Raccoon Invasion

A few weeks ago, in early April, I went out to the shed for the first time in a few months to pull out the lawnmower and make sure it was properly running before it was time to mow the lawn.

I opened the door and to my surprise a large raccoon scurried across the bench, clawed up the wall, and hid in the back corner of the top area where I have some wood stored.  No big deal I thought.  There's a couple of missing panels in the awning along the side of the shed, so it's not uncommon to find a stray cat in the shed.  Never had a raccoon, however.

Anyways, I set to work on my mower, and then I heard some quiet squeaking noises which I traced to a litter of raccoon babies!!!  Mom had made a nest on a bag of dirt in the shed.  I took a video that you can see below.

Very cute!  But also a problem.  Raccoons are typically afraid, but can be mean little critters if you get on their bad side.  We didn't want to call a pest control company because they'd kill them.  My wife contacted some wildlife people she knows and they told us that by opening the door and bothering the mother, we had already set in motion their removal.  Sure enough, two days later the raccoons were gone.  Mom was PO'd by my intrusion and moved her babies to a safer place.

An interesting way to start the spring season!

This Blog's History: Science Fiction Anthologies

For This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to the post I wrote last month on science fiction anthologies.  A great gift for the science fiction lover in your family!

Science Fiction Anthologies

How to Say 'Uranus'?

Every teacher's favorite planet is Uranus, for the simple fact it elicits unstoppable laughter.  You know what I mean.  What person can't help but laugh at a planet often pronounced YOUR-ANUS??!!!??  LOL!  I admit, whenever we cover Uranus in my upper level high school classes, it brings a chuckle to me as well.  I can't help but break a smile when the first student smiles start to crack.  LOL!  At some level we are all children who think butt jokes are funny.

So how do you pronounce Uranus?  Fraser Cain over at Universe Today states the proper pronunciation is ur-unus.  That's how I say it in class, but that's not going to stop those YOUR-ANUS jokes!  LOL!  Regardless of how you pronounce it, no one can argue Uranus has a very cool blue color to it.

Notice the rings...Uranus is tipped on its side.

Super Earth with Mercury Similarities

Finding new planets are a dime a dozen these days, but every new planet found adds more to our understanding of exo-planets, or planets outside of our solar system orbiting other stars.  Most of these are gas giants, but more and more are Earth-like.  Astronomers have recently discovered K2-229b, which has a radius slightly large than Earth's, but a mass much larger, meaning it has a much greater density, more similar to Mercury's density in our own Solar System.

Astronomers Find Super-Earth with Mercury-Like Composition: K2-229b

Mercury has a much larger core than is expected for a planet of its size.  The best explanation is that Mercury was impacted by another planet sized object early in its formation, stripping the outer layers from Mercury, leaving the denser core intact.  Thus Mercury has a larger density.  Did the same thing happen in this Solar System to K2-229b?  Possibly. 

This planet is highly unlikely to contain any life given that it is very close to its star, with an orbital period of just 14 hours.  This means one side of the planet always faces the star and temperatures can reach a few thousand degrees!  Yikes!!!  This planet may not be habitable, but it sure is interesting!

James Webb Space Telescope Delayed Again

Last October I wrote about the James Webb Space Telescope and its launch being delayed from 2018 to 2019.  Well guess what?  That 2019 launch has now been delayed to 2020.  Sigh.  Will the JWST ever launch?  These constant delays make you wonder.  Most projects end up delayed by some amount, but it seems the JWST delays keep coming and coming and coming.

The James Webb Space Telescope.

To put it simply, astronomers and engineers have encountered several problems that require more testing, resulting in the multi-year delay.  A delay is better than a cancellation or a failed telescope in space.  Hopefully everything can be tested and found to be in working order before the 2020 launch date.  The JWST will be an amazing telescope and help answer many astronomical questions.  But it needs to be launched first.  At the moment, the earliest possible launch date is May 2020, with further delays possible.  Keep your fingers crossed!  

I know we were all looking forward to that launch day later this year, but we must wait two more years.  What's that saying?  Patience is a virtue?  Sure...but I'd rather have a working JWST now!!!

More Fun in Atlanta

My two non-conference activities in Atlanta last month were a visit to the National Center for Civil and Human rights museum and a tour of the CNN facility.  There's much more to do downtown, however, if you're ever in town for a visit.  Here are a few things I found just walking around.

Georgia Aquarium - One of the best in the country I'm told.

World of Coca-Cola - Learn more about Coca-Cola!

Skyview - A giant Ferris wheel!

Skyview in Atlanta

Centennial Park - All of the above are located in this park and it's a great area to walk around and have a picnic.

