Online science curriculum is great. But outdoors science curriculum is even better.
Rush out tonight and see the annual August shooting star show before this year's event is over. This annual meteor shower is called the Perseids because they seem to come from the constellation Perseus.
The Perseids are fragments left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle in the vicinity of Earth's orbit...actually the vicinity of the part of this orbit that the Earth passes through every August.
You could say that the Earth runs into the shower. Much like when you or I run into the shower. You don't get wet just standing in the bathroom. You have to move to a certain place where there are drops of water in the air. The orbiting Earth runs into the Perseids in a roughly similar way.
I remember this science song lyric from my childhood....
"A shooting star is not a star, why does it shine so bright?
The friction as it falls through air, causes heat and light."
Last night sitting outside talking with my brother, I saw a terrific shooting star with a long lasting trail. And I wasn't even looking!
Pretty DAF FY
More info in this Yahoo article.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Oil on Mars?
Could there be oil on Mars? For some reason, I started wondering about this. It seems theoretically possible, albeit unlikely. [Albeit is our vocabulary flash card for the day.]
If there was life at one time on Mars, perhaps when it was a wetter planet, organisms could have lived, died and become buried in the same manner that precipitated oil formation on Earth.
At least that's my theory. Comments from folks with more knowledge in the geobiology of oil formation are most welcome.
One thing seems certain. It wouldn't be very economical to transport for use on Earth.
If there was life at one time on Mars, perhaps when it was a wetter planet, organisms could have lived, died and become buried in the same manner that precipitated oil formation on Earth.
At least that's my theory. Comments from folks with more knowledge in the geobiology of oil formation are most welcome.
One thing seems certain. It wouldn't be very economical to transport for use on Earth.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Big new particle accelerator doesn't
Vocabulary flash cards for today's curriculum:
a. Higgs particle/Higgs boson
b. Large Hadron Collider
The biggest and latest "atom smasher" is just giving those atoms a gentle squeeze. Like Mr. Whipple the shopkeeper squeezing the Charmin toilet paper in the old commercials.
That's right, the Large Hadron Collider, a huge, high-profile international project that spans the French/Swiss border for several miles in each direction is not working that well. It's by far the biggest and meanest particle accelerator ever and but doesn't. It doesn't accelerate the particles that much. That's right, some of the scads of magnets that are supposed to accelerate particles to amazing velocities aren't working that well so far. So the particles aren't going that fast (relatively speaking) and their collisions are kind of on the wimpy side. More like fender benders than collisions.
It's kind of like asking the Tin Man to chop trees without enough oil to swing his arms fast.
But don't worry, they will fix it. Notwithstanding the satirical prose above, the engineers, scientists and construction teams building the LHC are a dedicated and ingenious group that are sure to make everything right.
And when they do, perhaps they will find that elusive Higgs particle. The hypothetical but as-yet-undetected particle that bestows the property of mass on all subatomic particles have mass. And maybe they will get clues about the mysterious dark matter that is supposed to account for 25% of the universe's mass (~weight) but also has never been seen.
So while the accelerator isn't accelerating that much, at least the dark matter is still living up to its name by remaining dark for now.
a. Higgs particle/Higgs boson
b. Large Hadron Collider
The biggest and latest "atom smasher" is just giving those atoms a gentle squeeze. Like Mr. Whipple the shopkeeper squeezing the Charmin toilet paper in the old commercials.
That's right, the Large Hadron Collider, a huge, high-profile international project that spans the French/Swiss border for several miles in each direction is not working that well. It's by far the biggest and meanest particle accelerator ever and but doesn't. It doesn't accelerate the particles that much. That's right, some of the scads of magnets that are supposed to accelerate particles to amazing velocities aren't working that well so far. So the particles aren't going that fast (relatively speaking) and their collisions are kind of on the wimpy side. More like fender benders than collisions.
It's kind of like asking the Tin Man to chop trees without enough oil to swing his arms fast.
But don't worry, they will fix it. Notwithstanding the satirical prose above, the engineers, scientists and construction teams building the LHC are a dedicated and ingenious group that are sure to make everything right.
And when they do, perhaps they will find that elusive Higgs particle. The hypothetical but as-yet-undetected particle that bestows the property of mass on all subatomic particles have mass. And maybe they will get clues about the mysterious dark matter that is supposed to account for 25% of the universe's mass (~weight) but also has never been seen.
So while the accelerator isn't accelerating that much, at least the dark matter is still living up to its name by remaining dark for now.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Jupiter Just Saved Earth...
...or so some believe. But others disagree. That controversy is today's curriculum.
"Jupiter took a bullet for us last weekend.
PERSONALLY, I think this is a mathematical question. Obviously Jupiter deflects some passing objects toward and some away from earth and the question is how many in each column? Someone (not me) could do a computer simulation of objects (comets, etc.) traveling inward from the outer solar system and how they are affected by Jupiter's gravity. That should give an informed answer. Or at least as informed as we can be based on our knowledge and assumptions about the overall distribution of masses and trajectories of outer solar system objects heading inward.
"Jupiter took a bullet for us last weekend.
"An object, probably a comet that nobody saw coming, plowed into the giant planet’s colorful cloud tops sometime Sunday, splashing up debris and leaving a black eye the size of the Pacific Ocean. This was the second time in 15 years that this had happened. The whole world was watching when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fell apart and its pieces crashed into Jupiter in 1994, leaving Earth-size marks that persisted up to a year.
"That’s Jupiter doing its cosmic job, astronomers like to say. Better it than us. Part of what makes the Earth such a nice place to live, the story goes, is that Jupiter’s overbearing gravity acts as a gravitational shield deflecting incoming space junk, mainly comets, away from the inner solar system where it could do for us what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Indeed, astronomers look for similar configurations — a giant outer planet with room for smaller planets in closer to the home stars — in other planetary systems as an indication of their hospitableness to life.
"Anthony Wesley, the Australian amateur astronomer who first noticed the mark on Jupiter and sounded the alarm on Sunday, paid homage to that notion when he told The Sydney Morning Herald, “If anything like that had hit the Earth it would have been curtains for us, so we can feel very happy that Jupiter is doing its vacuum-cleaner job and hoovering up all these large pieces before they come for us.”
"But is this warm and fuzzy image of the King of Planets as father-protector really true?"
THE OTHER SIDE
PERSONALLY, I think this is a mathematical question. Obviously Jupiter deflects some passing objects toward and some away from earth and the question is how many in each column? Someone (not me) could do a computer simulation of objects (comets, etc.) traveling inward from the outer solar system and how they are affected by Jupiter's gravity. That should give an informed answer. Or at least as informed as we can be based on our knowledge and assumptions about the overall distribution of masses and trajectories of outer solar system objects heading inward.
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