The Buzz : Science (Real World)

Things are heating up

As the outdoor temperature fluctuates in central Virginia this time of year, it could easily be 26 degrees fahrenheit, but today's forecast is closer to 26 degrees celsius!  Is it unusually warm where you are?  This may be a good time to review why we have seasons, or view seasonal changes in 3D, or maybe even investigate the greenhouse effect.

Lunar Eclipse on March 3, 2007

The first of two total lunar eclipses in 2007 is unique in that it is partly visible from every continent around the world. Here in Virginia it will occur at the same time as the moonrise. I'll try to get a picture if we have clear skies.

Several Gizmos can help you understand an eclipse. These include the Penumbra Effect Gizmo, the 2D Eclipse Gizmo, and the 3D Eclipse Gizmo.

More information about eclipses can be found at these sites:
NASA Eclipse Home Page
Lunar Eclipse Computer

Mercury Transit

Every so often Mercury will be between the Earth and the Sun such that it is visible from the Earth. That is happening today and won't happen again until May 9, 2016!

For more information you can visit the Wikipedia article that discusses the transit.

Using Seismographs To Look For Explosions

When you think about a seismometer (or seismograph) an earthquake is often the first thing you think about. In the real world seismometers have several uses. In recent news scientists throughout the world were trying to determine if a nuclear weapon was detonated in North Korea.

This picture shows data from multiple seismometers which scientists analyzed in an effort to understand the location and magnitude of the underground explosion.

To gain a greater understanding of what scientists try to do when looking at all those lines you can use our Earthquake Gizmos.

Links:
BBC News: Underground nuclear testing
Earthquake: Recording Station Gizmo
Earthquake: Determination of Epicenter Gizmo

Pluto demoted

Well the verdict is in, and Pluto is out. In a vote last Tuesday, the International Astronomical Union voted on a new definition of "planet" that would exclude Pluto and other icy objects in the outer parts of the solar system. Ironically, the new definition stipulates that a planet has "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit," which would exclude the gas giant Neptune as well (Pluto's orbit  overlaps the orbit of Neptune). However, Neptune was officially reinstated as a planet by special footnote. Pluto (and other newly discovered bodies, such as Xena and Sedna) is now a "dwarf planet."

Unlike textbooks, ExploreLearning was able to respond to the change quickly by adding a few notes to our Solar System Explorer Gizmo. We left Pluto in because it has such an interesting orbit, but made sure we referred to it as a "dwarf".

On the topic of planets, check out our brand-new Orbital Motion - Kepler's Laws Gizmo. In this spectacular new Gizmo, you can change the position, mass, and velocity of a planet, then observe its motion around a central star. It was a great surprise to me that almost any starting configuration results in a stable orbit - things don't gradually spiral in to the star as you might expect. Just as Kepler did in the 17th century, you will discover that the planetary orbits conform to some very interesting laws.

Mercury, Venus, and the Rest?

As a student I only had to remember the name of nine planets in our solar system. I managed to remember all. Currently almost 2,500 astronomers are meeting in Prague and working on a definition for what a planet really is. There is a chance we could end up with twelve planets, dozens more, or maybe just eight! If changes occur we'll be sure to update our Solar System Explorer Gizmo the following day.

Electrons and Northern Lights

Physicist James A. Van Allen passed away earlier this week. During his very long career he did a wealth of research in magnetospheric physics. The Van Allen belts were named after him in 1958.

One of the highlights of this early research was the 1953 discovery of electrons believed to be the driving force behind the northern and southern lights.

For more information go ahead and read the Wikipedia entry about his career.

Solar Eclipse Reminder

Just a reminder, the total solar eclipse is on Wednesday, March 29! The eclipse will be visible from Eastern Brazil, Africa, and Central Asia, from 8:34 to 11:48 GMT (that's 3:34-6:68 EST). To see the eclipse, check out the Exploratorium eclipse page

And don't forget to check out the 3D Eclipse Gizmo to learn more about why an eclipse happens.

Vernal Equinox ahoy!

The vernal equinox occurs today (Monday) at 1:26 pm EST (6:26 pm GMT). This is considered to be a "day of balance" around the world — every location on Earth has approximately 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night on the equinox.