There are many other things to do in Atlanta and plenty of great restaurants.  If you're looking for a city vacation, I highly recommend Atlanta if you've never visited.  

This Blog's History: Do Apples Prevent Doctor's Visits?

In case you missed it last month, for This Friday in This Blog's History, I point you back to a post I wrote on the saying that an apple a day keeps the doctor away.  It's okay to eat those apples, but just understand you still need to visit the doctor for you annual checkups!

Misconceptions that Kill #11: An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

National Center for Civil and Human Rights

On the day of my arrival to Atlanta last month and the day before the start of the NSTA conference, I took a visit to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights Museum.  Let me just say that this museum is a MUST see.  Regardless of your plans in Atlanta, plan ahead and devote 2-3 hours to this museum.  It's an amazing museum that shares with you the horrible history of human and civil rights in this country and in this world.  I had chills throughout my entire visit and it's very possible you may find yourself shedding tears.

National Center for Civil and Human Rights

Much of the museum is devoted to the civil rights movement in the U.S.  Although I knew much of the basics of this movement, I was stunned at many of the awful things that took place I was unaware.  There's a lunch counter exhibit that you must participate in.  Even if there's a line, spend time in the line to take part in this exhibit.  You sit at a lunch counter, put on headphones, and are taken back in time to the slurs and physical violence black men and women experienced on a daily basis.  I walked away with chills and goosebumps.

Mural on the first floor of the museum.

There's an excellent section devoted to Martin Luther King Jr. and upstairs is a section devoted to human rights across the world.  I am so glad I made time to visit this museum and if I'm ever in Atlanta again with my kids, I will make sure to take them.  This is an experience EVERYONE needs to partake in to help develop an understanding of what it was like to be black during the civil rights movement (and today). 

CNN Tours

While attending the NSTA conference last month in Atlanta I took a break and went on a tour of the CNN facilities.  The CNN building is located right across the street from the convention center, so it was an easy walk that didn't interrupt my conference schedule.  Since it was just me, I splurged on the VIP tour for $33.  The standard tour is about $15 per person. 

Headed up the escalator to the CNN VIP tour.

The tour lasted 50 minutes and showed us around some of the facilities where production takes place.  We had a chance to walk in the studio where HLN is recorded and that was pretty cool.  I'm not sure I'd spend $33/person for a family of four to do the VIP tour, but since I was buying just one ticket, I was satisfied.  If you have a family, I'd stick to the regular tour unless you have money to burn.

Overall I found the tour informative, interesting, and worth the cost.  If you find yourself in the Atlanta area and have an interest in how TV news is made, the CNN tour is a great option to see this in action. 

Visit to Atlanta

Last month I had the opportunity to travel to Atlanta, Georgia and attend the 2018 National Science Teachers Association national conference.  I last attended this conference in 2007 when it was in St. Louis.  A great conference!  An amazing conference!  The best part of large conferences such as this one is you are surrounded by thousands of other science teachers teaching across the country and facing some of the same struggles I face.  The sessions were great and provided motivation to continue to improve my teaching and provided several activities I can take back to my classroom. 

National Science Teachers Association

The exhibit hall was great too, packed with a ton of vendors showing off their science wares.  There were several book publishers there as well, selling books.  One publisher had a deal that every book was $5, regardless of publishing date and hard/soft cover.  I stocked up on some books, which concerned me a bit when I got back to my apartment and had some struggles getting my suitcase to close!  LOL!  But how could I resist $5 science books?!?!?! 

If you are a science teacher and you've never attended a NSTA conference, I highly encourage you to do so!  I'm hoping to attend next year (back in St. Louis), but it will probably come down to funding.  Traveling to national conferences is not cheap and school funding has decreased relative to inflation over the years, making it tough to attend unless one pays entirely out of pocket.  Thus the reason there is an 11 year gap in me attending a NSTA conference.  For more information on NSTA, go to the link below.

National Science Teachers Association

Atlanta was also a great city to tour.  I did a bit of sight seeing on my trip and I'll describe these experiences in future posts. 

Extreme Science Kit

A couple of weekends ago my 11 year old opened up the box of an "Extreme Science Kit" she received for her birthday.

Extreme Science Kit

The kit includes a few plastic test tubes and basic materials that allows one to complete 11 different science experiments.  My daughter's first experiment was the one shown in the video below.

Very cool!  My daughter is old enough now to do many of these on her own.  In fact, that's how this weekend's experiments started.  She woke up, opened the box, and set out to do some science!  The moral of this story is the same as most stories I write up on this blog.  Expose your kids to science.  Encourage them to explore.  Let them make a mess.  Let them have fun.  Do all of this and you have a young scientist in the making!  Maybe they won't have a career in science but they'll have a greater appreciation of science for the rest of their life!

