magic” at work that spans the gap between the charger and the device, transferring energy without wires.

taken from an IndiaMart product listing

Due to a special physical phenomenon known as Faraday’s Law, this magnetic field produces a voltage in a matching wire coil within the device that is being charged. This voltage is the electric equivalent of potential energy.

At this point, we have successfully transferred electric energy across a gap with no wires! Hooray! The last step is using this voltage to charge the battery, just as if it was plugged in to a standard charger. At this point, the process of charging is complete.

Armed with this knowledge, you can debunk many misconceptions about wireless charging. For example, some avoid wireless charging lest its “radiation” leave harmful effects on their body. In this case, we know that there is no nuclear radiation here, simply electromagnetic energy at a very small scale.

Another misconception is that wireless charging is significantly slower than wired charging. While this used to be true, manufacturers are now selling wireless fast-chargers that charge much faster than before, even faster than standard wired chargers. While a wired fast-charger still edges out the win in charging speed, wireless charging is barely behind. (This is especially true of iPhones, since there is no wired fast-charger for iPhones.)

If you happened to know that metals redirect/affect magnetic fields (if not, then you do now), then you would notice that the annoyingly fragile glass phones of today are not completely purposeless; many phone manufacturers (including Apple) have switched from aluminum-backed phones to glass-backed, because wireless charging is incompatible with metal phones. This is also why cases designed for phones with wireless charging capabilities no longer are ever made of metal; wireless charging just doesn’t go through metal surfaces.

Overall, wireless charging isn’t too complicated; physically, the technology only consists of a coil of wire. However, the technology is the capability of changing the entire paradigm of how electronic devices, appliances, and vehicles are designed and used. Armed with this simple tool, we could see a revolution in consumer electronics in the coming years that reaches far beyond just smartphones.

by ams9006

What Is Noise Cancelling?

If you look on amazon right now under the headphones/audio department, you’ll see headphones advertised as noise reducing, noise blocking, noise cancelling, or sound isolating. Upon first glance, they may all appear to be the same. Either that, or they’re all different and shopping for headphones just got a lot more difficult. However, there’s only one term that is worth the hype.

Noise cancelling is the only term from the many listed above that actually means something. All of the other terms simply refer to headphones that passively obstruct your ears from noise, such as with foam padding and a good shape to fit the side of your head. Noise cancelling is more than that.

Technically known as Active Noise Control (ANC), noise cancelling is simply intentional destructive interference of sound waves. Sound waves are all around us, and the microphones built into noise cancelling headphones can detect these sound waves accurately in real time. Then, the noise cancelling headphones actually play a sound to your ear that is the exact same as the noise incoming from the outside.

This seems counter-intuitive at first. How can noise be reduced by playing more of the same noise? Well, this is where the destructive interference comes in.

As seen below, the waves are either in line with each other and amplify each other or out of line with each other and cancel each other out in destructive interference. This is what happens with sound waves when noise cancelling headphones play replay exterior noise; the sound waves are precisely aligned through calculations involving the frequency of the sound and the speed of sound such that the exterior sound and the replayed sound cancel.

Image interference

Wave interference taken from UCSD

All of these calculations are done in real time by headphones when noise cancelling is activated, which is pretty incredible. However, noise cancelling has more applications than just headphones. If instead of isolating a single person from all noise someone wanted to muffle a single noise from all people, this same technique can be applied to loudspeakers strategically placed in a room/area with an unwanted noise. For example, if a private conversation were happening in a room, active noise control could be used to hide the conversation from eavesdroppers by creating what the IEEE calls a “quiet zone” within a certain radius. This could also muffle the sound of loud interior HVAC systems or the background noise in plane cabins.

This application of active noise control, called 3-D ANC, has its limitations. With multiple speakers needed to project sound in all directions/areas, these multiple sound sources could create unpredictable or unwanted areas of constructive, rather than destructive interference. Thus, a true “quiet zone” that covers the intended area is very difficult to achieve. However, it still has its useful applications in reducing noise pollution and increasing privacy, as well as possible less useful theoretical applications where I could go around and delete other people’s conversations from existence. That’s not science fiction; it’s science.

by ams9006

Why Are Instruments So Expensive?

Are you ever surprised by how vast the difference is between a rare artifact’s mundane appearance and its contrasting exorbitant price? These luxury objects are usually exclusive and handmade using rare materials, perhaps in limited quantities. Usually, these items are relatively useless and mostly for show, but occasionally these extremely high-end products are the necessary tools of a trade. For example, professional photographers use cameras worth thousands of dollars as well as many lenses worth thousands more in order to do what they do. Professional bike racers spend thousands of dollars on a competitive bike. Professional politicians spend significant chunks of their savings on their campaigns. In the same way, cellists end up spending more than they’d prefer to on their instruments.

This is the situation that cellists like me find themselves in. I don’t regret choosing the cello, but it definitely is the most expensive hobby I have ever been involved in. That is understandable, I hope, since many instruments are expensive and instruments are usually not impulse buys. However, cellos are among the most expensive of all orchestral instruments.