There are many interesting questions to explore around the equinox and seasons in general.  For example:

• Why do seasons occur in the first place?
• What are the seasons like in different locations on Earth?
• What would the seasons be like if the Earth's axis were more tilted, or less tilted? (actual tilt is 23.5 degrees)

We have several Gizmos to help study these questions and more, including some Gizmos in 3D (very cool stuff):

• Seasons: Why Do We Have Them? (2-dimensional)
• Seasons: Earth, Moon, and Sun (3D)
• Seasons in 3D
• Seasons Around the World (3D)

So, if you're in the northern hemisphere... Happy Spring from ExploreLearning!

Eclipses Are Coming

March is the month for eclipses in 2006, and two are coming soon.

Tomorrow night, March 14, there will be a penumbral lunar eclipse at moonrise, visible from the east coast to the midwest (the eclipse will be over before moonrise on the west coast). The effect will be very subtle, as the full moon will only be partially shaded by earth's penumbra. Look for the full moon to be slightly less vibrant than normal.

On March 29, a spectacular total solar eclipse will be visible across much of the Earth, although unfortunately not from North America. The moon's shadow will first hit Brazil, then move across the Atlantic into West Africa (Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria). The shadow will then cross the Sahara, pass through northern Egypt into the Mediterranean, and then move across Turkey, Kazakhstan, Russia, and finally Mongolia.

For more details about the coming eclipses, try the NASA Eclipse Home Page. You can also watch a live webcast on the Exploratorium website. 

At ExploreLearning, we have also gotten into the eclipse spirit with two new eclipse-related Gizmos. To learn how eclipses happen and why they are so rare, check out 3D Eclipse. The Penumbra Effect Gizmo demonstrates how a partial shadow, or penumbra, is formed.

Happy eclipse hunting!

Cow Tipping: Torque in the Real World

In the next month about 30 new Gizmos will be showing up on the ExploreLearning web site. One of these deals with torque and moment of inertia. Many students often think that such things have no real application, but a friend of mine recently sent me a link that takes a rather entertaining view of the subject - cow tipping!

Link: Cow-tipping myth hasn't got a leg to stand on

Herbie Goes High Tech

Phillips Design has developed a prototype of a kitchen Herbarium that can automatically change its growing conditions based on what herb you have placed inside it. Read more about the interesting design concept here (scroll about halfway down the page), which uses RFID tags placed inside seed/soil packets.

The Herbarium might be a useful real-world example to discuss in your science classroom if you are using our Seed Germination Gizmo.

Scotty's Transparent Aluminum

For those Star Trek fans out there you'll remember that Scotty traded the secret of transparent aluminum in an effort to save whales on Earth. It looks as though that material is now being made here on our planet.

A transparent material tough enough to withstand armour piercing rounds is being tested by the US Air Force.

Aluminium oxynitride, known commercially as ALON, could replace the existing bullet-proof glass on military vehicles, which is heavier and less tough.

"The substance itself is light years ahead of glass," says Lieutenant Joseph La Monica, head of the transparent armour research project at the Air Force research laboratory in Ohio.

ALON is a ceramic compound made from aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen, and has similar optical and structural properties to sapphire ...

So much science fiction becomes fact. I'm still waiting for a transporter :)

Bone-eating snot-flower

From an article on BBC News, "A new species of marine worm that lives off whale bones on the sea floor has been described by scientists. The creature was found on a minke carcass in relatively shallow water close to Tjarno Marine Laboratory on the Swedish coast."

The new species has been named Osedax mucofloris, which literally translates to bone-eating snot-flower.

Names like that are fun. Gizmos never seem to end up with cool names like that.

BBC News Story

EL Team Member Pens Science Scope Article

Congratulations are in order for ExploreLearning's Science Curriculum Specialist, Kurt Rosenkrantz, whose article "Celestial Mechanics" featured in the September 2005 journal Science Scope published by the National Science Teachers Association.

Kurt's article describes how simple instruments can by used to find your position on Earth.

Great work, Kurt. (And if I'm ever lost, I know whom to call for help.)

Not Doing Copernicus Proud

More sobering news regarding problems with basic scientific literacy in our culture, a white paper (PDF) on the Public Understanding of Science reveals the following:

Only half of US adults know that the Earth rotates around the Sun once each year (NSB, 2000). One in five US adults say that the Sun rotates around the Earth, and 14 percent of US adults think that the Earth rotates around the Sun once each day (see Figure 2). A comparative study with Britain in 1988 found that only one-third of British adults understood that the Earth rotates around the Sun once each year … The level of adult understanding of the solar system shows little change over the last decade.