This Blog's History: Drinking Too Much Water Kills

For This Friday in This Blog's History, I point you back to a post I wrote on drinking too much water.  Yes, it's deadly and it's not the same as drowning.

Misconceptions that Kill #10: Drinking Too Much Water

Is a #16 Seed Beating a #1 Seed Shocking?

Last month, a #16 seed beat a #1 seed in the Men's NCAA tournament for the first time ever.  Note the word "Men's" however.  A #16 seed beat a #1 seed in the Women's NCAA tournament way back in 2008.  So let's be careful by tossing around the word "first". 

The NCAA expanded the men's tournament to 64 teams in 1985, thus creating 4 brackets with 16 teams each.  The first round of the tournament has 4 games in which a #16 team faces off against a #1 team.  Until this year, no men's #16 team had ever defeated a #1 team.  It took 134 games, given the timing of this year's games, for this upset to happen.  Everyone is super shocked, but should they be shocked?  In the regular season, a team ranked in the top 4 quite often plays a team ranked in the 60's.  Usually the top team wins, but not always.  Upsets happen every year and quite often every year. 

Nate Silver, over at fivethirtyeight.com wrote about this game and in the last paragraph of the article, linked below, calculated the odds of it taking this long for a #16 seed to win, at just 3.7%.  Not the odds of winning, but the odds of it taking this many games to occur.  In other words, Silver has calculated a 96.3% chance that a #16 seed should have won BEFORE this year.

How UMBC Did The Unthinkable — And The Inevitable

Statistics are fun and often go against common sense.  See the birthday matching problem I posted yesterday for another example of this.

The Matching Birthday Question

I believe I've written about this before on this blog, but I couldn't find that post so if this is a repeat, I apologize.  The other day in astronomy class we talked about statistics for a bit and I presented them with the matching birthday question.  What are the odds that any two people in the room have the same birthday?  Consider two students in the room, Mary and Bob.  What are the odds that Bob has the same birthday as Mary?  There are 365 days in the year so the odds Bob has the same birthday as Mary are 1:365.  Pretty simple.

What are the odds Mary and Bob have the same birthday and their birthday is on March 22?  Those odds are lower and are given by:

(1/365)(1/365) = 0.00075%

That's pretty low.  Not impossible, but very unlikely.  But the original question asked is what are the odds that ANY two people in the room have the same birthday.  In this particular class there are 11 students and myself, so a total of 12 people.  Students usually argue the odds are very low, but are they really very low?  Before we calculate the odds we go around the room as a test and see.  In this class, person 3 and person 11 had the same birthday!  Upon learning this there were several shocked faces in the room, but should there be shocked faces?  Let's see what the math tells us.  

What makes the odds of this happening higher is the fact that we are not selecting two specific students, but only asking about ANY two students.  Therefore you have to look at each possible pairing in the room.

(364/365)^(12*11/2) = 83.5%

The 12*11/2 looks at the number of possible pairings in the room and the 83.5% is the chance that there are NO matching birthdays.  To find the number of matching birthdays, just subtract from 100% to get 16.5%.  Therefore there was a 16.5% chance two people in our room had matching birthdays.  Low, but far, far from impossible.  Things with a 16.5% chance of happening happen every day!  Increase the number of people in the room and the odds of a matching birthday increase.  It only takes 23 people to give a 50% chance of any two people having a matching birthday.  

I love this problem because at first glance it goes against common sense.  The number 23 is far less than 365, so it seems impossible that there is a 50% chance of two people having a matching birthday.  But the math tells us otherwise!

Unexplained Colored Flower Experiment

Last week I posted the setup of my 11 year old's white carnation science experiment.  She had looked up the procedure for an experiment to turn white carnations into colored carnations by putting their stems in water colored by food coloring.  We started with the following:

White carnations placed in colored water.

After a few days we were supposed to see the color of the white petals changing to the color of the water.  However, that did not happen.  After seven days in colored water, here were her results: 

Still white carnations.

The carnations were still just as white as the day we started with no hint of coloring in the petals.  Hmmm.  To be honest, I'm not really sure why this didn't work.  I did an experiment similar to this several years ago when my kids were younger and I remember it working.  Maybe we didn't put in enough food coloring?  I really don't know.  But that's science!  Sometimes our results are unexpected which leads to more experiments to answer these questions.  Experiments that do not go as expected are not failures.  They are an opportunity to learn!

