Charged 2026

Author: Daniel Lago

  • All Work and No Play

    The cover image was sourced from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.020.

    If you’ve ever fallen down the easily addictive, low-stress rabbit hole that is the world of wonderfully awesome animal videos, you might have come across this video of a crow in Russia, sliding down a snow-covered roof while perching on a jar lid.

    While it’s easy to think that this crow went sledding purely for their own enjoyment, scientists aren’t content with that conclusion – thinking in such an anthropomorphic way projects our own human thoughts and feelings onto animals who, while exhibiting familiar behaviors, may not be doing it for the same reasons we do (Emery & Clayton, 2015).

    But, regardless of what we may think, birds do play! What does that look like? Well, most forms of play are divided into one of several categories: the first broad category being locomotor play, which includes all kinds of flight-related play – hanging from surfaces, flying upside down (Emery & Clayton, 2015), and even sledding down a snowy roof in Russia!

    Social play involves interactions between birds – there’s play chasing, where one bird follows another, whether on the ground or through the air. We also have play fighting, where two birds engage in actions adopted from antagonistic behaviors. There’s also play invitation, where two birds engage in actions that occur primarily before play. Finally, we have social object play, where two birds engage with one or more objects in their environment (Bond & Diamond, 2003).

    While we briefly touched on it, object play itself can be considered another major category of play – involving exploration, curiosity, object manipulation, where birds learn about the structure of objects, if they’re edible or not, and how they might work (Emery & Clayton, 2015).

    Figure 2 Source: https://corvidresearch.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/northwestern-crow-youngsters-playing-tug-of-war_595.jpg

    The problem with researching play is that birds don’t necessarily need a reason to play – even when considering the anthropomorphic projection we cast onto them from our human perspectives, it can be as simple as having fun!

    “Fun”, at least, in the context of the brain, involves taking part in something rewarding that provides a sense of pleasure. You may have heard of the neurotransmitter dopamine… it plays an important role in the reward-seeking system, controlling the search for reward-inducing stimuli for almost all creatures (Emery & Clayton, 2015).

    When people come across phenomena like this in the wild, the answer that tends to come to mind often lies on the justifying end of the spectrum; in our attempt to be objective, we may implicitly assign a “value” to that act of play. Perhaps birds play fight to practice hunting, perhaps birds engage in social play to form strong, interconnected networks, and perhaps that crow slid down that roof to learn how to use that lid!

    Studies done on the potential concrete benefits of play – such as relative brain size, for instance – ultimately find that there is little to no predictive value between the complexity of play with those benefits. As such, it is hard to say whether or not the act of play is utilitarian in nature (Bond & Diamond, 2003).

    Does that mean that play is inherently fun? Once again, it’s hard to say! Humans, after all, may be the only species that have the luxury of leisure time. The time we spend solely pursuing pleasure: games, hobbies, activities we may find fun, are all a product of modern developments. We no longer have to hunt or grow our own food, we no longer have to worry about predators, we no longer have to worry about forming civilized societies – but birds, and by extension, all other animals, do (Emery & Clayton, 2015)!

    Perhaps that is the underlying reason why we believe play has to have a purpose. Wild animals have a limited time to find food, find water, avoid predators, find a mate, raise offspring, all in the name of the cycle of life. Why, then, would a bird waste its time playing for the sake of playing? Why, then, do we have examples of crows sledding through the snow?

    All of these questions are interesting to ponder, and I personally don’t have all the answers. The realm of neuroscience is far out of my understanding, but I hope I’ve done a good job setting the stage for this interesting question.

    I’ll leave things here with a plan of action to you, the reader – whenever you see a cute animal video in the future, think to yourself: why could this be happening? Is it play, or is it intentional? Most importantly, though… why is it so gosh darn adorable?!

    Reference List

    Bond, A., & Diamond, J. (2003). A Comparative Analysis of Social Play in Birds. Behaviour, 140(8-9), 1091–1115. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853903322589650

    Emery, N., & Clayton, N. (2015). Do birds have the capacity for fun? Current Biology, 25(1), R16–R20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.020

  • The Hidden World of the Piano Action

    The cover image was taken by the author.

    In my humble opinion, the best way to unwind after a long, arduous day is to pour out all your stresses onto the beautiful white and black keys of a grand piano.

    (Of course, that’s a little hard to do if you’ve never learned to play… I digress, though.)