It's ironic that at one time the work of Copernicus et al was suppressed by those in power because ideas like the earth revolving around the sun were so revolutionary and presented a threat to the established view. Now, centuries later, the concepts of celestial mechanics are readily available and are universally taught, yet 1 in 5 US adults still hold a 15th Century understanding of our solar system.

On a positive note, anyone taking even the briefest look at the Rotation/Revolution of Near-Earth Planets Gizmo will come away with a clear understanding that the Earth does indeed rotate around the Sun.

Want Enhanced Spatial Memory? Eat Oatmeal

From the Washington Post:

In this month's edition of the journal Physiology and Behavior, Tufts University psychologists report on two experiments they conducted on 60 schoolchildren. For breakfast one day, the researchers fixed the youngsters oatmeal made with milk and then had them take a battery of classroom tests. A week later, the students ate Cap'n Crunch cereal with milk and then were tested. During a third week, they skipped breakfast one morning and just took the tests.

Simply eating breakfast produced better test results than missing the morning meal -- findings that echo results of numerous other studies. But the researchers also discovered that boys and girls performed better on the tests when they ate oatmeal than when they had Cap'n Crunch. (The research was funded by Quaker Oats, maker of both products used in the study.)

After eating a bowl of oatmeal, boys and girls aged 9 to 11 showed enhanced spatial memory, a skill that helps with drawing and doing puzzles. Spatial memory can help not only with art, but also with geography as well as some technical skills used in math and science. Girls, but not boys, also displayed better short-term memory after eating oatmeal. [Emphasis is mine.]

Meanwhile, if you or one of your students want to skip breakfast (oatmeal or otherwise) with the reasoning that it's part of the new super low calorie diet that'll have you living to age 125, well, consider this:

Starving -- officially known as caloric restriction -- may make worms and mice live up to 50 percent longer but it will not help humans live super-long lives, two biologists argued on Sunday.

They said their mathematical model showed that a lifetime of low-calorie dieting would only extend human life span by about 7 percent, unlike smaller animals, whose life spans are affected more by the effects of starvation (Yahoo News).

OK. Now I just need to find a way to make oatmeal more palatable, so I can start eating it for breakfast. I find it rather bland. Any suggestions?

Science Literacy Lags

Sobering news regarding the state of "scientific literacy" in the United States:

Dr. Miller, 63, a political scientist who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at the medical school, studies how much Americans know about science and what they think about it. His findings are not encouraging.

While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process (The New York Times).

How true. If you don't know what a cell is, you won't have much to work with as far as the stem cell debate goes.

Now if that isn't sobering enough, how about this? A Tufts University School of Medicine report suggests that most published research findings may be false.

Fireworks in Space

For those that are enjoying the Fourth of July weekend, be sure to keep an eye on the Deep Impact Mission. A 327 kg 'bullet' will be colliding with a comet late in the evening. What will happen? No one is positive, but hopefully a lot of data will be obtained so we can have a better idea of what comets are made of.

Deep Impact Mission Home Page (NASA)

Taking "Real World" Science a Bit Too Far

Generally we applaud cases where teachers make their lessons in science and math analogous to real life situations, but this is taking the science behind combustion and oxidation a wee bit too far …

HOUSTON - A chemistry teacher who was months behind on her car payments gave passing grades to two failing students after asking them to steal her Chevrolet Malibu and burn it so she could collect on its insurance, authorities alleged (Dallas News).

I guess it's time for us to get busy making a combustion Gizmo.

Fly me to the Moon...

OK, so the Cosmos-1 won't fly me to the Moon today, but in the future the technology it uses could be the propulsion that could take me to the furthest reaches of our solar system, and maybe beyond.

A solar sail spacecraft is set for launch later today which will perform a very limited test of this new (and straight from science fiction) technology.

Good Luck!

BBC News Story
The Planetary Society
CNN followup story on failure of Cosmos 1

To boldly go where no probe has gone before.

Eleven years after the first episode of Star Trek, the Voyager probes were launched. Twenty eight years later Voyager 1 has gone beyond the termination shock and is flirting with deep space where the solar winds are around two million km/h. More than 10,000 days of travelling through our solar system. Wow. I'll bet the Earth looks very small from way out there.

Links:

• BBC News Story
• Official Voyager Site

The little rovers that could

Originally scheduled for just three months of operations, the two Mars rovers have been operating for 14 months, and have recently been scheduled for another 18 months of adventure.

