astronomy

Ngô Đồng

Ngô Đồng is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ngô Đồng rather than just read about it. In short: Ngô Đồng (born South Vietnam - died 15 May 2000), known also by the Japanese title O Sensei, was a Vietnam-born naturalised American entomologist and martial arts instructor. He is chiefly known as the founder and grandmaster of the international school of Cuong Nhu Oriental Martial Arts.

Key takeaways

Ngô Đồng belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ngô Đồng to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ngô Đồng from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ngô Đồng (born South Vietnam - died 15 May 2000), known also by the Japanese title O Sensei, was a Vietnam-born naturalised American entomologist and martial arts instructor. He is chiefly known as the founder and grandmaster of the international school of Cuong Nhu Oriental Martial Arts. Having served as a college president in South Vietnam before the fall of Saigon in 1975, he spent time in a re-education camp until escaping in a small boat. He taught entomology at the University of Florida while continuing to guide the international Cuong Nhu martial arts community.

Biography From 1961 to 1971 he was a professor in the Department of Biology of Hue University, South Vietnam, during which time he founded the Cuong Nhu style of martial arts. After the devastating 1968 Tet Offensive and the communist Massacre at Hue, Grandmaster Dong organized a civil defense organization, the People's Self-Defense Forces of Hue, to help protect the public from the violence spawned by the war. His organization engaged some 25,000 people in a program of karate, games and friendly competition to rebuild morale and spirit during the Vietnam War. In 1974, Dong earned his PhD in entomology from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and during this period (1971–74) founded and incorporated the first Cuong Nhu Karate club in the United States. He then returned to South Vietnam and served as the President of Da Nang College until the fall of Saigon and the communist victory in 1975. An outspoken opponent of communism, Dong was placed under house arrest in 1975, and spent time in a re-education camp. He and his family escaped by boat to Indonesia and eventually reached the United States in 1977. From then until his retirement he served as a professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. In 1986 Dong took up long-distance running. He soon completed his first two marathons, on consecutive weekends. His first ultra-marathon was the 100-mile Western States run in Squaw Valley, California. In all, he completed 23 marathons, eight 50-mile ultra-marathons and fourteen 100-mile ultra-marathons. Upon his retirement from the University of Florida, the City of Gainesville and Alachua County, Florida, honored him by declaring August 14, 1994 as Dr. Ngo Dong Day. To commemorate his life, his family commissioned an oriental plant garden to be built and maintained in his honor at Kanapaha Nature Center in Gainesville. This garden contains plants and flowers that he liked as well as a plaque dedicated to his memory.

Martial arts As a boy, Dong learned Vovinam, the Vietnamese system of martial arts, from Ngo Quoc Phong, one of the top five students of Vovinam's founder Grandmaster Nguyen Loc. Dong also learned Wing Chun from his two elder brothers, who had studied with Chinese Master Te Kong. Although their father, Ngo Khanh Thuc, was Attorney General of Vietnam, the Ngo brothers tested their fighting skills on the street by engaging hustlers and professional street fighters from the alleys and back streets of Hanoi. After moving south to Huế in 1956 after the partition of Vietnam, Ngo Dong began Shotokan karate training under former Japanese captain Choji Suzuki. After years of training, Ngo Dong earned his fourth degree black belt in Shotokan, and a black belt in judo. Later, Dong studied with American Marine Lt. Ernest H. Cates, a judo and Goshin Jujitsu instructor who had placed first at the U.S. Olympic judo trials. He eventually synthesized his broad martial arts knowledge into his own style, Cuong Nhu, which means "hard-soft" in Vietnamese. During a special ceremony in May 1994, Grandmaster Dong was promoted to 6th degree in judo, by Sensei Ed Szrejter, then executive director of the U.S. Judo Association. Grandmaster Dong is the 47th judoka out of 20,000 USJA members to reach 6th dan. The Cuong Nhu Oriental Martial Arts discipline now has over 3,000 active members under the leadership of Grandmaster Quynh Ngo. Cuong Nhu has its roots in Shotokan karate, Wing Chun, boxing, aikido, judo, vovinam and tai chi.

Escape from Vietnam After his escape from Vietnam in 1977, Dong wrote an account of his escape in a letter to his U.S. students:

Dear Cuong Nhu friends: At last my family and myself got out of the "Red Hell." This is the second time we tried to escape and we succeeded. It was like in a spy movie, I'll tell the whole story later on when we'll meet together. I was indebted to my friend Mr. Vo Dinh Chuc who owned a small boat ... in a small harbor 300 km North of Saigon, consented to bring us along with his family. The two families had to leave Saigon by small groups (two or three people each group) bringing nothing except clothes on the body (we'd be arrested if we brought luggage or money, or went in a group like a family) we changed to a bus and then trucks, at last we arrived at the place at night, we jumped in the boat and fled to the ocean at 9:30 pm June 18. On June 22 we ran out of fuel, food, water. We called SOS for 2 days. We met 14 big ships but they didn't answer our SOS call. At last an Indonesian ship (6500 tons) named Garsa Tiga picked us up in the ocean; by then we had covered already 600km without sleeping. They brought us to Singapore where we had no permission to land, then we arrived Djakarta 27 June, we had to stay aboard two days for investigation because we didn't have papers. A delegation of the United Nations and the US Embassy came to interview us, and we filled out many forms. Then we moved to a Vietnamese refugee camp where 108 other Vietnamese refugees lived there already six months waiting for permission to go to USA, Australia and France. All procedures took a very long time. We hope that Cuong Nhu Karate Association can help us to shorten our stay in Djakarta by sending letters sponsoring my family and my friend's family, Vo Dinh Chuc, the man who saved us in bringing us along with him in his boat. Hope to see you soon. —Ngo Dong

Notes

Sources Dragon Nhus newsletters. Cuong Nhu Founder Ngo Dong.

External links Website of the Cuong Nhu Oriental Martial Arts Association. Nguyen Loc, founder of Vovinam.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ngô Đồng

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ngô Đồng claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ngô Đồng before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ngô Đồng ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ngô Đồng

In research: Ngô Đồng appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ngô Đồng in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ngô Đồng is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2000 deaths, American biologists, American martial artists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ngô Đồng outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ngô Đồng in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ngô Đồng means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ngô Đồng out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ngô Đồng in simple terms?

Why does Ngô Đồng matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ngô Đồng?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ngô Đồng.