    During my time at Georgia Tech, I’d find myself sitting at the piano located in the West Village Dining Hall almost every night – and while I wouldn’t say the piano there is especially well maintained, it still produces a sound that’s pleasant to my ears. In the end, isn’t that all that matters?

    “Enough with the preamble! What’s the point of all these ramblings?” You might be asking. Well, to answer that hypothetical question – I often think about the acoustics of a piano. That, of course, naturally leads to how it works… and believe it or not, there happens to be a surprising amount of physics under the (metaphorical and literal) hood of the instrument!

    The story of the piano begins with the clavichord, developed in the 14th century. The clavichord action was as simple as could be – a key lever with a hammer on one end. After the key is depressed, the hammer is immediately lifted until it hits the string, remaining in contact until the key is released (Russo & Robles-Linares, 2020).

    Figure 2 Source: (Russo & Robles-Linares, 2020)

    While this action enables volume dynamics, vibrato, and control over the attack and duration of one’s sounds, there remained one large problem: the string would be damped for as long as the key was held down.

    The harpsichord attempted to address this issue, while sacrificing some of the finer benefits of the clavichord.

    For its action, when a key is pressed, the jack is lifted along with the plectrum and damper, the latter immediately releasing the string. Right after, the plectrum hits the string, generating sound. At some point, the jack meets a rail up above that stops its motion, allowing the string to resonate for as long as the key is held down. When the key is finally let go, the jack falls such that its plectrum does not hit the string a second time (Russo & Robles-Linares, 2020).

    Figure 3 Source: (Russo & Robles-Linares, 2020)

    Even though this solves the major issue with the clavichord, the harpsichord, in turn, has almost no volume dynamics, nor can vibrato be performed with it!

    That takes us to the mid-17th century, where Bartolomeo Cristofori would invent what was known as the fortepiano – named because of its ability to play forte (loud) and piano (soft).

    The action of the fortepiano is far more complex than both the clavichord and the harpsichord. When the key is first pressed, it lifts an intermediate lever; a damper connected to that lever releases the string. After a small period of time, the jack on the intermediate lever pushes the hammer up. The hammer lifts off the jack halfway to the string and uses its existing momentum to hit the string.

    If the key was immediately released, the string is immediately damped, making a staccato (short) sound, as the mechanism returns to its resting position. If the key is held down, the string is undamped and free to resonate; the hammer falls back down onto the jack. After the key is released, the hammer returns to its resting position and the string is damped, muting the sound (Russo & Robles-Linares, 2020).

    Figure 4 Source: (Russo & Robles-Linares, 2020)

    In essence, the fortepiano was the combination of the good of both the clavichord and harpsichord – dynamics and vibrato, along with volume and an ability to sustain sound. In many ways, the fortepiano is similar to the grand pianos of today, but with a few key differences…

    Figure 5 Source: (Brent et al., 2011)

    …Quite a lot of differences, in fact. From a first glance, this diagram seems far removed from the likes of the fortepiano, but most of the underlying theory remains the same.

    To put it simply, the goal of the grand piano action is to let the hammer hit the string to create vibration – but, most importantly, it should be fast enough that it doesn’t damp the string. Efforts to reduce that time have resulted in the complex system seen in Figure 5… each part of that mechanism plays its own role in giving as much control to the pianist as possible (Brent et al., 2011).

    Control is an important part of playing the piano, in my own experience. The difference between a grand piano and an electronic MIDI keyboard is like night and day. Even the smallest, involuntary actions when playing a grand result in minor yet noticeable changes – and the best of the best (which, unfortunately, doesn’t include me) are able to manipulate each and every facet of control given to them.

    As we close the hood on the fascinating world of the piano action, I hope you’ve gained a proper appreciation for the instrument! The fact that we’ve been able to manufacture such a sleek design, fitting in all the complex mechanisms into such a small area, all while ensuring it works to perfection… it’s an engineering miracle, to be honest.

    When I inevitably return to that piano in West Village, I’ll surely be thinking about the action that I’m invoking with every press.

    Reference List

    Brent, G. R., Yu, B., Grijalva, R., & Awtar, S. (2011). Characterizing the Feel of the Piano Action. Computer Music Journal, 35(1), 43–57. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41241706

    Russo, M., & Robles-Linares, J. A.  (2020). A Brief History of Piano Action Mechanisms. Advances in Historical Studies, 09(05), 312–329. https://doi.org/10.4236/ahs.2020.95024