"Feel Good" Education Story of the Year (A Must Read)

If you want an incredibly uplifting story of teacher and student achievement, please read Wired's "La Vida Robot," the story of a team of undocumented Mexican immigrants at a West Phoenix high school who competed in a contest to build an underwater robot that could survey a model of a sunken submarine. (And won!)

I don't even want to pull a quote from the story, as you need to read the whole thing for yourself.

Summer Vacation in Jurassic Park

Summer is still a few months away, but when I read this story, all I could think about was the Jurassic Park movie from a few years ago. I'm sure that the park won't be ready this summer, but maybe one day ;)

Dinosaur experts have extracted samples of what appear to be soft tissues from a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil bone. T. rex is perhaps the most famous dino and Montana has yielded excellent fossil specimens.

I wonder how a T. rex cell would compare to a human cell?

"Eventually, you do plan to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right?" -- Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park (1993)

Push and Pull: Fans in Action

The current issue of the The Physics Teacher magazine (March 2005) contained an article about building fan carts for studying Newton's Laws in your classroom. A wealth of studies can be performed in the lab with the carts. If your students need to spend additional time experimenting with the carts feel free to let them explore the Fan Cart Gizmo, which allows you to perform almost every experiment discussed in the article (everything but the torque/angular acceleration experiment).

The Gizmo is a great tool for using during classroom discussions, in your office when students have questions, when you are preparing a quiz or test and want images, or for students in the evening when they are reviewing content at home.

Feel free to explore Newton's Laws with the Fan Cart Gizmo!

The Physics Teacher home page

Fish Science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently held its annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Scientists presented research that shows the shrinking size of fish due to their overexploitation has dire consequences for the recovery of depleted stocks. Fishing drives natural selection for smaller fish that grow more slowly and have reduced reproductive potential.

If you want to learn more about natural selection, take a look at the Rainfall and Bird Beaks Gizmo!

BBC News Story: Fish shrinkage threatens survival

Huygens on Titan

As I child I was stuck to the television as I watched the first landing on our moon. Today the Huygens probe has successfully (hopefully) landed on Titan, a moon of Saturn. Science is amazing.

Links of interest:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/apollo/
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4175099.stm
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/01/14/huygens.titan/index.html

Ten-year-old's Earth Science Knowledge Saves Family

In yet another example of how what we teach and learn in science and math classes has "meaning" in the real world, comes this story of Tilly Smith:

A British girl aged ten saved 100 tourists from the tsunami — thanks to a geography lesson.
Tilly Smith, who studied the huge waves in school two weeks before Christmas, realised a Thai beach was about to be swamped when the tide shot out (The Sun).

Tilly's family, from Surrey, England, was enjoying a day at Maikhao Beach last Sunday when the sea rushed out and began to bubble.

The adults were curious, but Tilly froze in horror.

"Mummy, we must get off the beach now!" she told her mother. "I think there's going to be a tsunami."

The adults didn't understand until Tilly added the magic words: "A tidal wave."

Her warning spread like wildfire. Within seconds, the beach was deserted — and it turned out to be one of the only places along the shores of Phuket where no one was killed or seriously injured (NY Post).

What an amazing story!

Holiday Reading on Bonds

If you have ever wanted to know everything there is to know about the Nobel Prize winning Linus Pauling, you should visit the Linus Pauling: The Nature of the Chemical Bond web site. The site is extensive, and contains over 800 scanned documents, photographs, audio clips, and video excerpts covering the life and research of Linus Pauling.

I have a feeling this site will keep me busy during the holiday break!

Discarded Cell Phone Case = Seed Germination

If you're using our Seed Germination Gizmo in your science classes, an interesting real world tie in can be found in this recent news story as reported by CNN:

Materials company Pvaxx Research & Development, at the request of U.S.-based mobile phone maker Motorola (MOT.N), has come up with a polymer that looks like any other plastic, but which degrades into soil when discarded.

Researchers at the University of Warwick in Britain then helped to develop a phone cover that contains a sunflower seed, which will feed on the nitrates that are formed when the polyvinylalcohol polymer cover turns to waste.

Is that cool or what?

Collaborative Acid Rain Project

I recently heard about a project for teachers that wish to integrate the web with the classroom to help investigate, and perform research, on a real-world concern - acid rain.