Spring Break with my Cat

Last month while on Spring Break I had a chance to catch up on a few things since I was home, but my wife was at work and my kids were at school.  Unfortunately our Spring Breaks never match, but it does offer some time to catch up.  I had a few school items to catch up on, but also spent time during Spring Break doing some spring cleaning of areas in the house that never get cleaned on a regular basis.  This included cleaning of the ceiling fan blades and light fixtures that collect dusts for months before getting cleaned.  On my first day of Spring Break I moved the ladder from the garage to the kitchen to get started.  It only took a few minutes for our cat, Newton, to discover the wonders of a ladder.

Newton investigating the ladder.

Too bad his little paws can't grasp a rag so he could help with the cleaning of the light fixtures!  LOL!

This Blog's History: New Planets Outside the Galaxy

In case you missed it last month, today, for This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to the post I wrote on astronomers discovering new planets outside our galaxy.  Very cool stuff.  To read more, click the link below to read the full post.

New Planets Outside the Galaxy

Starting Softball

My 11 year old has always been interested in soccer.  She's played since she was 4 and has never had any interest in trying another sport.  In fact, when we ask she seems offended that we would ever consider asking her if she wanted to try a new sport.  LOL!  My 7 year old, on the other hand, is interested in trying many things.  She played soccer for a few years (I coached her team) but she decided not to play this year.  She wanted to try new things and started taijutsu last year and continues with that.  This spring she'll start playing softball for the first time.  We recently went out and bought her a glove and a bat.  Her and I have been out a few times on warmer days to play catch.  I'm quite impressed with how quickly she's picked up throwing and catching.  She's got a strong arm on her and looks natural when throwing, not something all kids can easily pull off when first starting.  I always thought I was pretty good as a kid playing baseball, but if there was video, I'm sure I would have looked very awkward when I first started!

Spring is here and softball is starting!

At the time of writing this, practice has not yet started, but my 7 year old is very excited!  I've had fun playing catch with her.  Although I have fun kicking around the soccer ball with my 11 year old, playing catch with a softball comes much more naturally to me.  It's the sport (baseball) I played for years as a kid and the sport I can provide the most guidance to my kids.  When I was coaching soccer I was learning on the fly.  I never played soccer as a kid, nor did I play as a college student or as an adult.  My first real soccer experience came when I coached my daughter's team when she was 3!  Softball season, here we come!!!

Indiana State Museum

With soccer season quickly approaching and weekends about to be booked with soccer for the next 2-3 months, we decided to take a day trip to the Indiana State Museum, located in Indianapolis, IN.  We've never visited this museum before and I'll start by saying it's a very good history museum I highly recommend you visit if in the area.

Inside the Indiana State Museum.

As with any museum, there were several galleries to view.  Unfortunately the dinosaur gallery was being renovated at the time.  This bummed out my 7 year old a bit, but she still had a lot of fun viewing the other exhibits.  My 11 year old's favorite exhibit was in one of the rotating galleries.  We made it in time before the Poison and Venom exhibit left.

The Poison and Venom exhibit.

She had a great time in this exhibit.  In fact, we probably spent more time viewing this exhibit than any of the other exhibits.  I figured we'd spend 2-3 hours in the museum, but it was a full four hours before we left and that's with us moving quickly through one of the final exhibits because we were all getting hungry.  In addition, a couple of exhibits were closed as they were updating for a new exhibit to open soon.  

Inside the Indiana State Museum.

Again, I encourage you to make a visit to this museum.  It's well worth the visit and we had a great time on a Sunday afternoon before soccer season fills our schedule. 

Taco Cookies!!!

Some people have talents in some areas and and other people have talents in other areas.  For example, my talents lie in math and science.  I love math and science and they come easy to me.  Making taco cookies, however, is not one of my talents.  I mention taco cookies because I saw these at a birthday party for one of my kids last month.  They are simply amazing!

Taco cookies!!!

Look at these!  They are simply amazing!  They are not store bought but made by hand of one of the family members of one of the kids at the party.  They are beautifully constructed taco cookies and delicious!  I keep looking back at this picture and am just amazed at the effort put in to make these!  Like I said, people have different talents and this person is definitely talented in cooking and food presentation.  If I made taco cookies they would look like the above cookies after 5 minutes in a blender.  LOL! 

Science Fiction Anthologies

I had a $5 coupon at Thriftbooks.com to use that was about to expire, so I used it on the purchase of a few used science fiction anthologies, shown below.

Science fiction anthologies now part of my collection.

I've never read a science fiction anthology before but I came across one while browsing some books so I thought I'd give them a try and purchase a few used ones for cheap.  These anthologies all consist of several short science fiction stories written by prominent science fiction authors.  I started by cracking open Volume I of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame and the first story was originally published in 1934 and focuses on a team of astronauts landing on Mars and finding intelligent life.  So far I'm really enjoying these books.  They are great addition to my book shelf, which I just cleaned and re-organized, as discussed in a post just a few days ago!  :-)