Go ahead and take a guess and write down how much you think a student cello or professional-grade cello should cost. Write those values down, and I’ll let you know whether you were right at the end of this post. In the meantime, let me explain the remarkable construction of a cello that leads to its unique sound and price.

Cellos are handmade, and they take several months to make. This in itself speaks volumes about how much manpower it takes for a cello to exist. However, the labor is only one part of the cost. Cellos have some pretty special parts made of relatively rare materials. The pegs, nut, fingerboard, and tailpiece are all made of ebony, an incredibly hard and dense wood that is also quite rare. The main body of the cello is made of mostly maple, but with a pine front, all hand-carved and/or bent.

parts of a cello from wikipedia

The strings of a cello are made of similarly unique materials. In the baroque era of music, most cello strings were made of dried sheep/goat intestines. Today, they are usually made with a core of steel or synthetic materials. However, wound around this core is a coil of tungsten, steel, aluminum, or silver, which itself can be plated with chrome or gold to gain the desired sonic effect. These rarer metals predictably make a set of strings cost up to hundreds of dollars, which I am reminded of often as strings have to be replaced approximately every year under regular use, and far more often for professionals.

But wait, there’s more! The cello is a bowed instrument, and the bow itself has many unique parts. The main body of the bow, the stick, is made of pernambuco wood, also known as brazilwood. Unfortunately, the pernambuco tree is officially an endangered species with its international export now illegal, so bow makers are now sometimes adopting alternative materials such as carbon fiber. The hair of a bow is bleached horsehair from the horse’s tail, and the grip is made of leather or snakeskin. The frog can be made of ivory or ebony with a mother-of-pearl inlaid within. The tip of the bow (not seen) is also traditionally made of ivory.

Parts of a bow from Sessionville

To protect these valuable instruments, musicians need a protective case. However, the cello is rather unwieldy, necessitating not simply a strong case, but also a lightweight one such that a person could carry it to and from gigs, rehearsals, and performances. Most cello cases are made of fiberglass and/or carbon fiber. This also contributes to the cost of owning a cello.

Now, for the moment of truth. Due to the above factors, a student-quality cello would cost from $3,000 to $10,000, and a professional-quality cello would cost from $10,000 to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. How does this compare to your initial impression?

What’s the point of paying so much money for a cello? Is there any alternative? Well, the the point of paying all this money is that there are some things you simply need as a professional musician. There really aren’t many alternatives today, since the art of instrument making is so detailed and traditional that modern technology is hard to apply to the process.

The point of this article is not to scare you from learning a new instrument or to complain, but rather so that you are more aware of something that I feel needs more attention. From now on, you will not be like my roommate’s classmate, who estimated Yo Yo Ma’s cello to be worth “about two hundred dollars.”

Edit: I found a website that completed an entire
study on the costs associated with owning a string
instrument, check it out!
by ams9006

eSports Are Not Sports… Or Are They?

According to Google, the definition of sport is “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” This definition makes sense; every sport requires athletes that train to be the best and compete in front of an audience. According to this definition, competitive video games are not sports, because there is no physical exertion. However, it’s not that straightforward.

First, some background. Competitive video games are known today as esports. Professional esports “athletes” compete in one of several games full-time to entertain viewers and win prize money in tournaments. Esports are an industry growing so quickly that its expected by Forbes to be worth over $1 billion by the end of 2018. This year, the League of Legends North American Championship had of 76 million viewers, which is 72% as many viewers as the 2018 Super Bowl, and that is only one of many tournaments in one of many games.

Esports are significant and cannot be ignored; however, are they sports? The main argument against this definition of esports as sports is that there is little physical exertion. While this may be true, many other activities that are popularly considered sports lack physical exertion as well, such as target shooting, motor sports, and fishing. These sports are defined less by heavy physical exertion and more by precision, coordination, and experience. These three skills required of athletes in these (admittedly minor) sports are all skills required in esports.

Does this mean that esports are just as much a sport as target shooting, motor sports, and fishing? I believe that technically, it does. Of course, culturally, it is not accepted as a sport, so I wouldn’t go around referring to it as a sport since it’s not popularly accepted as one. However, I believe it has enough similarity to a sport that it deserves the same recognition as as a sport.

Esports cannot be dismissed due to its economic size, as I noted earlier that the esports industry is skyrocketing. However, esports players cannot be dismissed as athletes either. Their physical precision, team coordination, and work ethic require more hours of work than I can imagine. An ESPN article reports that common practice hours include 12 hours a day, 7 days a week of scrimmages, strategy analysis, and drills. Like most competitive scenes, esports has incredibly fierce levels of competition that require relentless work.

This relentless work found in sports leads to a tragic end: early retirement. Like in many sports, esports players experience mental burnout, physical injury, and displacement by up-and-coming younger players that force them to retire early, usually as young as in their early twenties. Like retired athletes in other sports, esports players often settle down after their tumultuous careers and finally go to college and get a more standard job.

Esports are like any other sport. They have a gigantic and growing market and viciously competitive players. They have dedicated fan bases, an international audience, inspiring underdog victories, and tragic downfalls. However, society often relegates esports to the role of youthful fad. I cannot deny them by claiming that esports are sports by definition, but I can say that esports are real and they cannot be ignored for much longer.