Spring Acid Rain Watch is a collaborative project that involves classes from many regions of the province and the world who communicate using a simple Internet technology. Together, the classes form a team of researchers who share their process, their data and their analysis. The age group aims for 10-14 year olds. Participating teachers can receive technical, scientific and pedagogical help on-line.

The project will run from January 31 to April 30 2005. Interested teachers can register and their class can become part of this team. More information of the project can be found on the project web site. (the site can also be viewed in French!)

Since you will need to know about acidity when performing measurements for acid rain, feel free to drop by the pH Analysis Gizmo where you get to test the pH of many common substances.

Mars Rovers Still Roving!

Although they aren't getting the press that they were getting in the summer time, Spirit and Opportunity are still operating on Mars! Both were expected to last for 90 Martian days, but have been operating for three times that long. Wow.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission Site

Soaring to Space

SpaceShipOne soared in to space today to claim the Ansari X-prize as the first private space ship to make it to space twice within two days carrying a mass equivalent to three people.

For more information:

BBC News story
CNN News story

District Administration Magazine: NCLB & Science in the news

In District Administration magazine's cover story last month, writer Rebecca Sausner focuses on the "next wave" of No Child Left Behind requirements for states and districts in the coming year: those related to science. In the article titled "Ready or Not," she emphasizes the challenge states face in developing and administering large-scale assessments that effectively measure students' scientific abilities. The story explains why science is different from reading and how states are working to create challenging standards and methods to test for true conceptual understanding.

The article goes on to say that

Educators from the Secretary of Education on down say inquiry-based learning is probably the best way to teach science, and it follows that hands-on experiments may also be the best way to assess students' understanding of concepts and the scientific process. And while hands-on science testing can be done on a small scale, it's cost prohibitive for an entire state...'But by using simulation you can simulate those experiences and give students the chance to demonstrate what they know,' says Assistant Secretary of Education Susan Sclafani...Aside from testing students on a deeper level of science understanding, computer-based simulations will generate zettabytes of data about how students solve problems, another boon to the science education community.

"From an assessment perspective, anything you do on a computer you can keep track of--how people solve problems, how many times they rotate an object, how they collect data," says David Kumar, professor of science education at Florida Atlantic University. "You can collect a lot of that kind of data, which would be useful psychometrics."

District Administration notes that most of the money for research in this area comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF). We at ExploreLearning should know because we have a Phase 2 SBIR grant from the NSF to develop a new approach for assessing learning in math/science courses. We are currently designing a revolutionary new product that uses Gizmo-like simulations to measure conceptual understanding and the ability to reason in a scientific manner -- using this product, we are confident that precisely the kind of assessment envisioned in the "Ready or Not" article can be scaled to large student audiences in a cost-effective manner.

To read the article, which includes quotes from NSTA Executive Director Gerry Wheeler, go to http://www.districtadministration.com/page.cfm?p=832.

Venus Dances and Transits

Venus will be moving between us (here on Earth) and the Sun tomorrow. It will be visible in many parts of the world. For more information you can read this BBC article (and they have links to many other web sites).

For visibility regions, visit this NASA site.

Double Helix, or Twisted Ladder?

Scientists are constantly trying to use alternative methods and simplification to explain science to students, politicians, and the public. With science becoming more complex every day, this is a constant struggle.

"Wieman said he had reduced the number of snoozers at his lectures by using cartoons and a toy machine gun that fires pingpong balls (mimicking light particles) at a basketball (an atom)."

Read the complete LA Times Story for a bit more on how scientists try to explain things like string theory, spectropolarimetry, and DNA.

One Mile on Mars

Spirit and Opportunity continue to explore Mars. While travelling to Columbia Hills, Spirit passed the one mile mark. Simply amazing when you think about it.

Mars Exploration Home Page

This Post Is Gluten and Bromate Free!

The May issue of Popular Science features and article entitled "Hogwashed: All the Science Baloney You Get Dished in a Day."

From the Washington Post:

William Speed Weed, a science writer with a sly wit, spent a day last fall recording every scientific claim he encountered in stores, in ads, in newspapers and on TV, radio and the Internet. Then he enlisted experts to help him evaluate their veracity.

… "Advertisers probably feed more science to Americans than anyone else," he writes. But learning science from ads is "like learning the fundamentals of automobile engineering from a used-car salesman."

Ouch.

There's probably an interesting science project here. For example, ask students to log all the scientific claims they are confronted with via ads and/or product packaging over the course of the week, then debunk (or corroborate) the claims as a group during class. (Or variations along those lines.)

LaparoStarfighter -- the next videogame craze?

An interesting article entitled Research shows video game playing may help surgeons is making its way around CNN, Yahoo, and other news sites, with the following lead:

All those years on the couch playing Nintendo and PlayStation appear to be paying off for surgeons.

Researchers found that doctors who spent at least three hours a week playing video games made about 37 percent fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgery and performed the task 27 percent faster than their counterparts who did not play video games.

The story goes on to talk about a surgeon-researcher who is developing a videogame for laparoscopic surgeons to use as a 'warmup' before they go into surgery.

It's easy to see why this kind of study would generate media interest. The processes underlying knowledge/skill transfer between computer-based environments and real-world tasks is a fascinating area of study, and one that is growing in importance every year. [In fact, almost 10 years ago, I became so interested in this area that I made it my career :) ]. Plus, with all the media attention paid to research on the negative effects of videogames, I'm glad to see more balanced coverage that includes research into the positive aspects of this new medium.

Unfortunately, the articles in CNN and elsewhere do not include links to the actual study's results, and in my opinion do not do a good job of accurately representing the findings -- it's easy to walk away from the article thinking, "If a surgeon starts playing video games for at least three hours a week, he or she will become a better laparoscopic surgeon", which is not a valid conclusion from the study.

I found a presentation of the study's results on one of the researcher's WWW sites -- if this kind of research interests you, you might want to take a look at it.

'Fab Five' Make Rare Appearance in Night Sky

Five planets are arrayed across the evening sky in a spectacular night show that won't be back for another three decades.

For the next two weeks, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - the five closest planets - should be easily visible at dusk, along with the moon.

"It's semi-unique," said Myles Standish, an astronomer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "They're all on the same side of the sun and stretched across the sky and that's what is kind of pretty."

Link: Sky and Telescope article
Link: NASA article

To Boldly Go...112 Feet.

Spirit and Opportunity are on their final missions on Mars, and NASA has upgraded the software that controls them so that they can try to make it out of the small craters they have been in during the entire mission.

Spirit managed to travel 34.3 m (112.5 ft) in just one day, and Opportunity is having a tough time with the loose soil so it has been slipping down the hill as it tries to climb up. I think I can. I think I can!

Useful Links:
CNN Story
Mars Rover Mission Home Page

Nine Planets? Or Eight, or Ten?

As a child I had to memorize the names of the planets. There is Mercury, Venus, Earth (that's us!), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Will Sedna (named unofficially after the Inuit goddess of the sea) now be added to that list. Or will Pluto be removed? Does Sedna really have a moon? How far away is Sedna?

So many questions. As science and technology advance there always seem to be more questions than answers ;)

Link to BBC News Stories: 'New planet' forces rethink, 'New planet' may have a moon
The legend of Sedna (a personal home page)

Bring in Da Noise

I've always been impressed by the noise that one cicada can produce. This spring is looking to be a very loud year due to the unusual insect.

Periodical cicadas, a species of the grasshopper-like insects best known for the scratching, screeching "singing" of the males, will emerge this May, filling forests in more than a dozen states. Almost as abruptly as they arrive, they disappear underground for another 17 years.

— start of CNN news story

Link to CNN story

Art and Science

Last week I saw a story about a Hubble image being compared to the van Gogh painting "The Starry Night." I couldn't help but think about a book I read a few years ago called Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain which begins:

Art and physics are a strange coupling. Of the many human disciplines, could there be two that seem more divergent? The artist employs image and metaphor; the physicist uses number and equation. Art encompasses an imaginative realm of aesthetic qualities; physics exists in a world of crisply circumscribed mathematical relationships between quantifiable properties.

Water Soaked Mars

There have been six landings on Mars over the past three decades. The most recent data from Spirit and Opportunity have provided a wealth of information for scientists to study for many, many years.

NASA held a press conference yesterday to announce that Mars was once a very wet planet according to the data.

More information can be found at the following URL's

• BBC News Story
• NASA Mars Rover Page

Journey To A Comet

The European Space Agency is getting ready to launch a spacecraft that will land on a comet ten years from now. The launch of the Rosetta is currently scheduled for 07:36 UT on February 27. Where were you ten years ago? Where will you be in ten years when it lands on the comet?

The Rosetta will travel many, many miles on this journey.

Spirit and Opportunity

For the first time since landing on Mars, both Spirit and Opportunity are fuctioning as expected! If all goes well they will be performing experiments on Mars for the next three months.

Visit MarsQuest Online for more information about the rovers. It sure would be fun to have one of those ;)

Space.com also has a special report on the Mars rovers.

Congratulations to NASA

Opportunity made a successful landing last night, and Spirit has been upgraded from critical to serious condition. Landing two craft on Mars in just one month is really amazing, and being able to analyze and correct problems on a robot that far from home is phenomenal.

Link: Mars Rover Home Page

Play on Mars!

With the current success of the NASA Mars Rover Mission I've become fascinated by the data that Spirit is sending back to Earth. I wish I could control a robot on Mars!

NASA has answered my wish by providing Maestro software. The program allows you to control your own simulated rover on Mars using the actual data obtained by Spirit. After learning how to control the rover in a lab setting you can let it explore a virtual 3D Mars. Don't get your rover stuck in a crevasse.

Apple posted a story about the background of the program.

The software (runs on Windows 98 and higher, Mac OSX, and *nix) can be downloaded from NASA. I am still learning how to control my rover in the lab environment before I venture out to Mars.

The Music and Magic of Words

On of my favorite sites on the web is WordSmith.org where they provide you with a "word of the day." It's a great way to not only build your vocuabulary but also learn a little history and various cultural trivia as well.

For instance, this week's theme at WordSmith is "words that are coined after earls." Heh heh … I didn't even realize there are words coined after earls, but here we have today's word:

orrery — A mechanical model of the solar system that represents the relative positions and motions of the planets around the sun. After Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery (1676-1731), who was given one of those models by John Rowley, a London instrument-maker. They were invented by George Graham c. 1700.

And speaking of orreries, have you seen our Rotation/Revolution of Near-Earth Planets Gizmo? I think the 4th Earl of Orrery would be proud of our virtual mechanical model of the solar system.

Spacecraft Out and About, Mysteries Abound!

This Saturday evening the first of two rovers will try to bounce over rocks and roll to a safe stop on Mars. More information can be found on the NASA Mars Rover Site.

NASA will collecting dust from a comet in about four hours. The Stardust spacecraft is more than 242 million miles away from Earth and has its 'shields up' right now. Detailed information can be found at the NASA Stardust Site.

Here on Earth we have gotten used to a compass pointing North. Could that be changing? Find out more about the decreasing magnetic field of the Earth in this BBC News Story. Since time doesn't want to feel left out, it seems as if the rotation rate of the Earth has changed a bit and we haven't needed a leap second for the fifth straight year.

Science sure is fun!

Really Old Photosynthesis

Scientists have recently found evidence of photosynthesis that occurred over 3.7 billion years ago! That is much older than the photosynthesis that is happening in the plant that sits next to my desk.

If you'd like to learn more about photosynthesis, read the news article and play with the Gizmo.

• BBC News link
• Photosynthesis Gizmo

Christmas, Dogs, and Mars.

Christmas is just around the corner. I know many of you will probably be opening gifts, enjoying a breakfast, or walking your dog. I'll be keeping an eye on a Beagle that is not a dog, it is a rover that will be landing on Mars early Christmas morning. Good dog.

I hope everything goes well for the Beagle 2 British led exploration of Mars. Be sure to check out their blog. I was sorry to hear that the electrical problems on the Japanese probe could not be corrected.

Beagle 2 Website

Misconceptions About Moon Phases

There's an interesting article in the November 2003 issue of The Science Teacher (vol 70, no 8) about students' misconceptions regarding phases of the Moon. Studies have shown that only about 25-35% of students correctly answer questions about Moon phases at the middle school and high school level (Sadler, 1987; Baxter, 1989). These misconceptions seem to persist through college:

Targus (1987) conducted...research with college students and found that 65% had no knowledge and 23% had fragmentary knowledge of the phases of the Moon.

The authors of the Science Teacher article describe a lesson plan for addressing these misconceptions, which I think would work very well with the Gizmo Moon Phases. I was also excited to see the authors use a pre-test/post-test 'action research' approach to see how successful their lesson plan was — if anyone uses Moon phases (or any other Gizmo for that matter) and collects data on its effectiveness, we'd love to hear about it!

Earthquake Hits ExploreLearning!

Here in Charlottesville we were just a hop, skip, and a jump away from a 4.5 magnitude earthquake this afternoon. I'd never felt an earthquake before, but I did make a few Gizmos to understand how scientists determine the location of the earthquake. Useful links are below (be sure to notice the travel times for the P waves on the USGS web site!).

• Earthquake Gizmo: Recording Station
• Earthquake Gizmo: Location of Epicenter
• USGS Report of Virginia Earthquake

Science, Food, and Holidays.

For those of you here in America, Thanksgiving will be celebrated this Thursday. Many of you will be home cooking up a variety of foods. Believe it or not there is a lot of science involved in the cooking! What is the boiling temperature of water? If you add salt will that change the boiling temperature? When the pop-up timer on the turkey pops up what does that signal? Why is some bread flat and some is puffy?

Keep your mind active during the holidays by exploring these web sites!

• Cooking A Better Bird
• Science of Cooking
• Kitchen Cornucopia
• Heat Transfer by Conduction (Gizmo)

Tracking a Disease

Around this time of the year many people ask the question, "Have you gotten a flu shot this year?" The flu can be considered a disease, and it is possible to track the spread of the flu.

The flu often begins in Asia and can be tracked around the world. Eventually it ends up here in Charlottesville, Virginia. How exactly does one track a disease? While reading through curriculum standards it is easy to find several key items: observe, classify and sequence, measure, interpret and analyze data, and construct graphs and tables to communicate experimental findings. Those are just a few of the skills that are developed while trying to track a disease.

In the real world investigators have spent considerable time trying to determine the cause of Hepatitis A in over 400 people in western Pennsylvania. The exact cause of the disease is still unknown, but green onions are one potential cause. Across the world the spread of HIV has been a major concern for more than two decades. The BBC News recently did a story that uses many graphs for showing the current status of the disease along with a prediction for the year 2010.

Our Spread of Disease Gizmo will let you explore three ways that disease can spread throughout a group of people in a room. With just a single room controlled environment in the Gizmo students can learn the basic skills of measurement, observing, graphing, and communicating their ideas. We have plans for two other Gizmos that will allow student to track down possible sources of disease on a larger scale than just one room, so stay tuned for those during the next year.

I enjoy using investigative skills to discover the source and cause of disease. I think I might have watched to many mystery movies and read adventure stories when I was growing up. 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'

Prime Time Saturday Night

There are many things to do on a Saturday evening. Television, movies, dining, or web browsing, but all of those can take a back seat to a total lunar eclipse! If you live in North or South America, Europe, or Africa get out and enjoy the eclipse if your weather cooperates.

Saturday night will be a night without a moon, for about 24 minutes. I will be out watching this eclipse since it is supposed to be clear and cool this Saturday evening.

Detailed information about the eclipse can be found at these sites:
CNN Lunar Eclipse Story
NASA Lunar Eclipse Site
Wikipedia Lunar Eclipse

The moon has been observed in the evening for many, many years, and can be found in literature stretching back to ancient times. Imagine living thousands of years ago with no electricity, no computer, and no street lights. Do you think you might have noticed the moon a bit more often?

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.
-- Alcaeus (fl. 611-580 BC)

To help students understand tides on Earth, or phases of the moon we have two new Gizmos that were recently added. An eclipse Gizmo is currently under development. I'm sure it will be ready for the next lunar eclipse since that isn't until May 4, 2004 :)

Solar Activity Yields Art

In the past few weeks there has been a lot of solar activity which has led to some amazing pictures from around the world.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
-- Albert Einstein

Charged particles moving through magnetic fields really can produce art!

A long time ago = far far away.

As a teen back in the seventies I was fascinated by the exploration of space that was going on at that time. The Voyager was launched back in 1977 as an exploratory probe. It sent back amazing pictures of many objects in our solar system, particularly the planets of Jupiter and Saturn.

Voyager has now travelled over 8.4 billion miles in the past twenty six years, and is now at the very edge of our solar system. It carries a "12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the culture and diversity of Earth and meant to be played by an alien form of life that may run across Voyager."

Voyager has gone farther than anything else created by humans here on Earth. To boldly go where no human-created robot has gone before! I wonder if an alien form of life or even another human will ever get to try to play that disk. In the movie Star Trek I Voyager was a featured entity :)

You can read more about Voyager at these URL's.

NASA - Ask Voyager
CNN - Craft reaches edge of solar system

In the next two months there will be several probes reaching Mars. I know I can't wait.